I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you when I say that many people have a negative view of the church. This negative attitude toward the church is captured in the following quotes.
“I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.”—George Carlin, US comedian and actor (1937-)
“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”—Thomas Paine, US patriot & political philosopher (1737-1809)
“My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far way from a church as you can.”—Frank Zappa, US musician, singer & songwriter (1940-1993)
Definition: The church is the community of all TRUE BELIEVERS in the New Testament age.
1. The church is both VISIBLE and INVISIBLE.
• The visible church is the church as CHRISTIANS ON EARTH see it.
The visible church is not the church as any person sees it (such as an unbeliever or someone who holds false teachings) but as it is perceived by those who are genuine believers and have an understanding of the difference between believers and unbelievers. We could say today that the visible church is the group of people who come together each week to worship as a church and profess faith in Christ.
• The invisible church is the church as GOD sees it.
When Paul wrote his letters, he wrote to the visible church in each community (“To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colosse; Col. 1:2). Paul certainly realized that there were unbelievers in some of those churches, some who had made a profession of faith that was not genuine, who appeared to be Christians but would eventually fall away. Yet neither Paul nor anyone else could tell with certainty who those people were. Paul simply wrote to the entire church that met together in any one place.
In its true spiritual reality as the fellowship of all genuine believers, the church is invisible. This is because we cannot see the spiritual condition of people’s hearts. We can see those who outwardly attend the church, and we can see outward evidences of inward spiritual change, but we cannot actually see into people’s hearts and view their spiritual state—only God can do that. This is why Paul says, “The Lord knows those who are his” (2 Tim. 2:19).
• Not everyone is a member of the VISIBLE church is also a member of the INVISIBLE church.
The visible church throughout the world will always include some unbelievers, and individual congregations will usually include some unbelievers, because we cannot see hearts as God see them. Paul speaks of “Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have wandered away from the truth” and who “destroy the faith of some” (2 Tim. 2:17-18). Paul says in sorrow, “Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica” (2 Tim. 4:10). Similarly, Paul warned the Ephesian elders that after his departure “savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20:29-30). Notice that some of these false teachers would come “from [their] own number.”
Caution: When we recognize that there are unbelievers in the visible church, there is a danger that we may become overly suspicious.
2. The church is both LOCAL and UNIVERSAL.
• The local church is a church that meets in a CERTAIN PLACE.
A “house church” is called a “church” in Romans 16:5, 1 Corinthians 16:19. The church in an entire city is also called “a church” (1 Cor. 1:2; 2 Cor. 1:1; 1 Thess. 1:1). The church in a region is referred to as a “church” in Acts 9:31.
• The universal church is the church throughout the ENTIRE WORLD.
• The church is not the PLACE; the church is the PEOPLE.
3. The church is the BRIDE of Christ.
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Eph. 5:25-27).
• We should strive for greater LOVE for Christ.
Christ “loved the church and gave himself up for her” (v. 25). We are told in one of the Greek histories that the wife of one of the generals of Cyrus, the ruler of Persia, was accused of treachery and was condemned to die. At first her husband did not know what was taking place. But as soon as he heard about it he rushed to the palace and burst into the throne room. He threw himself on the floor before the king and cried out, “Oh, my Lord Cyrus, take my life instead of hers. Let me die in her place.”
Cyrus, who by all historical accounts was a noble and extremely sensitive man, was touched by this offer. He said, “Love like that must not be spoiled by death.” Then he gave the husband and wife back to each other and let the wife go free.
As they walked away happily the husband said to his wife, “Did you notice how kindly the king looked at us when he gave you the pardon?”
The wife replied, “I had no eyes for the king. I saw only the man who was willing to die in my place.” (James Montgomery Boice, Ephesians, p. 200). The church should have eyes only for her bridegroom, Jesus Christ.
• We should strive for greater PURITY.
Christ’s goal is to make the church “holy” (v. 26). A holy person (or saint) is one who is set apart wholly for God. This is what Jesus desires of His church: that she might be set apart wholly for Himself. Christ will “present” the church as a radiant bride without blemish (v. 27). This is the end product, when the church will appear before God in perfection (her wedding day).
“I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2-3).
4. The church is the BODY of Christ.
“The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
“Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?” (1 Cor. 12:12-17).
• We should recognize our INTERDEPENDENCE on one another.
In the body of Christ, there is to be a unity of diversity—every person in the church, though different from one another, should work together to complete the mission Christ has given us. We can’t do it on our own. We need one another.
“For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Rom. 12:3-5).
”All of Paul’s emphasis on unity within diversity calls into question the behavior of growing numbers of [North] Americans who claim to be religious, believe in God and even Christ, and yet drop out of organized church life or at least fade to its periphery. In a land still heavily influenced by a heritage of rugged individualism, believers need to work ever harder to demonstrate that Christianity is not a merely personal religion but fundamentally corporate. Even evangelical language for conversion betrays this bias: a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” That is the necessary starting point, but we dare not stop until that relationship leads to intimate interpersonal relationships with other Christians” (Craig Blomberg, The NIV Application Commentary, 1 Corinthians, p. 254).
“And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body….” (Eph. 1:22-23).
We should recognize that Paul uses two different metaphors of the human body when he speaks of the church. In 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, the whole body is taken as a metaphor for the church, because Paul speaks of the ear and the eye and the sense of smell (vv. 16-17). In this metaphor, Christ is not viewed as the head joined to the body, because the individual members are themselves the individual parts of the head. Christ is in this metaphor the Lord who is outside of that body that represents the church and is the one whom the church serves and worships.
But in Ephesians 1:22-23 (see also 4:15-16, and in Col. 2:19), Paul uses a different body metaphor to refer to the church. In these passages Paul says that Christ is the head and the church is like the rest of the body.
• We should strive to SERVE Christ and one another.
“Surely a crucial question for believers in every time and culture is how they determine what their individual gifts are. But…all Christians remain responsible for praying, searching their hearts, trying out ministries, and seeking loving but truthful feedback from mature believers to guide them to ascertaining their distinctive gifts.”
“…I must participate in the local church to help others grow. Whatever gift I have been given, I am under obligation to my Lord to use it to serve His people. That gift need not always, of course, be expressed only in a local church. But this much can certainly be said: The gifts God has given us are generally to be exercised in local churches. Other Christians need what each of us has to offer. As the human body is at a disadvantage without a foot, or an eye, or an ear, so the local church is harmed when the full panoply of gifts are not being exercised within it” (Craig Blomberg, The NIV Application Commentary, 1 Corinthians, p. 251).
We live in a “me first” society. The world encourages us to think of ourselves first and others…well, rarely. We can sometimes be so consumed with this mentality that we even expect the church to cater to us.
Video: “meCHURCH, where it’s all about you”
The video serves as a humorous reminder that we should not be asking our church to serve us. But rather, we should eliminate our grumblings remembering that Christ came to serve not to be served.
5. The church is the FAMILY of God.
“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household” (Eph. 2:19).
• We should see our immense VALUE to God.
“I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6:18).
“Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, Abba, Father’” (Rom. 8:14-15). The word “sonship” can also be translated “adoption” (see also Rom. 8:23; 9:4; Gal. 4:5; Eph. 1:5). The Holy Spirit bestows on every believer the rights and privilege of God’s own children.
• We should increase our FELLOWSHIP with one another.
We are to treat one another as family. “Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if her were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity” (2 Tim. 5:1-2).
6. The church is the TEMPLE of God.
In contrast to the Old Testament period in which Israel had a temple (Ex. 25:8), the church is a temple: a living temple. “You are…God’s building” (1 Cor. 3:9). “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16). Paul says, “You yourselves (plural) are God’s temple (singular).”
• We should increase our awareness of GOD’S PRESENCE dwelling in our midst.
“As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says: ‘See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame’” (1 Peter 2:4-6).
Jesus is pictured as the chief cornerstone. The cornerstone was placed at the juncture of two walls to tie them together. In arches, a stone was placed between the supporting sides. The weight of the arch was on that stone, and if the stone was removed, the arch could collapse.
• We should recognize that the GOSPEL is our foundation.
You are “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Eph. 2:20-22).
Summary: The church is a community in which Christ is NUMBER ONE and believers WORSHIP together and LOVE and SERVE others.
Challenge: How have you served your church lately? (Remember: the church is people, not a place.) “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:1-2).
WHAT IS THE CHURCH ALL ABOUT?
Definition: The church is the community of all __________________________ in the New Testament age.
1. The church is both ________________ and ___________________.
• The visible church is the church as _____________________ ________________ see it.
• The invisible church is the church as ___________ sees it (see 2 Timothy 2:19).
• Not everyone is a member of the ________________ church is also a member of the _________________ church (see 2 Timothy 2:17-18; 4:10; Acts 20:29-30).
2. The church is both ________________ and ___________________.
• The local church is a church that meets in a _________________ _______________.
• The universal church is the church throughout the ____________ _________________.
• The church is not the ___________; the church is the _____________.
3. The church is the ____________ of Christ (see Ephesians 5:25-27; 2 Corinthians 11:23).
• We should strive for greater ______________ for Christ.
• We should strive for greater ______________.
4. The church is the ______________ of Christ (see 1 Corinthians 12:12-17; Romans 12:3-5; Ephesians 1:22-23).
• We should recognize our ___________________________ on one another.
• We should strive to ______________ Christ and one another.
5. The church is the _______________ of God (see Ephesians 2:19; 2 Corinthians 6:18; Romans 8:14-15; 2 Timothy 5:1-2).
• We should see our immense _____________ to God.
• We should increase our ___________________ with one another.
6. The church is the ______________ of God (see 1 Corinthians 3:9, 16; Ephesians 2:20-22; 1 Peter 2:4-6).
• We should increase our awareness of __________________________ dwelling in our midst.
• We should not forget that the ________________ is our foundation.
Summary: The church is a community in which Christ is ____________ _________ and believers ______________ together and ___________ and ____________ others.
