Not everyone in the visible church—those who go to church, take part in the worship, even preach from the pulpit—is a Christian. According to Jesus, there are many people in the church who believe they are Christians and are quite wrong. We should examine ourselves, as the Apostle Paul says, to see whether we are in the faith. And as Jesus Himself says, the fact that we call Him Lord doesn’t necessarily prove that. One of the signs that we are in the faith is that we are hearing His words and obeying them. Not that any of us are able to obey Christ perfectly, of course, but are we sincerely looking to obey Him and repenting when we fall short?

What do people mean when they talk about the visible and the invisible church?

I hope I’m not getting anyone into trouble here, but I have a—well, let’s call him a close relative—who has a gift for getting into places he really shouldn’t be. He once took me to an airshow when I was a child, breezily ushering me into an area that was intended exclusively for members of the media. When challenged by an official, he nonchalantly flashed a laminated badge—it might have been his library card, for all I know—and the door was duly opened for us. It was like that bit in Star Wars where Alec Guinness waves his hand mysteriously in front of the stormtroopers and says, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” except without a library card, obviously.

Not everyone who identifies as a member of the media is actually a member of the media. And in the same way, not everyone who seems to be a member of God’s church is actually a member of God’s church. That’s what we mean by the visible and invisible church. The visible church comprises all those who claim to be or identify as followers of Christ. The invisible church comprises all those who really are followers of Christ.

Jesus tells a story about this in Matthew chapter 13. A man sows good seed in his field, and his servants are perplexed when the field turns out to have weeds in it as well as wheat. “We thought you only sowed wheat—what’s with all the weeds?” The master says rather ominously, “An enemy has done this.”

“So, what would you like us to do?” say the servants. “Shall we go and root up all the weeds?”

“No,” says the master, “if you do that, you might accidentally root up the good stuff. Let them both grow together. I’ll separate them once and for all when the time comes for the harvest.”

The thing about wheat and weeds—as I discovered in the mid-1980s during a short-lived stint as a gardener—is that it isn’t always easy to spot the difference between a weed and a prize-winning flower. Some of the most destructive weeds look beautiful.

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