What is the church? The people of God.

This past Sunday we started a new series for the summer called “What is the church?” A key challenge take-away from Nick was the idea of church not just being what you do, but it’s who you are. That is because church in the New Testament never refers to a place or a building but to a gathering or congregation of people in the context of preaching, teaching, serving, communion, and prayer. 

While we do use the word church in English to mean both the building and the group of people, it is important to understand that distinction, because semantics, how we use and understand words, matters. Our semantics shape our thinking and actions. And while we consider our thoughts and actions, another challenge is to realize how much of our cultural constructs, preferences, and past experiences take precedence in how we operate as the church, instead of keeping what is found in the NT as our primary guide. Nick pointed out things like children’s ministry, for example, is not a NT distinctive, but regular communion is. Not that children’s ministry is bad, but it is not a primary distinctive of what the church is, whereas communion, prayer, and service to our neighbors would be. 

But let’s look at the answer to the question for this week: “The church is the people of God filled with the Spirit of God, who confess Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, who are given a mission from God.” That’s a lot of distinctives, so we’ll look at each part. The main point is the church is the people of God, and the rest helps define what that means. To define these parts well let’s look to the Scriptures. 

“The church is the people of God filled with the Spirit of God, who confess Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, who are given a mission from God.”

In Matthew 16:13-19, Peter correctly confesses who Jesus is, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” To which Jesus responds that he is correct, and it is on the confessing of that truth, that Jesus, the Rock of our salvation, will build the church. This can be a point of contention with other Christians on how we interpret this, but we can all agree that Jesus is the foundation of the faith, and it is in Him and Him alone that our hope and faith are built. 

Next in Acts 2:1-12 on the day of Pentecost, we see the coming of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus had promised in Acts 1:5 & 8. While the coming of the Spirit in Acts is unique in how it happened, the reality is everyone who places their faith in Jesus and His sacrifice for them on the cross, will be filled with the Holy Spirit and given all they need to preach the Gospel, like we see Peter begin to do in Acts 2, and to live a life growing in Christ-likeness and godliness (2 Peter 1:3-9). 

And finally, we’re given a mission from God, which we see in both the previous passages. Peter confesses who Jesus is in Matthew 16, and He affirms that saying the church will be built on that truth. Then the Holy Spirit comes in Acts 2 and Peter and the other disciples immediately begin proclaiming the Gospel, essentially getting to work on Jesus’ final commands from Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8, to go and be His witnesses and proclaim the Gospel and teach people everything He commanded them. 

So as we continue to dig into “what is the church?” this summer, let’s keep our sights set on these core ideas, that the church is a group of believers, unified by a confession of faith in Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, and empowered to be His witnesses and to proclaim the Good News.