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These three marks of the true church, the signs of its authenticity, seek to
verify whether the truth God has given the church is being preached, the gospel
is being proclaimed, and the moral character and reputation of the church are
being protected. However, each of these comes back to God. The test is whether
the truth being preached is God’s, the gospel being proclaimed is God’s, and the
holiness being sought is God’s. An authentic church is one that is God-centered
in its thought and God-honoring in its proclamation and life. It can be
authentic only when it honors, reflects, and proclaims who God is and what he
has done in Christ. These marks of an authentic church are asking deep but
unavoidable questions. Are we preoccupied with God as he has revealed himself to
us, with Christ as he has been given to us, and with ourselves, not simply as
psychological selves, but as God’s people in this world? These tests, in fact,
take us to the very depths of who God is and test the church at the deepest
level of its being.
Who Builds the Church?
Suppose we were to discover that the evangelical church in America today was not
passing these very basic tests of authenticity with flying colors. What would we
do? Think afresh about worship? Revise the Sunday school curriculum (if it still
exists and if there is such a thing as a curriculum)? Ask if there are new, more
innovative ways in which the church can rethink and rearrange itself?
The most important things we learn about the church when we come before God in
this way is that the church is his, as we have seen, and that he is the one who
builds it. Indeed, we have this in Jesus’ own words. It was on the “rock” of
Peter’s confession that Christ said, “I will build my church, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18). The New Testament uses many
metaphors to speak of this process, but those of building and growing are
frequent. And the key point is that this is God’s work. The church needs
to be led, taught, pastored, and organized, but it is God alone who builds and
nourishes it.
This is Paul’s main point in 1 Corinthians 3:1-15. What is the church and how
does it get built? What is ministry in the church and how are we supposed to do
it? These questions are obviously connected. What we think the church is will
explain how we think it will grow. How we think the church grows, explains what
ministry is. Paul had been driven to raise these questions because many people
in Corinth were going about their life in the church in the wrong way. They were
not spiritual in their understanding and behavior. Paul could not address them
as “spiritual” (3:1) because they were seeing the church simply from within
their own fallen perspective. They had to be spoken to as the children that they
were (3:1).
Is
not the evangelical church in the same boat today? That this is a moment of
great weakness seems to be commonly agreed. What the remedy is has become a
matter of debate. The parallels between our situation and the one in Corinth,
however, are really quite striking. Would we not do well to ask, then, what they
had not understood?
Paul’s perspective on this matter is summed up in a few pointed words. How
should we think of ourselves? The answer is as “God’s fellow workers”
(3:9 in Paul’s Greek, the word “God” is placed first for emphasis). How should
we think of the church? It is “God’s field” and “God’s building”
(3:9). And why should we think of it as God’s field and building? Because the
church is his creation and only he can grow it. He gives it its qualitative
growth inwardly, in terms of character and obedience, and its quantitative
growth outwardly in terms of numerical expansion. We see this second truth at
work in the early days of the church’s life when we read that “the Lord
added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47; italics
mine). All of this being true, it is the Lord who “assigns” the work in
the church (1 Corinthians 3:5). Paul says, to bring about its growth, nurturing,
and training. The church’s goals and functions, therefore, are given to
it. They come, not from business manuals, not from cultural norms, and not from
marketing savvy, but from what the Lord has told us in the Scriptures. It is in
the light of these truths that we will be judged (1 Corinthians 3:8). And this
leads Paul to the heart of the matter. We sow and water, but is God who
gives the growth (3:6-7). |
