What is the Church? Ephesians 2:19-22
In the West, where individualism
reigns supreme, we have privatized almost everything, including the Christian
faith. But it’s interesting, isn’t it,
as we look at Paul’s words here in Ephesians 2, that one of the overriding
concerns of the cross is to bring people together. The reconciliation that was accomplished on
the cross, doesn’t just reconcile people to God – though that is the main thing – it also reconciles man to
man. And it doesn’t stop there, it brings
men and women into the community of the church.
We are not meant to live out the Christian life in solitude, cut off
from other believers. We are to live
together in the fellowship of those who have also been called out of darkness
and into the marvelous light of Christ.
And yet, despite the clear
importance of the church, there is a lot of confusion as to what the church
is. Too often, I think, church is
equated with the meeting that happens on Sunday morning. Though this event is certainly necessary and
very important to the life of the church (we are not to forsake the assembling
of ourselves together, Heb. 10:25), this is not the church. If what we do on Sunday morning is the sum
total of what defines us as a church, then we need to think a little more
carefully as to what we are about. Not
too long ago, I heard a prominent voice in the Christian community say that he
didn’t think the church was up to the task of confronting the rising secularism
of our culture. His statement frankly
alarmed me. How can you have so little
confidence in God’s institution? If
change doesn’t come from the church, where would it come from? And then I realized that he was thinking of
the church as a group of people who do no more than meet together to watch
something once a week, if that often.
Yes, I agree, that will not change society. Because that is not the church!
On the other hand, some people
think that church is just getting together with other believers, in any
context. This is closer to the truth,
but it is still far from the Biblical reality.
They emphasize fellowship,
which is important, but they stop far short of what the Bible describes as
Christian fellowship. They balk at the
notion of a “service,” and will ascribe such things to legalism and formalism. For such people, a church service is no good;
they would rather go to the park and talk theology over hot dogs. Fellowship among Christians is truly in short
supply, and ironically our technological society has begun replacing Biblical
fellowship with media. And yet, the NT
church is much bigger than talking theology over hot dogs.
Others think of the church purely
in terms of programs. Again, I want to
say right off the bat that I’m not against programs. But secular organizations run programs. Doing stuff together is not what really
defines a group of people as the church, no matter how impactful such efforts
might be.
What then, is the church? Well, we can give a functional definition. When
one looks into the NT, one sees that the church is the community of God’s
called-out people (ekklesia) who
worship together (Eph. 5:19,20), pray together (1 Tim. 2), disciple one another
(Rom. 15:14), submit to spiritual leaders together (Heb. 13:7, 17), hear and
respond together in faith to Spirit-filled preaching (2 Tim. 4:1-5), who hold
one another accountable (Gal. 6:1-5), and who share with each other (1 Tim.
6:17). All these things can be
illustrated by definite examples in the book of Acts. And this is not a complete list. All the “one-anothers” of the NT go here as
well. And it thus becomes immediately
clear that limiting the church to an event, to a program, or to theology over
hot dogs, is far, far from all that God has for us in the church.
However, the problem with purely
functional definitions is that they beg the question, why? Why do we do all these
things together? And why these
particular things and not others? And so
on. That is why it is also very
important to get down to a more ontological
definition of the church. What I
mean by that is, what is the church before it does anything? What is the
essence of the church? Because if we
understand that, then we will have a better grasp on what we are to do. And I think this is especially relevant for
our church in this season. As we consider
what God would have us to do, we need
to always go back and measure such goals against what we are.
And here in our text, the apostle
Paul helps us. Though the word “church”
itself is never used, we know that is what the apostle is talking about
here. For the imagery he uses he applies
elsewhere to the church. Paul describes
his readers as belonging to the household of God; in 1 Tim. 3:15 he says that
the house of God is the church of God.
In 1 Cor. 3, Paul describes the church as a temple, just as he does
here. In Eph. 2:19-22, we have a
description of the NT church.
In describing the church, the
apostle uses three metaphors: kingdom, family, and temple. The first two are found in verse 19, and the
third is expounded in verses 20-22. So
as we ask the apostle Paul what he thinks the church is, he would say that the
church is the community of those who belong to the kingdom and family of God, and
who are being incorporated into the temple of God. This morning, I want to try to unpack what is
implied in these metaphors. And
hopefully, as we go forward in our vision-casting we will look back to what we
are in Christ in order to determine how to look forward in our service to him
and his kingdom.
The church is the
community of those who belong to the kingdom of God.
Now I recognize that the church
and the kingdom of God are not strictly synonymous. God’s kingdom rules over all (Ps. 103:19),
and the church is not a universal community.
It has always been, and will always be a minority community in the
world. Nevertheless, the church consists
of those who have bowed the knee to Jesus as their King and who find their
identity as citizens of the kingdom of heaven.
This is what the apostle is saying when he writes, “Now therefore ye are
no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints.”
This is in contrast with the
description of their former state in verse 12.
“At that time” they were “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.” Remember that before Christ came, God’s rule
among men was most closely connected with the nation of Israel. Israel, in its most glorious state under the
rule of Kings David and Solomon had been a theocracy; the true God was the
acknowledged ruler. The Gentiles were
for the most part alienated from this visible expression of God’s rule upon the
earth. But now, this is no longer the
case. In Christ, God is forming a new
community upon the earth, the church, and this community is now the visible
expression of God’s rule upon the earth.
Of course, the citizenship
celebrated here is more than just belonging to the church here on earth. It means that we are citizens of heaven, as
Paul reminds the Philippian believers: “For our citizenship is in heaven; from
whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change
our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according
to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself”
(Phil. 3:20, 21). The kingdom of which
we are now a part has no borders and it has no end. It is a kingdom which will find its ultimate
fulfillment in the new heavens and new earth.
As such, the church is connected
to the saints in every age. “Fellow
citizens with the saints.” The saints
are those who in every age, from Adam until now, who have embraced with faith
the rule of God over their lives, who have bent their knees to the sovereignty
of God over their plans and choices and desires. It is a truly global and timeless community.
There are at least three
implications for the church that arise from this metaphor. First of all, we need to be constantly
reminded that it is vain that we claim to belong to the kingdom of God if we
are not willing to submit our entire lives to the lordship of Christ. Though it is true that our works can never
inherit eternal life, and though it is gloriously true that we are justified by
faith alone in Christ alone, that does not mean that works have no place in the
life of the Christian. Faith is necessary,
but faith without works is dead, as James put it. We are saved by grace unto good works (Eph.
2:9-10). The fact of the matter is that
you cannot truly have put your trust in Christ without repenting of your sins. Christ does not present himself to you merely
as a Savior, but as Savior and Lord. You
must have the whole Christ; he does not come to you in pieces for you to pick
and choose as you like.
That is why any healthy church is
going to be a place that promotes holiness and discipleship. Healthy churches are going to be places where
church discipline is practiced. They are
going to be places where sin is lovingly confronted, not conveniently
ignored. Of course that does not mean
that we are to be harsh or unkind. It
does not mean that we are to be inflexible or self-righteous. But it does mean that we follow Christ. We embrace the sinners with love and with the
same love call them to repentance.
There is also another implication
from this description of the church that we need to hear: since the church is
borderless and timeless, we need to be careful that we don’t just define our
mission purely in terms of our own locality.
From Paul’s epistles, we know that in the first century, churches in
Greece sent money to help churches in Judea.
Christians had a global mindset even then, and we need to have the
same. To the extent that we can, we
should be willing to help churches in other parts of the world. This is an often overlooked responsibility of
the church. We are sometimes so focused
on helping those who don’t know Christ in other parts of the world, that we
forget about those who do.
And then the third implication is
that we are to be concerned about world missions. We cannot belong to the kingdom of God and
pray, “Thy kingdom come,” without wanting to see the saving rule of Christ
embraced by more and more people in every part of the world. This is why Paul was in prison; he was in
prison because he had made it his mission “to make all men see what is the
fellowship of the mystery” (Eph. 3:9).
May God bless our church to be a part of God’s world-wide mission.
The church is the
community of those who belong to the family of God.
In Christ, we belong to the
family of God. It is why when we pray,
we call God, “Father.” Christians are
people who embrace God as their Father through Christ and who receive one another
as brothers and sisters. We belong to
“the household of God.” One commentary
notes that the world the apostle uses here “implies a close intimate family.”[1] God does not welcome us to his family like
David welcomed Absalom back from exile; rather, God embraces us with open arms
into the intimacy of the fellowship of his family.
This is one of the reasons, by
the way, why we have to be careful that we don’t define church so narrowly as
to exclude members of God’s family from it.
Unfortunately, the need for denominational commitments has led to a very
unbiblical view of the church. For some,
the church is defined primarily in terms of externals like baptism and
ordination. But here, in our text, the
apostle describes the church as the household of God, as he does in 1 Tim.
3:15. That does not mean that we give up
certain denominational commitments, but it does mean that we are willing to
recognize that the church is bigger than our own local fellowship or denomination. We all know how dreadful it is when siblings
exclude each other; how much more horrible must it be when sons and daughters
of God exclude each other from mutual fellowship!
Just as the metaphor of kingdom
speaks to the need of holiness in the church, so the metaphor of family speaks
to the need of love in the church. “Home
is where the heart is” is a message we see displayed in many homes, and it
should certainly be true of the church.
The community of the people of God should be a place where we feel at
home. It should be a place where we can
let down our guard, so to speak, where we can feel vulnerable. It should be a place where we can be honest
with each other without getting our heads bitten off. The church should be a community of people
who want to serve each other. It should
be a place where washing the disciples’ feet is lived out in many practical
ways. Remember what our Lord said: “By
this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to
another” (Jn. 13:35). “Bear ye one
anothers burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).
And by the way, kingdom and
family are not mutually exclusive categories.
Paul put both the need for holiness and the need for love together in
Eph. 4:15, when he wrote, “But speaking the truth in love, [we] may grow up
into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.” We grow in holiness through the embrace of
truth in our hearts. But truth is most
convincingly embraced when it is received in love. It is very unfortunate that some people don’t
know how to be zealous for holiness without being ugly about it. How unlike our Lord that is! There was no one on earth more zealous for
holiness and the glory of God than Jesus Christ. And yet there was no one on the earth more
gentle and loving than he. I love how
the prophet describes him: “A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax
shall he not quench” (Mt. 12:20, quoting Isa. 42:1-3). It was he who said, “My yoke is easy and my
burden is light” (Mt. 11:29).
The church is the
community of those who are being incorporated into the temple of God
The third metaphor Paul uses, and
which he spends the most time developing, is that of the temple. He writes: “And are built upon the foundation
of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone;
in whom all the building fitly framed together growing unto an holy temple in
the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through
the Spirit” (20-22).
There are two words for temple
that are used in the NT. One word is
used to refer to the totality of the temple precincts in Jerusalem: the court
of the Gentiles, the court of the women, and the court of Israel and the
priests. The other word is used to refer
to the inner sanctum, the temple proper, where the priests would offer
sacrifice and burn incense to God. It is
this word that the apostle uses to describe the church. The church is the place where God meets with
his people in grace and salvation. The
church is the “habitation of God through the Spirit.”
It is true that the individual
Christian is the dwelling place of God through the Spirit. Paul teaches that in 1 Cor. 6. But in 1 Cor. 3, when Paul refers to the
temple of God, he is not talking about the individual believer, but as here he
is talking about the church of God as a corporate reality. We must not miss the significance of
that! In a day when people are adopting
drive-thru churches or resorting to the Hour of Power as their weekly encounter
with the church, we need to be reminded that God reserves a special blessing
for the church as the gathered community of his people. We are meant to be together, and God blesses
his church when they meet together.
You see that in the imagery that
Paul uses here. He says that in Christ
the building is “fitly framed together.”
Today, it really doesn’t matter as much how the bricks are shaped because
we use mortar to put them together. But
in Paul’s day, they didn’t use mortar and so there was “an elaborate process of
cutting and smoothing the stones so that they fit exactly next to each other.”[2] The idea is that God is shaping us and
smoothing us so that we will fit perfectly into the temple that he is
building. But that means fitting exactly
next to other believers! This is a
beautiful picture of the harmony and unity enjoyed by believers who before
their conversion were at each other’s throats.
We need each other for the temple that God is building.
A wonderful illustration of this
comes from the ministry of the Welsh preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones. There was a witch in the town where he was
preaching who was on her way to take her own life, when she passed by the
church building and heard the service in progress. For some reason, she went in – and as she
entered, she said that she felt a power, not a dirty power which she had known
through witchcraft, but a clean, holy, wonderful power. And it changed her! God was working in the gathering of his
people! We need to make sure that we
don’t miss the great blessing of the church.
God didn’t ordain the internet, he ordained the church. He didn’t ordain parachurch ministries, he
ordained the church. God is building his
church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. If you really want to experience his
blessing, you will get in on what God is doing: and what he is doing is building
his church. To abandon the church is to
forsake your own blessing.
In describing the church, Paul
talks about its foundation. This is very
important. One of the sad things about
the church is that through history it has often been mistaken about its
foundation. Paul says that the
foundation of the church is “the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself
being the chief cornerstone.” The
apostles and (New Testament) prophets are foundational in the sense that the
church’s beliefs and doctrines are grounded in their teaching. God communicated his truth to the church
through the apostles and prophets. And
this was done once: “are built upon the foundation…” God is not still laying the foundation. That has been done. As Jude put it, we are to contend earnestly
“for the faith once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). And we are not to add to that
foundation.
The contents of this foundation
are to be found in the NT. It is not
found in the tradition of the church fathers, nor in the traditions of our
grandfathers! It may be illuminated by them, but it is not defined by them. This is why I am so thankful for the
Reformation emphasis on sola Scriptura,
“Scripture alone.” With Martin Luther,
we ought to boldly proclaim, “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain
reason, I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have
often contradicted themselves; my conscience is captive to the word of
God. I cannot and will not recant, for
to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me.
Amen.”
And Jesus is the “chief
cornerstone.” Ancient builders laid the
cornerstone first. It was the most
important stone in the foundation because it determined how the other
foundational stones would be laid. “It
is that stone by which every other stone in the foundation and the
superstructure must be measured.”[3] Christ is the measure of the church. The message of the church is Christ and him
crucified. The life of the church is the
abundant life purchased by him on the cross.
Everything about the church is to point to Christ as our Savior and Lord
and Brother and Friend. We witness to
the fact that those who rest their lives upon him will never be disappointed.
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