I BELIEVE IN THE CHURCH

Readings: 1 Peter 2:4-12; 1 Cor 1:1-17
Heidelberg Catechism LD 21 Q 54
Text: 1 Corinthians 1:2 
Theme: The church is the community of God’s people who are holy in Christ.
Purpose: To define what the church is and to help us appreciate the local and universal expression of the church. 

Surveys have been conducted in New Zealand to determine church attendance. These show that only about 15% of New Zealanders attend church on any regular basis; not all of those attend every week. 
This means that by far the majority of New Zealanders do not attend church, and many of them do not seem at all interested in doing so. If you ask them about this they will tell you the church is irrelevant, it is out of date, it is behind the times. Or they will tell you that “the church is full of hypocrites” or that “they are only after your money!” And they may well point out all the divisions and disagreements between Christians and denominations. 

It is true that the church is very divided. There are a great variety of churches – from those that are rigid and fundamental to those that re wildly Pentecostal, from those that sings psalms only to those that have a band playing hard rock, from those that read the KJV to those that put up the latest version of the Bible on a data projector screen.

With the negative view that many have of the church, and with all this diversity we need to ask, what is the church? What are key characteristics that define what a church is, or should be? Today we want to define the church by looking at the definition of the Heidelberg Catechism and by going through the words and phrases of 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 2.
 
Paul was an apostle of Christ Jesus. This means he was a leader of the early church, chosen by Jesus himself, and sent out to tell others the good news about Christ. He wrote this letter in 55AD to the church in Corinth while he was staying in Ephesus. He wrote it to “the church of God in Corinth”. 

The word “church” translates the Greek word ekklesia. That word is made up of two Greek words, ek meaning out of and kaleo meaning to call. In Greek cities the ekklesia was a gathering of the citizens of the city to discuss and decide on matters of public interest. Early Christians borrowed this word to describe the church as the people who were called by God out of the world to assemble together. 

The church is not the building. We meet here in this building, but we could meet in the town hall or in a gymnasium or in a large classroom in a school. The church is the people of God who assemble together. 

As a church we have an organization. We have a formal structure with men who are elders and deacons. We have worship services and Bible studies, catechism classes, Sunday school, cadets and youth group. The church is organised. 

But our church is also an organism; that is, it is a living community of people, it is a body of people who meet together regularly to worship God, to encourage one another, to fellowship and to grow in their faith. We are the church, “a community chosen for eternal life” (HC).

We are the church of God. 
The church in Corinth had lost sight of this. Some thought they were the church of Paul, others the church of Apollos, others the church of Cephas, and still others the church of Christ (1:12). They were quarrelling amongst themselves and dividing the church of the Lord Jesus. They were following mere men rather than Jesus himself. They were focusing on human personalities rather than God.  

Paul reminded them that they were the “church of God.” 
God the Father had chosen them in Christ even before the creation of the world. (Eph 1:3)
God had called them to himself “through his Spirit and Word” (HC). The Holy Spirit had given them a new heart. They had been converted through repentance and faith. That is true of most of us here today. This has happened to many of you. 

As a result of all this we are “a people belonging to God” (1 Peter 2:9). We believe in God and in his Son Jesus Christ. We are “united in true faith”, that is, a faith in “God the Father, almighty, maker of heaven and earth” and in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit.

Paul wrote this letter to the church of God in Corinth. 

There was just the one church in Corinth. There were other churches in other cities in Greece and churches in many other places in the Roman Empire. The word church, or ekklesia, is used 115 times in the New Testament. Over 100 of those are references to local churches. Paul did not write this letter to the church universal but to the church in Corinth, to that particular local congregation, as they existed in 55AD. 

This highlights the vital importance of the local church. In the 2006 New Zealand census about half the population claimed to be Christian. Yet only 15% of the population attends church on any regular basis. This means 35% of New Zealanders identify themselves as Christian but never go to church. The Bible does not allow for that possibility. The Scriptures always picture the Christian as belonging to a visible, local body of believers. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth assuming that all the Christians in the city belonged to that congregation. 

There may be some individuals who cannot attend church because of age, sickness or distance, but they are exceptions to the rule. Even in countries where Christians are persecuted and are not allowed to assemble together they will still make every effort to do so; they will meet secretly in their homes or in the forest or in a basement; they want to meet together because true believers are drawn to each other by their common faith in God. If you are a Christian you must seek to belong to a visible body of believers who make up a church.

Paul wrote ”To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy.” 

The word “sanctified” means to be made holy, and the word holy means to be set apart and to be made pure. God has purified his people from their sin, he has forgiven us; he has washed us and cleansed us from all impurity. He did not do that because we deserved to be made holy but because he chose us in Christ to be a holy people (1 Peter 2:9-10). He did not make us holy because we were so good; he made us holy because of the perfect work of Jesus on the cross, because Jesus died for the sin of all of his people. 

We also need to know a little Greek grammar to understand this word: “sanctified” is a perfect passive verb. The perfect tense means that this happened in the past but is has an ongoing effect in our lives; the passive means that we did not do this ourselves but God did this to us. In theology this is called “positional sanctification” because it describes our position in Christ, who we are in him – we are sanctified in Christ Jesus. 

This is why Paul goes on to say that we are “called to be holy”. Literally the Greek reads, “called holy”, or “called saints”. The Greek word for “holy” or “saints” is the same root word as for “sanctified”. 
The Roman Catholic Church has named some of her members as “saints”: Saint Andrew, St Peter, St John, St Teresa, St Paul. Recently they named an Australian woman a saint. For them the saints are people who have been especially holy and done a lot of good work for God and others. For the apostle Paul every Christian is a saint, every believer is a holy one. Every one of us who believes in God through the Lord Jesus has been washed of our sin and has been made holy. Every one of us is a saint. 

Sadly, we do not always live up to who we are. 
That was true of this church in Corinth. This city was one of the greatest in the Roman Empire. It was a centre of intellectual thought and philosophy. The Corinthians also had the reputation for speaking very good Greek, as the Hague has for fine Dutch and the BBC for well spoken English. 

But underneath this cultural veneer the city of Corinth was full of paganism, immorality and corruption. It was a city full of sin. 
The Christians in Corinth had allowed this to come into their own lives and their church. Later on in his letter Paul urged them to put out of their fellowship a man who was living an immoral lifestyle. (Chp 5) They were a holy people and they had to maintain that as a church.  

We can illustrate the same point from the Roman Catholic Church in the later Middle Ages. That church was not holy; it was corrupt. Many of the monks, nuns and priests were just as bad, if not worse, than the people of the world. They were greedy and immoral. They knew little or nothing of the Bible and were incapable of teaching the people. This was one of the reasons for the Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church needed to be reformed in its doctrine and in life. 

And what about us today? We are part of the church of God. We have been sanctified in Christ Jesus. We are called saints. 
Are you fulfilling your calling? Are you being what you are? Are you living a holy life? Is it clear that you are different from the other people at school or at work or at university? Are you living good lives among the pagans so they can see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us? (1 Peter 2:11-12)

Having addressed the church in Corinth Paul then broadens out his perspective on the church by writing, “together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – their Lord and ours.”

The church in Corinth was one church among many in the ancient world. 
Our church is one among thousands of churches in New Zealand and one among hundreds of thousands in the world.
This is what we confess in the Apostles Creed when we declare that we believe in the “holy catholic Church”. 

We are not saying we are part of the Roman Catholic Church, which is the church that looks to the Pope in Rome as its head.

Rather, we are part of the “holy catholic church”. The word catholic means universal or worldwide in geographical spread and in history. This is the church that Jesus is gathering, “through his Spirit and Word, out of the entire human race, from the beginning of the world to its end.” (HC) This is the church spread through the whole world in China, India, Uganda, Tonga and Brazil and that has been in existence in the Old Testament and in the first century AD and during the Middle Ages and in the Reformation and up to the present day. 

All over the world, on this Lord’s Day, believers will gather together to “call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – their Lord and ours.” They, like us, will call on the Lord in faith, in prayer, in worship. 

The church is made up of people who are united in a true faith in Jesus, who believe in him and are committed to following him. This church is spread through the whole world.

This is very encouraging. The church of Jesus Christ is much bigger than our congregation. It is historical, universal, worldwide, catholic.
 
We experience that when we travel within New Zealand or overseas. We visit another Reformed church and we can worship with other like-minded believers. Some of you have lived overseas for a time and have found a spiritual home in a faithful Bible believing church where you have been built up in your faith. You have experienced the catholicity of the church. 

As we examine our own lives and our own church we can see many flaws and failings. When we examine the wider church we can see hypocrisy, division, disagreement and doctrinal error; “by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” (PH 398)

But behind and beyond all this we believe that each faithful, true, local congregation is the church of God, sanctified in Christ Jesus and called saints. Every church, including ours, is part of the holy catholic church; we are together with all those everywhere who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ – their Lord and ours.

And one day we will all meet together in heaven with all the people of God “from every tribe and language and people and nation.” 

Together we will sing; “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever. Amen.” (Rev 5:9,13)