Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
So the church gatherings today present an invitation to show grace, to forgive, to testify of God's Son,
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As an example of how much meanings have changed, and how we currently read history backwards: in the NT Greek the word used for our English "church" and that for "gatherings" was even the same: 'ekklesia'. But today, conceptually, the ideas have grown distinct, each with typically unique and separate meaning, with disparate usage. Nobody would say, "Last night we had an ekklesia of the ekklesia"; we say 'service' or 'meeting'. But now I think perhaps it wasn't always so, including in the composition of our foundational text, the Bible. How little we truly understand!
If, through such partial or even complete mis-understanding, we're caught up in organizational foo-faraw, trying to suss out an institutionally coherent "church", and an unbeliever comes along and watches for a moment and says, "No thanks", and walks away, who can blame them?
Love alone is key to structural coherence - love alone will guide us together through scripture, with the unfolding Word bringing light, and understanding to the simple (Psa 119:130), and as we begin to hear faint echoes of the Shepherd's voice through the written word, we formerly disobedient 'goats' begin to dimly sense an outline in scriptural text of the Obedient Lamb of God, and to thusly re-orient ourselves homeward. . . what a journey! Praise God!