The Church

In the last blog entry we talked about why Jesus came to earth, that is, Jesus came to earth to seek and save the lost.  Without Jesus we are lost, we don't have eternal life with God.  The emphasis is primarily on the individual as we look at the teaching of the New Testament.  But there is teaching also about the collective, the coming together as a church; so we will look at that briefly.

In Matthew 16:18, Jesus was talking to Peter and the rest of the apostles saying, "...upon this rock I will build My church."  His plan was to build His church, sometime in the future, upon the rock foundation of Jesus being the Son of God.  He could have started the church right then, but we see that His plan was to lay the ground work, then leave the actual formation of the church to the apostles after He left the earth. 

The word "church" comes from the original Greek word "Ekklesia" which simply means a gathering, a group of people; in this case a group of Christians.

And we see the first church being formed in Jerusalem as people first became Christians, as recorded in Acts chapter 2.  The last verse of chapter 2 says, "And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved."  It was His church and He does the adding.  But from the beginning we see that the church is formed as people became Christians.

We will note that the term church is used in two different ways in the New Testament.  It is used in the over all sense, meaning all Christians are part of His church.  And it is used in a local sense to reference a particular group of Christians meeting together in a local place.  Paul, in writing to the Ephesian church in Ephesians 5, said "Husbands love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it."  We see in this passage that Christ loved the church so much that He died for it.  And if He felt that strongly about the church, certainly we should value it highly....and be a part of it, both in becoming a Christian and in participating in a local sense, in a local church.

Hebrews 10:24-25 teaches us, "And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another...."  We serve God by coming together as a group; but we also serve and help one another in doing so.

The church is good.....it is His....and we need to be a part, an active part.  Thanks for reading.  Have a great week!