The Church: The People of God We Love and Build Up

Today’s reading begins Section III: The Church – The People of God We Love and Build Up.Read here.

The Lausanne Covenant (1974) declared, “World evangelisation requires the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world.” The Fourth Lausanne Congress (2024) has, as its theme, “Let the church declare and display Christ together.” Therefore, how we imagine the “church” matters greatly. We recognise that the doctrine of the church has received little attention during these decades of extraordinary Christian expansion in the world, and there is little consensus about what the church is, its importance in the life of the Christian, and its relevance to our world. The resulting confusion has opened the way for aberrant forms of church that distort the values of Christ and his gospel. It has also increased disillusionment among baptised believers, leading them to distance themselves from the formal or institutional church. Christians today, especially first-generation believers, need a more comprehensive biblical understanding of the church—one that can inspire in them deep appreciation and loyalty as they, “conduct themselves in God’s household, the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).

The church is the communion of God’s people.

The ancient Apostles’ Creed professes our common faith in “the communion of saints.” Through the saving work of Jesus Christ, the triune God is gathering and uniting his people as one communion of saints by the Holy Spirit. This fellowship with God and with our brothers and sisters in the church is not our doing; it is God’s gift. On the day of Pentecost, God revealed this unity as Jesus poured out from the Father the promised Holy Spirit upon his people. He sent them out to announce the good news and draw others into his new community, to be baptised as members of the Body of Christ, and to be indwelt by the Spirit as the Temple of God. Still today, the Lord Jesus continues to pour out the Holy Spirit upon the church and the Holy Spirit continues to glorify the Lord Jesus in and through the church. (1 Cor 12:27; 2 Cor 6:16)

All those who are united to Christ—through personal repentance, faith, and the grace of God—have him as their head and together form his body. Therefore, though we are saved as individuals, we are not saved alone, but together with one another. As disciples of Jesus, the Spirit incorporates us into Christ as members of his body, through faith in his shed blood. Christian baptism is a sign and seal of God’s grace, a public declaration of our new allegiance to Christ and our new identification with his church. (1 Cor 12:13)