Articles
Church Form
It is easy enough to get confused about what people mean when they use words with just one meaning. But it is doubly so when one word is used with subtle, or sometimes vastly, different meanings. People can speak so clearly, at least in their mind, and we completely miss their meaning. Perhaps that is why the bible describes the people of God with simple illustrations - to avoid confusion. And, because it uses so many to describe His relationship to His people, more people can understand.
One such word is church. As we saw last time, it simply describes the relationship as that of those who are called out of the world into fellowship with the God who calls through His gospel (2 Thess. 2:13-14). But because there is so much confusion today, we almost have to explain what we mean every time we say the word church.
Rather than list all the wrong uses, let's look at the Biblical ones. The New Testament refers to the church (think God's people) in two primary ways. One is in the universal sense of all christians, in every place without organization (1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 3:10; 5:22-32; Col. 1:24); the other is as a local organized congregation of God’s people considered as a group (1 Cor. 1:2; 1 Thess. 1:1). There are some secondary uses such as regional (Acts 9:31) or of the actual assembly itself (1 Cor. 14:19, 28), but today let's focus on the first of the two main uses.
So, what is the church universal? In short it is all of God's saved people.
The universal church is everywhere (Eph. 3:15) and every when. It is not limited to a particular time or place because it is made up of all saints (Gal. 3:26-28); everyone who ever worships God in spirit and truth (John 4:24). People become a part of the church universal as the Lord adds them (Acts 2:47) by baptism (1 Cor. 12:13). Since it is universal, there is only one (Eph.4:4). Because it is made up of all the saved of all times and places it can only assemble figuratively (Heb. 12:23), at least until that day when we all meet in heaven (Rev. 21:1-4).
The universal flock (John 10:16) has one Shepherd - Jesus (John 10:11, 14). It contains only the saved (2 Tim. 2:19) and Satan cannot overcome it (Rom. 8:35-39). It is an individual relationship of the saints with God through Jesus Christ - a vertical relationship.
Since the church universal has no earthly head or method of organizing it is not possible for the church universal to act collectively or as a unit. In fact, the universal church only functions distributively, as each saint obeys God’s will. All attempts to organize the church universal or join local churches together for collective action is unscriptural. There simply is no biblical authority for any church organization other than at the local level. We'll look at that in our next article.
