A few years ago, I got a longing to seriously begin to study the nature of the Church. The words, “Get to know the nature of the Church”, came to me in a surprising and strange way, in fact. This wasn’t the kind of expression I used every day. I realised it was a word from the Spirit, but I didn’t exactly know how I’d go about doing it. Until then I’d been fully occupied with what the church, the Body of Christ, did, produced, undertook (her activities), rather than what she actually was in her innermost self.

I had, for a number of years, been employed with the central precepts of the Gospel: Who Jesus is, what He has done for us through the Reconciliation and how, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can offer salvation to all. The Church felt more like some external cladding, a sort of primitive scaffolding that can be torn down or rearranged, and that was on the outside of something invisible that I couldn’t quite define. And it wasn’t so important to give definition to it, either. It could, in fact, have a variety of appearances. I was quite pragmatic in this. The message about Jesus and people’s salvation had greater importance.

Missions dominated everything I did, and there have been truly enriching years with such great results in so many different mission fields. There was – and is – a concentration on Jesus, His work, His presence and power and on building the local church from that perspective in many countries. On the other hand, there hasn’t been so very much reflection given to the Universal Church and to fullness in the Body of Christ.

After a while, I began to discover that the understanding of the church was actually “the missing link” in much of the Christian life. Understanding what the Church is, is contained in the message of the Gospel and is a part of the invitation to salvation. It isn’t just an external appendix or something added on later. So, the instrument used to convey salvation in this world is an unconditional part of the message of salvation – not just merely the wrapping around the gift.

Every time I heard someone say they loved Jesus but not necessarily the church, something inside me reacted. It was like someone saying he loved his wife’s head, but not the rest of her. There’s nothing like that in the New Testament. After the Resurrection, Ascension and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, there’s no separation of Jesus from His Body. What Jesus is and mediates, He does through His Body and all of her limbs, which is the Church. This lack of appreciation of the Body of Christ can eventually become both self-centred and harmful. It gets to be more about me, my salvation and my experiences, my Bible-reading, whilst the Body of Christ gets further down the list and is not considered as important.

We can’t just relate to Jesus in heaven or Jesus in our own hearts, we also have to relate to Jesus in His whole Body. If the church, which has been and is burdened down by a lot of weakness, isn’t just a great mistake, but is rather an eternal, God-given instrument and means of  mediating grace and salvation, then we have to relate to her in a serious way. How do we do that? What and who is she actually, in her nature?  How important then is the church’s inner life, her ordinances, her doctrine and her testimony throughout history? Are there things that we tend to skip over, but which we actually neither can nor afford to be negligent about or deny?

This began to fascinate me enormously and I’m going to regularly dive into it in my blog. There’s so much to dissect in this that’s important for our understanding. Eventually, there’ll be a book about it, and come the spring a number of Sunday evening lectures at Word of Life about “The Wing-beat of the Spirit throughout History”. Just to see how we’ve kept together in both time and space, and that there’s a Body with many, many members, which is a tremendous asset to us. An asset we’ve often overlooked, perhaps haven’t even known about or chosen to relate to.

Using the word, “Church” in the Swedish context can give rise to some discussion, since in certain circles it has clearly more inherent meaning than “congregation”. I’m well aware of this, but you might as well get used to it here, anyway.

Reading the wide range of English-language translations of the Bible available, you find that the word, “ekklesia” for the greater part has been translated with the word, “church” and is often taken to include both the Universal Church as well as the local congregation. So, in English there’s no great problem. For me, the Church (which ought to be spelled with a capital “C” – even if I’m slack here and there and don’t do it all the time) means the Universal Church, the Body of Christ, everywhere and for all time. The church is also the local congregation. Both are important and work together with one another.
(The church, a building of stone, wood or concrete, I’m not so interested in – even if they’re ever so beautiful and necessary, especially in cold, old Scandinavia.)

So, irrespective of where the reader’s sympathies lie, I hope you understand what I mean – so we don’t end up in too many unnecessary word-fights. It’s only the great, worldwide, Universal Church that I’m interested in as I write this now, and feel challenged to get to know better. The one we all belong to if we’ve been made members of the Body of Christ. 

I believe we have to begin by looking at her, so that we can be surprised and pleased over what we see. Otherwise, it so easily just turns into an intellectual debate, often marked by mistrust instead of a joyful discovery that you can later share with others.

Listen to Paul in Eph 2:20-22, “[You have] been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” Then in 3:18, “so that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” In these verses, there’s so much to enjoy, so much to discover, so much to be thankful for, and so much we still haven’t understood.

The Church is the Body of Christ whose members are born-again believers, grafted into this Body by the Spirit through baptism and faith. These grafted-in believers can be found all over the world and have been around throughout the ages ever since the Day of Pentecost.

The New Testament contains a number of illustrations describing the Church (in Greek, the word, “ekklesia”, which by the way in certain languages has not been translated, but is used just as it is). These illustrations include:

1. The Body of Christ: 1 Cor 12:12, Rom 12:4, 5 etc. It’s interesting that 1 Cor 12, which we often use – and rightly so – as the great chapter on the Gifts of the Spirit, actually has another accent, namely unity in the Body of Christ. The word, “body” appears 19 times in this chapter alone. The Church as the Body of Christ is the dominant picture in the New Testament. The head, Christ and the body belong together and are united with one another.

2. The People of God: 1 Peter 2:9, 10. Peter emphasises that we are a chosen generation, His own special people, a royal priesthood in ministry before and in fellowship with God.

3. Citizenship in Israel: Eph 2:12, 13, 19. We were truly outside, excluded from citizenship in Israel, but through what Jesus did on the cross, we have become citizens together with the saints.

4. God’s Family: Eph 2:19, Rom 8:15. Through the work of the Spirit, we now belong to the family of God and are truly His children.

5. The Bride of Christ: Eph 5:23-32. The picture of Christ as the bridegroom and the Church as His bride speaks about a deep spiritual unity.

6. God’s Temple: Eph 2:20-22, 1 Peter 2:5. We are living stones in a spiritual house which is God’s dwelling through His Spirit – a holy temple in the Lord.

7. The Vine: John 15:1-8, 16. Jesus is the vine, we are the branches and only in Him do we have life and can bear fruit.

8. The Olive Tree: Rom 11:16-24. The noble olive tree has had wild branches grafted into it and these partake in the fatness of the genuine olive tree’s root.

(There are other pictures, too: soldiers in the army of God, Christ’s disciples, the saints, ministers, ambassadors, and so on)

What is interesting with these eight I’ve mentioned above, is that they are incapable of being understood and used without being related to the word, unity.

The Body needs to be one in order to function. Unity gives and safeguards life in the body.

Being one people, God’s people, requires unity to provide a sense of belonging together, being a part of a specific group.

Citizenship annuls in Christ the differentiation found between the Jews, on the inside, and the Gentile, outside, far away.

 The Family needs unity for security and acceptance, not just between parents and children, but also between brothers and sisters.

Marriage is an expression of a deep and intimate unity between man and wife.

The Temple, the various stones, the temple ministry and the priests give expression to a ministry to God and worship built upon unity and unanimity – not just solo performances.

The Vine yields no fruit if the branches are not attached to it. They have to be united. And not to remain in the stem of the vine is to dry up and be burnt.

The Olive Tree gives life to the grafted-in branches which allow themselves to be united with the trunk.

In short, we can say that these illustrations provide a powerful testimony to how the New Testament places emphasis on the fact that every believer is a part of something bigger than themself. We’re part of something enormous and alive and the whole point of the New Testament is just this – that we have to go deeper into what we already are, the Body of Christ. This means our growing from the baby-stage where we’re so very egocentric, everything revolves around ourselves, only thinking about ourselves and our own needs and instead, through Christ, to a place where we allow ourselves to be united with a greater and deeper reality.

This understanding of the Christian life as fellowship and belonging together with all the other members and working together is extremely alien to the westernised, super-individualistic lifestyle that would rather be separate and build up its own life’s project. Body-of-Christ thinking is soundly Biblical and heals us from this over-individualism. It consumes our flesh, which would much rather go its own separate way, away from the others. At the centre of the church’s nature can be found this loving fellowship, not an isolated, me.