Churches, “the Church,” and God’s kingdom.
Whenever people say
Which is way different than what I mean by it. Or what Jesus and the bible mean by it. When Jesus says
Still, even Christians tend to use it to mean a church building, or the church leadership. Which is why we tend to forget we are the church. Church isn’t a separate thing from us; it is us. It’s us collectively; it’s why I can’t say “I am the church,” because I all by myself am definitely not the church: Other Christians have to be in it. At least two or three.
Typically “church” refers to a local group. But sometimes we use the word to refer to every Christian, everywhere: The universal church. The catholic church (as opposed to
Of course, since many Christians are under the delusion we determine who’s a “real Christian” and who isn’t, we tend to limit the universal church to our definitions. If we’re pretty sure real Christians only vote the way we do, every Christian in the opposition party isn’t a real Christian, so they don‘t count as part of Jesus’s universal church. If we’ve got
Meh. I’ve no idea how many people Jesus actually intends to let into his kingdom.
The idea of the small kingdom.
I just mentioned how some Christians figure God’s kingdom is small: They’re getting in, and they’re pretty sure many of the people in their church are getting in. They’re not so sure about other churches. They’re definitely not sure about certain churches. They’ve got a lot of caveats in their Christianity. It’s mostly
Y’see, Jesus describes the kingdom as having a narrow gate.
Matthew 7.13-14 KWL - 13 “Enter through the narrow gate: The broad gate, the wide road, leads to destruction. Many enter destruction by it.
- 14 The narrow gate, the tight road, leads people to life. Fewer are finding it.”
This, they figure, means Jesus wants a small kingdom. He’s gonna weed out a lot of people who aren’t good enough, aren’t
Doesn’t have to be in the words they use:
But does Jesus’s narrow-gate language mean God’s kingdom is predestined to be a small one? Nope. Narrow gates don’t mean only the thin can get in. It means you gotta take off your baggage before you squeeze through. Those who envision a small kingdom, do so because they have a lot of baggage. They’re the ones who are gonna struggle to go through. Not the gracious.
You read the scriptures about who’s getting into the kingdom, and you’ll notice it may have a narrow gate, but it nonetheless lets just about anyone in. It’s not limited to the rich or poor, white-collars or blue-collars, nobles or commoners, freemen or slaves. It’s not limited to Jews; yeah, the Jews are God’s favorites,
Revelation 7.9-10, 13-17 KWL - 9 After these things I saw—look!—a crowd of many people, which nobody’s able to count.
- It’s of every nation, tribe, people, and tongue, standing before the throne,
- before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, palm branches in their hands.
- 10 They called out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation!
- By our God who sits on the throne, and by the Lamb!”
- 13 One of the elders answered, telling me, “These clothed in white robes—who are they? Whence came they?”
- 14 I told him, “Sir, you know.” He told me, “These are martyrs who came from the great tribulation.
- They washed their robes and whitened them in the Lamb’s blood.
- 15 This is why they’re before God’s throne; why they serve him day and night in his temple.
- He who sits on the throne will encamp among them:
- 16 They’ll never hunger again, nor thirst again, nor may the sun fall on them, nor any heat.
- 17 For the Lamb on the middle of the throne will shepherd them and guide them to springs of living water.
- God will wipe away every teardrop from their eyes.
If they can’t be counted, it’s a good bet it’s more than the 2 million Josephus counted in
Because Jesus wants, and willingly receives, a whole lot of people into his kingdom. Everyone who believes in Jesus,
True, it doesn’t always feel like the kingdom is all that large. Mostly ’cause we’re only looking at our own churches, at the Christians who look the most like us, and have a lot of prejudices about the Christians who don’t. Often ’cause we’re looking at our sins: There are a lot of messed-up Christians in our churches, and we wonder whether they have any real relationship with Jesus—they sure don’t act it! So we get pessimistic. We think like Elijah: We’re God’s only followers in an increasingly pagan world.
Much of that negative perspective can be fixed by just getting out of our bubbles: Step out of your own church and start interacting with the other ones. Get to know a Christian who’s not from your tradition. Look at what the Holy Spirit’s doing in their life. You wonder whether Roman Catholics are Christian? Get to know a practicing, Spirit-filled Roman Catholic. You think
Look for the invisible church.
Theologians describe God’s actual kingdom, as opposed to the visible churches in the world, as “the invisible church.” What they mean by it are
- all the real Christians, as opposed to the phony Christians
and Christianists ; - all
the secret Christians who hide their faith, or who aren’t plugged into church, so we don’t realize they exist; and - people
who have a saving relationship with God, but we (and they!) don’t realize this yet.
Essentially, everyone God recognizes as his, and intends to populate his kingdom with. But they’re below our radar. We’re too busy looking at the visible church.
We shouldn’t presume every spiritual-sounding person we meet is one of these invisible Christians.
Same with all the folks in church. There are a lot of
But when you find one of these invisible Christians, nudge ’em out of the closet! If it sounds like they have a saving relationship with God, but don’t yet know who Jesus is and that salvation comes through him, introduce them to Jesus. If they’re not going to church,
Either way, we’ve got work to do. Let’s get to it.