The church

A people called together

The church is not a building but a people. The New Testament word, ekklēsia (ἐκκλησία), means an assembly of those called together, and the Greek Old Testament often used it for Israel gathered before God, the qahal (קָהָל). When Jesus first used the word, he said, "on this rock I will build My church" (Matthew 16:18). The church belongs to Christ: it is "the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood" (Acts 20:28).

The New Testament draws the church in many pictures. Christ "is the head of the body, the church" (Colossians 1:18); the church is the bride he loved and gave himself up for (Ephesians 5:25), and the household of God. It is also God's temple:

In Him the whole building is fitted together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together into a dwelling place for God in His Spirit.

Ephesians 2:21-22

Paul writes "To the church of God in Corinth" and in the same breath greets "all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 1:2). The church is both a congregation in one place and one people spread through the world. The first believers "devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer" (Acts 2:42).

The church's confession

The Nicene Creed confesses "one holy catholic and apostolic Church" Nicene Creed. The church is one in its one Lord; holy because set apart for God; catholic, the universal church of every time and place; and apostolic because it stands on the apostles' teaching. The Heidelberg Catechism opens up this article of the creed:

That out of the whole human race, from the beginning to the end of the world, the Son of God, by his Spirit and Word, gathers, defends, and preserves for himself unto everlasting life, a chosen communion in the unity of the true faith; and that I am, and forever shall remain, a living member of the same.

Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 54

The Reformers asked how a true church can be recognised. The Augsburg Confession, article 7, defined the church as the assembly of saints in which the gospel is rightly taught and the sacraments rightly administered Augsburg Confession, art. 7; the Belgic Confession, article 29, added church discipline.

Where the traditions differ

Christians differ over how the one church is visible on earth. 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 sanctification and truth are found outside it Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 8. The Orthodox churches understand themselves as the one church that has kept the faith of the apostles and the councils whole. Protestant churches hold that the true church is present wherever the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered, and many distinguish the visible and invisible church. Churches are also governed differently: by bishops, by elders, or by the congregation itself (congregational polity).

Yet every tradition confesses Christ as the head of the church and holds to the Lord's prayer "that all of them may be one" (John 17:21). See also the lesson What the church is and Why do we need the church?