The church of Christ meeting at 27 Old Tyng Road is composed of men and women who are, most likely, very much like yourself — construction workers, teachers, landscapers, full time homemakers, welders, medical technicians, nurses, university students and office managers. Some of our members own their own businesses and others work for some of the big multi-national companies located in Boston and the Merrimack Valley. Within the congregation we have couples who are just beginning their families and, on the other side of the spectrum, we have grandparents. We have individuals with very small children and others with teenagers. Like we said, the individuals who make up the Tyngsboro congregations are, in all probability, much like you.
But though we are diversified in our make-up, we are bound together by a common desire to abide in the teaching of Jesus. For it is in this way that we not only become disciples, but that we also come to know the truth that makes men free (John 8:31-32). Furthermore, we take seriously the warning given by John in his second epistle, verse nine:
“Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son.”
The first century church also limited their service to God to those things authorized by the apostles. We read, for example, that they continually devoted “themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42) and remembered them in everything and holding firmly to their traditions, just as he had delivered them. In his letter to the Thessalonians this same apostle encouraged the Christians to “stand firm and hold to the traditions” which they had been “taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us” (i.e., the apostles); and, to keep themselves “aloof from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition” which they received from these men (2 Thessalonians 2:15; 3:6).