I. What is being confessed in this article?⤒🔗

The previous article gave a striking outline of what the one catholic church is and should be. Now it addresses the calling or duty to join this church. The article says about this:

1.  Absolutely no one, whoever he may be, should keep aloof from this catholic church, as if he were self-sufficient. For in this church those are being gathered who are saved. Full salvation is enjoyed there, and not outside of it. Therefore, it is necessary for everyone to join her.
2.  In this way the church remains a tight unit. For by submitting to her instruction and discipline, we bow together before Christ, and by supporting one another, each with his own gifts from God, they form one body.
3. To accomplish all of this all the better, all believers — according to God’s own Word — have a duty to withdraw themselves from those who do not belong to the church and join the church. This must be done, even if the government opposes it and threatens with the death penalty.
4. Those who leave the church or do not join her therefore act contrary to God’s command.

II. All are obliged to join the catholic church←⤒🔗

1.  This article specifically calls on "all believers" to join the church. This would be entirely superfluous if all believers had already joined her. So there are believers outside the church. They are those who are said to stand aloof, who keep to themselves, do not to join her and unite with her, or who separate themselves from the church.
    In order to give clout to this call, which is intended for all believers, it will have to be explained why those who are already believers should necessarily join the church. Why should a believer also specifically need to belong to the church?
2. The article opens with a radical statement: that “no one ought to withdraw.” It looks as if the words "no one" are even underlined: no one, whatever “his status or standing.” No one at all is to withdraw from this holy assembly or feel content to be by himself. We do not have to guess which assembly is meant. It is that of the catholic church of which the previous article spoke, that is, the “holy assembly of the true believers."
3. Before we continue, we point out that the church is not presenting her own claim here. It is not the church that commands every believer to join her. That would mean ecclesiastical pride. Rather, the article starts with: ”We believe…” The church draws the urgent call, which she indeed voices, not from her own initiative or decree, but from the Word of God.
4. The fact that no one should stay away or separate from the church was not recognized and understood by all believers at that time. Some thought it was enough to know themselves to be Christ’s possession and did not join the church. We can think of quite a number of believers in France who had chosen to follow the Reformation out of conviction. However, under the threat of torture and the death sentence for "heretics," they were forbidden to have church services.33333 However, that was not the only thing. Those who merely neglected the Roman Catholic services or did not have their child baptized there were already under suspicion. Therefore, many believers felt compelled to attend some of these services. By way of apology they then pointed to Nicodemus (John 3:1-2) or to Naaman (2 Kings 5:18-19). Calvin was very understanding of the plight of these believers, some of whom he considered better and greater than himself. Yet he could not and would not go along with their reasoning.
   This article is proof that the church in those difficult times did not succumb to the seductive reasoning that the bond of faith with Christ allows us to remain away from the church. That is not even allowed "even if death or physical punishment might follow.”
5. A second argument for not joining the church already existed at this time. The Anabaptists were pleased not only to denounce the imperfections of the Roman Catholic church, but also of the churches of the Reformation. That is never difficult, by the way. They made the sins of the church people a reason not to join them. Instead, they emphasized each believer’s special personal relationship with God. The Holy Spirit would not care about whatever church and would never be bound by the preaching and the sacraments. The church was of no significance to the work of the Spirit. He worked like the wind, which blows wherever it pleases. Our article objects also against this sheer indifference to the church.
6. Also in evangelistic activities one gets to deal with this matter. Often the opinion prevails among evangelists of all kinds, that one needs to win the other for Christ, but not or not so much for the church. People consider choosing for Christ to be the main thing and choosing for a/the church only secondary. All that matters would be the bond with Christ and this can be preserved either with or without the church.
   No one can deny that a distinction needs to be made between these two mentioned matters. Indeed, there are believers outside, just as there may be unbelievers inside the church. However, we should not draw the conclusion from this that therefore church membership is not important. What is decisive is that God himself says that we are to join the church and that she offers protection. These two motifs are woven throughout the article and form the subject of the next chapter.

III. Why everyone ought to join himself to the church←⤒🔗

1. The first argument that the article mentions for its call to join the church is: “This holy assembly is the gathering of the redeemed...” What excuse could anyone who seeks to be saved by Christ think of for not attending this meeting?!
   The image of the shepherd with his flock can be enlightening here. The sheep need to join the flock, because that is where the shepherd guarantees protection. There, for example, are the elders appointed by the Holy Spirit himself to keep watch over the flock and to shepherd it (Acts 20:28). Therefore all believers are called upon to “join this assembly wherever God has established it.”
2. Many consider joining the church a matter of voluntary organization. The most important thing is that people come to faith, but how and whether they organize themselves afterwards is a matter of lesser importance, because the bond with Christ arises first and that is the most important; only then does the church come into existence. According to this view, the church is actually the daughter of the believers. After all, they are there first and then possibly form a church. The believers are the mother and the church is the daughter. The church that is a daughter then exists by the grace of the believers. But Paul calls the church “our mother” (Galatians 4:26). See also Calvin’s Institutes IV.1.1. And as a child cannot live without a mother, neither can the believers without the church. A mother nurtures her children, and our article says of the church that she provides “instruction and discipline,” to which we must submit. This is also called “bending the neck under the yoke of Christ," because it is he who gives substance and strength to the teaching and discipline of the church.
3. The article makes no mention of one or another kind of unity between "all believers" or the elect. It does speak, very practically and concretely, about “the unity of the church” that needs to be "maintained" and it calls on all believers to work together in this. This unity comes about when all submit to the one teaching of “our mother.” Then all believers are truly one family and they serve “the edification of the brothers and sisters... as members of the same body."
4. A further argument for joining "this holy assembly" is that “there is no salvation outside of it.” What does this mean? It has been explained to mean that no one is saved outside the circle of the elect. That in itself is true and no one will have a problem with it. But the assembly referred to here is none other than the catholic church, which everyone is called to join and which on earth has its addresses where one can and must knock, for outside of it there is no salvation.
   We do not understand these last words as a general truth but as a warning. That makes a difference. For example, when the rain splashes against the windows, everyone knows that it is raining outside. That is an irrevocable truth. But when the doctor says to a recovering flu patient, “You still need to stay indoors, because you will catch a cold outside,” then that is a warning. Suppose the patient goes through wind and weather, coughing and spluttering, and yet suffers no ill effects... Did the doctor lie because he or she did not catch a cold?
   The doctor only warned, and rightly so. Warnings must be clear. Then sometimes it has to be said very harshly. To prevent someone from falling, we say as a warning, “Watch out, or you’ll fall!” To prevent a sheep from going on an adventure, a good shepherd says, “Outside the flock you are lost.” And to prevent us from withdrawing from the protection that Christ offers us in his church, the warning is that “there is no salvation outside of the church.”
   Incidentally, to understand this warning properly, we should not restrict the word "salvation" to going to heaven. It is also about salvation, which is enjoyed now within the church. This is handed out to us through the preaching, which comforts and encourages us and opens up perspectives. The celebration of the Lord’s Supper is even called a foretaste of the joy to come. Believers who complain that they receive stones for bread within their church federation are depriving themselves and missing out on much. After all, in the church are the springs that already cause happiness today (Psalm 87:7).
5.  The article thus leaves aside the matter of personal faith and the salvation of those who do not join the church. It says two things about them that we should not play off against each other. It calls them "believers." For it is about the duty of all believers to separate themselves from those who do not belong to the church and to join this assembly. This article clearly has an eye on believers who do not yet belong to the church. The fact that the church calls these people "believers" is not meant to excuse or cover up their wrong attitude toward the church. They are called "believers" in order to appeal to them all the more emphatically about their obligation or calling. But if they fail to do so, the church must alas confess, in black and white — and that is the second thing — that they are “acting contrary to the ordinance of God” in this matter.
6. That God himself calls all believers to “separate themselves from those who do not belong to the church,” we read in 2 Corinthians 6:17: “be separate from them, says the Lord”; see also John 10:5, 8; Romans 16:17-18; and Revelation 18:4. Ephesians 1:22 teaches us the importance of joining the church, which says how God gave his Son as head over all things to the church. That is the rule: Whoever wants to meet Jesus needs to be in the congregation. A sheep that wants to be fed and protected should seek its place in the flock. That is where the shepherd is present. That place implies one’s wellbeing.
   This article does not give voice to some fanatics who think the church is important, but it is the confession of those who believe what God himself says about his church in his Word.

Points to discuss←↰⤒🔗

1. What tension or dilemma is there between the confession that the church is "an assembly of the true believers" (Article 27) and the acknowledged fact that there are believers outside the church? Find out who is responsible for this tension and how this finds a way out in the "calling of all believers" as professed here. See also Section III, point 5, above.
2. Ecumenical movements, such as the World Council of Churches, which strive for the unity of all churches, always appeal to John 17:20-21. Meanwhile, they are not so concerned with Christian teaching. What connection is there between the unity that is indeed desired and the teaching of the church? Is it true that doctrine divides? Should churches that recognize each other as faithful churches always have identical confessions? And can churches that do have similar confessions simply become one?
3. Is Article 28 ecumenically inclined or does it encourage a repeat of divisions because of the call to "separate"? Were the Reformation in Europe, as well as the Secession of 1834 and the Doleantie of 1886 in the Netherlands, ecumenical acts? Or can we only say this about, for example the reunification of the then-established churches in the Netherlands in 1892
4. Of the church it is confessed, “and there is no salvation outside of it.” Can we then still speak of a saving church?
5. Does Joseph’s example have any significance for us when we perhaps have mountains of criticism of what church people are doing or have done? Joseph had been sidelined by his brothers. Still, he had his sons blessed by Jacob (Genesis 40:1-2), and wanted to be buried in Canaan (Genesis 50:25). What drove Joseph to continue to join the church, even though he had been mistreated by people of this church?
6.  No one may keep himself separate from the church. But does the church to which we belong, socially speaking, perhaps have a threshold that is too high for certain people? And how do we act when we meet "strangers" in our church service?
7. What task does the church have when it thinks it finds the characteristics of the true church in another community:
   • when it concerns a church in the same country, and
   • when it concerns a church abroad?
     Try to explain your answer with examples from history.