Ecclesia vs. Hetaeria

Christ is Head of all individual, 'local assemblies', collectively, therefore, spiritually, of the Universal Church or 'Assembly'. What qualifies any to receive Christ as Head, is to be one individual person, to be "called out" - out of the world, in the world, but not of the world. That makes the Headmastership of Christ totally individual, and impossibly of any locally assembled society collectively. There are not as many 'Heads' as there are 'assemblies'. Christ is One and God is One, and his Church is one, therefore, invisible in its visibility. I have always maintianed, not outside its visibility, and always, inside it; yet invisibly, inside it.

Here to me is the ultimate and final 'definition' of the Church of Jesus Christ: "The Body of Christ's Own" 'sohma tou Xristou', of which "He is the Head" -- "The Head of the Body the Church, the Firstborn from the dead" -- from all the dead whom Christ spiritually ever resurrected, The Head from which "all the Body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increases with the increase of God" to eventually and at last include each and every one "Called Out".

 

The 'local assembly' at best plays but a small and intermediate part!

 

The Kingdom of Heaven refers to the Millennial Kingdom yet to come--a thousand year reign of Christ which will follow a seven year period of what is known as The Great Tribulation.
Sometimes the Kingdom of God (or of Christ) is used interchangeably with the Kingdom of Heaven. I don't believe that there is a distinct delineation between the two all the time.
However the Bible seems to talk of the Kingdom of God in another way, as a kingdom that includes all believers in the present. I believe that to be likened much like the family of God, but more in a royal sense. In fact the Bible says:

1 Peter 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:
--Although referring to our priesthood here, it does speak of royalty.

Revelation 1:6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
--We are royalty, even called kings.

Philippians 3:20 For our citizenship is in heaven; whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:
--But more importantly we are citizens of Heaven, that Heaven which is ruled by the King of kings.

My home is not here; it is in heaven. I am a pilgrim and stranger on this earth. My citizenship is in heaven. I am a child of the King. I belong to His Kingdom. In that will I glory.
In any Kingdom the subjects never gather together at any one time in any one place, and it is never necessary to do so. I think of the British Empire a couple hundred years ago when the monarch of England ruled over nations like Canada, Australia, India, and many others. When did all the citizens of these nations gather together in one place at one time. This is not the ekklesia, an assembly. A kingdom is like an empire with a king ruling over it. The subjects are not required to gather together at one time. Nor will they as long as this kingdom is on this earth before the coming of Christ.

The only "Assembly of saints" possible is in a local church. That is where the saints assemble.

Ephesians 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus:

Colossians 1:2 To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 1:1 Paul, apostle of Jesus Christ by God's will, and the brother Timotheus, to the assembly of God which is in Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia. (Darby)
--A church is an assembly. It is loca. Here it was at Corinth. The letter was addressed to the saints in Corinth and perhaps to the surrounding churches near to Corinth (Achaia).

There will never be an "universal" assembly of all saints, except in heaven.

 

What part of the definition of "assembly" or "congregation" don't you get?
You have become a mystic or a gnostic, assigning your special revelation to these words which have no such meaning. Assemblies assemble, and Congregationis congregate. You deny these very basic facts and vainly try by allegorization to make these words mean something they don't say. Bluntly said: you are wrong.

The local assembly is a divinely ordained institution which the Lord Jesus gave His life for. It is not intermediate. It is the only part in this dispensation that God has his hand of blessing upon.

Understand what the Scripture says here, and try to put yourself in the historical context of the people that were there, hearing what Paul was saying to them:

Acts 20:17 But from Miletus having sent to Ephesus, he called over to him the elders of the assembly.
--First he summons together the Pastors from Ephesus (here called elders) together, to give to them his dearting words and instructions.

Acts 20:28 Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.
--They were to take heed to themselves,
--They were to take heed to the flock, that is the flock or the assembly at Ephesus which they were the overseers.
--They were to feed that flock of believers, that church at Ephesus.
--That local church of God at Ephesus is the church which Christ purchased with his own blood (as he has with every other Bible-believing church).

He purchased the local church with his own blood.
Don't down play the local church which GOD has purchased with his own blood.

 

I ask again: how many bodies does Christ have? It's a pretty simple question.

 

I will counter with another question, and then you can figure out the answer for yourself.

The Bible says "Christ in you the hope of glory"

How many Christs are there?
Half a billion? Or if there is just one Christ are you the one that is claiming him?

 

I have broken one of my own rules, which is to use clear and precise language so I will not be misunderstood. When I said, "if the Great Commission is meant for the Universal Church....", I left open the possibility that one could read that to mean that I was actually implying that it exists, which you did.

What I should have written is, "If the Universal Church exists (which it does not) and if the Great Commission was meant for it (which it was not), the so-called Universal Church is a huge failure."

 

Paul was writing to the church at Ephesus. They were one body. There was to be unity in that body of believers. Neither Paul nor Jesus ever wrote of a unity of world-wide believers. This passage speaks of no such thing. He is speaking to the believers at Ephesus. The teaching to the church at Ephesus is applicable to every local church.
Every local church is one body of believers gathered together in one spirit of unity, as they are called to one hope when they were saved.

This verse is self-explanatory. There were divisions in the church at Corinth. Paul was informed by those from Chloe's household about the arguments that were going on in the church. Paul said: "ENOUGH!!" He was putting an end to it. His directions were very specific to that church. We can draw lessons from what we read and apply them to our own churches. But this in no way is speaking of the unity of all believers; only the unity of the believers of the church at Corinth.

There is a such thing as progressive revelation. Jesus after this prayer goes on and tells us how this unity was to be achieved. The last commnad he gives before ascending up to heaven is the Great Commission--to go and disciple, to baptize, to teach all things that I have commnanded you.
That command is given to the local church.
Baptism is an ordinance given to the local church.
It is true that the command to witness is given to all Christians. But one cannot properly be discipled until he puts himself under the authority of the local church, where he can receive the teaching of the Word of God, where he can be fed by the Shepherd.
True unity is found in local churches--Bible-believing local churches, churches that are obedient to the Word of God.

The only time (before the coming of Christ) that there will be a universal church, is when there will be a one-world church composed of all the people of the world who have received the mark of the beast. It will be the church of the anti-christ in the time of the Tribulation, when all the world will be deceived and will worship the "beast" as god. There is your "one-world" church. But mark this: I won't be there.

And when the Millennial Kingdom comes, after Christ comes again, then complete unity and peace will have been achieved. But not until then.

 

DHK, may I add another thought to your last post regarding unity.

The biblical ideal is that all believers be of one heart and mind. The biblical ideal is that each church be unified, and that all churches be unified with each other.

The first is an iimpossiblity as of now. I believe that there may be true believers even in false churches, or in reasonably sound churches with which my Baptists have some theological differences. We can never be of one mind until we meet in heaven. Any such attempts at unity will have artificial results, and force one or the other to give up cherished beliefs. Or at best to simply ignore them. But such unity will not be real.

Even we Baptists cannot achieve unity among us. For Southern Baptists, we agree to cooperate on missions and other evangelistic endeavors. But in order to do so, we must regard some things as secondary issues, or ignore them altogether.

That's not altogether bad, because it does force us to decide which doctrines and practices are hills on which we will be willing to die, so to speak. There are essentials, and there are non-essentials.

The biblical ideal for us is perfection, and the scriptures don't cut us any slack on that. But the reality is that it, too, is impossible.

 

There's one Christ, and He has one Body - the Church.

It's very straightforward, really.

 

So where does that leave Holywood Church, which you attend, and East Baptist, where I serve? And where does that leave the church at Corinth, which Paul described as "the" body of Christ? (I Cor 12:27)

At least our congregations assemble. I missed the last meeting of the Universal Church, if there was one.

Oops, I'd better be more precise. If there was a meeting (which there wasn't) of the Universal Church (which doesn't exist), I missed it (which I didn't).

 

Ecclesia is used in both local and universal senses in the NT and the LXX OT; that's the point I'm making. So, my Holyrood is an ecclesia just as your East Baptist is an ecclesia; however both are part of Christ's universal ecclesia (in Holyrood's case via the Ecclesia Anglicana). To insist that ecclesia has a purely local meaning is as absurd as insisting it has a purely universal meaning - it has both, depending on the context eg: in Col 3:18 and Matt 16:18 it is clearly universal and in I Cor 1:2 and Acts 14:23 it is clearly local.

 

Paul uses the "body" as a figure or illustration of "the church", the one in Corinth.
For you to apply that universally would be as absurd as for me to say: Whoops, I lost one eye in Europe, while I left my other Eye in the good ole USA. My torso is still in Canada, but my brain is in Asia, and my feet are in South America, and my hands are in Africa, while the rest of my head and face are in Austaila. The rest of my body parts, don't ask me. I am too scattered too tell you. I am truly a universal body.

 

It may have been autonomous but it was also interdependent on other churches Paul started.

 

Col. 3:14 "Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity."

If unity were impossible there would be no commands in that regard. It is only impossible where there is no love.

As Christians we can work with people who do not agree with us in everything and are doing their best to live for Christ. It takes love to do that, not condemnation, fighting, and gossip.

Christian Schwartz wrote a book titled, " Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches." In that book he cites several reasons why churches grow. The main ingedient is love. A church's growth is directly realted to its capacity to love. He surveyed many churches around the world to see what growing churhces did. He developed a list of qualities. The more qualities a church had, the more it grew.


"Christians are often theological conservatives but practical atheists, Blackaby said in the second message of his series Feb. 18. "

“Our problem is not in our doctrinal correctness,” Blackaby said. “Our problem is that we are not living it. And doctrinal correctness according to the Scripture is not head knowledge. It is heart knowledge.”

"Even though the Pharisees were doctrinally correct, Blackaby noted, their hearts were far from God. "

Source
http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=17795

 

Matt, I believe you meant Colossian s 1:18 "and he is the head of the body, the church...." not 3:18.

But to me, it is not clear at all that it and Matt 16:18 refer to the universal church. The former could easily be interpreted as Paul speaking in a generic or institituional sense. Paul could just as easily mean that wherever there is a church, Jesus is head of it. Or he could simply be referring to the congregation at Colosse.

And Mt 16:18 is just as clearly to me referring to the congregation that he was in fact building at that moment, with the twelve disciples as its core group.

 

Jesus, in Matt 5:48, said, "be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect."

This was a command from Jesus to be perfect, sinless. It is an impossibility, and Jesus knew it when he commanded it.

Is it okay then, if they teach error in ignorance, just as long as they're doing their best to live for Christ? If they teach salvation by works, baptismal regeneration, falling from grace or Christ was a created being, then I don't care how much love they have, I cannot work with them. Loving them is not enough. Love is an important ingredient, but not the only one.

 

Those who quute Ephesians 4:4 (...there is one body, and one Spirit...) as support for the Universal church must also deal with the view that is not just one bvig church, for many, as in Romans 16:16, " The churches of Christ salute you."

If my church is a body of Christ, and the one down the street is, too, then one must explain the claim that there is only one body, but many bodies.

 

Steaver said...

Yes. There certainly is the one Church that God has here on earth.

The Universal Church. Made up of multitudes of assemblies, and christians who, for whatever reason, are not a part of an assembly.

How anyone can deny such a simple truth, when the scriptures are so clear, is beyond me.

To deny such a great truth is, imo, usually due to people who, for some reason, seem to have a great desire to promote "Church-ianity", at which point one is no longer promoting "Christ-ianity".



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