We often think of the Church as something that exists independently of people: a building, an institution, a body of doctrine, the sacraments, a tradition. People, by contrast, seem to be merely temporary vessels, replaceable bearers of something far more important.

But the word Church means an assembly, a gathering. People brought together.

Once, while I was speaking about the importance of fellowship among Christians, someone asked me a question: “Is it really worth holding on to people, relying on them, becoming attached to them? Shouldn’t a Christian live according to Christ’s commandments rather than create a small, comfortable world of his own?”

At first glance, the answer seems obvious. Christ’s commandments must come first. Surely, making people the center of our lives is a mistake. God, after all, is our true foundation.

But is the matter really that simple?

Consider the New Testament. When the Ephesian elders said farewell to the Apostle Paul, they wept bitterly, embraced him, and kissed him. Their grief was not a sign of spiritual immaturity or misplaced attachment. It was the natural expression of love.

Or consider the Apostle John, who writes in his letters that he hopes to come and speak with his readers “face to face,” so that their joy may be complete. A written message was not enough. There was something about being together that could not be conveyed by words on a page.

And what about Christ Himself? He could, perhaps, have simply left behind a teaching—a scroll, a text, a system of beliefs. Instead, He spent three years walking with people, eating with them, talking with them, sharing their daily lives. He cared for His disciples. He was not dependent on them, yet He chose to live and minister alongside them.

He did not merely give people a message. He gave them His presence.

Why, then, do we sometimes imagine that our relationship with God can be separated from our relationships with one another?

I suspect that we often think of the Church as something that exists apart from the people who make it up: the building, the institution, the correct doctrine, the sacraments, the tradition. The people themselves become secondary, almost interchangeable. If one person disappoints us, we can find another. If one community becomes difficult, we can move to a more comfortable one.

Yet the Church is not simply a collection of religious ideas or a place where sacred things happen. It is a gathering of people who are called to walk toward Christ together.

And people matter enormously to us as human beings. For Christians, they matter in a particularly profound way, because genuine love for another person brings us closer to the Creator.

The Incarnation is not an incidental detail of Christian doctrine. It reveals something essential about the way God has chosen to meet us. God became human. He entered our history, took on a human body, and lived among us.

In doing so, Christ showed us that the way to God does not lead around our humanity, but through it.

We learn to love God not by escaping human relationships, but by entering into them more deeply. We learn patience when someone tests it, humility when someone challenges our pride, forgiveness when we are hurt, and compassion when another person’s suffering demands more of us than we expected to give.

No book, however profound, can fully teach us these things in the abstract. We must encounter another person. We must listen, misunderstand and try again. We must discover that the person standing before us is not an illustration of a theological principle, but someone with a life as complicated and precious as our own.

The Evangelist John makes this point with unmistakable clarity: we cannot claim to love God while refusing to love the brother or sister we can see.

And yet, how often do we try to do precisely that?

It is relatively easy to love humanity in general. We can feel compassion for distant strangers, admire the idea of Christian brotherhood, and speak eloquently about the unity of the Church. Abstract love rarely asks too much of us.

Concrete love is different.

It is much harder to love the person who irritates us, the fellow parishioner who misunderstands our words, the friend whose weaknesses we know all too well, or the member of our community whose opinions seem impossible to bear. These are the people with whom we are actually called to share our lives.

Sometimes, I think, our insistence that we need only God is less an expression of spiritual maturity than an attempt to avoid this difficult work. It can become a way of escaping the demands of relationship while preserving the appearance of devotion.

After all, if my faith is entirely between God and me, I never have to confront the inconvenient reality of another person. I never have to compromise, apologize, endure awkward silences, or forgive a familiar fault for the hundredth time.

But the Christian life was never promised to be so tidy.

This does not mean that we should become dependent on other people, idealize them, or tolerate abuse in the name of Christian love. Human relationships can become unhealthy, and there are times when distance is necessary. No individual person can take the place of God.

But there is a difference between making another person our ultimate foundation and recognizing that God often sustains us through the people He places in our lives.

There is a difference between clinging to someone out of fear and remaining faithful to a relationship because love is worth the effort.

And there is a difference between seeking a comfortable little world of our own and belonging to a community in which we are gradually transformed.

Perhaps we need one another not despite our spiritual lives, but precisely because of them.

The Church is not merely a place where individuals gather to pursue their separate relationships with God. It is a communion in which we learn that we cannot become fully ourselves in isolation. We are called not only to believe together, pray together, and receive the sacraments together, but also to bear one another’s burdens, share one another’s joys, and remain present when presence is difficult.

The Church, in this sense, is not simply something we attend. It is something we live through our relationships.

Perhaps that is why the thought of a Church without people feels so strangely incomplete. We can preserve buildings, books, rites, and doctrines, and all of these are precious. But if we begin to treat the people around us as disposable, we risk losing sight of the very love these things are meant to serve.

We do not come to Christ by stepping over one another.

We come to Him together, through the ordinary, difficult, sometimes beautiful work of loving actual human beings.

And perhaps the Church is not only something that stands before us in stone, rises above us in domes, or gathers us beneath its roof. Perhaps it is also something we carry beneath our ribs: a living space in which another person is allowed to matter, to wound us, to teach us, to rejoice with us, and to help us grow.

A space that expands whenever we make room for someone else.

Because the Church is not an escape from humanity. It is where we learn, with God’s help, how to love it.