“The local church is the historical manifestation, under the new covenant, of this massive, blood-bought assembly. It is characterized by certain marks and order, yet behind it all lies the love of God, the love and sacrifice of the Son, and the life-giving and transforming power of the Spirit.”

Most of us, I’m sure, have heard the adage, “The church is the only human institution that continues into the new heavens and the new earth.”1 It’s the sort of adage with which no Christian can thoughtfully disagree, even though it is spectacularly fuzzy. Does “church” in that old adage refer to the universal church? If so, is the universal church rightly thought of as a “human institution”? It is certainly made up of humans, but it was not designed by humans. Is the universal church usefully thought of as an institution? Organism, company, body, assembly, yes-but institution? We all agree, I imagine, that Christians continue into the new heavens and the new earth, but if that’s all we mean, why mention the church? The body of Christians continues into the new heavens and the new earth, the assembly of Christians continues into the new heavens and the new earth, but is it coherent to assert that the institution of all Christians everywhere continues into the new heavens and the new earth?

Suppose, instead, that “church” in the adage “The church is the only human institution that continues into the new heavens and the new earth” refers to the local church. But does the local church continue into the new heavens and the new earth? The answer to that question is going to depend pretty heavily on how we define “local church.” Suppose, for argument’s sake, that we adopt the three marks of the church defended by much Reformed thought: the church is the assembly where the gospel is faithfully preached, the sacraments are rightly observed, and faithful discipline is carried out. Will such a church continue into the new heaven and the new earth? Will the sacraments-or, if you prefer, the ordinances-then be practiced? If baptism is tied to conversion, surely no one will be eligible for baptism if no one is getting converted. If the Lord’s Supper points forward “until he comes,” what evidence is there that it will still be celebrated after he has come?

In short, the old adage with which I began this address is so beset with terminological challenges that its sole benefit lies in the domain of sentimental reassurance rather than in the domain of clear-headed theological reflection. In exactly the same way, the slightly cheeky affirmation advanced by the title of this address easily becomes indefensible unless some terminological clarifications are introduced right away.

Terminological Clarifications

The title speaks of the relative importance of the local church, not the universal church: “Why the local church is more important than TGC [and all the rest].” No Christian would dispute the importance of the universal church. But two factors weigh against the practical ecclesiastical significance of such an avowal. First, there are surprisingly few references to the universal church in the NT. The overwhelming majority of the occurrences of the word “church” refer to local churches. Second, many Christians think of the universal church as the conglomerate collection of believers drawn from every age who ultimately gather around the throne of God; but, as wonderful as this notion is, such a definition provides little scope to assess the relative importance of the local church and of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) since both the local church and ETS, we hope, are made up of such believers. To derive lessons on the importance of the local church from the relatively few passages that refer to the universal church presupposes that one has sorted out the relationships between the two at a deeper level. That is an important subject worth exploring, but, at least at the popular level, it is not one that is well understood.

For instance, although the set of contrasts built into the relevant passage in Heb 12 is immensely evocative, precisely how do they help us think through our subject?

You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire: to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded: “If even an animal touches the mountain it must be stoned to death.” The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, “I am trembling with fear.” But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Heb 12:18-24)2

The driving contrast in these verses is between, on the one hand, the Mosaic covenant, and, more broadly, the approach of the people of God in OT times going all the way back to Abel, and, on the other, the privileges of “the church of the firstborn,” who gather not at Sinai, nor in the temple in Jerusalem, but in the presence of God, in the presence of Jesus the mediator of a new covenant. The identification with him is so strong that the language is reminiscent of Ephesians: just as he is at the right hand of the Majesty on high, so those who are in union with him are seated in the heavenlies. The focus, in other words, is on the universal church. There are, I contend, connections between the local church and such passages in Ephesians and Hebrews, but they are not widely recognized, so it is difficult to appeal to them in support of the title of this paper. Perhaps we may return to that in a few moments.

At the other end of the scale lies a different definition of the church that will equally lead us astray in our considerations. Instead of focusing on the universal church, some circles argue that the (local) church is the “assembly” of any Christians gathered together in Jesus’s name. For example, two Christian businessmen meet on the platform of the Libertyville Metra station to commute to work in downtown Chicago. On the train they enjoy a quiet Bible study together. Here, surely, is the church. Did not Jesus say that where two or three are gathered together in his name, he himself is present in their midst?

Under such a definition of church, of course, it is impossible to argue that what we refer to as “the local church” is any more important than the assembly of Christians meeting on a university campus under the Cru banner, or the assembly of Christian doctors and nurses at a meeting of the Christian Medical Fellowship, or the assembly of Christians at the 2014 ETS conference. They are all “the church.” In practice, this view of the definition of the church, intelligently held by relatively few but unthinkingly adopted by many, serves to reinforce Western individualism. We may rejoice in the presence of Christ when two or more Christians get together for Christian purposes, but it has little bearing on the church, or on the importance of the church as a body, as an institution.

Methodologically, this approach depends on creating a definition of “church” that relies on too narrow a selection of biblical texts, notably passages that speak of the presence of Christ where two or three are gathered together.

Suppose, however, we attempt a definition of church that is far more integrative-that depends on cautious and careful inferences drawn from the wide range of the use of ἐκκλησία in the Greek Bible, and from other passages that contribute to the theme of the church even where the word ἐκκλησία is not found. How would our two businessmen on the Metra train look then?

For example, in Matt 18 Jesus insists that where there is some sort of fault between two of his disciples, the way to deal with it ascends from personal discussion to the use of others who serve as witnesses, to the final appeal, “tell it to the church” (Matt 18:17). This church then has the authority to excommunicate the guilty party. In the concrete case of discipline portrayed in 1 Cor 5, the crucial step is taken “when you are assembled” (1 Cor 5:4). “Tell it to the church” does not mean “Tell it to two Christian blokes on the Metra train.”

Or again, from the pages of the NT it is reasonably transparent that there are offices in the church denoted by such labels as elder, pastor, overseer, and deacon. We may disagree on exactly how these offices are configured, but certainly the Pastoral Epistles, to go no farther, outline their roles and characteristics in the local church-something that the “assembly” of our two blokes on the Metra train seem to be missing. If someone were to point out that on the first Pauline missionary journey recorded in Acts, the apostle and Barnabas plant churches in a number of cities, and get around to appointing elders in those churches only on the return leg through the same cities (Acts 14:23), and therefore infer that one can have churches without the well-known designated officers, it’s a bit like trying to list the characteristics of human beings by referring only to babies. We want to insist that babies are human beings, but we don’t think that the characteristics of babies constitute an adequate definition of the characteristics of human beings. In other words, to sustain the thesis in the title of this address, we need to avoid definitions of church that are indefensibly reductionistic.

That leads me, then, to offer four further considerations on the nature of the church:

(1) We must say at least a little about what are traditionally called the marks of the church. In the Reformed heritage, borrowed nowadays by many others, there are three: the church is the assembly where the Word is rightly taught, where the sacraments (some would say “ordinances”) are rightly celebrated, and where discipline is practiced. These three were, of course, shaped in part by the experiences of the Reformers in the sixteenth century. On any “thick” reading of them, however, they presuppose synthetic argumentation. For example, the right teaching of the Word of God, for the Reformers, not only questions the magisterial authority of the Pope, but presupposes the careful and controlling exegesis of Scripture, and the importance of the teaching office in the local church. This does not mean there is no sense in which lay Christians admonish one another, nor does it belittle the ways in which Christians edify one another even in the singing “to one another” of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (all part of what is today called Word-based ministry), still less the importance of teaching the Word of God, whether by catechism or other means, within the family, but it does recognize a distinctive role for pastors/elders/overseers who have been tested and set aside as those who rule over the church by means of the Word.

(2) The third mark, the discipline of the church, presupposes the urgency of preserving the church in faithfulness to God in both doctrine and life. One’s understanding of how such discipline should be carried out will vary, depending not least on whether one is convinced by what is today called “the believers’ church tradition” or by the typically Presbyterian view that holds the local church is made up of the new covenant community that is somewhat larger than the assembly of the elect and regenerate. Regardless of which view you take, discipline is nevertheless needed so that the church is not destroyed by the admission of purely nominal converts, false doctrine, and rampant immorality.

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