God Is Calling You To Be Part Of His Church.

Jesus said he would build his Church.

But what is the church?

What does God expect of it?

How it is to be structured?

How do the members relate to the physical organisation?

Who does God want to be physically leading his Church?

These and many other questions will be considered in the following posts from the serialization of Chapter 5 of Friends With God: God’s Called Out Ones.

The Role Of The Church

How we learn to love God and other people comes from what we are taught about God by a preacher:

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?
And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher?
And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written,
How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace,
and bring glad tidings of good things! (Rom 10:13-15)

God established the church in order to preach the glad tidings of good things to those whom he has called. And he calls us through preachers whom he sends.

While God is developing a personal relationship with us, and can obviously call us individually without a preacher, this is very rare. Moses and Abraham are two examples where no other person seems to have been involved with their calling.

Yet, God wants us to learn to relate to others in love, in order to express our love toward God.

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1John 4:20-21)

The role of the church is therefore critical in how we relate to God, and how he then develops his mind in us. (Eph 4:13, 1Cor 2:16)

The New Testament is the story of the establishment of the group of believers known as the church, which is translated from the Greek word ekklēsia, meaning “called out ones”.

Jesus said he would build his group of called out ones. (Matt 16:18) And we are told that Jesus is the head of the church, and that the church is his body, analogous to being his wife. (Eph 5:22-30, Col 1:18-24)

Given this analogy, the church is to obviously to have a very intimate relationship Jesus. The depth of this relationship is very similar to the analogy of our “drinking his blood and eating his flesh”, previously discussed.

Yet, despite this very intimate relationship, God has also allowed many false teachers to exist both within and outside the Church. These people, as also discussed previously, will attempt to lead you astray to take your money! Such liars are there to test you, to see if you will be led by Christ, or will be willing to be led by them. (Matt 7:15-23, Matt 24:11, Matt 24:23-25, Mark 13:21-24, Acts 13:6)

The role of the church is therefore more complex than just teaching us about God. We are taught to have a personal relationship with God by preachers who bring glad tidings of good things. As we develop this relationship with God, he then tests us by allowing false teachers to attempt to lead us astray.

So, while we must learn to rely upon God rather than men, it’s through men that we learn what relying on God means!

Even true teachers can sometimes be wrong, as is shown when Paul corrected Peter for his hypocrisy. (Gal 2:14)

So, God expects us to learn his truth through other men teaching us, but at the same time, we should not actually trust men to always teach us the truth. The only way to find truth is to trust God, through our direct friendship with him.

Is There One True Church?

Our relationship with God as our friend is therefore fundamental for determining how we perceive his word, and relate to other people, both in the church and outside it.

How is the church structured, and who determines who leads it? To whom do we listen and obey, and who has the power to correct us and determine if we should fellowship with the group of believers, or not? 

Yet, even more fundamental is the question of “what is the church?”

Is there one ‘true church’, or are there multiple groups of believers?

Is there an apostolic succession from the apostle Peter to the ‘true’ modern day leader of the Christian church?

The doctrine of the Primacy of Peter and apostolic succession holds that supreme authority on Earth is now in this modern day “Peter”. He is the head of the true church. This is the person whom we should listen to and obey. If we don’t respect his authority then he has the right to remove us from the church- with all the consequences for not just our physical life, but our eternal life also!  

The doctrine of the Primacy of Peter determines the authoritarian structure of not only the Roman Catholic Church, but also the Greek Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church- all of which claim to be the “true” church- with their own true successor who goes back to Peter.

While most other Christian organisations don’t claim one individual as “Peter’s successor”, many still maintain that, because their historical lineage goes back to Peter, they have the authority to dissuade anyone from setting up their own organisation to preach the Gospel of Christ.

In this chapter we will examine these claims in the light of the word of God, and see what insights Christ provides to enable us to discern which of these organisations, if any, is the true successor to Peter.

What Jesus Said About “The One True Church”

Who is the greatest in the church today? Who should be the leader that determines doctrine, and is representing God on Earth?

Jesus was often asked similar questions, and had a lot to say on greatness and leadership. (Matt 18:1-4, Matt 20:20-28, Mark 9:33-41, Mark 10:35-45, Luke 9:46-56, Luke 22:24-30)

Each of these scriptures provides some important information on the structure of the Church; be it humility, service to others, not exalting leaders, or how to protect those weak in the church.

In this chapter we will examine these points in some detail, and see how they impact on the roles in the church, as outlined by Paul in 1Corinthians 12:1-31 and Ephesians 4:11-14. Please take the time now to read these scriptures to get a good overview of the subjects’ issues, and the context in which they are discussed.

False Teachers In The Church

An important, yet often ignored characteristic of the true church is that God actually allows false teachers to be in it!

Jesus warns us:

Take care that no man deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, I am Christ, and will deceive many. (Matt 24:4-5)

Being in “My name” means that they point to Jesus and say they represent him. They will also say that Jesus is the Messiah. Yet, despite these statements, they will actually deceive people.

Yet how can they represent Jesus, yet do it wrongly? Simply by not teaching what he taught:

But in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. (Matt 15:9)

They claim they worship him, but because they don’t teach what he taught, but what men have taught, their worship is of no value.

All the writers of the New Testament, as we will see in this chapter, tell us that even in the first few years after the Church was established by Jesus, many were being led away from the truth in God’s word by false teachers.

These false leaders were abusive and covetous, nonetheless they taught that Jesus was the Messiah. (2Cor 11:19-21) If that could happen when the Apostles, and many others who personally knew Jesus, were alive, then we obviously need to be doubly careful not to be similarly led astray some 2,000 years later.

Unity In The Church

Many modern church leaders realize the importance of church unity, and they quote Paul when he implores the Corinthians:

Now I beseech you (plead with you), brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you; but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. (1Cor 1:10)

Despite this appeal by Paul, it is clear from scripture that Jesus never actually expected sameness of mind to be achieved within his special group of called out ones.

As we will see in the following posts, Jesus clearly explained to the disciples that, even when he was in the flesh, there were various groups of people doing God’s work who were not directly associated with the apostles.

The reality was that the Church would always be divided, and this was God’s will for the Church, and (as we will see in the next post) disunity still is God’s will for his Church today.