Sunday School | Ecclesiology - Doctrine of the Church (What is the Church?)

Okay, so you guys, we're in a systematic theology class here. We've been doing it for at least a year. We're walking through the 10 major areas of Christian doctrine: theology proper, Christology, pneumatology—we've covered all this stuff. We're seven of 10, and all we have left are ecclesiology, which is the doctrine of the church; angelology, the doctrine of angels and demons; and then eschatology, the doctrine of last things. So this morning, we begin our section on ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church.

So let me ask you, and I ask you especially you who grew up in the shadow of Virginia Tech, which I'll explain in a little bit: what is the church? How would you answer that question? What is the church?

We are the church. This is exactly right. If I were to ask a Virginia Tech student, "What's a Hokey?" The answer is, "I am." When we ask the question, "What is the church?" The answer is we are. Right?

Now, the Bible doesn't give a definition of the church, but overwhelmingly, it gives metaphors. Lots and lots and lots of metaphors for the church. This document that Ray is gonna hang on to, that Rick's gonna keep and not let you have yet, lists as many of the metaphors for what the church is that I could come up with. There's a bunch. And you don't get to look at this, but we're gonna try to recreate it, and then we're gonna pass it out and talk about it.

Metaphors for the Church

So we ask the question: what is the church? The answer is we are. But how does the Bible describe us? What are the metaphors that pop to mind of how the Bible describes the church?

Body of Christ. We are the body of Christ, of which Christ is the head. Massive. Okay, good. We are the body of Christ.

The bride. We are the bride of Christ. Major, major theme. Good. So we're the body of Christ, and we are the bride of Christ.

What else? What are the other primary metaphors that the Bible gives to describe us?

Flock of the shepherd. Okay, good. We are the flock. So he is the shepherd, and we are the sheep. So we are the body of Christ, we are the bride of Christ, we are the flock of the shepherd. That's a great way to phrase it, Mark. Very good.

What else have we got?

Ambassadors. This is good. When the Bible describes the church through the lens of ambassadors, we are ambassadors. It's as though Christ were making his appeal through us, right?

It is as though Christ were making his appeal through us — 2 Corinthians 5

However, that tends to be a little bit more individual than corporate. It's not a bad answer—it's a great answer to the question, "What is a Christian?" Love that answer. It's actually really, really important.

Corporately, other metaphors the Bible uses to describe us:

Salt of the earth. That is corporate. I didn't think of that one, so I'm not sure if that's individual or if I just didn't think of it. But the idea of salt—what does that invoke? Well, salt flavors things. We are voices and our lives bring flavor. We change things. Great. Salt flavors, but it also preserves. Right? We don't think of salt as a preservative so much, but in the ancient world, absolutely. So in some regard, we not only make things taste better, but we also are supposed to keep things from falling into absolute corruption.

Living temple. Yes, this is a big one. This actually shows up many times, and it has a variety of different forms. We could say, as a bull's eye: we are the temple, we are the place where God dwells, and he dwells in us, right? We are his temple. But sometimes that metaphor gets kind of shifty. Sometimes it's a temple, which is a building. Other times it's a different sort of building. And I'll talk about how we, like living stones, individuals are being built into this. And then sometimes that building is—sometimes you go from temple to building, from building to household, right? So it's not just a temple, but it's a household.

Household of faith. In what sense? That's not just about the structure at that point. Give me another word for household. Household has two synonyms: building and family, right? And that is a massive thing. Every time Paul says brothers and sisters, we're talking about a family, right? So we're the body of Christ, we are the bride of Christ, we are the temple, we are the household, we are the family. Very, very good.

The people of God. Yes.

This is not too generic. This is absolutely right. We are the people of God. And this one has a really interesting history. We'll look at Exodus 19 when we get there, and then how Peter describes us: "You once were not a people, but now you are." We are a nation. We are a collection of persons. Very good. Excellent. One more. What do we got here? Yeah, Brenda? Frozen or elect?

Okay. We just got done spending weeks and weeks on the elect. Can we please drop it? No, yeah. So but it's true. He will call us the elect. That is a synonym for the church. So not bad. It's not on my list, but that's not a bad answer. Yeah. One more. What else we got? Yeah, John?

Nation priests.

Say it again?

Nation priests. Yes. So nation of priests, and this actually goes right with that first Peter passage. You're a chosen nation, you're a holy nation, a chosen people, a kingdom of priests. Right? This is all that Exodus 19 language. I'll show you that shortly. What's that? The ekklesia.

Okay. Now this is not the metaphor, but it is literally the word. Right? So the word church in Greek is ekklesia. Do you know what that literally means? Because that doesn't literally mean church. Right. In the Greek language, it would be: you go out. If the city government or state came so corrupt, go outside the gates, and a new government and a new formation, a new thing was established, and the old was destroyed and the new was raising up. Okay. So I don't know that the history of that term. So my understanding is what it means is the gathering. It's an assembly, a congregation, but that's how it was used in Greek culture.

I understand. The word church, which is the German word kurch, which means building and land, which is what was adopted by King James and the 14 edicts.

Well, I didn't know any of that, Mike. Okay. So but there's something fundamental. The church is almost then what you're describing there, something akin to a reactionary force.

Yeah, this thing is broken, we need to go make a new thing. Very good, excellent. Okay. One more that I have that you guys haven't mentioned. You want to dig deep? One more primary metaphor. We're the body of Christ. We're the bride of Christ. We're the temple of God. We're the household of God. We're the family of God. We are what do we say? Flock of sheep. The shepherd's flock of sheep. Say it again? The vine of the sheep.

Yes. Rick for the win. Okay, the final thing is there's a couple of different agricultural kind of metaphors. Jesus says, "I am the vine, you are the branches." In Romans 11, it's not so much a grapevine as much as what is the Romans 11 version of the plant that is the church? Wild olive and domestic olive.

The olive tree. Right? We're an olive tree. We Gentiles are the wild shoots that are grafted into this thing. Alright. Good enough. Let's pass these sheets out, and let's make the case for all of these. That was very well done.

Metaphors of the Church

As these things are going around, I want you to think: when he describes us, he's got all these different pictures, what are we? We are the body of Christ. We are the bride of Christ. I want to show you in the scriptures—we're not making this up—how he describes us. And then as we go through this list, Lord willing, we'll be able to come up with some of the implications. What does it mean that we are all of these things?

And again, we are all of these things. This is not the individual. This is not what's a Christian, it's what is the church. And you guys, here's a funny little thing as those sheets are getting passed out: How many churches are there?

One. It's one church. There's one church. And it doesn't feel like there's one church. It feels like there's a lot of churches. Right? And if you wanted to ask a biblical definition of that, on the one hand, there is one church. But when you read through the New Testament, what you find is that there's really one church in every city. The letter to the church at Rome, the letter to the church at Thessalonica. Those are cities. But there is one letter in the New Testament that is written to the churches. Do you know what that one is?

Revelation?

Okay. No. Although Revelation does have seven churches that are described in the beginning—that's good, Revelation 1:3. But of Paul's epistles, one is written to a plurality of churches. Do you know which one it is?

It's Galatians, because Galatia's not a city. Galatia is much more like a state. It's a big area. So the church is in Galatia, but the church in Rome. There is one church in the whole world, but there is really, in a different sense, all of the churches in Roanoke are one church. Thank you, Don. Appreciate that. Alright. Let's take a look. Let's just kind of let these things run through our minds. What is the metaphor that we're talking about here?

The church is, I think principally and chiefly, the primary metaphor. We are the body of Christ.

Now you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it. — 1 Corinthians 12

Just as each of us has one body and many members, 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. — Romans 12

Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, which is the church. — Colossians 1

After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church. For we are members of his body. — Ephesians 5

There's a number of different implications we're going to hit as we go, especially in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12. What is the implication? What is Paul going after with the metaphor that we are a body? We belong. We have a different function. Different gifts.

The whole point of these passages is this: If your hand thinks your foot is bad at writing with a pencil, it would be stupid. Your hand is supposed to write with a pencil, but your foot has a different job. In both of those passages, Paul's point is: we're a body. Those of you that have more upfront gifts and those of you that have more behind-the-scenes gifts, those of you that are good at this and those of you that are good at that, those of you are administrators and those of you that are singers—we should not think we should all sing as well as I sing, we should all lead as well as I lead, we should all serve as well. No, that's not how it works.

Your hand is good at stuff, your eyes are good at stuff, your ears are good at stuff. The different parts of the body—we should look around this room and be grateful for the ears and the thumbs and the knees and the knuckles, because the body is a unit, but it's made up of many parts. You're needed, and with one purpose. We all together work for one purpose. We are not at odds. My ears are not fighting with my eyes for supremacy. We're working together for the whole thing.

It's a massively important thing, and sometimes forgotten in the body. The greatest problem in the church today is division. Imagine your body at war with itself and how foolish that would be. That's problematic for us. The church is the body of Christ. We are all magnificently different, but with one common purpose.

The Suffering Body

In Colossians, you get a sense of a different implication. What is the implication that we are the body of Christ in Colossians?

Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions for the sake of His body, which is the church. — Colossians 1

Don, forget about the church for a second. Tell me about the body of Christ. Tell me about Jesus' physical arms, legs, hands, feet. What do you know about his body?

Wounded.

How did it respond to its wounding?

It welcomed it.

When we say we are the body of Christ, what we are saying is: we are crucified. I think we jump to the many-parts-as-one thing, which is good. But the very image, when he says "this is my body, you are my body," he's saying: you are the ones who will, for the sake of others, accept suffering, pain, loss, ridicule, beating, mocking, and death. You are the church. You are the abused one. We are the scum of the earth. We are the refuse of the world. We are at the end of the parade like condemned men on our way to death. We are the body of Christ. Don't miss that piece. That's a huge part of the metaphor.

The Care-Giving Body

How about the fourth one, Ephesians 5?

After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and he cares for it, just as Christ does the church, for we are members of his body. — Ephesians 5

What's the implication of that? Yes, love one another—and that's second. First, he loves us. No one ever hated his own body. Does Jesus hate his own body? Absolutely not. And we, who are members of one another, we recognize that we suffer. We recognize and see that in this world we will be persecuted, and so we move towards one another to bring comfort and healing. We don't just throw fuel on the fire. We bring soothing calm where the body is broken, where the body is hurting.

He showed us how to use the body too. His hands—touch people. His feet—go. And listen.

And his mouth—I mean, he showed us how to use the body. We are his physical representation in the world, which means that we will honor our various gifts, we will embrace the suffering that is necessarily the case, because the body—his corporal physical body—was suffered terribly. And so we should not be surprised when we do, and yet we will move towards one another in our pain to feed and care. That's what it means that we're the body of Christ. There's a lot packed into that.

But though we are the body, we're the body from the neck down. We all want to be the head. We are the body from the neck down.

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow into him who is the head, that is Christ. From him, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. — Ephesians 4:15

He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy. — Colossians 1

What is the implication? That though we are the body, we are the body from the neck down. We die to self. We're in submission. This is what headship is. I am not in charge.

The other day, I was at the gym, and there was a guy wearing a shirt that said, "Never follow, always lead." And I thought, that is so asinine. That is so ridiculous. The greatest leader in the history of the world is the most submitted man who has ever lived. You cannot lead if you are not following someone. Choose very carefully whom you follow.

And as this body of Christ is the manifestation of God in the world, which is what we are, if we fail to recognize that we are to lead and accomplish His purposes without being in submission to the head, woe to us. If the church were to embrace "never follow, always lead," what an absolute unmitigated disaster that would be.

Jesus was sent from the Father, and he says to us, "As the Father sent me, so I am sending you." We are endlessly and always to bend the knee to him, to respect and honor His supremacy in all things, that whatever we do, we do because He told us to do it. Whatever we say, we say because He told us to say it. He is the head. So the church is the body of Christ, and Christ is the head of the body.

The Church as the Bride

Let's talk about the bride. Ephesians 5 might be the bull's eye of this, although this one really is rooted in the Old Testament.

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. — Ephesians 5

Ephesians 5 is probably the principal place that we see this. And with this, I want to make one thing clear about all of these metaphors.

When we say that Jesus is the shepherd, we might think that we're saying Jesus is like a shepherd. But that's not really what we're saying. What we're saying is that shepherds are like Jesus. He is the original, and everything that exists exists in some degree as a reflection of Him. Fire is not like God. Fire is like God. He is the original, and everything He made in some regard is like Himself.

Now, I want you to bear that in mind when we talk about what it means the church is the bride of Christ. We are not saying that the church is like a bride, as if brides came first and then the church was the afterthought. The reality is that the church is the original, and brides take their cues from the church.

In a similar way, Jesus is not like a husband. Husbands are like Jesus, or at least they're supposed to be. He is first. He is primary. But there is something that we get to see in a real life marriage. We probably know more about marriages than we know about him. You probably know more about your husband than you know about Jesus. And there's something about your husband that is meant to reflect what Jesus is like. Now whether he does or not—and by the way, there's something about you that is supposed to reflect what the church is like, whether it does or not.

But the original is that God would have this relationship between himself and his community, and marriages are meant to be a picture of that, not the other way around. That is what Paul is saying here in Ephesians 5.

And as John picks it up in Revelation 19 and 21, it says this:

Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory, for the wedding of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. — Revelation 19

You guys, every wedding that has ever happened was in anticipation of the wedding. This is the real one. The real wedding, the wedding supper of the lamb.

Then the angel said to me, write, "Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the lamb." And he added, "These are the true words of God." — Revelation 19

And in Revelation 21:

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, "Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the lamb." And he carried me away in the spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. — Revelation 21

What are we to take from this? What is it supposed to mean? If we are the bride of Christ, what are the implications for us? What is true of this great bride, of that great bridegroom? Honor and cherish. Honor and cherish. How does that work? Who honors and who cherishes? They both honor each other, but as a wife, I should honor and cherish my husband as the head of our household. So the very language of bride is telling us, the church, hey, your job is to follow your great husband.

Now this is strangely controversial today, and I absolutely reject any claim that it is controversial. It is unmistakably, biblically the case that the church submits to Jesus, without question. This is what Paul is saying in Ephesians, is that should be played out in a marriage. A lot of places it's not, a lot of places it's thought to be a hateful thing, it's not. We're not going to deal with that all today. But there is this sense here that the church should follow the leadership of Christ, and what does he do for his church? He honors and cherishes her. He loves his church. He gives himself up for her. Jesus' orientation towards us is of love and sacrifice, of seeking the good of his bride. He leads, and he leads really well, and he leads sacrificially, and he leads through suffering to give himself up for her.

What else? Implications that the church is the bride. What else is true of a bride? The bride's orientation to her husband is one of honor, to follow his authority. What else? Joy. Brides should be happy things. We are meant to be in him. This is not a dour thing—this is a wedding supper. There's a delight to this.

What color do brides wear on their wedding day? Why? Pure. Because they are pure. The bride of the lamb, and especially—this is very important—especially in Revelation, what is the counterpoint to the bride of the Lamb? Think of Revelation, maybe chapter 18. There is a counterpoint: the harlot, the whore of Babylon. We see the bride of Christ set apart in Revelation in this great drama from the horror of Babylon. The bride is pure. The bride is faithful. The bride is dressed in white linen, which represents the righteousness of the saints.

When we say that we are the bride of Christ, we are not the adulterous whore of Christ. We are the faithful bride who love him, who honor him, who are not running around with anything else that calls and tempts and teases us. So when you hear language that we are the bride of Christ, that should provoke you to holiness, to purity, to faithfulness.

Yeah, we're made radiant, sinless, and pure by his doing, not our own, because we really are the heart that is unfaithful. So it's his doing. He's the washing and renewing of his word. He's the one who covers us. He's the one who loves us.

So in case you couldn't hear, this bride's purity is a granted purity, an imputed purity. And that's exactly right. If this bride has a name, her name is Gomer. It is a faithless bride that he has gone out to win, and to capture, and to redeem, and to cleanse.

So in Ephesians 5, when Paul says:

Love your wives 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. — Ephesians 5

All of that language is purity language. Every bit of it.

And it is taking an impure people and making them into a pure, washed, radiant, stainless, spotless bride. It is a work that he has done in us, and that we maintain by faith. That's what it means to be the bride of Christ. We are the one that he loves.

Christine? I'm just thinking about purity and the wearing of white, having daughters. That verse in Revelation, it talks about preparation. She makes herself ready.

Yes. And it's a process, and it is the Lord who is cleansing, but a softened heart, a willingness to come to be washed.

Absolutely. And to prepare. And that is the imagery that permeates the New Testament—that the bride, that's us, we are making ourself ready for him to come. Right? So that when he comes, we're not unaware. The wedding could be tomorrow. Right? And we are ready for Him. We are preparing. We are waiting for Him. We don't want to be caught or found unready when He comes.

All right. Flip the page. Let's talk about the temple. Talk about the implications of this.

Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him, for God's temple is sacred and you are that temple. — 1 Corinthians 3

Consequently, you're no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 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. — Ephesians 2

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. — 1 Peter

Okay. Gosh, ten forty. What are the implications of this?

I have a question. Okay. When it says you are God's temple, is it also true that you individually are the temple since the Holy Spirit lives in?

This is great. Okay. So pause that, and let's do this. What's the implication that we are the temple? And it really is pretty clear in Corinthians and Ephesians.

A place where God lives.

A place where God lives. That is what the temple is. The temple—what's the temple? That's where the ark is. That's where God's presence is. When he says that you are the temple, what he's saying is, this is where God dwells. And then we could, Gary, in light of that, your question is, well, doesn't He live in me? Yes. There is a sense in which we are individually His temple. This is where Paul's gonna actually develop this in First Corinthians 7. It's like, having sex with a prostitute doesn't make any sense because you're uniting this place where God dwells with a prostitute. That's just weird. Don't do that. Right? But so it's both true individually, and it's true corporately. We, as a group, are the temple. We are the place where God dwells.

And then Peter's gonna add to it. Right? We're a holy priesthood. We are the place that offers sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Because we are a temple, we're the place that He dwells. We are the place where the sacrifices are offered. But as I said, sometimes it's not just the building, it's a family.

Consequently, you're no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household — Ephesians 2

Which then flows into:

If I'm delayed, you know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. — 1 Timothy

And then over 300 times, we are called brothers and sisters. What's the implication, you guys, that we are a family or a household? How does that shape us? What is the mark of a healthy family? It is love. We are to love one another, to consider one another's needs as more important than our own, that we will spend our time, our money, our energy caring for one another. There's always somebody in this family that is hurting. Always. And our orientation towards them is not, well, that's them, but this is us. We are the family.

Sometimes we're a people or a nation. But the road forks here. I don't want to rush this, so we're going to pick this up next week. It's gonna be a short lesson. So it's gonna be a weird narrative arc. But there are things about each one of these that I want to take some time to develop, so we're not gonna have time to do it.

So let's say it like this. We ask a Virginia Tech student, what are you? What's the right answer?

I am.

When I say to you, what is the church? What's the answer?

We are. And what you mean when you say that is, we are the body of Christ. We are the ones that are willing to accept abuse, that know what it is to be crucified, but who also understand that every one of us has a valuable contribution to make, and we will not look down our noses at the other parts.

When we say that we are the church, we say that recognizing that we are the bride. We are the one that he loves. We are the ones who should follow and honor him. We are the ones for whom he has purchased purity, and we will live in it. We will be faithful brides.

Joe? On the element of being a bride. Yeah. And the aspect of that, not comes not competition, but completion. A bride completes.

Yeah. That's right. Yeah. We are not the head and the body at odds. The bride and the groom are not in a fight. We are unified to each other. Right?

We are the temple of God. We are He dwells with us. He has said:

Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.

We are the family. We are a family marked by love. And I want you to notice in all of these metaphors, the picture here is that we're unbelievably close to him. Your head and your body are inseparable. A bride and a groom are supposed to be inseparable. You cut the vine off from the branch, and the branch dies. All of these metaphors that he gives—the temple is where he is, it's not where he isn't.

Every one of these pictures of what is true of the church, they confer upon us the sense of intimacy with him, connectedness to him, closeness with him. You are as close to him as a head is to a body. You are as close to him as a bride is to her husband. You are as close to him as the temple that contains the living God. We are with him. That's what it means.

Who are we? We are the church. We are the ones with whom he will not consent to be without. We are with him. And there's a myriad of implications, and we'll chase down the last three and some other things besides next week. Good enough? Yeah. Alright. We're done.