God's Church
WHAT THE CHURCH MEANS TO CHRIST
God's Church
WHAT THE CHURCH MEANS TO CHRIST
Jesus’ ministry was more than half completed. His death loomed large in His heart and teaching. At the close of His second year of teaching and healing, Jesus asked His apostles: “… who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” (Matthew 16:13) Immediately they replied, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (Matthew 16:14). Then the kind of question Jesus often asked was put to them: “But who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15) It was a sobering question that demanded a personal decision. Simon Peter said: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).
After commending Peter for voicing this divinely revealed truth, Jesus then promised that upon the bedrock of His divinity and Sonship the church, His church, would arise and it would never pass away. Here are Jesus’ actual words: “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:18-19).
Jesus’ View of the Church: This passage leaves no doubt about Jesus’ view of the church and its importance. The “church” Jesus promised to build was not a monolithic human organization, not a loose confederation of denominations, not a never seen host of the saved, not an irrelevant and tradition-bound institution. The “church” of the New Testament was vibrant, active, involved, and committed to a great Savior and a great task.
The New Testament impresses upon the earnest student that the church belongs to Christ. In fact, this is what Jesus promised His apostles: “I will build My church” (Matthew 16:18). The relationship between Christ and the church suggested by this promise stresses a peculiar and possessive relationship between Christ and the church. Paul offered this greeting in confirmation of such a relationship: “All the churches of Christ greet you” (Romans 16:16b).
The New Testament also speaks of “the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven” (Hebrews 12:23). Paul addresses both of his Thessalonian Epistles, “To the church of the Thessalonians in God the [our] Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:1). Redeemed man is the basic material out of which the church is constructed. This is why Peter described the Christian’s role in these words, “You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house …” (1 Peter 2:5).
The Church’s Nature: One’s picture of the church is certainly not complete without a look at the nature of the church, as taught in God’s Word. For instance, we learn that the church is God’s family, His special people. Paul explains that “the church of the living God” is “the house of God” (1 Timothy 3:15). The Apostle Peter viewed the church as a “spiritual house” when he wrote: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light: who once were not a people, but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy” (1 Peter 2:9-10).
Paul calls the Christians at Corinth “the temple of the living God” (2 Corinthians 6:16). After describing the reconciliation of man to God and Jew to Gentile, Paul concludes of all reconciled men, “… you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22). The family of God, the house of God, the temple of God, the habitation of God, the people of God – this is the church.
No New Testament description of the church occurs more often than “the body of Christ.” When stating that Christ is the “head over all things to the church”, Paul adds the explanatory phrase, “which is His body” (Ephesians 1:22b-23a). We read almost identical words in Colossians when Paul describes Christ as “the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18a). A few verses later, in the same chapter, he refers to Christ’s body as that “which is the church” (Colossians 1:24b). The same author explains in Romans 12 that the church, as Christ’s body, has “many members” and the “many” are united in the “one body of Christ” with God, Christ, and all Christians. Paul offers an extended discussion of this description of the church as Christ’s body in 1 Corinthians 12. Here one finds a well-drawn analogy of His body and a physical body. Paul shows that both are a unit. Both have many members with unique functions, yet they all contribute to the health of the body and act harmoniously. As physical birth and development explain how the fleshly body’s members originate and act, so the spiritual body, “in one Spirit” is one “baptized into one body” – Christ’s body, the church (1 Corinthians 12:13). Membership in Christ’s body results from an act of God. Paul explains: “But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He pleased” (1 Corinthians 12:18). Regarding the local congregation at Corinth, Paul remarks, “Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually” (1 Corinthians 12:27).
Christ and His Church: But the most vivid description of Christ and His church appears in Ephesians 5:22-23. Here, as clearly as anywhere in the New Testament, one sees what the church means to Christ and what Christ means to the church. At least five relationships between Christ and the church are explained by the Apostle Paul in these passages. He uses the relationship between husband and wife as an illustration. In verse 32, Paul says: “This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32). Let us carefully consider this beautiful and important relationship.
First, we learn that Christ is head of the church. “For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body” (Ephesians 5:23). Earlier in the same epistle, Paul showed that God planned the raising of Christ from the dead and placing Him at His right hand, having “put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body …” (Ephesians 1:19-23). Christ is the head of the church because the church is Christ’s body – God’s family, God’s people, God’s army (Colossians 1:24). The apostle reminds us that we ought to hold “fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God” (Colossians 2:19).
Second, Christ is the Savior of the church. Not only is Christ “head of the church,” but “He is the Savior of the body” (Ephesians 5:23). Paul explains in 2 Timothy 2:10 that salvation “is in Christ Jesus.” Instructing His followers how to remember His sacrifice, Jesus said of the bread: “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19). He died to save those who became members of His spiritual body. When the Lord gave His body on the cross, He opened the doors of God’s fellowship and forgiveness to all men. “… yet He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, blameless, and above reproach in His sight” (Colossians 1:21b, 23). Christ is the church’s Savior. He gave His body that we might live. In our obedience to Christ’s Gospel we become members of His body, which was given for our salvation.
Third, the church is subject to Christ. Paul says, “Wives, be in subjection unto your own husbands, as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22). Then in verse twenty-four of the same reading, Paul states: “… just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:24).
From the proper understanding of Christ’s roles as Head and Savior of the church, the church’s subjection necessarily follows. The Apostle Peter calls Jesus Christ “the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Peter 2:25). He labeled Christ “the chief shepherd” when describing His second coming (1 Peter 5:4). The New Testament talks about lesser shepherds or elders for local groups of Christians in 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, 1 Peter 5, and Acts 20. In these passages the qualifications, duties, and distinct roles of these men, as well as those of another group known as deacons, are given. Such men, known as elders or bishops or shepherds, along with deacons, were responsible for the spiritual guidance and leadership of only one congregation or local group of believers. The Lord’s Church has one universal head, Jesus Himself. Local leaders were to be appointed in the individual congregations.
Fourth, Christ loves the church. Paul describes this love: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25). The husband/wife relationship clearly and powerfully describes Christ's relationship with His church. The same analogy is employed by Paul, when he chides his Christian brothers and sisters with these words: “For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:2). The church is betrothed to Christ the bridegroom, as Paul here explains. Therefore, through obedience and purity of life the church must prepare to meet the loving bridegroom, Jesus Christ, when He returns. Christ loves the church as the bridegroom loves and cherishes his bride. John saw “the bride, the Lamb’s wife” (Revelation 21:9b). An angel “carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain,” John writes, “and showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:10). This same holy city is described earlier as “a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21.2).
Paul illustrated Christ’s love for the church in this way: “So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body …” (Ephesians 5:28-30).
Christ’s love for the church is as natural and deep as His love for Himself – as the intensity and instinct of self-preservation is in a husband’s love for his wife. The love of Christ for the church creates His willingness to “nourish” and “cherish” her because, after all, as Christians in the church, “we are members of His body” (Ephesians 5:30). When in doubt about whether the church is important or not, remember Calvary. Christ died for the church. To the elders of one local church of our Lord, the apostle charged: “… take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood” (Acts 20:28). Christ loves the church. Did He die for and love a non-essential institution – a human organization? Thank God, the church of the Bible, the church that belongs to Christ, is neither a non-essential institution nor a human organization.
Fifth, Christ sacrificed Himself for the church. Christ not only “loved the church,” but He also “gave Himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25). He died on the cross “because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification” as Paul explains in Romans 4:25. Here we see the inseparability of the Christian and the church. Christ died for each of us in that He died for the church.
Christ sacrificed His life for the church for two reasons: “That He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present the church to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:26-27).
The Church Is Important: The church is important to Christ. As head of the body, the church, Christ directs all her affairs and controls her mission. Paul urges all Christians to speak “truth in love” growing “up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ – from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:15-16).
Christ loved the church supremely. He is not only “the head of the church” but also “the Savior of the body” (Ephesians 5:23). According to His own standard: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13). Christ demonstrated ultimate love for the church.
He literally bought the church with His own life. One reveals the value he places on something by the price he is willing to pay in order to possess it. Christ used His own life’s blood to create a body of redeemed men and women. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews makes a similar statement about Christ’s sacrifice for individual Christians. “By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (10:10).
As we have already considered, the process by which Christ sanctifies the church, or individuals for that matter, is specified in Ephesians 5: “… having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word.” Jesus commissioned His apostles to “… make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Jesus Himself explained the new birth to the Jewish ruler, Nicodemus: “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). This “washing of regeneration” and “renewing of the Holy Spirit” is the way God saves us, as Paul explains in Titus 3:5. Christ cleanses the church “with the washing of water by the word” (Ephesians 5:26).
Conclusion: At this point we observe some very striking similarities between what Christ does for the church and what He does for individual believers. He died for both on Calvary. His blood is the only spiritual cleansing power available to both. He is the Lord of both. We reach Christ’s blood in our obedience to the Gospel, in baptism (John 19:32-34; Romans 6:3-4). But baptism is also God’s way of making one a member of Christ’s body, the church (1 Corinthians 12:13). All of these similarities are not coincidental. They occur by design – by the redemptive design of God.
These parallels teach the Biblical truth that God’s love, grace, and forgiveness are only in the church; only in the Christ who died for us and whose spiritual body is the church. “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). The Apostle Paul said: “But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He pleased” (1 Corinthians 12:18).
Christ died for our freedom from sin and our confidence in eternal life. When we surrender to Him, becoming a member of His body, we enter His church. Christ and His church are ours to accept in meaningful partnership, if we obey the Gospel and become a Christian.
(Bible text is the New King James Version. Renderings from other translations are so noted.)
