BLOG 8.14.12. QUESTIONS: WHY IS THE CHURCH? WHAT IS ITS PURPOSE?
If you were to ask the questions: “Why is the church?” or “What is its purpose?” or “What does it have to do with the gospel?” … chances are that would likely get either puzzled looks, or rambling non-answers. Yet it is essential that the followers of Christ have lucid and convincing answers to these, else they be easily taken captive by church counterfeits.
From the New Testament documents, let me propose a few answers to get us started on the way (after all, Jesus said that he would build his church, … but, then, he did not define what that church would look like).
In that the gospel of the kingdom of God was (and is) Jesus’ core message, it stands to reason that the church is somehow the communal expression of that very kingdom of God. In the New Testament, the designation: kingdom of God, refers to the grand (or eschatological) design of God to “make all things new,” to reconcile the world to himself through Christ, to “make known “the mystery hidden for ages” through Christ and his cross. The apostle John will use the designation eternal life to refer to the same reality, and Paul frequently uses new creation to communicate it. So, my thesis is that the church is the communal demonstration of the kingdom of God (though, as we say, “provisionally”).
So, how does the church demonstrate, in flesh and blood community, such an awesome reality?
- The church is the flesh and blood demonstration as its people incarnate the lifestyle, i.e., the thinking and behavior (Sermon on the Mount stuff) of the kingdom, … as they communally live out that lifestyle: the divine nature in them, in daily life, i.e., Christ in them—“that men may see your good works …”
- The church is the flesh and blood demonstration as it incarnates God’s recreated human community in its relationships of love and grace, as it expresses among its members the relationships of inter-animation and inter-dependence and self-denying service and humility that exists between the members of the Trinitarian community—“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples …”
- As such a demonstration of the lifestyle and the relationships of God’s new creation in Christ, the church is also (to borrow from our Latin American colleagues): “the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity” to make known this gospel of the kingdom to every people group in the world.
- And, ultimately, the purpose of the church is to provide a Beautiful Bride for the Lamb, a Bride without spot or wrinkle, i.e., in total oneness with her Lord.
For starts, … and if any ostensible expression of the church is unfaithful to, or unself-conscious of, or oblivious to such a purpose, then it becomes something of a diluted version, or contradiction, and probably not (or only marginally) a church!
(To be continued).
