God’s Mission Has A Church (Part Two)

How do you define Church?

Two Perspectives

Most people see Church as one of the balls they keep in the air amid a busy life. God, though, desires something different for His church. Life in covenant with God's family (the Church) is central to reality. Thus, all of life, and its many components, flows through the reality of being in God's family.

The Church was not an afterthought in God's plan. At the centre of God's eternal purpose is His desire to create a people for Himself. It is His unfolding plan of redemption and where history is headed. We are not reconciled to God as individuals and then choose to join the Church at some point as if it were a social club, country club, gang, support group or activist organization.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Pastor, author, and theologian Jon Stott said, “...the Church is God's new community...conceived in a past eternity, being worked out in history, and being perfected in a future eternity...[God] is not saving isolated individuals to perpetuate our loneliness...” The Church, or some form of it, was always the plan. Jesus died for a people, not just a person, and when we are reconciled to God by grace through faith, we immediately become a part of the people for whom Jesus died. We immediately become a part of God's eternal community, His patchwork family. 

The eternal community is central to the identity of one who practices the Way of Jesus, not an addition to it. We are defined by being in God's family, though this goes radically against our deeply embedded individualism. The Church is God's family, God's eternal community of people from all different backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and socio-economic strata. 

The beauty of God's family is that there is no prerequisite to be a part, except that you truly believe He has a family and that the head of it is Jesus. Jesus purchased it through His sacrifice on the cross, leads it through the Holy Spirit, and holds it together by the power of His word. 

As practicers of the Way of Jesus, we realize that Church is not an option, a place you go, or an addition to your “personal faith.” By becoming a Christian, you belong to God and the family of faith—we belong to each other. 

Today, even in local churches, an ethic of individuality and non-commitment has been woven deeply into how we view and interact with the Church. The idea of Covenant has nearly been lost. The lack of community in the Church, the prevalence of “church-hopping,” the lack of life-giving relationships and accountability, and the lack of church restoration are all symptoms of our underdeveloped and often unbiblical understanding of the Church. Which church do you want, the one we have in the West or the one Jesus envisioned from the Cross?

Come back next week for part three of this Theology of the Church series.