Saved for More Than Solitude: Why We Must Be the Church Together

The Man’s Desire Is Good But Incomplete

As I have been slowly studying through the Gospel of Luke, there are certain passages that cause me to pause as they confront assumptions that we often carry without realizing it. Luke 8:38-40 is one of those passages. It is familiar, yet deeply challenging, especially in a culture where faith is often framed as something highly personal and private. After Jesus delivers the demon-possessed man, Luke tells us, “The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with Him”. This is a right and understandable desire. The man longs to remain near the One who has completely transformed his life. He desires proximity to Jesus, intimacy, safety, and discipleship. His posture is that of a true disciple, one who wants to sit at the feet of his teacher and follow Him wherever He goes.

Nothing about this desire is wrong. In fact, many sermons pause here and conclude with a simple application: “Just be with Jesus.” While that is true and necessary, the text does not end there. What happens next should arrest our attention. Jesus does not grant the man’s request. That single detail forces us to ask a deeper question: Why would Jesus deny such a sincere, seemingly spiritual desire? The answer opens the door to a much larger conversation about what it truly means to follow Christ not in isolation, but as part of something far bigger than ourselves.

Jesus Redirects Intimacy Into Mission

Jesus responds to the man’s request with a command that changes the entire direction of the passage: “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you”. This statement is the interpretive center of the text. Everything we are meant to understand about discipleship, witness, and community in this account flows from this moment.

Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not tell the man to remain with Him privately, enjoying the safety of proximity and the comfort of continued isolation from the world. He does not instruct him to withdraw to protect his testimony, nor does He suggest that his healing was meant to be kept personal or hidden. Jesus does not frame deliverance as something to be preserved in solitude.

Instead, Jesus gives three clear directives go, return, and declare. Each word is intentional. The man is sent back home to the very place where his brokenness was once visible and well known. His mission field is not distant or abstract; it is personal, relational, and local. The transformation Christ has worked in him is meant to be seen and heard by those who knew him before.

This is crucial for how we understand discipleship. Deliverance is not an end in itself. A personal relationship with Jesus is never meant to remain private. Healing that remains private and disconnected from witnesses is not the pattern Jesus establishes. True restoration produces testimony, and testimony is meant to be lived out in real communities, among real people, in the ordinary spaces of life.

Jesus does not call this man away from a relationship He calls him into a mission. And that mission begins at home.

Following Jesus Was Never Meant to Be Done Alone

This moment in Luke’s Gospel forces us to think beyond an individual framework and view faith the way Jesus consistently presents it communally, not privately. From the beginning of His ministry, Jesus speaks and acts with a collective vision in mind. He does not gather isolated followers; He forms a people. Scripture repeatedly reinforces this reality. The Church is described as one body with many members, 1 Corinthians 12, empowered by one Spirit, Ephesians 4, and called to live with one mind , Philippians 2. Christ is the bridegroom, and His people together are one Bride Ephesians 5, sent into the world with one unified voice to proclaim the gospel -Acts.

In Luke 8, the healed man understandably wants to remain physically close to Jesus. After everything he has endured, being near Christ feels like safety, wholeness, and life. Yet Jesus sees beyond the moment. He knows something the man cannot yet grasp: that the mission of God will not be carried forward through proximity to Jesus’ physical presence, but through participation in His spiritual body.

This is why Jesus later tells His disciples, “It is to your advantage that I go away” John 16:7. His departure is not a loss, but a divine expansion. Christ ascends, the Spirit comes, and the presence of God is no longer limited to one location or one person. The Spirit indwells the whole body, empowering many members to carry the gospel into every corner of the world.

Jesus is not forming a collection of isolated spiritual experiences. He is forming a collective witness of people bound together by one Spirit, moving with one purpose, and sent together into the world. This is the logic of the Kingdom, and it shapes how we understand discipleship, community, and mission.

“Me and Jesus” Is Not a Biblical Category

One of the clearest tensions this passage exposes is a deeply modern distortion of faith the idea that Christianity is primarily about “me and Jesus.” Phrases like “It’s just Jesus and me,” “Only God can judge me,” or “My relationship with Jesus is all that matters” are often spoken as signs of spiritual maturity. Yet when measured against Scripture, they fall short of the biblical vision for the Christian life and show the immaturity of the believer's understanding.

The New Testament does not support an isolated, self-contained faith. In fact, it teaches the opposite. Believers are repeatedly called to submit to one another, to bear with one another, to exhort, encourage, forgive, serve, and love one another. These commands are given more than a hundred times throughout the New Testament. Growth is not designed to happen in isolation, and maturity is not measured by independence, but by love for the brethren.

John states this plainly: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar” 1 John 4:20. For many readers, the word hate may feel strong or even misplaced. We may think, I don’t hate other believers, I’m just not involved, or I’m not angry; I simply keep my faith private. But in Scripture, love is not defined by passive feelings. Love is demonstrated through commitment, presence, service, and shared responsibility within the people of God.

To withhold ourselves from the body, refusing accountability, fellowship, service, or submission, is not a neutral position. Biblically speaking, love is active, sacrificial, and relational. When believers choose disconnection over commitment, isolation over participation, and independence over unity, they contradict the very love Scripture describes. This is why John ties love for God directly to love for His people. The two cannot be separated. Personal intimacy with Christ and faithfulness to His body rise and fall together.

We cannot love the Head while functionally despising the Body. We cannot claim closeness to Christ while refusing life with His people. We cannot follow Jesus while rejecting the community He died to redeem. An arm cannot function as a body on its own, and a stone cannot remain loose and still call itself part of a temple. God’s design has always been a people formed together, growing together, and bearing witness together.

Jesus Models Both But Never Isolation From the Body

Jesus Himself models a rhythm that is often misunderstood. Yes, the Gospels clearly show Him rising early to pray and withdrawing at times to commune with the Father Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16, These moments of solitude were real, intentional, and essential. Yet they were never the dominant pattern of His life, nor were they used as a justification for disengagement from people. The overwhelming testimony of the Gospels is that Jesus spent most of His time with others. He ministered among the crowds, walked daily with His disciples, ate in homes, taught publicly, healed openly, and bore with the weakness, slowness, and immaturity of those He was forming. Discipleship happened in proximity, in relationship, and in community. Even when Jesus sent His followers out, He sent them together, never as isolated individuals (Luke 10:1).

The apostles carried this same understanding forward. After Christ’s ascension, they did not retreat into private spirituality. Instead, empowered by the Spirit, they gathered the believers into visible, functioning communities. Acts describes the early church as devoted to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer together Acts 2:42. They shared life, bore one another’s burdens, submitted to spiritual leadership, and worked collectively for the spread of the gospel. There is no category in the New Testament for a believer who belongs to Christ but not to His people.

Private prayer was never abandoned, but it was never treated as a substitute for embodied obedience. Time alone with God fueled public faithfulness; it did not replace it. The early church understood that communion with God naturally leads to communion with His people, because Christ does not redeem individuals into isolation; He redeems a body. Jesus did not model a spirituality that retreats from community. He modeled one that is rooted in prayer and expressed in shared life and mission. That same pattern shaped the apostles and the early church, and it remains God’s design for His people today.

The Flow of Discipleship in Luke 8:38-40

Luke 8:38-40 offers more than a moving testimony; it reveals a biblical example of discipleship that recurs throughout the New Testament. In just a few verses, we see the pattern Jesus establishes for those He redeems.

First, there is deliverance. Christ sets the man free completely. His bondage is broken, his identity restored, and his life transformed. This is the gracious work of Jesus, initiated by Him alone.

From deliverance flows devotion. The man longs to remain with Jesus, to stay near the One who has rescued him. This desire for closeness is good and necessary. Love for Christ always begins with gratitude and devotion.

However, discipleship does not end there. Jesus gives direction. Rather than allowing the man to remain at His side, Jesus sends him out with a purpose. He redirects devotion into obedience.

That direction leads to a declaration. The man is told to testify publicly about what God has done for him. His restored life becomes a living witness to the power of Christ.

Finally, there is integration. The man is not sent into isolation, but back into the community into relationships, responsibilities, and shared life. His faith is now lived out among others, not apart from them.

Anything that stops at devotion alone at personal experience without obedience, witness, or shared life is incomplete discipleship. Jesus does not merely save individuals from sin; He restores them into a people, sending them back into the world as part of His body.

Conclusion

Luke 8:38-40 leaves us with a loving but necessary warning. A genuine relationship with Jesus will always draw us into His people, not away from them. While time alone with Christ is vital and highly encouraged, it was never meant to replace life with the body He died to redeem. “Me and Jesus” cannot be used as an excuse for disengagement. Scripture does not present isolation as a sign of spiritual maturity. In fact, lone Christianity is foreign to the New Testament. From Jesus to the apostles to the early church, faith is always lived out in shared life, shared obedience, and shared mission.

Jesus did not tell the man who had been delivered to stay close and remain unseen. He told him to go home, to speak openly, and to live transformed among others. The same is true for us. A personal relationship with Christ that never becomes visible in community, service, discipleship, and witness is not following the pattern Jesus Himself established.

We were saved for more than solitude. We were saved to be formed together, to grow together, and to bear witness together as one body, under one Head, by one Spirit, for the glory of God.

That is what it means to Be the Church.