faith for faith

Why am I a Baptist? It is a question that I have addressed several times since I was brought to life by the Spirit of God, and it is one that has been brought up to me on several occasions by esteemed friends who were very much not Baptist in their denominational persuasion. One such friend, after having not spoken with him in several months, said in seeming amazement to me, “You are still Baptist? I had money on your being Presbyterian by now.” After extending to him my regrets for having lost for him a sum of money, I assured him that those same convictions that made me a Baptist before were the same convictions that kept me a Baptist at that time. And to this day, it is those very convictions that I held then that prohibit me from being anything but a Baptist.

You may ask of me the same questions that my Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, etc. friends asked of me several years ago: What business does an amillennialist have in the Southern Baptist Convention? Why would someone who is so unshakably Reformed stay in a denomination that is so doctrinally diverse? Why would someone who is not diehard about baptism by immersion be in a denomination whose very name is derived from that doctrine? These are all questions that I have periodically posed to myself throughout the years whilst reevaluating my denominational affiliation and my supposed position as a doctrinal oddity in the Baptist denomination. Yet in spite of all these differences that I have with many Baptists, there are key doctrines that keep me in the denomination.

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Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:25-27).

What’s in a name? We give them to dogs, cars, cows, and I’m sure someone somewhere gives them to trees. And even when we name our children, we care much more about how the name sounds with our surname than what it means. It is obvious, however, that names in the Bible had a much greater significance than they do now; in fact a person’s name was the very definition of that person. When Jacob was born, he was given the name “heel catcher” that literally described the manner in which he was born and also the deceptive nature by which he would live. When God revealed to Jacob that his life would be much more that heel-catching, he gave him the name Israel–”he who contends with God.”

We also hear in Scripture of praying in the name of Jesus, calling on the name of the Lord, and not taking the Lord’s name in vain, and we react to such statements much more foolishly than the Jews did who would refuse to utter, “Yahweh,” out of fear of transgressing the commandment. We flippantly tack on “In Jesus’ name” at the end of prayers, not realizing that it is when we pray in accordance to the very being and character of Christ that our prayers are answered not when we add a magical phrase. You will find much more success in your prayer life if you pray, “Conform me to the image of thy Son for thy glory; amen,” than “Lord, please give me a new car, in Jesus’ name; amen.”

All this is to say that when God gives something a name, he does it for a glorious and holy purpose. When God gave the name, “church,” to those he would call out and redeem, a certain reverence should have been granted to that name for his naming it thus alone. Furthermore, when Christ hung on the cross and shed his precious blood for the church, the price of the name “church” went up a million fold. I don’t know about you, but if the very God of the Universe died for the sake of something, I would be sure that I knew and used the correct definition of that for which he died.

In a previous post, we took a look at the origin of the Greek word for church, ekklesia, and noted that the word is a compound word meaning, “Those who have been called out.” This defintion being at the core of the church is significant because it makes the church at its core a personal and living entity rather than impersonal and lifeless one. Each member that composes the body of the Church has been chosen specifically by God before the foundation of the world and singled out in this life by his call through the Holy Spirit.

The question that we must ask ourselves at present is, “Does our present misdefinition of the church as the building with a steeple affect how the genuine church functions?” Or another way, “Do you think that our regarding the church as a building rather than the people who God has called to himself affects relationships within the church? I think that it must, for how much strife would vanish and how much more regard would we have for the each person in the church if we regarded each of them as particularly called by God? I think the impact would be profound indeed.

Let me offer this challenge to you this week: You know that person who is a member of your local body of believers who gets under your skin with his personality, who teaches something that you know is unbiblical, who looks at you funny, who voted against your proposed chair color at the last business meeting?—this week, instead of murmuring and talking about that person behind his back, look at that person as one who was called by God to be exactly where he is now. How will your attitude toward him change now that you look at him not as “that guy at church” but as “him who was chosen and called by God”?

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 1:1-7).

There is a certain ambiguity that one encounters with every mention of the term “church” at this present time roughly two thousand years after the Apostle Paul penned his letters to the saints dispersed throughout the Roman kingdom. Typically, that ambiguity is solved by the context of the conversation in which the term is mentioned. If one listens in on a conversation and hears the word “church” mentioned in the same sentence with basketball, barbecue chicken, committee meetings, and the like, that person can be pretty certain that the term “church” is to be defined as the building(s) where a certain group of self-identified Christians gather together to participate in various activities. On the other hand, if the term “church” is mentioned in the context of Jesus Christ and his bride, church discipline, holiness, and the like, one can be fairly certain that “church” in that instance is to be defined as the collective saints of God, called by him to holy and blameless before him. There also exists another key identifier, the Church Universal, which is unambiguously the whole of the redeemed, bought by Jesus Christ to be his spotless bride and to dwell with him forever in eternal bliss.

Confused yet?

Unfortunately, I believe it is history, not Scripture, that is responsible for the confusion that we now encounter with the term “church” and like a tumor, has attached itself to the word and has usurped the proper meaning and replaced it with an improper one. “What is the big deal?” you might ask, “What impact can the meaning of one word have on the whole of Providential history?” The impact has been great indeed, and I believe that an evaluation of our present definitions of the “church” put beside what the Bible says concerning the church will reveal the gravity of that which we regard as trivial and trite.

For the sake of brevity, I will address our definition of the church with what Scripture says concerning the church on future posts and gauge the significance of our misdefinition:

1. The Church is Called by God
2. The Church is Bought by the Blood of Jesus Christ
3. The Church is the Bride of Christ
4. The Church Is To Be the Holy and Blameless
5. The Church is To Love Its Members

Oftentimes, the best way to understand a word is to understand where it comes from. In our case, the original word for church, ekklesia, is particularly insightful as to its original definition. Ekklesia is a compound word in the Greek, composed of a preposition, “ek,” which means “from, after, out,” and “kleth-,” which means “to call, to bid.” Therefore, at its base, ekklesia means “called out,” or when applied to people, as it is, “those who have been called out.” This definition by itself raises two very points–those who are of the ekklesia have been called by someone and have been called out for something. The first chapter of Ephesians, vv. 3-10 gives some insight on these two points:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Though in this text we do not see verbatim “those who have been called,” we do clearly see the idea of the church and the definitions of the aforementioned two variables. First, we see that those who have been called have been called by the Father through Jesus Christ. The Apostle writes, “Even as he [the Father] chose us in him [Jesus Christ] before the foundation of the world.” It is the Father who has called the Church through his instrument, Jesus Christ, before the world existed.

In this statement alone we can deduce that the Church is established outside of the power of men (for it is establish by God), it is established through an intermediate (i.e. Jesus Christ), it is established outside of the dominion of man (i.e. the world), and it is established outside of the existence of man (i.e. before the creation of the world). In other words, the Church is an institution established and called by God alone beyond the realm of human influence.

Second, we see what the Church is called to. The Apostle writes: “He chose us in him . . . that we should be holy and blameless before him.” In other words, the
Church’s purpose in being called out is for the creation of a holy people that will be to praise of God’s glorious grace through the work of his intermediary, Jesus Christ.

This is the Church at its very base. From this base I build the rest of my evaluation of the doctrine of the Church.

Perhaps one of the more difficult things, and indeed unexpected things, in my marriage has been getting involved in a particular “church.” Since getting married early last year, the wife and I have attended regularly two “churches” (one at the beginning of our marriage, the other in the latter months) on Sunday all the while not acknowledging those “churches” at any other point in the week. We had rather flippantly begun the membership process (which by God’s providence was never completed) at the latter “church” across the street from our home simply because of its proximity and lack of heterodoxy, which, in retrospect, seem not to be the two most important factors when joining a “church.” And now again, the wife and I find ourselves on the brink of making the ever important decision of joining a particular “church” and finds ourselves a bit more sober-minded this time around.

Before taking the plunge of “church” membership, I have decided that before we join the aforementioned “church” that I would evaluate first the Bible’s picture of the church and then place that picture against our present picture of the “church” (which my present opinion you might have ascertained by the ridiculous amount of quotation marks). I will share my thoughts with you here, so stayed tuned.