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Hello, I'm Kevin DeYoung, pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, and you are listening to Doctrine Matters. We want this podcast to equip Christians with a better understanding of the rich theology that undergirds our faith. And hopefully along the way, we'll be looking at some that have even been misunderstood or maybe threatened in the church's history. We'll point out the biblical evidence, the arguments, and work together to reshape our thinking, be transformed by the renewal of our minds with scripture and reason as we think theologically together. Because, as the title of the podcast tells you, doctrine Matters. We turn the page this week on Doctrine Matters, literally turn the page if you are following along in the book Daily Doctrine. And we come to ecclesiology. That is the doctrine of the church in many systematic theologies. This loci, this topic has been underappreciated. Famously, Charles Hodge and his wonderful three volumes didn't have a separate section on ecclesiology. Now, to be fair, he had written a lot about it already and he was meaning to add to and just he didn't get to it. So it wasn't that Hodge didn't think ecclesiology was important. He wrote about it all the time. It was a very committed Presbyterian churchman. Just an example how in more recent systematic theology, sometimes you get to the doctrine of the church and you might have something about the sacraments and a little bit about the church. And at a lay level, I think many people, though Christians in the pews, you know, yes, soteriology matters, the Trinity matters, the two persons of Christ. But you can think, yeah, ecclesiology, I'm not sure, maybe there's some differences. Baptist, Presbyterian, Congregational, I'm not sure what all these terms mean, and these things are probably not as important. Well, there are some, some distinctions here and some differences, and we'll get to some of those. And some of the things that my Baptist friends listening to this won't agree with and Congregational friends and of course, Anglican friends. So I, I am a Presbyterian, and, and that's how I'm going to teach through this section on ecclesiology for the next several weeks. But what I want you to get, whether you end up agreeing with everything in it or not, is to see how many of our most pressing issues in the church really come down to our doctrine of the church. What do we think about what constitutes a church? What's the nature of the church? Who should run the church? What is the most important thing to take place in the the worship of the church? What Is the mission of the church? What are the marks of the church? These are all really important. So we're starting here with ecclesiology. This word familiar to all of us, church. Let's get behind that and talk about some Greek and Hebrew. There are two Hebrew words used in the Old Testament that mean assembly or gathering. From the root meaning to call an ed ha, from a root meaning to appoint or to meet together. These two words are often translated when appearing side by side as assembly of the congregation. So they're used separately, they're used together. Sometimes the two words signify a meeting of the people's representatives, like they do in 1st Kings 8. The two Hebrew words are usually rendered in the Septuagint. That's the Greek translation of the Old Testament as synagogue or ekklesia. You can hear some words that may be familiar to you. The word synagogue means to meet together. That prefix there soon means with or together can be used for a Place, Matthew 4:23, or the Gathering itself. So you hear our word synagogue, which can be the gathering of the people, or they went to a place, a building that was a synagogue. The word ekklesia can be translated woodenly as called out ones. And sometimes people mistakenly, they want to make this connection. Well, you're called out from darkness into light. But that's not really the. The etymology of the word. It simply means called out into some public gathering, out of private homes, into some kind of public assembly. It was, it was not a particularly religious word. It could be used for a religious gathering, but it could political gatherings. And this is the word that Jesus uses in an explicitly Christian sense in Matthew 16, I will build my church. Now, you can hear there our English word church doesn't sound like sunagoge or ekklesia. That's because our word church, like the word kirk, which you hear in Scotland or kirk in Germany, is not related etymologically to ekklesia but to kuriake, a Greek word meaning belonging to the Lord. So a. A church is, you might say, a building belonging to the Lord, or the church is a people belonging to the Lord. An ekklesia is an assembly. Sometimes people can get bent out of shape with the word church and say, no, don't call this building a church, or you don't go to church. You are the church. And a right impulse there. We don't want to forget that people constitute the church and yet k belonging to the Lord. There's, there's good reason that you might refer to this building as one that is set aside For a particular purpose. It's set aside for the. The worship of a holy God by God's holy people. And so it is in. I know there's differences on whether you call it a sanctuary, a worship center, a. A gathering space. But it is something set apart for a unique purpose. The New Testament employs a number of images for the church. Most prominently, we can think of the church as three bees. The church is like a building with Christ as the cornerstone, the apostles and prophets as the foundation. Each of us built together as a dwelling place for God. We get that language in Ephesians. The church is also a body. That's the second B. Christ is the head. Each of us connected to one another as members. And then the church can be compared to a bride. So a building, a body, a bride. Christ is the groom, God's people collectively as the wife of the Lamb. I know in the mystical tradition, people often, you know, sometimes think of themselves as the. The bride personally of Christ. But it's important here that this spousal imagery is not given to individuals, but collectively to God's people. We are a bride. The church is not an optional extra. It is an essential element of what it means to be a Christian. We can think about the nature of the church with a few different pairs of words. The church is both militant and triumphant. So that means God's people fight travail here on earth. That's militant. At the same time, there is a church in heaven gathered in glorified rest. So the church is both at war against sin, the flesh and the devil. And the church is also enjoying, in a prefigured sense, here on earth. Our Sabbath rests with Christ and fully realized in heaven. And one day to come, so militant and triumphant, the church is also visible and invisible. Now, this important distinction, you may have heard before does not refer to two churches. As if we could choose to be a part of the invisible church. But I'm not a part of the visible church. And sometimes people make that. Well, I'm a part of the the church. I just don't need to belong to any local church. That that is an unknown option in the history of the church. Not unknown. And that people haven't tried it. But theologically it has never been suggested as a biblical option. You are a member of a local church and as one who truly follows Christ, born again elect also a member of this invisible church. So the distinction draws our attention to the church as we can see her and the church as she is called to be. The distinction is also a contrast between an outward and external relationship to Christ and the church in an internal and spiritual relationship to Christ. And the distinction is sometimes used to describe the professing church we can see on earth compared to the church of all the electricity in heaven that we cannot see. So it has various levels to it. Church on earth, church in heaven, visible and invisible. And there's something of a, a realism and a hopefulness to it. And we don't often think of invisible visible distinction in this way, but. But we should. Bhavinck writes about this at length. When you are frustrated with your local church, as everyone will have occasion to be pastors or parishioners and you say, this is not what I think the church is supposed to be. This is falling short. Well, let's not have over realized eschatology, meaning let's not think that the church on earth is going to look like the church in heaven. We want it to as much as possible. But there is an invisible church and a visible church. That means there's the church that we are called to be, that we're pressing after. And yet what we see will not always match that spiritual goal and that heavenly reality. We can also think the church is Catholic and local. There's another important distinction. Catholic here meaning universal, not Roman Catholic. So the church on the one hand finds tangible expression among an identifiable group of people. And then on the other hand, it is not confined to any one place or people. It's universal, it's local. The church is also organism and organization. Now some Christians hear church and they think, yep, there's a building, there's a budget. They only think organization. And they need to be reminded that the church is a living, breathing, growing organism. It's a living thing. At the same time, some people don't want to have anything to do with that organization side. Well, I don't believe Jesus didn't believe in organized religion. Really. He was a good Jew, which was a very organized religion with priests and sacrifices and holy places and holy things and holy scriptures. So the church is an institution. It has officers, it has doctrines, it has rituals, it has orders. We must not pit one against the other. The church is always both organism and organization. Both are necessary. Neither is a bad thing. The church is also gathered and scattered. That means what the church looks like on Sunday. They're gathered in a specific time and place. That's one aspect of the church. But the church also scatters. It doesn't mean it disappears. Well, your church exists once a week on Sunday. No, the church also exists as Believers spread abroad, in their homes, in their workplaces, in their communities. I've heard it said before. Well, you should think, you know, if your church disappeared this week and that corner of the block was gone, your church was gone, would anybody miss your church? And sort of the, the impetus there is, are you really doing anything in the community? Are you making a difference? And that can be a fair question, though it can also push us away from the mission of the church. Sometimes that's given, as are you guys just, you know, trying to save souls and you're not really getting plugged into your community. But besides that whole mission of the church discussion, what, what can be wrong about that way of thinking things is to think that, well, the church is not just what's gathered in this building on Sunday and what exists at a one particular address, but it's the church scattered throughout the week. So, yes, I trust with almost any church, certainly any remotely healthy, vibrant church, if all of the Christians disappeared, yes, people would notice. They would notice that teachers are gone and their neighbors are, are gone, and doctors and taxicab uber drivers and healthcare workers and all sorts of people who are hopefully living out their Christian life, who are engaged as good citizens, as good neighbors. So, yeah, the church is gathered and the church is scattered. Many mistakes in the church and here we'll close are the result, I think, of looking at one half of these pairs at the expense of the others. And we need both, lest we become unrealistic about the church or skeptical about what Christ says. So the church is bigger than the physical location where your church exists. But we need to belong to the church wherever we are. The church is more than an institution, but it's not less than that. The church needs trellis and vine. We should not expect every meaningful thing in the Christian life to happen on Sunday or in the walls of the church building. And yet the corporate gathering is a unique time for edification, covenant renewal, reflecting the glories of heaven. So getting these pairs, militant and triumphant, visible and invisible, Catholic and local, organism and organization, gathered and scattered, helps us as Christians to be realistic but not cynical, to expect structure but not lifelessness, to rejoice in the big picture of what God is doing around the world, and also to be happy and content in the small places. We need the church with all of its both and splendor and glory. You've been listening to Doctrine Matters with me, Kevin DeYoung, your host and teacher. If you'd like to learn more about the topics we talked about today, you can check out my book Daily Doctrine. It's available in print or audio from Crossway.org and you may want to talk to your pastor or a trusted friend who can recommend other good resources. The Doctrine Matters podcast is produced by Crossway, a nonprofit ministry that exists solely for the purpose of proclaiming the truth of God's word through publishing gospel centered content. To learn more, visit Crossway.org until next week, I'm Kevin DeYoung, and this has been Doctrine Matters. Thanks for joining us.