What is the right church according to the Bible?

The Word of God is the only right place to which one may go to find the answer. Therein we read throughout of one Church in blessed unity in all lands. But we find no denominational names of men attached to it such as we hear of in our day. This Church is the Church of the living God and the only church which God owns and recognizes and to which every true believer in Christ is already joined by God's Spirit, as our subsequent studies will show. To the Scriptures, then, we shall go to find out what God has to say about His Church - "The Church of the Living God."

Last of all, the man who killed the Philistine was to have a princess for a bride. Saul's daughter was to be given in marriage to the happy man. And Christ, by His victorious death, has obtained for Himself a bride — the Church. The apostle says, speaking of the Church under the figure of a wife: "Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for it" (Eph. 5:25). Christ's bride is "the Church of God, which He hath purchased with the blood of His Own" (Acts 20:28, N.T.). This is the Church I believe in, and of this blood-bought Church I am a member. People sometimes say, "What Church are you a member of?" I say, "The only Church there is." "That sounds like bigotry," you say. I reply that it is not bigotry; it is the Bible. "What is the name of this Church?" perhaps you ask." I answer, "It has four names." "Four names?" you say. "Indeed! What are they, pray?" It is called in the first epistle to Timothy, third chapter and fifteenth verse, "the house of God." It is called in the first epistle to the Corinthians, third chapter and seventeenth verse, "the temple of God." It is called, in the same epistle, twelfth chapter and twenty-seventh verse, "the body of Christ." And in the Revelation, twenty-first chapter and ninth verse, it is called "the bride, the Lamb's wife." It is richly endowed, and firmly established; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. This is the only Church of which we read in Scripture.

A church, in the language of the Spirit, means an assembly of believers in the Son of God, and differs by this token from all other assemblies or communities which are not in the common faith. Such is its proper and essential description, as distinguished from the attributes which may mark, for praise or blame, one assembly of God's people in comparison with another, as they pass under the Master's eye. The Corinthians were carnal; the Ephesians were spiritual; the Galatians were slipping from the faith; the Philippians were set for the defence of the gospel, etc.; but all were alike assemblies of God. As such, they are further designated in the Scriptures under a rich variety of descriptions, as God's building and His husbandry, His flock, His habitation, and His temple. Nor were they thus in name only, but in the positive manifestation also, more or less abundantly, of His power by the Spirit. They stood thus in a visible, as well as real, separation from the world, which then went openly after another god.

The fashions of the world may vary, but God and His truth can know no change. The world, as has been already noticed (ante, 2 Cor. 6:17), has undergone a notable external transmutation wherever the truth of Christ's gospel has been outwardly acknowledged among men; but external recognition is not saving faith, and the difference between the world, and those whom God has redeemed to Himself out of the world, is as real, though less visible, in these last days of formal godliness, as when Caesar openly denied and persecuted Christ. But our question at present is with names. There are churches now as there were churches then. It should concern the true disciple, first, to discover whether this scriptural designation still retains its proper acceptation among men, and, if otherwise, to endeavour to reclaim it from false uses, and restore it, as a thing of God, to God.

One little word in addition as to your definition. You tell us it is an assembly of Christians united by the profession of the same true faith. Hence, as there are millions in the Greek church who say they are the true church, and millions of Protestants who say they are, and millions of Catholics who say they are: and you tell me that their being united in the same true faith is part of the definition by which I shall know which is the true one, I must find out what the true faith is, before I know which Christ's church is, or if any of them are; for each of them tells me it is. Of course they honestly think themselves so; and you tell me that profession of the true faith marks the true church. Well then I must necessarily know what is the true faith, to know who professes it; that is, I find the true faith before I find the church. And so it always was; for it was on receiving the true faith from the apostles, or other servants of Christ, that people at the first became members of the church; and they did not, and could not, become so otherwise.

35 Now, if it be a question for heathens or Jews — for them the whole question is, just how to be saved. If they believe and are baptized, they are saved, and members, it is to be supposed, of the true church, before they have discussed its merits at all. If it be a question which arises among Christians, who seek among Roman Catholics, and Protestants, and Presbyterians, and other bodies, where the true church is to be found; if, I say, the question arises among Christians, they have not all knowledge, doubtless, but they have saving faith, or they are not Christians at all; and hence, the truth is a most sure means of ascertaining the true church. Thus, if I know, as a matter of my own salvation, that the divinity and atonement of Christ are the very truth of God, and I found everything calling itself a church which denied these fundamental doctrines, I could at once say, That is not the true church. Souls may be ignorantly in error there — may come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved; but I cannot own the body as the true church of God.

The question is as to its distinctive doctrines and practices, as an ecclesiastical body, not as to what Anglicans hold in common with other Christians. Still less is it a question whether there be real members and ministers of Christ in that body: none but the ignorant, or the bitterly prejudiced, would deny it. The mere assumption of the name — Church of God — is no proof; if it were, the pettiest sect might produce the same pretentions. Doubtless, separation from a Church of God is false ground; but, on the other hand, no institution ought to be owned as a Church, without plain scriptural proof that its claims are well founded.

Most denominations and churches are based on certain truths (baptism, for instance) or on certain views-of-truth or as identified with godly men of past times. Consequently, these churches lack a divine inclusiveness since they only seek believers who share their views or who become followers of the leader in question. These churches also lack a divine exclusiveness because they are generally so zealous to build up their system that false teaching and other unfaithfulness to Christ and to His truth are often treated with an easy going tolerance.

284 Further, as distinguished from this, the gathering of companies of believers is nothing new. This all Dissenters profess to do. They may have thrown themselves into the world and politics more rabidly than the Establishment, and in a large measure fallen into rationalism; but they profess to make churches of believers, unless we except the Wesleyans who have a peculiar polity of their own. But they make churches to be voluntary associations, of which so-called churches those who associate are members - a thing wholly unknown to scripture. A member of a church is a thing unknown to scripture. All Christians are members of Christ, and there can be no other membership. We, all who have the Spirit of Christ, are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. Baptism even as a figure has nothing to do with giving life, or membership. It is baptism to the death of Christ for one previously a child of sinful Adam. The Lord's supper is (besides other precious truths) the expression of the unity of the body of Christ. Every saint is a member of it; and this is the ground "Brethren" meet on, supposing of course that the person is not justly subject to discipline.

Here, however, a grave question arises. Are believers, it may be asked, to hold together whatever evil doctrine or practice is tolerated? Or, if not, how is division to be avoided? The Word of God is perfectly clear. Division is condemned, separation from evil enjoined. Where false doctrine or immorality has shown itself, separation is to take place. Thus, when there was immoral conduct at Corinth, the leaven was to be purged out (1 Cor. 5:7); a heretic (or divider) was, after the first and second admonition, to be rejected (Titus 3:10); if a person preached another gospel than that Paul had taught the Galatians, "let him be accursed" (Gal. 1:8-9); and when Hymenaeus and Alexander made shipwreck concerning the faith, they were "delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme" (1 Tim. 1:20). This, however, was not division. It was united action, shown in separating from evil. Even if large numbers had supported Hymenaeus and Alexander, and had gone with them — nay, if all the assembly had upheld them, except two or three, who in faithfulness to Christ withdrew from them — the act of these latter would merely have been godly separation from evil, and the division which had occurred would have been the act of those who followed the false teachers, not of these who, in obedience to the Lord's mind, separated from them. As far as these were concerned, whether few or many, the principle of the oneness of the Church would have been maintained, and no departure from the divine order would have occurred. They would have remained on God's ground, and would have constituted His assembly or Church.

Thus we have seen in this blessed epistle the assembly in its double aspect of being the temple of God, and the body of Christ. In the former aspect it was the fruit of the wisdom of God in contrast with that human wisdom which was forming sects and parties, following leaders. It was founded on the cross of Christ which judged the flesh, Christ Himself in the glory, God's wisdom and the Holy Ghost come down here as the Revealer and Communicator of that wisdom. In 1 Corinthians 5 the Lord's table is seen as the gathering place of the assembly on earth, a place from which all evil must be put away, as the leaven from the houses of the Israelites when eating the passover. Thus the assembly is the place of judgment for the saints on earth, where also amongst wise brethren any difficulties among the saints may be settled. (1 Cor. 6) In 1 Corinthians 10. the Lord's table is seen connected with the thought of the assembly being the body of Christ. There the saints have communication together over the Lord's death. There they exhibit the unity of the body. This also guards them from fellowship with any other false system of worship. In 1 Corinthians 11 we see the Lord's supper plainly shown forth to be the assembly meeting, yet seen rather in the family aspect of the supper, the saints there individually, remembering the Lord's death till He come, and exercising themselves in habitual individual self-judgment before they come there, so that the flesh might not dishonour the Lord. The great thing to realise is that it is the Lord's table — the Lord's supper. The Lord is present in Spirit, though actually absent in body. His authority, therefore, should be owned there. According to the word in Ephesians 4:4.5, there is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling, ONE Lord, one faith, one baptism. The ground of gathering is the unity of the body, the centre of gathering is the Lord's person, the place of gathering on earth is the Lord's table. Here the Christians gather to be occupied with the Lord Himself, to break bread (Acts 20:7) in remembrance of His death, and to worship the Father through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:5.)