3 things

[aron]

It seems to me there are 3 things God sees:

1. He sees the human heart, whether it is responsive to His love or not.

2. He sees the "ekklesia" the gathering, the assembly, the congregation of those who are called out of the world into the name of His Dear Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

3. He sees the "universal church", the Body of Christ, His dear bride.

Without the first thing, a heart of love for His dear Son, I don't think any gathering or activity is of any value at all. It is the essential prerequisite. Without this foundation, a heart of love, based on the solid rock of unwavering faith in God's call in His Son, everything else is vain.

The second thing is what is commonly called, in christianity, the church "service", like the Sunday service. A sermon, or a prayer meeting, or a Bible study meeting. It's label varies with the aim and time and location of the gathering, usually. In the LCs we commonly called them "meetings" whether on Sunday morning or not. Other meetings were "prayer meetings", "home meetings", etc. The catholics call it a "mass", I believe.

Anyway, it is a physical gathering. Hebrews 2:12 is clearly referring to this when it says, "In the midst of the church I will sing hymns of praise to You". It seems to me that this "church" must really mean what LC'ers typically call a "meeting". It is an actual physical assembly of human persons, in time and space, on the earth.

The third thing is the universal Body of Christ. Ephesians 5:25 "Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her". This cannot refer to just one meeting somewhere, but must represent all believers everywhere. At least that is my take.
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Why am I writing these points? Because when we say "church" we usually don't refer to the "meeting", or "service", or "mass". Rather we refer to an organization, like the RCC or the Lord's Recovery or the Baptists or Methodists or the Assemblies of God. We refer to an alliance of usually legally-incorporated religious groups scattered across the face of the earth.

It is a human organizational construct, and it doesn't exist in the Bible. The universal church is bigger than any of these; none of them can equate with the mystical Body of Christ. It is the fallen human's try to climb too high, to go where only God can go.

Only Christ can build His church. His command to us is "Love thy neighbor". But instead we try to build extra-local religious organizations, and in the eventual, inevitable clamor that ensues we have to trample our neighbor. We have to toss them under the bus because they couldn't get with our organization-building program.

Only Christ can know his church. The brothers who presume to speak for the "feeling in the Body" are saying they know the heart of every believer on the earth today. This is nonsense. It is patently absurd.

Even in any major urban area, to designate the "church in Toledo" or some such is patently absurd. Can you say you have the name, and allegiance of every believer in Toledo? Of course not. God does, however.

So let God take care of the third entity. Take care of your own heart, love your neighbor (i.e. meet with them, "receive them as God received them in Christ Jesus [Rom 15:7]), and God will indeed build His church.

It is when we try to go to the third level that we go past our God-allotted portion, our mandate. We are then cast away from the heavenly realms.