Adapted from When Life Feels Empty by Isaac Serrano. ©2025 by Joseph Isaac Serrano. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.  

All you need is a personal relationship with Jesus…well, sort of.

Have you ever heard someone say, “Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship”? If you are like me, you have probably heard it countless times. And every time you hear it, it probably goes unchallenged and is received with nodding heads of approval. Maybe you have even said it with good intentions. But just stop and think about it—is that true? For sure, there is a relationship with God in Christianity, but does that exclude it from being a religion? How could a belief system with rites, rituals, sacred days, and a sacred book that teaches about sacred practices not be a religion? How in the world could “Christianity is not a religion” have become a beloved slogan?

Our individualism has led us to emphasize one component of the faith at the cost of the others. Yes, our faith entails a relationship with Jesus, but that’s not all it is. Nowhere in the Bible does it even use the phrase “a personal relationship with Jesus.” Nowhere in the Bible does it say anything like, “You don’t need to go to church, you just need a personal relationship with Jesus.” Nowhere do we get a hint that the Bible would say, “Don’t worry about all the rites, rituals, and religious stuff; the only thing that matters is your personal relationship with Jesus.”

The apostle Paul wrote roughly half of the books in the New Testament. Guess how many times Paul uses the phrase “my Lord.” Now guess how many times Paul uses the phrase “our Lord.” Not a big difference in meaning between the two; one is singular, one is plural. But there is a big difference in usage. Here are the actual results:

My Lord = 1

Our Lord = 53

Pretty shocking. The first-person singular is worlds apart from the first-person plural. Is this simply a matter of grammatical preference? Or is there something much deeper going on? Do we see anything else in Paul that might help us get to the bottom of this? Listen to what Paul says to some of the very first Christians in the city of Ephesus:

“There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4‑6).

Obviously, there is a clear emphasis on the word one. And much of that makes sense—there is one God the Father, there is one Lord Jesus, and there is one Spirit. But one faith? One baptism? One body? How can that be? Clearly, there are millions of people who have their own faith, countless people who have different baptisms, a multitude of bodies that are Christian.

Paul would agree to this pushback, but he would also push forward. He would say that all those separate baptisms are part of the one baptism that the church administers. He would say we all have different individual accounts of putting our faith in Christ, but we all participate in the one true faith. And yes, we all have different bodies, but collectively we are the one body of Christ. There is a unity in our diversity, and a oneness in our plurality. Sound familiar?

Throughout his writings, Paul puts the utmost importance on the unity and oneness of the church. There are many examples of this, but here is one of my favorites: “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (Philippians 2:1‑2).

Paul is in prison, and he says “complete my joy” by being unified. I don’t know about you, but if I were stuck in a prison cell, my joy would rest on getting out of jail, not on the unity of some church miles away. Not for Paul though. The unity of this church was central. It was by no means some side mission; it was part of the heart of the mission for Paul.

Paul takes this lead from Christ himself. Look at what Jesus asks of his Father on the night when he is handed over and betrayed. Initially, Jesus prays specifically for his disciples, but then he goes on.

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:20‑23, italics added)

Jesus prays for his disciples, but then he also prays for all those who would come to believe based on their words. See the implication? Jesus prayed for you. Did you know that Jesus prayed for you on the night of his betrayal? Followers of Jesus alive today are, by extension, all those who believe because of the teaching of the apostles. And take note of what he prays for, that all believers would be one.

No one would have believed it on that night, but Jesus knew what he was going to build. He would build a church made of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. He knew his church would expand and reach all people. And even though there are countless believers around the world, his prayer was that they would all be one. Jesus prayed for unity in the diversity. Just as a human body has trillions of living organisms that compose the whole, so the body of Christ is made of innumerable men, women, and children who compose his body.  

There is one bride, one body, one church.

God’s people constitute the one body, the one bride, the one church. And when God’s people gather, he is there with them in a profound way. Of course, God is omnipresent, so he is always with believers in one sense, but he is uniquely with his people when they gather around Word and sacrament, in corporate worship. If each believer is a temple of the Holy Spirit, imagine what it’s like when all believers gather.

When materialism seems to be turned up louder than usual in your life, the faith of others can raise the volume on what is true. When life feels empty, the faith of others can help fill you. Part of what it means to be human is to exist alongside the other. So, know as an individual that you are the church, but you are the church because you are a part of the church.

And every week we need to gather with the church, because we need each other.

It is not good for us to be alone.