What the church is

A people called together

Ask what a church is and many people will point to a building. The New Testament never does. Its word for church is ekklēsia (ἐκκλησία), an assembly. In a Greek city it meant the citizens summoned to meet; in the Greek Old Testament it was used of Israel gathered before the Lord. A church is people whom God has called together. The building is only where they meet.

Peter wrote to scattered and often despised believers and told them who they really were.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

1 Peter 2:9

"Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God" (1 Peter 2:10). The church is not a club founded by people who happen to agree. It exists because God called, and it exists for a purpose: to make his goodness known.

Body, temple, bride and family

Scripture paints this people in several pictures. The church is a body: "Now you are the body of Christ, and each of you is a member of it" (1 Corinthians 12:27). Its members share one life, so that "If one part suffers, every part suffers with it" (1 Corinthians 12:26). And the body has a head.

And God put everything under His feet and made Him head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

Ephesians 1:22-23

The church is a temple. Believers are "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone" (Ephesians 2:20), and together they are becoming "a dwelling place for God in His Spirit" (Ephesians 2:22). The church is a bride: Christ "loved the church and gave Himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25). Matthew Henry notes that his love for her is "sincere, pure, and constant, notwithstanding her failures" Matthew Henry. And the church is a family, so we are to do good to everyone, "and especially to the family of faith" (Galatians 6:10).

Every picture puts Christ at the centre. "No one can lay a foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:11). Jesus promised, "on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18). Christians have read ‘this rock’ as Peter, as Peter's confession or as Christ himself, but Origen, commenting on the promise, names what all can hold: "it is clear that neither against the rock nor against the Church will the gates of hell prevail" Origen.

The life of the first church fits in a single sentence.

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Acts 2:42

Word, fellowship, the Lord's Supper and prayer make a church a church. Yet the church does not exist for itself. The risen Lord sent it out to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them" (Matthew 28:19), and promised to be with it to the end of the age. For why we need it, see Why do we need the church?.

What the church has confessed

The Nicene Creed confesses the church in four words: one, holy, catholic and apostolic The Nicene Creed. It is one, for there is "one body and one Spirit … one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Ephesians 4:4-5). It is holy, because God has set it apart for himself. It is catholic, because it belongs to no single nation or age but to every place and time. It is apostolic, because it stands on the apostles' teaching and carries on their mission. The Apostles' Creed confesses "the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints" The Apostles' Creed.

‘Catholic’ here means universal: the whole church throughout the world, not one communion alone. The earliest surviving text to use the phrase is a letter of Ignatius of Antioch, written about 110 as he was taken to Rome to die. Urging the Christians of Smyrna to gather around their bishop, he adds: "wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church" Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 8.

The Reformers pressed a sharper question: how can we tell where the true church is? The Augsburg Confession (1530) answered that the church is "the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered" Augsburg Confession, Art. 7. The Belgic Confession (1561) added a third mark, church discipline exercised to correct sin, and summed up: where all things are governed by the pure Word of God and Jesus Christ is acknowledged as the only Head of the church, there the true church is found Belgic Confession, Art. 29.

Protestants also distinguished the invisible church, all true believers of every age, known fully to God alone ("The Lord knows those who are His," 2 Timothy 2:19), from the visible church, all who profess the faith together on earth, in which true and false are for now mixed. Catholic and Orthodox Christians do not usually divide things this way; for them the church is one reality, at once a visible communion and a spiritual mystery.

Where Christians differ

The first question is how the church should be ordered. Three main patterns have grown up, each appealing to the New Testament.

Episcopal churches note that the apostles appointed leaders in every church (Acts 14:23) and that Ignatius already writes of a bishop with presbyters and deacons. The Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans treasure bishops in unbroken succession from the apostles as a sign and safeguard of the church's continuity; Lutherans and Methodists who have bishops understand that succession in different ways.

Presbyterians observe that ‘elder’ and ‘overseer’ name one office in the New Testament (Titus 1:5-7), and that at Jerusalem "the apostles and elders, with the whole church" decided together (Acts 15:22). Congregationalists point to Jesus' instruction to "tell it to the church" (Matthew 18:17) and to the whole assembly choosing the seven (Acts 6:5). All three agree that Christ alone is head of the church and that its leaders are shepherds, "not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock" (1 Peter 5:3).

The second question is how the one church is visible. The Catholic Church teaches that the one church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him, while many elements of holiness and truth are found outside its visible structure, gifts that belong to Christ's church and draw toward unity Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium. The Orthodox churches understand themselves as the one church that has kept the apostles' faith and the teaching of the seven ecumenical councils, a family of self-governing churches whose unity is shown in one faith and one Eucharist around the bishop. Most Protestants hold that the true church is found wherever the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly given, so that believers in many denominations already belong to one body, however divided its outward life. For how the churches came apart, see Why are there so many churches and denominations?.

None of these traditions is content with division; all pray with Jesus "that all of them may be one" (John 17:21). Meanwhile no believer is a stray stone. Each is being built, with others, into a house where God lives: imperfect for now, loved without wavering. That is why Christians gather, listen, pray and carry one another's burdens, and why Christ's gifts of baptism and the Lord's Supper are the subject of the next lesson.

Practice