. . . 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.
