A Church as a Body, Part 2

November 11, 2011 By Mark D. Roberts Leave a Comment

Part 14 of series:
What is a Church?

A Church as a Body, Part 2

In my last post I began to explain why the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, and why he used the image of the human body to help them understand who they were as God’s people together. The core problem was that of division in the Corinthian ekklesia, with members treating each other in an unloving manner and failing to value their connectedness in Christ.

The more you learn about Corinthian culture in the first century A.D., the less you are surprised by the problems occurring among the Christians there. Corinth was located in southern Greece, in a prime location for travelers and merchants moving across the Mediterranean Sea. Thus Corinth was a hotbed of economic opportunity, unlike much of the rest of the Roman Empire. The city had lots of new money and all that often comes with it: pride, boasting, extravagance, prejudice, resentment, selfishness, sexual adventurism, etc.

Moreover, because of Corinth’s location and economic vitality, it was a truly multicultural city, with immigrants from throughout the Roman world. With multiculturalism came all sorts of adventures and challenges, including foreign religions, different languages, and conflicting cultural patterns. The religious life of Corinth was suitably varied, with vestiges of older Greek religion and its mysteries, as well as lots of newer cults brought by immigrants and visitors. Among those who brought their religion to Corinth were some Jews who had built a synagogue there. (If you’re looking for more information on the Corinthian culture and its impact on the Christians there, see the outstanding commentary by Ben Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth.)

Given what I’ve said about the diversity and unsettled nature of Corinthian society, it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that the Christian gatherings weren’t without their challenges. After all, if you were to bring together people from different socio-economic brackets, religious backgrounds, and ethnicities, and put them in close fellowship with each other, and supply only minimal leadership, then you would surely find yourself with a mess. And that’s what Paul experienced with the Corinthians.

Please understand that I’m not necessarily criticizing the Corinthian believers for this situation. After all, they were relatively immature Christians when Paul left their city to plant churches elsewhere. They didn’t have Bibles, since the New Testament wasn’t written yet, and they would have had at most very limited access to scrolls in the local Jewish synagogue. They didn’t have mature Christians to lead them (except perhaps for a few visiting missionaries, but these could be problematic). They didn’t have Christian books, tapes, CDs, DVDs, or websites. What they had was a memory of Paul’s teaching, some of which they misunderstood or found confusing, and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

I’m not minimizing the value of the Holy Spirit, mind you. Indeed, there is no better resource for Christian community that the third person of the Trinity! But the problem is that Christians, especially immature ones, can easily get confused about the Spirit. They can attribute to the Spirit works of the flesh, or even of demons. They can claim for themselves spiritual inspiration when none is truly to be found. And this is exactly what happened at Corinth.

In my next post in this series, I’ll say a bit more about the specifics of this Corinthian confusion about the Spirit, and how it relates both to their culture and to the divisions within the Corinthian ekklesia. Then we’ll be ready to dive into Paul’s teaching on the church of feet and ears.

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A Church as a Body, Part 1

November 10, 2011 By Mark D. Roberts 1 Comment

Recap: In this series, What is a Church?, I’m trying to discover what the Bible says about the local church. What is, or better yet, what should this odd collection of people we call a church be like? What is the nature of a Christian community, according to Scripture?

So far I’ve examined in detail the meaning of the Greek word ekklesia, which is usually translated as “church” in our Bibles. In my last post, I noted that Paul’s letters to the Colossians and to the Ephesians talk about the church in terms of a body, with Christ as the head. This points to the next stop in our tour of New Testament images for church. But we won’t start with Colossians and Ephesians, since these are some of Paul’s later letters. (Yes, I’m aware that some scholars believe them to be written by one or more of Paul’s disciples, but I’m convinced that they are from Paul’s own hand.) Rather, we’ll start with 1 Corinthians, the oldest extant reference to the gathering of Christians as a body.

The ruins of ancient Corinth. Photo from holylandphotos.org

Paul wrote 1 Corinthians sometime in the mid-50s A.D. Previously, he had ministered in Corinth, a city in southern Greece, perhaps for around a year and a half, leaving behind a collection of believers in Jesus. After Paul left town, these folks continued to meet together in a regular gathering (ekklesia), or perhaps in several gatherings (ekklesiai) located in various homes.

Life among the Corinthians Christians wasn’t altogether happy, however. Though they experienced Christ’s presence and power through the Spirit, they had a hard time getting along together. After greeting the Corinthian ekklesia and offering a prayer for them, Paul jumps into the core of their turmoil:

Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” (1 Cor 1:10-12)

Paul was writing to the Corinthians from Asia Minor (modern Turkey). While ministering there, he had received a visit from “Chloe’s people,” who were probably members of her household, perhaps relatives, servants, or slaves, though we can’t be quite sure. They brought bad news of divisions among the Corinthian Christians. This may not have been the first Paul had heard of this, because he had also received as visitors three men from Corinth (1 Cor 16:17). These people had, among other things, delivered to Paul a letter from the Corinthian Christians (1 Cor 7:1). The combination of reports and letter concerned Paul greatly, especially as they related the disunity among the Corinthian believers. So he decided to write the letter we know as 1 Corinthians. (In fact, however, it was at earliest the second of Paul’s letters to these believers; see 1 Cor 5:9).

One of the main things Paul intends to do in 1 Corinthians is to help the immature Christians there understand who they are together. We would say: Paul wants them to know who they are as a church. Yet he doesn’t do this by drawing out the deeper implications of the word “church” (ekklesia). Rather, Paul uses the image of the human body as a way of explaining how the Corinthian Christians are related to each other, and therefore how they should in fact treat each other in their gatherings. Their likeness to a body makes clear the fact that they should be unified rather than divided. It also suggests how they can achieve unity in a practical way.

Before I get to Paul’s teaching about the church as a body, however, I need to say a few things about Corinthian society, and why this may have led to divisions in the Corinthian ekklesia. I’ll do this in my next post in this series.

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Church Beyond the Local Gathering

November 9, 2011 By Mark D. Roberts Leave a Comment

Part 12 of series:
What is a Church?

Church Beyond the Local Gathering

Before I finish my discussion of the meaning of the word ekklesia – usually translated as “church” – in the New Testament, I need to say something about the use of ekklesia in Paul’s letters to the Colossians and the Ephesians.

I'm a now and then collector of old hymnals. I was glancing through my collection recently to see if I could find any interesting hymns about the church. I did indeed find a curious selection in The Sunday-School Service and Tune Book. It's called "Beautiful Church," by Rev. E. L. Drown. I find his vision of the church – and here we're talking largely in terms of an actual gathering – quite fascinating. See the appendix to today's post.

Curiously, neither of these letters are addressed to an ekklesia or to a group of ekklesiai as is the case in Paul’s letters to Corinth (both letters), Galatia, and Thessalonica (both letters). Colossians is addressed to “the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae” (Col 1:2), while Ephesians was sent to “the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus” (Eph 1:1). The greetings at the end of Colossians reflect the sort of tangible, actual-gathering quality of ekklesia that we have seen before in Paul. He greets “Nympha and the ekklesia in her house” as well as the “ekklesia of the Laodicieans” (4:15-16).

Yet earlier in Colossians we find a different nuance of ekklesia. Let me quote several verses from the first chapter of this letter:

15  [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. (1:15-20; emphasis added)

A few verses later Paul underscores this new sense of ekklesia:

I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. (1:24)

Ephesians takes this ball from Colossians and runs with it far upfield. In the first chapter, God raised and exalted Christ,

22 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (1:22-23)

In Ephesians 3, God reveals his wisdom “to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” “through the church” (Eph 3:10). He concludes the chapter with a stirring benediction:

20   Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (3:20-21)

Then, in Ephesians 5, ekklesia shows up six times. Christ is “the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior” (5:23). The church “is subject to Christ” (5:24). Christ “loved the church and gave himself up for her” (5:25). Christ seeks “to present the church to himself in splendor” (5:27). He nourishes and tenderly cares” for the church (5:29). Finally, like the unity between husband and wife, so it is with Christ and the church, something Paul refers to as “a great mystery” (5:32).

The meaning of ekklesia in Colossians and Ephesians has clearly moved far beyond the literal gathering of Christians in some location. Now the ekklesia is the body of which Christ is the head. It appears to be some cosmic reality that transcends ordinary space and time, and that encompasses far more than a single gathering of believers. Paul seems to be envisioning some sort of “gathering,” now used metaphorically rather than literally, of all Christians on earth and in heaven. This ekklesia has permanence in time like an actual body. An ekklesia in the regular sense may come and go, but an ekklesia as a body remains intact over time.

The relationship of the church/body in Colossians and Ephesians and the local church is not spelled out in detail. Though Paul uses ekklesia in a new and greatly expanded sense, he can still refer, as I mentioned earlier, to the ekklesia in Nympha’s house (or that meets at her house, Col 4:15) and to the ekklesia of the Laodiceans (4:16). His specific instruction that his letter be read “in the ekklesia of the Laodiceans” suggests that Paul can still use ekklesia in the ordinary sense of the tangible gathering. Yet, at the same time, the ekklesia is also a much larger and more permanent reality. It is something that can be spoken of as a body, with Christ as the head.

The use of ekklesia in Colossians and Ephesians offers a fitting segue to the next image I want to investigate in this series on the church, the image of the body. To this I will turn in my next post.

Appendix

“Beautiful Church” by Rev. E. L. Drown

Beautiful Church of Christ below,
Beautiful in this world of woe,
Beautiful Gate to Heaven above,
Beautiful House of God I love;
He, who was slain on Calvary,
Has built this beautiful Church for me.

Beautiful Round, our Festival year,
Beautiful all its scenes appear,
Beautiful Feast, when Christ was born,
Beautiful light the Easter morn;
With Christmas wreaths, and Easter Flowers,
Thank God, this beautiful Church is ours!

Beautiful Baptism, Christ its light,
Beautiful Infants, robed in white,
Beautiful Chants, we love to sing,
Beautiful Hymns to Christ our King;
The path that Saints and Martyrs trod,
The Church that leads us home to God.

Beautiful Church of Christ, our King,
Beautiful offerings let us bring,
Beautiful lives, the Church to adorn
Beautiful love, to Heaven’s First-born;
With hearts of faith the Saviour see.
Come to this Beautiful Church with me.

From The Sunday-School Service and Tune Book, ed. John C. Hollister (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1863) p. 155.

 

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The Church as an Alternative Community, Part 2

November 8, 2011 By Mark D. Roberts 3 Comments

Part 11 of series:
What is a Church?

The Church as an Alternative Community, Part 2

In yesterday’s post, I explained how the early Christian use of the work ekklesia for their gathering suggested that the church was an alternative, even a subversive community. By subversive, I do not mean that Christians were plotting to overthrow the local ekklesia (governing body of the city) by political or military means. Rather, the early Christian use of ekklesia did, in some sense, undermine the social order of the Greco-Roman city, with its ekklesiai (plural of ekklesia, town meeting-like gatherings to do city business). The Christian ekklesia was meant to be an alternative society, a society of a radically different order with radically different values. It was a thumbnail sketch of the kingdom of God.

So, for example, in the ekklesia of God, Jews and Gentiles, so often separated in Roman society, shared life together as brothers and sisters. Slaves could also be full participants in the Christian gatherings, enjoying equality in Christ with non-slaves, even with their masters. Women could actively participate in the gatherings just as long as they didn’t engage in the scandalous behavior of the pagan cults. The theological truth that in Christ “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female” was lived out in the Christian assemblies (Galatians 3:28). Thus, they were a kind of alternative society, one that implicitly rejected the domineering, separatistic, and elitist values of the Roman world.

Could it be said that the church in America today is also an alternative society? Perhaps, in some places and at some times, but I fear these are the exceptions to the rule. The church in our culture tends to play a very different role than what was once envisioned by Paul and the earliest Christians. On the one hand, we often reflect the fallen values of our society rather than the holy values of God’s kingdom. For example, put a church in the middle of a materialistic culture and, odds are, the church will be materialistic too. On the other hand, we have often been satisfied to play a comfortable religious role in society, offering a spiritual narcotic to soothe jangled nerves rather than an alternative way of living under God’s rule. We don’t want to rock the social boat. We want to find our niche in society so that society will smile upon us. Of course there are some Christians, who, like the Amish, withdraw from society in order to live as God’s chosen people. But they hardly reflect the reality of what the Christian ekklesia ought to be in the world.

Christians who are active in politics, whether on the left or right side of the political spectrum, may see themselves as the rightful heirs of the early Christian ekklesia. Indeed, their desire for God to make a difference in this world does reflect what we see in the New Testament understanding of church. But nowhere in Scripture do we get the idea that the role of the ekklesia is to directly influence (or replace) the civic ekklesia. Nowhere is it suggested that the Christian assembly should major in “speaking truth to power,” other than the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Rather, the power of the ekklesia to change society comes from the authenticity of its corporate life, which is a manifestation of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament, the ekklesia offers, not political advice to the members of the civic ekklesia, but, instead, a whole new way of living, one that reflects the kingdom of God rather than the empire of Caesar.

The logo of the Presbyterian Church (USA)

Let me apply what I’m saying to my own denomination. If you’re not part of the PC(USA), I expect you’ll find things here that are relevant to your denomination and/or local church.

I come from a denomination that has often seen itself as a counselor to the federal government and other leaders. We pass motions and write position papers, recommending to our leaders what courses of action they should take on a variety of issues. There is a sad irony in all of this, because, on the one hand, I don’t think many of our national leaders care one bit about what we recommend. On the other hand, our efforts to “speak truth to power” often end up dividing us and impoverishing our own fellowship. The very thing that should be making a difference in society – our life together as an alternative community – is hampered by our misdirected efforts to make a difference in society through the ministry of pronouncements. How I wish we’d stop trying to recommend to our government how it should act and start, instead, trying harder to get our own act together.

What would this mean, in practice, for my denomination?

• It means we would care much less about the proceedings of our national assemblies (ekklesiai) and pay much more attention to the regular, tangible, essential gatherings of our local ekklesiai.

• It means that our denominational bodies would put much more energy into nurturing healthy ekklesiai than we do today. We’d see our denominational purpose primarily in terms of planting and nurturing churches through the Gospel.

• It means we would be open to new denominational structures that support our mission, rather than holding on to the structures of the past that guarantee our power but weaken our common life and mission.

• It means that we would strive harder to be an alternative society through our ekklesiai, one that truly reflects the gospel of Jesus Christ, one that shines as a light into our dark world.

• It means that we would see our local gatherings as essential, not only to our congregational life, but also to the health of our cities.

• It means we would care more about doing God’s justice, and less about talking about justice in ways that divide and weaken our churches, thus enfeebling our efforts to do justice.

• It means that our congregations would embrace our identity as “missional churches,” fellowships sent by God to proclaim and live out the reality of his kingdom. We’d be less committed to our own self-preservation and more committed to offering our neighbors the good news of Christ, both in word and in our shared life together. (For more on what it would mean for our churches to be mission, see my essay, The Mission of God and the Missional Church.)

I’m speaking about my denomination here as an example. What I have just said about the PC(USA) would be relevant to other denominations, and even to non-denominational bodies. I find it fascinating that many so-called independent and non-denominational churches today are becoming “multi-site” churches. The distance between “multi-site” and “denomination” is really very small.

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