Following his theological discourse on the priesthood of Christ and the sufficiency of his sacrifice, the writer of Hebrews makes application to the people of God and the corporate life they share together. He begins, "Therefore, brothers and sisters." The confidence that we have in the blood of Jesus - in the new and living way that he has opened - leads us to respond in a few different but complementary ways. We draw near with assurance that our guilt has been removed. We hold fast to the confession of hope that we have been given by a faithful God. And we consider each other by provoking love and good works in one another. All of these - drawing near, holding fast, and considering one another - become nearly impossible to do if we neglect the exhortation that follows. Do not neglect to gather together.
In our current cultural moment, there is a widely accepted lie that we can be virtually present. Kids growing up right now perceive very little difference between and move almost imperceptibly in and out of reality and the pseudo-space of the internet. The illusion of interconnectedness afforded by modern technology is reshaping the way that we think. And one of the primary ways that it has done this is to lessen in our minds the need to gather. Under the guise of opening up enitrely new avenues for presence and interaction - claiming to expand and add to the definition of what gathering can mean and can look like - what the world of post-modernity has actually done is to deform and debilitate the concept of "gathering." This is often the reality of the Enemy's deceptions. The promise to enrich a thing by expanding its definition - but in reality this "expanse" of definition is actually a loss of definition, unraveling the thing and stripping it of any semblance of coherence, leaving it not enriched but actually anemic.
The gospel does the exact opposite. The gospel brings clarity of definition. Not only do we gather, but we gather in the flesh - occupying space together. Not only do we gather together, but we do so to stir one another up to love and good works. We love and do good works because this is the outworking of holding fast to our confession of hope. We hold fast to that hope because the One who promised it to us is faithful. And even though we should by all accounts be unworthy, we can gather and draw near to this One who is faithful because the priestly work of Jesus has made that possible. This clarity doesn't stifle and restrict our gathering together; it actually infuses it with significance and frees it up to be everything that it was meant to be. The gospel makes things thicker - realer and healthier and more robust. Imitation gospels make things thinner - hollow and sickly and unable to hold or carry any real weight or substance.
