What is the Church? By the reckoning of Greek and Hebrew word studies in Scripture, the word refers to an assembly of the ones who are called out. This leads to the idea that the Church is not a place but a people. Ultimately and eschatologically, the Church is the full number of the redeemed, the new humanity constituted in Christ, gathered up under His covenant lordship, being conformed forever and ever to His image. So, the Church is indeed a people. But the people always occupy a place. Just like it is not possible to separate the soul from the body, it is not possible to separate people from a place. To refuse to see the Church as a place, is not to limit it to people but to merely your imagination. Instead of brick and mortar, flesh and blood, the church is reduced to an idea. Sure, it is God’s idea. But this type of thinking cannot move beyond trying to peer into the darkness of God’s decree for salvation. Instead of the breathing, living, fighting, warring, prevailing Church militant of history, this kind of thinking does nothing more than graphically plot the eternal decree of God. And that is plain boring.
Not that the decree of God is boring. Look at what He has wrought. The adventurous exodus of humanity from the clutches of sin and death through the death, burial and resurrection of His Son in history, preceded and followed by centuries of reformations and wranglings, heresy and heroism, the prayers of a weeping mother and the thundering of Word after years of drought. That is not static, lifeless and boring. But the navel-gazing pietistic prognostications of certain Calvinists with respect to the elect are indeed boring. I am, of course, referring to the fact that the visible church is a valid, acceptable and necessary category for understanding what the word Church means. Those who would only refer the church to as that which is invisible, want to claim the reformations but not the wranglings. They will rightly ascribe the heroism to God at work in His Church but have no place for the heretics. They will welcome the thundering of God’s Word but do not know where to put the seasons of drought. Contrary to ideas in our head, real life is messy.
There are imposters in our midst, the tares growing amidst the wheat. Are tares part of the church? Was Judas a Christian? The answer of course is yes. Will we see Judas in heaven? Most definitely not. He was the son of perdition (John 17:12). But if we are unwilling to call him a Christian, we are not speaking in Scriptural categories. If you say that he may have been a ‘Christian’ but he surely was not a ‘disciple’, I would point you to Matthew 10:1 where our Lord calls unto Himself ‘his twelve disciples’. Including Judas, his disciple. You may say, “Yes, well, he was not a true disciple.” To which I would agree (see above) but I would hasten to add that the other true disciples didn’t know that yet. He got treated like a disciple, nay, like an apostle. And when he fell, he got judged as an apostle (Acts 1:16-22).
So, we conclude that the Church is not our idea of the elect of God. Instead, the church is God’s idea of the elect of God as expressed through His works in history. She (Ephesians 5:25, Revelation 19:7) is a living, breathing organism and institution, in time and place, occupying certain buildings at certain times (which are not trivial), whose glory is manifested throughout history to the eyes of faith, imperfections and imposters notwithstanding, and who awaits her full manifestation when her Lord and Saviour returns to unveil her glory. The care of this very visible Church has been entrusted to a group of very visible Christian men throughout the ages, who have been officiated by God to keep His flock. The shape of the Church is the most complex fractal that God ever put in the physical world. It consists of many particular buildings and organisations. In other words, the Church is made up of many Christians throughout history and the good workmanship of their hands, compacted layer by layer (Psalm 122:3, 1 Peter 2:5, Ephesians 2:10).
Thanks for writing this Sam...appreciate your insights and it clarifies a lot of confusion regarding what we call a church and who constitutes it..Obviously the answer should be simple and direct-the believers who are part of a local body of Christ at a particular place and nothing more.
I would much appreciate if you can write on and build scriptural catergories for what is the "kingdom of God" and what constitues that.. also what are the dangers in calling only the church as the kingdom of God..
We need good voices in India to help all of us come to terms with Biblical definitions on these important matters.
God bless