Living in God's Two Kingdoms by David VanDrunen

Author:David VanDrunen [VanDrunen, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Good News Publishers
Published: 2010-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

What Is This Church?

I have been making some stupendous claims about the church. What do I mean by “the church”? In our colloquial speech we often use the term “church” in different ways—to refer to a building, or to a worshiping community, or to the aggregate of believing individuals known only to God. There is nothing necessarily wrong with using the term “church” to refer to different things, and there is some variation in how the New Testament uses the term. But for the most part the New Testament, and certainly the texts considered above, use “church” to refer to the visible community of believers and their children. This community is united particularly in worship and is instructed, governed, and served by ministers, elders, and deacons appointed for those tasks. To use a common theological phrase, the church in the New Testament is primarily “visible.”

For example, when Paul speaks of the covenant of Abraham finding fulfillment in the churches of Galatia, these communities are marked out by baptism, a visible sacramental sign (Gal. 3:27). In Ephesians 2–3, where Paul writes about the Old Testament covenants of promise coming to fulfillment in the church, he refers to the church as a community where he and his fellow apostles and prophets have ministered (2:20; see also 1 Cor. 3:5–9) and which has experienced concrete reconciliation among Jew and Gentile (2:13– 19; 3:6). As the “body of Christ” the church exists in the intimate fellowship and mutual service of its members (1 Corinthians 12), as the “household of God” it has overseers and deacons (1 Timothy 3), and as the “kingdom of heaven” it exercises the keys of the kingdom and disciplinary procedures (Matt. 16:18–19; 18:15–20). The earthly communities that can claim the promises of the covenant and the blessings of the kingdom are visible, faithful churches of Christ spread over this world.

Consequently, in the rest of this book I refer to the church as a community or institution. It will be important to keep in mind that, seeking to follow Scripture, I distinguish between the work and life of the church and the work and life of individual believers (or groups of believers) as they make their way in this world. 18 Believers and groups of believers do not constitute “the church” in everything they do.

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