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“The Church: A Relationship”

Bill Robinson, Jr.
10/03/10

The word church as we use it, if it is to convey a scriptural concept, denotes a relationship. The church does not exist, in the New Testament, apart from a relationship regardless of the context in which it is used. As we think about relationship we are talking about people—people that are related. The relationship inherent within the word church is primarily that of people to God and secondarily to each other in a given location where they may assemble to meet for worship and to edify one another (i.e. local congregations). Consequently, all people in a saved relationship are thus related to each other, though they be specifically identified and joined with others who share that same relationship with God in a given locale. Hence, the New Testament speaks of one church, or body (Eph. 4:4; 1 Cor. 12:12). So, there is but one body though it is found in many places around the globe.

Wherever saints (those in saved relationship) gather together in a community to do the will of God, as individuals they are members of the one church. As such they are to function collectively as a unit (a local church). Yet, it is clearly the teaching of the New Testament that only those individuals who are faithful to God constitute the members of the one church. It is not that unit (the local church) which is a part of the one church, but rather the individuals who are striving to be faithful to Christ in word and deed (1 Cor. 12:14, 20, 27). The New Testament does not speak in terms of “church-hood,” rather it instructs us to love the “brotherhood” (1 Pet. 2:17). That is, individuals who are related to God through the forgiveness of sins (saved). Sectarian thinking has always fostered faulty concepts (even among us) regarding the church. It was true in the first century (1 Cor. 1:10ff, 3:1ff).

Let us be clear then in our preaching. It is not some church dogma or party to which we are pleading with men and women to submit and conform. To the contrary, it is to Jesus Christ based on the simple teaching of the New Testament. For Christ alone is head of the church and Savior of that one body we read in the New Testament (Eph. 1:21-22, 5:23ff). Paul’s solution to the party spirit was to preach Christ crucified “not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that [our] faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Cor. 2:2, 4-5). Ω