THE BRIDE YOU CAN KISS – Part 3

Imagine the scene in “every place “(1 Corinthians 1:2) where the saints of God “call upon the name of the Lord”.  Gazing out the window in my Church, thirty minutes before the hour of worship, there’s a steadily increasing number of vehicles finding a parking place and a steadily increasing number of people entering the “brick and mortar”.  At the hour of worship, when the Call to Worship is given, imagine each and every worshipper thinking: “We are the Temple of the Holy Spirit”.  As we are gathered we are God’s Temple, God’s ναός (pronounced naos), God’s sanctuary.  The dwelling place of God is with us!  How would that singular thought impact the next 90 minutes?  This place, this “brick and mortar” structure, has, because of the gathering of God’s called out ones, become a “heavenly outpost” an image of the celestial Eden.

John saw this sight in its glory and it’s recorded for us in Revelation 1:12–16 (ESV)

“¹² Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, ¹³ and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. ¹⁴ The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, ¹⁵ his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. ¹⁶ In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.”

The Holy Spirit helps us interpret this vision. “As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.” (Revelation 1:20, ESV)

This passage deserves more than a glancing interpretation, but for brevity I quote MacArthur who sums it up so well, “Each lampstand represented a church (v. 20), from which the light of life shone. Throughout Scripture, 7 is the number of completeness, so these 7 lampstands are representative of all the churches.”^[1] Here we have represented local, visible Churches, not the “invisible, universal, and mystical” Church.  Here are ordinary believers from known geographic locations.  “Both the congregations and their spiritual leaders are symbolized as light-bearing bodies. Both the congregations and their leaders are of special concern for the risen Lord. He will protect his people in spite of all evil that comes their way.”^[2]

Don’t miss the glory and the simplicity of the picture: individual local, visible Churches gathered together under divinely appointed leaders[3] who exist in the palm of the risen Savior.  And don’t miss the scene that exists amid the Churches.  “Christ walks among the churches as Lord and Shepherd (v. 13), just as God’s cloud of glory descended to dwell in the tabernacle and the temple, which had their lampstands (Ex. 25:31–40; 1 Kin. 7:49).”^[4]

He, moving graciously among the individual churches is this risen Lord exercising His rightful authority over the congregations (See Revelation 2-3). The very fact that the next two chapters include messages to these local, visible Churches, commending and correcting them individually forces us to conclude that delegated authority and local autonomy are necessary attributes of the local Church.

I find Jonathan Leeman very helpful.  I quote:

“Yet a Christian’s heavenly membership in the universal church needs to show up on earth, just like a Christian’s imputed righteousness in Christ should show up in works of righteousness (James 2:14-26) . . . In other words, our membership in Christ’s universal and heavenly body cannot remain an abstract idea. If it is real, it will show up on earth—in real time and space with real people . . . Membership in the universal church must become visible in a local gathering of Christians.”[5]

The schema of the New Testament starts with the foundational Gospel accounts that provide for us the life, ministry and teaching of Christ. How the Gospel gets fleshed out is found in the Acts of the Apostles.  It is there that universal ideas, such as, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”,^[6] the Holy Spirit makes visible through church planting.  The task of the Epistles will be to give correction and direction to these visible churches throughout the known world, “in every place”.  It seems logical that if one is to deny the glory and significance of the local Church in deference to the universal, mystical Body of Christ, he or she must disregard most of our New Testament. God forbid.

In the next article I want us to examine the magnificent and majestic attributes of the local, visible Church “in every place”.

 

THE BRIDE YOU CAN KISS – Part 1

THE BRIDE YOU CAN KISS – Part 2

 

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^[1] MacArthur, J., Jr. (Ed.). (1997). The MacArthur Study Bible (electronic ed., p. 1993). Nashville, TN: Word Pub.

^[2] Easley, K. H. (1998). Revelation (Vol. 12, p. 21). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

[3] There is a good argument that these representatives may be angels, not human pastors. 

^[4] Whitlock, L. G., Sproul, R. C., Waltke, B. K., & Silva, M. (1995). The Reformation study Bible: bringing the light of the Reformation to Scripture: New King James Version (Re 1:12). Nashville: T. Nelson.

[5] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-church-universal-and-local/

^[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Mt 16:18). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.