The Church

Let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Heb 10:24-5)

Lord, I thank you for the precious body of Christ, for the people with whom you have placed me, the people pray for me, and I them; who care for me, and I them; who serve me, and I them; who help me love you and trust you and live my life for you; and who work with me in the spread of your great name. 

The church is a universal body of believers. It is global and has no political or economic borders. It consists of those people for whom Jesus is Lord — who have had a genuine heart response to the person and work of Jesus Christ. That is the church.

But the church is also local. Wherever genuine disciples of Jesus exist, they meet together to form a local body. That local body may be as simple as two families meeting in their homes in China or as complex as a Western megachurch. The local church is the visible expression of the universal church. The components of a local church include the following: believers meeting together regularly (at least weekly) to worship Christ, to hear the Word taught, to mutually encourage one another in the faith, to practice communion and baptism, and all under the authority of elders.   Such is a local church, and such is the regular practice of believers across the globe.

But I sometimes have conversations like this:

“. . . so then, tell me. Are you a Christian?”

     “Yes.”

     “Where do you go to church?”

     “Oh, I don’t go to church.”

Now that’s an awkward interaction. Generally I follow up with something like “Why don’t you go to church?” And I get all sorts of answers.

“I’m burned out on church . . . the people are hypocrites . . . I had a bad experience . . . I can’t find a church that suits me . . . I don’t have time . . . I have too much work . . . I don’t need the church to worship. I can praise God on my own . . . It’s boring . . . It’s shallow . . . I want something authentic.”

Whatever the reason is, it seems as if many who call themselves Christians somehow think that participation in a local church is optional. They do not get this idea from the New Testament. Here in America they likely get the idea from — well — America. We are independent. We are free. We can do what we want. We have options. This thinking is basic to America, and many in America simply transfer the thinking to the church.

Many have lost the importance of the local church and in doing so have lost something significant about Christianity. They want an individualistic Christianity. They want to pick and choose according to their desires, but Christ calls them to die to their desires.

Let’s be clear. The local church is the local expression of the universal body of Christ. It is the body of Christ where you live. If you do not participate in the body of Christ where you live, what makes you think that you participate in the body of Christ at all? For the Christian, local church participation is not an option. I don’t mean this in a legalistic sense. Belonging to a local church does not save us. Salvation is a heart issue that goes deeper than church participation. But local church participation is spiritually necessary because salvation places us in a body, and we now need to live out our corporate identity.

In the New Testament, the idea of a believer intentionally operating without respect to a local church is utterly unthinkable. Here’s why.

1. Believers who intentionally stay outside the local church handicap themselves spiritually. Consider the following: a sheep without a flock, an antelope without a herd, a fish with no school. All of the above are food for predators, and Satan is a roaring lion looking for whom he may devour (I Pet 5:8). The local church helps provide protection from the Evil One. The local church provides spiritual strength, comfort, encouragement and help in the business of walking with God.
2. The local church is where the one-anothers happen: love one another, bear one another’s burdens, confess your sins to one another, serve one another, be devoted to one another in love, in humility regard one another as more important than yourself, greet one another with a holy kiss, speak the truth to one another, and so on. The very word “one another” (in the Greek it is one word), is a corporate word. By definition it requires a body. In addition, the context of the one-anothers is always corporate. When the New Testament writers give the one-anothers, they are giving them to local churches.   They are telling the local church how to live out its corporate life, and living out a corporate life assumes that you have a corporate life. It is difficult to have someone bear your burden when you are not around him, and it is hard to love someone with whom you spend no time. A local church is necessary to effectively carry out the commands of Scripture.
3. The local church is God’s main plan for spreading the kingdom of God. If you love missions, you need to love the local church. In the New Testament, it is the local church in Antioch that sends out Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13), and when Paul sets out on his missionary journeys, he establishes local churches. In other words, the local church is both the sending agency and the main objective of missions. Missions that does not end in local churches is a failure.

Now this fact does not mean that parachurch organizations or sending agencies are  somehow bad. They can bring resources together from multiple churches in order to accomplish something that no single church could accomplish. But those organizations need to understand that they do not exist merely to replicate their ministry. They exist to serve the local church, not to replace it. They may have different functions (feeding the poor, providing medical care, evangelism, translating Scripture, etc), but the purpose of those functions is to aid the local church.

In the New Testament, even when God built a team with people from different churches (Paul and Timothy, Luke or Silas), that team still functioned as a church while on the field and then worked to plant churches wherever it went. Make no mistake. The local church is Plan A for the spread of the kingdom. God can use Plan B or Plan Z if the local church won’t fulfill its responsibility, but He still wants to get back to Plan A.

These are a few reasons why God’s people are to love the local church. It is where faith takes on flesh.  We are not to neglect it.

This blog is a continuation of the previous blogs on the doctrine of the church.

The church consists of believers in Jesus Christ. It does not consist of mere churchgoers or religious types. One does not belong to the church by being a good neighbor or by giving money to a noble cause or by being born into a Christian family. One does not belong to the church by taking communion, reading the Bible, or praying regularly. To be certain, genuine believers will desire such practices, but external practices alone do not make one a believer any more than going swimming makes one a fish. The church does not consist of all those who look Christian. She consists of all those whose hearts have been transformed by the power of the gospel. In a sense, this makes her an invisible, global organization, but she always has a visible, local contact point.

If the worldwide body of Christ is to do any good, it must eventually touch people in a specific time and place. The local church gives to the body that time and place. It takes the power from the generating plant and carries it to 1264 E. Oak St. The local church is the neighborhood representative of Jesus Christ. It is the spiritual clinic around the corner that dispenses the power to change hearts and souls forever. It is the training ground for Christians. I do not mean that the church is the building where the gospel is proclaimed. Rather it is the men and women who proclaim it, just as the army is not the barracks but the soldiers who train in them. The church is people. It is always people, but it is not any people. It is a specific people who have given themselves to a specific purpose.

The church is a treasure. She is the beloved of Christ, His one and only. The Scriptures adjure us to love all men and treat everyone with kindness, mercy and grace, but there is a sense in which the Scriptures adjure us to do this all the more for the church. The church is special, not on her own account but on account of the One to whom she belongs. Those in the church are our brothers and sisters. They are family. Indeed, they are closer than family, for the bond of Christ is thicker than blood. If you think this to be favoritism, I would say that if it is, it is the sort of favoritism a boy might have toward his older brother. But Christians are not any family; they are members of a special family. The family name is greater than Rockefeller or Vanderbilt, Gates or Kennedy. Those families have paltry fortunes compared to ours. They have no real influence, no status, no position, no lasting accomplishments. But the church is the radiant bride of royalty. She belongs to the One who shall rule all nations, and He is jealous toward His bride. Do not treat her improperly, for she is God’s special treasure.

Thus, the church is a special people whose hearts have been cleansed and transformed by Jesus Christ. They belong to Him and are committed to following His lead. They are related not by blood or race or language or culture but by the Spirit. They are all part of one great body whose function is to love, serve and worship its Lord. They have been given a mission to make disciples of all the world. Wherever they go, they take the person and message of Jesus Christ. To the unbeliever they call for repentance and faith. To the believer they call for obedience, commitment, maturity and ministry. They live as ordinary people in the midst of society, but they live as extraordinary people called apart from society. They stand for something higher than this world and, as such, are persecuted as misfits and sometimes miscreants. They live to bring that other world to bear here because they know that, in the end, this world will be swallowed up by that one. They are a bride, a temple, an army, a lighthouse, a family, a body. They are the church, and one day, under Jesus Christ, they will rule the world.

The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God . . . it pleased God through the foolishness of what we preach to save those who believe . . . not many of you were wise according to the flesh, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.  But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.  (I Cor 1:18, 21, 26-8)

Lord, open our eyes, as those who stand in the righteousness of Christ, to see the power of the gospel that transforms.  May we as your church stand and not waver in the task of bringing light to a dark society and salt to an empty people. 

The last blog introduced the doctrine of the church and concluded by saying that the church has an obligation to take the gospel to the people.  To do this, the church must live where the people live. She is to infiltrate society and rub elbows with the common man. Monkery is not a long-term viable option for the serious Christian. Light does no good under a basket, and salt has no effect until it is rubbed on the decaying meat. Thus, the church traffics in the world. Yet simultaneously the church is not of the world. She lives in the world as a foreigner, and as such, is governed by the priorities and principles of her homeland. She dwells here but is a citizen of another place. In matters with no moral consequence she conforms to the place she lives, but in spiritual and moral issues she stands apart from her culture. In America she may wear jeans and eat burgers.  In the Middle East, she may wear a robe and eat hummus, but wherever she is, she does not abort her children or defile the marriage bed. She may live and work in the midst of the world, she may obey local laws, work ordinary occupations, and speak the same language as everyone else, but, ultimately, the church is counterculture.   She consists of everyday people living everyday lives in everyday places, but she transcends the everyday.

The church lives in the world, but God has not called her to be like the world. Rather, He wants her to transform the world. Because the church exists to bring Christ to the world, she constantly points the world to something beyond the world. The church is separate from the world and calls the world to a higher standard and power than the world can ever know. She is a lighthouse telling a society where the rocks are. She is a guide pointing a lost troop to the only path home. She is a nurse nursing the wounded back to health. She is counterculture because society wants to sail where the rocks are, travel down the path that leads only to a great morass, and practice those habits that only inflict further wounds.

The church is counterculture because while she points people to what is best, the people shut their eyes and ears to it and want nothing to do with her. The church is laughed at, scorned and mocked for calling the world away from its desires. In most places of the world, she faces persecution. She is beaten, robbed, killed, discriminated against and thrown into slavery, all because she insists on saying that the resurrected Christ is the only way out of the hellhole called self. But the world loves the hellhole. The world is an alcoholic who cannot see that his habits are destroying him. The church is a relative who comes alongside and points the way out. But the alcoholic loves the very thing that is killing him and sees the relative as a threat. So he abuses her. It may be quite safe to never speak to the alcoholic about change, but it is also quite immoral. When the church does her job properly, she will experience backlash.

The church is the only institution on earth that can do deep and lasting good. The Red Cross can help alleviate suffering, but it has nothing to offer the human heart. Political groups may help reform a wicked practice, but they cannot reform the human heart. A father and mother may instill in their children good manners and citizenship, but good manners and citizenship do not change the heart.  When we divorce our values from spiritual ultimacy, we become sugarcoated and hollow. Do not misunderstand. These other institutions can do good things. I would prefer to live in a place where wicked practices are reformed and people are polite, but I do not suppose that polite people obeying decent laws is the essence of life. The church is the lone institution that can bring ultimacy to all the other institutions on earth. It is the only institution that can offer something more than redecorating the living room. It can raze the house and build a new one. The church has at its disposal that kind of power. That power is inherent in the gospel through the Spirit. The church merely carries the power and brings it face to face with another person, like a medic who carries life in his bag and brings it to fallen comrades on the front line.

. . . on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  (Mt 16:18)

How precious is your church, O Lord.  She is your jewel, your Beloved, the ones you ransomed from the pit and made your own.  May we see her in all her glory, clothed in the righteousness of Christ and living as sons and daughters of the High King.  And may we honor her as one honors the bride of royalty.

A picture is worth a thousand words. You have heard the saying. And though Jesus predates the saying, He, too, understood the power of its message. When He taught, He taught with pictures. When He gave us baptism and communion, He gave us visual representations of spiritual truths. Indeed, even His very person was “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). He was Himself the picture of God.

Now I believe it quite helpful to think of spiritual truths in visual ways, and the doctrine of the church provides a good example of such a truth. Therefore, I wish to begin this blog with a series of pictures. Some are direct from Scripture; others are not. But all reflect some aspect of the biblical doctrine of the church.  Here we go:

The church is like a great temple composed of many living stones. Christ is Himself the chief cornerstone, and He has laid for us a foundation in the apostles and prophets (Eph 2:19-22; I Pet 2:4-8). By grace, the builder builds his temple, and by grace he then dwells in it.

The church is like a body with many organs and parts, but one head. The eyes see for the feet, and the feet walk for the eyes, but all follow the head and all need the others (I Cor 12).

The church is like the shoots and saplings that sprout from the root of a great oak. These then become stately oaks themselves and produce more shoots and saplings, which, in turn, grow and produce more and so on until this oak covers the earth from east to west.

The church is a great faucet through which living water flows.

The church is the light of the world shining in the darkness.

The church is the salt of the earth, preserving righteousness and truth.

The church is like an army spread out by squads in enemy territory and working to turn the natives away from their ruling prince and to their rightful king who will soon take over. Each member is a soldier working in some capacity to accomplish the mission of his commanding officer.

The church is an adopted family from all languages and cultures, full of variety, but whose members share a oneness that not even identical twins share.

The church is like an athlete whom the coach trains, puts in the game, calls his play, and gives him the ball. And the crowd cries, “Run! Run, church! Run!”

The church is a bride who has walked down the aisle and given herself to her groom. She belongs to him and he to her. He is her only love, and she has committed her life to go where he goes and has submitted her soul to his lead.

The church is a gathering too numerous to count of men and women singing, cheering, rejoicing, falling on their faces, all because of one man who is on the platform.

I suppose we could go on. The church is a group, a family, an army, whose task is to honor her king, to live in His ways, and to ultimately help raise others to do the same. Different members have different functions, but all work toward the same goal. They are teammates.

The church did not merely pop into existence. She had a beginning, a source. Jesus said to Peter, “upon this rock I will build my church” (Mt 16:18). The church was not yet formed at that time, but Jesus is clear that it was coming, and He was equally clear of who the builder would be. When the church grew, Luke tells us “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). The source of the church is Christ Himself. He is the object and the impetus of its worship. He gives to the church its purpose and the power to accomplish that purpose. He goes to the quarry, selects His stones, breathes His life into them, fashions them as He pleases and places them where He wishes in order to accomplish His purpose. He is the church’s beginning and fulfillment.

He is also the church’s head (Eph 5:23; Col 1:18). He calls the shots. He tells the feet to go or stop, the eyes to look to the front or back, the hands to steer left or right. He is commander in chief. He is Lord. And Lord means head. He never directs the church to act against her best interests. Just as any sound head never destroys its own body but cherishes and nourishes it, so does Christ do with His own body. He may at times give directions that require us to suffer just as a sound head may for a time command the feet to march 50 miles a day in the snow. But we must remember that He knows what He is up to. When He commands what we do not understand, when He directs us to suffer, we must remember that He is looking out for the best interests of His body. It is helpful to remember that we truly are at war. Sometimes to us the war is invisible, but to our head, it is never invisible. He always directs us as if we are in combat, not as if we were at a neighborhood garden party. When we question Him, it is often because we have forgotten that we are in the thick of a firefight.

Because Jesus is head of the church, He gives to the church her purpose. He has said, “The greatest commandment is this, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind’” (Mt22:37-8). His final instructions to His church were these: “All authority in heaven and earth is given me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19). The church exists, then, to love and worship God and to make disciples. In fact, there is a sense in which we can say that the church is to love and worship God by making disciples. If the church says she loves God but does nothing to complete the main work God gave her, she is a mouth without a heart. This mission means that she is to evangelize the lost and disciple the saved, to bring others to a greater knowledge of Jesus Christ, to help them be obedient to Christ, to help them worship and witness and pray and understand the Scriptures, and to help them, ultimately, help others do the same. As an army she is to obey her commander, recruit new soldiers and train them. If she obeys without recruiting and training, she is not obeying, for she is commanded to recruit and train. If she recruits but does not train, she ends up with a host of people who cannot do anything, but no real soldiers. If she trains but never recruits, she has a spiritual force focused on itself, not on its commander or mission. If she does not die first from self-centeredness, she will die eventually from the neglect of the next generation. The church is called to take the gospel to all people.

These are some aspects of the church.  We will talk more in future blogs.