by Pastor Patrick Cho

If you attend Lighthouse long enough you are bound to hear some teaching about the priority of the local church. This is one of the firm convictions of LBC since the Scriptures teach that the church is God’s one ordained institution that He will use to carry out His will and purpose in the world. In Matthew 16:18, after Peter’s great confession, Christ says that He would build His church. It is interesting that Christ does not say, “I will build THE church.” It is HIS church. It has always been His church and has never been our church. Because the church is Christ’s we ought to have the same understanding about it that Christ had, namely a biblical understanding as it is revealed in Christ’s Word.

In Acts 20:28, Paul instructs the Ephesian elders to “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” In Matthew 16, Christ declared that the church was His church. In the Acts passage, Paul gives the reason why it is Christ’s – Christ purchased the church with His own blood. This certainly buttresses the notion that Christ can lay claim to the church. He determines what the church is and how it is to be run. This is the reason why Paul even sees the role of an elder as a divinely ordained position, “among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (cf. 1 Tim 3). The elders would have no authority in the church if it had not first been given to them by God.

1 Corinthians 4:17 gives another picture of what it means that the church is God’s divinely ordained institution. Paul tells the Corinthians in that passage that he would send Timothy to remind the church of his ways. Paul says that his ways “are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church.” There was no room for human invention when it came to the work of the ministry. Paul was devoted to Christ’s ways – he made Christ’s ways his ways. Notice also the consistency with which Paul did his ministry. It was this way “everywhere in every church.” This Christ-centered ministry permeated his missions work because he understood that the church was God’s church and not his church (cf. 1 Cor 1:2).

It is God’s church and so God appoints the leaders. It is God’s church so God directs the ministry. In this very tangible way, Christ is building His church. This is the reason why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:28 that God has appointed in the church the various ministers and ministries. God governs the order in the church because it is His church (cf. 1 Cor 14:33). What greater statement is there about Christ’s identity with the church than Ephesians 1:22-23, “And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all”? The church is described as the body of Christ. He is the head of the church and the church is subject to His headship (Eph 5:23-24; cf. Col 1:18). This is not an overbearing, cruel headship, but a loving relationship that shows Christ’s unbreakable commitment to His church. The language of Ephesians 5 is sometimes hard to follow because of the intermingling of imagery between Christ and the church and the husband and the wife. The marriage relationship is to be a picture of Christ’s commitment to the church. It is no wonder then that God hates divorce (Mal 2:16).

One potential point of confusion that I am happy Pastor John brought up is the distinction between the church and the parachurch. One of the reasons why this is a point of confusion is that it is a comparison of two institutions – one divinely ordained in Scripture and the other conceived by men. In this sense, the two are not comparable as two of the same kind. Rather, they must be examined as two different things.

I want to emphasize that I am not in any way saying that God cannot use the parachurch for His purposes. He certainly has and continues to do so. I am not saying that the parachurch is incapable of any good. Certainly I can bear testimony to the amazing ministry that parachurches provide having been part of an amazing parachurch ministry in college and even after college in seminary. The point that I am making is that if one really desires to be committed to ministry as God intended ministry to be done, he must primarily be committed to the church. Although the New Testament speaks of the universal, invisible, catholic church, it is also clear that the working out of ministry is done by means of local churches. In this sense, it might be argued that ontologically as believers we find identity in the universal church. But economically, our function as believers is best understood in the context of the local church. Regardless of whether you are involved in parachurch ministry or not, as helpful as parachurch ministry can be, as believers you are called to work out your spiritual giftedness and abilities in the church, because it is His church.

I want to elaborate on the differences between the church and the parachurch, but I will have to save that for a later time since this entry is getting long.