What is the Church?

Question 9002.

Ask ten people what the church is and you will get ten answers, most of them about buildings, denominations or a vague sense of religious community, and the New Testament church is none of those things. The word in your Bible means something considerably more specific, and getting it wrong has consequences that run right through how a believer lives.

So let me set out what the word means, when this thing began, how the universal and the local relate, and why I insist on keeping the church distinct from Israel.

The word behind the word

Our English word church comes by a roundabout route from a Greek adjective meaning belonging to the Lord, and it has picked up architectural baggage along the way. The word the New Testament actually uses is ekklesia, which means a called-out assembly, and in ordinary first-century usage it described a gathering of citizens summoned for a purpose.

That background is not incidental. An assembly is people, summoned, and gathered. You cannot leave a building unattended and still have an ekklesia in it. When Paul writes to the church at Corinth he is writing to a group of people, and when he says greet the church in their house he is not commenting on the architecture.

So the first correction to make is the simplest. A New Testament church is a company of people rather than a place, and the habit of saying we are going to church, while harmless enough, quietly teaches something the Bible never says.

When the church began

I hold that the New Testament church began at Pentecost. Jesus spoke of it as future when he said he would build his church, and Acts 2 is where the promise lands. The Spirit is poured out, believers are baptised by the Spirit into one body, and a new entity exists that did not exist the day before.

That is not a minor scheduling detail. Paul calls the church a mystery, something not made known to the sons of men in other generations but now revealed, and the content of the mystery is that Gentiles are fellow heirs and members of the same body. Ephesians 3 could hardly be plainer that this arrangement was previously hidden.

You cannot have something previously hidden that has existed since Adam. The New Testament church is new, and treating it as a continuation of Israel under a different name requires reading the word mystery to mean something it does not mean.

Israel and the church are not the same

This follows directly, and I hold it firmly. The New Testament church is not Israel, has not replaced Israel, and has not inherited Israel’s national promises. God made unconditional covenants with a particular people concerning a particular land, and he has not quietly transferred them to a body that did not exist when they were given.

Romans 11 describes Israel’s present condition as a partial hardening until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, which is language about a pause rather than a cancellation. Paul asks whether God has rejected his people and answers his own question with the strongest negative Greek has available.

I am aware that many godly Christians read this differently, and I have no interest in questioning anyone’s faith over it. But the distinction matters practically. It governs how you read the prophets, what you expect God to do in the future, and whether the promises made to Abraham’s descendants mean what they say.

Universal and local

Two realities have to be held together. The universal church is every genuine believer in every place across the whole of this age, united to Jesus by the Spirit. Nobody has ever seen it assembled and nobody will until glory. It has no membership roll that any of us can consult.

The local church is the visible, gathered expression of that reality in one place. It has a door, a time, a list of members, elders, deacons, and people who bring the wrong kind of biscuits. Most of what the New Testament says about church life concerns this one, because this is the one you can actually serve, be shaped by, and be held accountable within.

I give the local church more weight in my teaching than the universal, not because the universal is less real, but because a believer who loves the universal church while attending none of it has found a way to love an abstraction. I have written on how the two relate in the universal church and the local church.

What the church is called

The New Testament reaches for several images, and each says something the others do not. The church is the body of Christ, with him as head, which speaks of union with him and of mutual dependence among members. Paul presses that image hard in 1 Corinthians 12, insisting that the parts we undervalue are indispensable.

The church is a building or temple, with Jesus as the cornerstone and believers as living stones being built into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. That image speaks of permanence, fitting together, and the presence of God residing in a people rather than a place.

The church is a bride, betrothed to one husband, awaiting a wedding. And the church is a flock, with under-shepherds answerable to the chief Shepherd. Notice that not one of these images is about an institution or a brand. They are about relationship, dependence and belonging.

What a New Testament church is for

A New Testament church exists to worship God, to build up believers, and to take the gospel to those who have not heard it. Those three run right through Acts and the letters, and a church that drops any one of them soon becomes something else with the same sign outside.

It also exists to be visible. The ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are given to the gathered congregation, church discipline assumes a body that knows who belongs to it, and the New Testament’s commands about one another cannot be obeyed alone. There is no such thing in the New Testament as a Christian with no church.

And it exists under authority. Elders lead and teach, deacons serve, and the congregation carries genuine responsibility rather than a decorative vote. I have set out how I see that working in what church government is and in the autonomy of the local church.

What the church is not

It is not the kingdom. Christians are not building the kingdom of God on earth by cultural or political effort, and the New Testament church is nowhere given that commission. We proclaim a King who will establish his own kingdom when he returns, and in the meantime we make disciples.

It is not a denomination. Denominations are useful arrangements for co-operation and accountability, and I belong to one, but the New Testament knows nothing of them and no denomination is the church. Nor is the church a building, a service, or a professional staff.

And it is not optional. The consumer instinct that treats a congregation as a provider of religious services to be sampled and switched has done real damage. A church is a covenanted body of people who have committed themselves to one another under the word.

Where this bites

If the New Testament church is a called-out assembly, then attendance is not the measure of membership; commitment is. If it is a body, then absence is not neutral, because a body missing a part is not simply smaller but impaired. If it is a temple being built, then you are a stone with a place in a wall rather than a customer with a preference.

That reframes a good many practical questions. Whether to join formally. Whether to stay when a church is difficult. Whether your gifts are yours to deploy where you please or given for the common good. The New Testament answers all of those from the nature of the church rather than from personal fulfilment.

It also reframes discouragement. Every local church is a disappointing approximation of the universal one, and always has been, as anyone who has read Corinthians will know. That is not a reason to leave. It is the reason the letters were written.

Who belongs to it, and who decides

A New Testament church has a visible membership, and that idea makes some believers uneasy because it sounds bureaucratic. It is not. The letters assume that a congregation knows who belongs to it, otherwise the instructions about discipline, about restoring the repentant, and about who may not be admitted as an elder would be unworkable.

At the same time no roll is infallible. Every New Testament church contains people who have persuaded themselves and everyone else, and Matthew 13 tells us not to spend our lives pulling up weeds we may misidentify. The Lord knows those who are his, and we work with credible profession rather than certainty.

So membership is a mutual commitment rather than a verdict on anyone’s soul. You are saying you will be here, be accountable here, serve here, and be shepherded here. The elders are saying they will watch over you and give account for you. That is a serious arrangement and it is meant to be.

So, now what?

So what follows? If you are a believer without a local church, that is the thing to put right, and not next year. Find one where the Bible is preached and the gospel is clear, and commit to it properly rather than hovering at the edge.

If you are already in one, ask what part you are actually playing in it. The New Testament church has no spectators built into its design, and a body carrying passengers is doing more work than it should have to.

And when your congregation frustrates you, as it will, remember whose church it is. Jesus said he would build it, and he has been doing so for two thousand years through people no more promising than the ones sitting near you on Sunday.

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Matthew 16:18 (ESV)