What is the church?

When we speak of THE CHURCH we do not refer to any ecclesiastical building, nor to any denomination, nor to any number of professing Christians banded together into what is called nowadays "a church." We use the term in its scriptural sense. The Greek word rendered "church" simply means "called-out ones." Those who are called out of the world by God during this period of Christ's rejection are by this means, and by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, banded together into God's assembly, the church.

The called out ones are to be gathered together; they are not left as so many units to tread a solitary pilgrim way to heaven. They are to be gathered together, Christ the centre of the gathering and the Holy Spirit the power of it.

In a previous article we considered the church as that which is built by Christ Himself, and which is His own peculiar possession. "I will build My church." From the Lord's own words in the earlier verses of that chapter we see how necessary it is to be free from the thoughts of men, and to have a clear vision of the greatness of the Person of Christ if we are to arrive at a true idea of what the church really is. As presented in Matthew 16 the church, as a divine structure, cannot be broken into — "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." We can rest on the unchangeable blessedness of the word of Christ; the church is His, and will be throughout time and eternity.

Many are vague as to this, having a general idea that the term includes all the saved from the beginning to the end of time... We find no mention of the church in the Old Testament at all. There we find God dealing with a chosen nation, blessing them in an earthly way in the land of Canaan. The godly among that nation and elsewhere appear as so many individuals looking up to God in their own personal faith, but a plan for forming them into a corporate body nowhere appears... The birthday of the church of God was the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down from heaven according to the promise of the Lord Jesus.

This body is not a body of Christians organised by men. "For as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body." This body, this one body, is made up of all truly saved believers, and is formed by the Holy Spirit.

As His body, the church is His fulness, filled with all that He is in order to express all that He is. The church, His body, is to be the expression of His mind, just as our bodies give expression to what is in our minds.

The body is never called the body of God, nor is the house ever spoken of as the house of Christ. It is the body of Christ, and the house of God. The Spirit dwells in each of the members of the body, uniting all together and to their living Head in heaven; but in the house, God dwells by His Spirit, as one might dwell in the house he has built for a home, or as God dwelt in the temple of old.

The church of the living God, then, is the bride of Christ, whom He loved with an infinite love and purchased for Himself by His own precious blood, which He gave to redeem her from sin and destruction. This is what He did for her in the past, that He might have her forever with Himself as the object of His deep affections and to share all His glory and dominion in the coming day.

The word "church" is sometimes used to embrace all the saints on earth as one body, and sometimes of the members of that one body gathered in a given locality... the local gatherings are looked at as an integral and representative part of the one body of Christ on earth.