Who is the Church?

Those who place their faith in Jesus Christ are the body.  Those who know that God loves them, they can see it through His creation, His Word, His church.  Those who know that they have fallen short of the standard of perfection and sinlessness that a Holy God sets are the church.  Those who believe that out of love God sent Jesus to this earth becoming fully God and fully man so that He could live up to God’s standard of sinlessness.  Those who believe that Jesus willingly hung on a cross and shed His sinless blood so that we could be saved are the church.  Those who place their faith in that shed blood as their only hope of ever crossing over from death to life.  Those who believe that Christ was buried in the ground for three days and because God saw His punishment as enough to forgive our sins He rose Him from the dead.  Those who believe He walked and talked among us for 40 days and then He was raised to heaven where He sits at the right hand of God waiting to come back for His body these are the church.

Just to be sure we understand, if we believe, there is no distinction between denomination, communion type, baptism, creed or color.  Ephesians, 2:13-16, “But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.  For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.”  The body should be a unified, powerful extension of Christ himself.  Instead we weaken ourselves with petty differences of how a service should be run rather than focusing on the mystery of the gospel as Paul lays out in His epistles.  In the weeks to follow we will examine what this body should do, how it should act, but if we don’t understand what it is these will all be meaningless.

Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  What a powerful verse especially if we would trade out some of the nouns.  There is neither traditional nor contemporary, there is neither young nor old, there is neither pretribulation nor midtribulation, there is neither infant nor immersion baptism; for you are all one in Christ Jesus if you believe!