this is the first of four videos on ecclesiology the doctrine of the church in this video we are going to be exploring the nature of the church what is a church what is the church supposed to be we begin by looking at some popular contemporary usages of the term church perhaps the most popular and common usage is to refer to the church as a building going to the church for a funeral we're going to rent out the church for a wedding i have a meeting at the church and while this is a pretty common designation and one that is not necessarily inherently bad or wrong it's certainly not what the new testament means by a church because there were no church buildings in the new testament most churches met in houses and the earliest church buildings really didn't start showing up on the scene until the 4th century when christianity became the official religion of the roman empire and then sometimes the word church refers to a denomination like a larger organization the roman catholic church or pictured here the presbyterian church usa or groups like the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints who use the church to talk about a large global organization sometimes i even hear people from the media talk about the southern baptist church but i'm very quick to correct that because there's no such thing as the southern baptist church we are a convention of churches an assembly or a gathering place of churches who work together who cooperate in mission but then there is this other use perhaps the most important one for us to be familiar with and that is a church is a local congregation and this is closest to the new testament usage of the word but when we're talking about the nature of the church we're really dealing with an unfinished theological development ecclesiology has often been neglected by theologians church councils creeds and the like you can look to early church creeds and see lots about the doctrine of the trinity you can look to early church creeds and see lots of things about the person and work of christ you can look to the confessions of the reformers and see things about soteriology about election about god's gracious call but rarely do they spell out exactly what it means to be part of a church so historically speaking we are just getting started in developing this doctrine more fully and then of course contemporary discussions about the church often focus more on the mission of the church or what the church should be doing than the nature of the church itself there's plenty of best-selling books about the purposes of the church about the mission of the church about the task of the church but rarely do these works stop to talk about what the church is and the question of the mission of the church may reflect the pragmatic nature of a culture that is really more interested in the function or effect of things than their essence that is we're more concerned about how the church can be useful what is its practical value or significance rather than asking the big picture theological question about what a church is so where do we go from here how can we study the nature of the church i can identify several different ways that we could approach the topic the first would be etymologically to study the word church we could talk about the church historically how was the church functioned in history and of course let's not leave off the most important reason we want to see what scripture says about the nature of the church what does biblical authority say speaking into the topic of the church of course as systematic theologians what we want to try to do is to learn from all of these insights and to formulate a systematic answer to what the church really is but let's begin with etymology the greek word for the church is ekklesia and it shows up in the septuagint the lxx the septuagint is the greek translation of the old testament it's the term normally used to describe the hebrew word cahal for the congregation of israel in the septuagint cahal the hebrew word in the old testament is used to describe an assembly or the occurrence of assembling such as groups of people and sometimes armies and gentile nations so if you'll observe here it doesn't necessarily have a religious connotation an army is a call not necessarily something that is a group of people who've gathered together for worship on some occasions cahall does have religious significance but there is another hebrew word that is used for israel in religious groupings in israel that's never translated by ecclesia the word ida is always translated by synagogue if you know anything about the history of the jewish people particularly between the old and the new testaments is we see the development of the synagogue as a local gathering place for jews who are far away from the land of israel where they can come together they can read the torah they can worship and they can work and function together as a local community the word synagogue is a word that really means gathering together and so that's exactly what the synagogue functioned as in jewish life but the hebrew word ada is frequently used to describe people who have gathered together at the tent of meeting as a congregation before the lord the hebrew word call on the other hand seems to speak of israel as a nation as a whole not simply the faithful of the nation so we really don't have a lot that we can glean from the hebrew word cahall in the old testament to talk about the nature of the church let's talk about ecclesia or ekklesia it's a greek term which stems from two words the preposition ek meaning out in the kaleo the verb that means to call so sometimes the church is called the called out ones but we have to be careful about trying to gather a whole lot of meaning from the way that words are put together there's a sort of etymological fallacy that sometimes people make in assuming that the words putting together somehow create the meaning of what a word is i'll give you an example from english the word butterfly is is neither a fly nor something that's made out of butter but yet we refer to this winged little insect as a butterfly but we don't want to gather too much from the composite words that make the name butterfly the same thing could probably be true of the word ecclesia though it does mean called out ones we don't necessarily try to put too much meaning into that vocabulary and then we see in its secular usage ekklesia was originally used in greek city-states to talk about an assembly of citizens who are called out to do the business of the city in effect ecclesia was a town council meeting it's where people gathered together and they did city business the word ecclesia is used 140 times in the new testament three times it is used in the secular sense the city gathering at ephesus in acts 19 and twice to refer to the old testament people of god with the specific reference to the church there are three basic uses of ecclesia in the new testament first it describes a group or groups of believers in a specific city the church at galatia the church at corinth the church at you know i'll fill in the blank anytime where a church is gathered it's referred to as a group or or groups of believers that are spread across a city it can also describe a group meeting in individual homes like a group meeting in the home of priscilla and aquila it can also refer to a collective group present in a larger geographical area what is important to note etymologically is that these references to ecclesia never make the claim that these individual assemblies are only part of a church but they are described as a whole church so we're not talking about the part of the church of god in corinth we're talking about the church of god in corinth so in some sense wherever the people of god have assembled together the whole church is meeting there even if they don't represent all believers from every place and every time now let's talk about the question of history what did the church begin with and when did it begin some like the jesus seminar a group of skeptical new testament scholars hold that jesus did not found the church rather later hellenistic christians under constantine did and that's quite a stretch to say that it took that long for the church to get started especially when we have all this other evidence in the new testament others will say that jesus never intended to found the church he never intended to start a church rather all he was trying to do was revitalize israel however when you read the new testament the church was always implicit in jesus teachings and embryonic in jesus mind jesus did intend to found the church and he did just that we can give several examples from the gospel of matthew as evidence matthew 16 18 after peter's confession he says i tell you you are peter and on this rock i will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it i will build my people on this rock matthew 18 17 jesus gives this instruction about church discipline and of course what he talks about is you know if there's a brother who has committed an egregious sin you go to him and you give him the opportunity to repent he repents all is well you follow the next step if he doesn't repent you go to a group of two or three who will listen and if that doesn't work if he refuses to listen to them tell it to the church tell it to the assembly tell it to the congregation of believers and if he refuses to listen to the church let him be to you like a gentile and a tax collector of course what i should mention here is that church discipline is ultimately about restoring a person to proper fellowship but jesus has this envisioned that a local assembly of believers would be together working together and doing ministry together and making spiritual judgments like this one something that is consistent with what the apostle paul says in first corinthians 5 about church discipline but what does the bible say about the church there are several different images that are used to describe the church the body of christ soma christo the body of christ is organic it's not merely formal we're not talking about being a member of of of a business council or being member of a formal organization we're talking about organic relationships where we live with one another that we grow together with one another where we need each other just as the body needs all of its parts and of course the body of christ is where christ is present christ is the head of the church christ lives and dwells among the church and christ acts through the church we get to be the vessels through whom jesus works his mission in the world and then there are other images we are called the people of god we are referred to as the temple of god or the temple of the holy spirit if i could bring to your attention first corinthians 3 16 and 17 and in just a moment first corinthians 6 19 and 20. do you not know that you are god's temple and that god's spirit dwells in you if anyone destroys god's temple god will destroy him for god's temple is holy and you yourselves are that temple oftentimes people think about the temple here as a reference to one's physical body but notice that paul uses plural nouns or plural verbs second plural verbs and he also uses a second plural uh pronoun here he's saying that it's do you know it's not speaking to individuals but plural i mean if we could if we could say this in in my mississippi and it would be do y'all not know that y'all are god's temple and that god's spirit dwells in y'all so again the takeaway that we want to have here is that paul calls the corporate body of the corinthian christians god's temple and remember most jews would have thought about god's temple as a building in jerusalem and now that temple has been replaced because god's people have become the temple the holy spirit dwells in us and of course what he marks here is that if anyone destroys god's temple it will destroy him he's not talking about a physical building and he's not talking about a physical body he's talking about if someone destroys the church god will destroy him for god's temple is holy and you yourselves are that temple first corinthians 6 19-20 do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy spirit within you when you have from god you are not your own for you are bought with a price so glorify god in your body we who are believers are the temple of the holy spirit the spirit dwells in us the new testament also describes the church as god's field and of course what this imagery invokes is that we are co-laborers together in god's field we are doing god's work together we are god's building and i really like this as a fan of the lord of the rings we are the fellowship of the holy spirit we are the light of the world the sons of light lights in the world we are also referred to as the bride of christ jesus loves whom jesus died for we are called strangers exiles and foreigners in a strange land because ultimately this world is not our home we are called little flock or one flock we are the descendants the offspring and the posterity of abraham we are israel the church is the people of god who represent god's priority god's mission and god's task in the world