What is meant by the church?
- the Church eternal and triumphant
- a transcendent institution perfected by Christ’s work on the cross
- composed of God’s covenant people, both in the Old Covenant(s) and the new Covenant in Christ
- those who have placed their trust in God’s work and submitted to his lordship
- crosses all boundaries: language, ethnicity, culture, even time
- the bride of Christ and attendees of the wedding feast of the Lamb
- glorious to behold, but not of much immediate practical significance
- the Church as the collection of God’s people now
- a temporal institution of the last 2000 years
- worldwide institution of practitioners of what DA Carson calls “cruciform Christianity,” that is, those who cleave to a set of basic beliefs such as the authority of Scripture, the necessity of Christ’s work on the Cross and a heaven to be gained and a hell to be feared
- Almost a cultural distinction, the thoughts and attitudes of its members, thinkers and leaders
- the local church
- temporal institution of here and now
- our local gathering of Christians, in which we meet for collective worship, for fellowship, for prayer and for preaching and teaching
- our most proximate institution – one through which we serve our brothers and sisters most
The importance of both truth and community in the local church
- truth is what holds us together – our common bond in the resurrection of Jesus – C.S. Lewis notes this poignantly in the Screwtape Letters
- truth is exclusive, two contradictory statements can both be false, but they cannot both be true, truth does not tolerate falsehood, but it behooves us to remember that the Truth was humble, patient, confident and courageous.
- Community must also be exclusive in some fashion, or it isn’t really community at all. Even the broadest definitions of community, all humankind for example, excludes animals and plants.
- The means of grace(prayer, reading of the Word, preaching, fellowship, worship, baptism, communion, etc) are where truth meets community, where the realities of God most definitely intrude on our physical existence, where his glory is shown most readily
- Community is the truth lived out – when we take to heart what God shows us about himself and the nature of the reality he has created community is the inevitable result – Christians love to be around other Christians and support and nurture
- Community without truth becomes like the support groups from “Fight Club” – nothing but an emotional drug, it will not last because it has no glue
- Truth without community is impotent and eventually leads to a false life
- Community over and against our radical individualism
- 1 John 3:16 – that we might give our lives for our brothers as Christ gave his life for the church
- Hardest for me to live out – it is relatively easy for me to talk a big game when it comes to community but making decisions that privilege the needs of the community over my personal dreams, goals and desires is extraordinarily difficult – yet the community will not prosper at all if no one subjugates their personal wants to its general good(think of the concept of positive externalities from economics or the grey town in “The Great Divorce”)