“Church” is created by Faith In Jesus Christ

Matthew 16: 18 - Jesus said, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

The Apostles’ Creed says, “I believe in the holy catholic church.”  People say, “I like Jesus, but I don’t care for the church.” “I believe in God, but I don’t believe in the church.” “I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious so I don’t go to church.”

They go to on spew: “The church is full of hypocrites.” “I can worship God on the golf course. That’s my church.” “I believe in my own way. I don’t need to go to church and have someone tell me what to believe.” “The church is just after my money.” “I hate the organized church.”

Then we have “THE” problem with this part of the Apostles’ Creed. Some of us stumble over the “c” word. If we are a Protestant church, why do we say we believe in the “catholic” church? There is something about that phrase that makes us feel vaguely uncomfortable, as if we’re doing something wrong if we say the Creed that way.

It’s as if we think we’re secretly (or not so secretly) saying the Catholic Church is right—or something like that. Since I started this sermon series, I know that at least one of you is waiting to hear what I had to say in this sermon because this particular phrase bothers them. Why do we say it and what does it mean?

To help us get the proper focus, let’s begin with the word “church.”

When we move from the English back to the original Greek, we encounter the word “ekklesia.” That Greek word is almost always translated by the word “church.” When you break it down, you discover that ekklesia comes from two other Greek words: ek, meaning “out of” and the verb kaleo, meaning “to call.” When you put those concepts together, you get ekklesia, the assembly of those called out of the world and into the family of God.

Think of everyone living on the face of the earth. That circle encompasses over six billion people. Now draw a smaller (and still substantial) circle within the larger circle. That smaller circle is approximately two billion professing Christians that represents the church.

The word church refers to those people who have been called out of the world by God to join together as followers of Jesus Christ. So a church is a “called-out assembly of believers.” That definition helps enormously because it tells us several key facts:

1. The Church is not the building.

2. The church is not a denomination.

The founder of the "home church" movement in England, Canon Ernest Southcott, said it best:

"The holiest moment of the church service is the moment when God’s people—strengthened by preaching and sacrament—go out of the church door into the world to be the church. We don’t go to church; we are the church."

The Bible uses the word “church” three different ways:

We see the word church used three different ways: First, as the body of Christ, the church is often defined as a local assembly or group of believers (1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Galatians 1:1-2). Second, it is defined as the body of individual living believers (1 Corinthians 15:9; Galatians 1:13). Finally, it is defined as the universal group of all people who have trusted Christ through the ages (Matthew 16:18; Ephesians 5:23-27).

These are helpful distinctions when you think about the religious confusion in America. There are approximately 350,000 local churches in the United States—but that number shrinks by about 7 churches per day.

With that as background, we come to this phrase of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the holy catholic church.” The very wording makes you stop and think. Up until this point, everything in the Creed has been either invisible or distantly historical.

When the Creed mentions “God the Father Almighty,” we understand that we cannot see God in his essence. He is hidden from our eyes. The same goes for the Holy Spirit. When we speak of Jesus Christ, we proclaim our belief in a Person who last walked on the earth 20 centuries ago.

The Creed so far has led us to confess our faith in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But now we make a sharp right turn when we say, “I believe in … the church.” Forget the “holy catholic” part for a moment.

After so many exalted phrases, it almost jars the ear to say, “I believe in the church.” With these words the Creed plunges us deep into the nitty-gritty of life in the 21st century.

It means we’re being asked to affirm our faith in the church—an institution that all too often seems unworthy of our trust. The historical record is checkered at best.

Critics like to point out that many of history’s bloodiest wars took place because of religion—often men killed each other mercilessly in the name of Jesus Christ.

Cardinal Francis George commented that sometimes the church has looked more like a mob than a holy family of God. In our day we have seen respected Christian leaders fall prey to immorality and greed. There was a day when society looked to the churches to provide moral and spiritual leadership. That day (for better or worse) is long gone.

Perhaps you remember folding your hands together, with your finger interlaced downward and saying, “Here is the church, here is the steeple. Open the door and see all the people.”

In the end that’s what we see as the problem and the challenge and the blessing and the hope of the church—"all the people.” People! If we didn’t have to deal with people, church would be a breeze. But inside every church you find …

Difficult people, Contentious people, Mean-spirited people, Greedy people,
Unreasonable people, Unkind people, Thoughtless people, Critical people,
Angry people, Cantankerous people.

If you doubt that these people exist in the church, just take a good look in the mirror. We’re all sinners in need of God’s grace. As I’ve told you before, if we knew the naked truth about every other person in the church, and they knew the naked truth about us, we’d all run screaming from the sanctuary.

The problem of the church is the problem of the people. One writer said it this way:

To live up above with the saints that we love, that will be glory. But to live down below with the saints that we know, that’s another story.

But if people are the problem, they are also the hope of the church. Take away the people and there would be no church left. So the Creed challenges us to set aside our misconceptions and our frustrations and say, “I truly do believe in the church.”

The Church is One: The first key word is one—the church is one. When Jesus said, “I will build my church,” he used the singular, not the plural—"churches.” Jesus promised to build one church and one church only.

There is only one true ekklesia—the assembly of those who have been called out of the world to follow Christ. The oneness of the church is the basis for true Christian unity. Ephesians 4: 4-6. “There is one body and one Spirit–just as you were called to one hope when you were called–one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

One Body - One Spirit - One Hope - One Lord - One Faith - One Baptism - One Father.  The church is one because it is built on Jesus Christ: 1 Corinthians 3: 11 tells us: “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

Samuel Stone said it well in his famous hymn:

The Church’s one foundation

Is Jesus Christ her Lord,

She is His new creation

By water and the Word.

From heaven He came and sought her

To be His holy bride;

With His own blood He bought her

And for her life He died.

Elect from every nation,

Yet one o’er all the earth;

Her charter of salvation,

One Lord, one faith, one birth;

One holy Name she blesses,

Partakes one holy food,

And to one hope she presses,

With every grace endued.

Before we go forward, we need to be perfectly clear about this. There is only one church because we have one Lord—not two. No matter what we may think about the incredible religious confusion of our day—that confusion does not come from God. The church is one because Christ is one.

We have the real church and we have a "religious" idea of church which is sullied by the hands of humanity.

The great biblical doctrine of the unity of the church flows from this truth. When Jesus prayed in John 17: 21 that “all of them may be one,” he was asking for believers to demonstrate on the earth the perfect unity that exists in heaven between the Father and the Son and not some human concept of "perfect robotic church" moving and swaying to a kumbaya around some mystical campfire.

Sometimes I hear people talk about “creating” unity in the church. But we are never told to “create” unity; God has already done that in Christ. We are to “maintain” and “keep” the unity God has already created among all true believers. This is a doctrine that is easier to talk about in theory than it is to work out in practice.

But I don’t want to leave the matter there. Protestants are indeed divided into many groups. In response to those divisions, the mainline denominations have attempted to come together through the ecumenical movement. This desire to merge the various churches came from a noble impulse—"Let’s put aside our differences and form one large church.”

After 50 years of talk, the movement has very little to show for itself. The major result has been to almost totally de-emphasize Bible doctrine. How else will you get the Baptists and the Lutherans and the Episcopalians and the Methodists to worship together in the same church?

This de-emphasis on doctrine led to a “lowest common denominator” approach to belief. And that led to more and more people coming together who believe in less and less until everyone believes in nothing at all. That’s how you get gay pastors and that women pastors have grown from 5% in 1985 to almost 25% today.

You just keep stripping away the truth until virtually nothing is left. But when everything is up for grabs, no one can tell right from wrong, and why not have gay pastors?

So when we say the church is one, what church are we talking about? We mean the church in the New Testament sense–the assembly of those who have been called out of the world to follow Jesus Christ. Those who truly believe in him are truly members of the church, regardless of their denominational affiliation.

We extend Christian fellowship to all true believers everywhere because we are fellow members of the family of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Not everyone who joins a church—any church—is born again. Many people just go through the religious motions. Some never clearly understand the gospel. Others prefer a religion of good works instead of the gospel of grace. There are unsaved church members in every church and every denomination.

But the Lord knows his own sheep. He calls them by name, they hear his voice, and they follow him (John 10:27). The Lord knows his own (2 Timothy 2:19). He is building his church one person at a time as men and women leave the world and begin to follow him. That church—the full number of true believers—a number known only to God—is the “one church” Jesus has been building for 2,000 years.

All of us are concerned about the growing rejection of Christian values in our society. We seem to be on a self-propelled descent into the pit of cultural anarchy.

But in the pressure of these days, Christians have begun to realize that we can disagree over secondary matters as long as we stand together on the essentials of the faith. Perhaps we will return to being “Christians first” and everything else second.

Christians first. Jesus said, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” God has a big family—and if you know Jesus, if you have trusted him as your Lord and Savior—you are part of that family. The church is one because Jesus is the foundation. If you are built on that foundation, you are part of the one true church. Amen. 

One last BTW – The Church is “catholic”

Some evangelicals are troubled by the word “catholic” because they think it has something to do with the Roman Catholic Church. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Note that when we come to this phrase, the word “catholic” is always spelled with a small “c.” If it were “Catholic,” that would indeed refer to the Roman Catholic Church. But catholic with a small “c” simply means “universal.”

When applied to the church, it means that the message of the gospel is for all people everywhere, in every generation and in every situation. We find this emphasis in many places in the New Testament. Mark 16:15 instructs us to preach the gospel to every nation. Jesus commands us to go and make disciples of every nation (Matthew 28:19). He said that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations (Luke 24:47). We are to be witnesses to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).

So on one hand, to be “catholic” means that we intend to preach the gospel by every means possible, to reach as many people as possible, in every place possible, so that by God’s grace we can win as many people as we possibly can to saving faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. The church is to be “catholic” or universal in its outreach.