Word of Salvation – Vol. 40 No.33 – September 1995

 

The Holy Catholic Church

 

Sermon by Rev. W. Wiersma on Lord’s Day 21, Q & A 54

 

Dear Members of Christ.

Whenever we think or talk about the Church, we should do so with a sense of wonder and respect.  For as the well-known hymn says:
            The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord,
            She is His new creation by water and the Word.

Yes, the church is the creation of the Saviour Jesus Christ.  The church is a miracle of God’s grace and Spirit.  As Christians we should never look at the church without faith.  Because without faith we will see only a bunch of people.  A bunch of people with all their idiosyncrasies – all their little pet projects and their little pet hates.

Without faith it is all too easy to run the church down, to stay away from the church or to leave the church.  Without faith you can only see fallible people.  You can’t see Christ.  But looking at and seeing the church with faith, seeing the church as the people with whom God is busy in a special way, you get a totally different perspective and impression, don’t you?  Look at the way the Catechism puts it: The church is the community chosen for eternal life and united in true faith, which is being gathered, protected and defended by the Son of God for Himself.

Later on the Catechism will add that believers, one and all, as members of this community, share in Christ and all His benefits.  It is in the church, in the community of Christ, that we come to share Christ and all His benefits.  The Bible and the teaching of the church know nothing about solo-Christianity.  In fact the old church fathers used to say, “Outside the church there is no salvation.”

That saying has created all sorts of questions, like: which church?  Well, that is a good question.  Outside which church is there no salvation?  Another way of putting that question is to ask, which is the true church?  Or, which church is the Catechism talking about?  Well, let me be very brief in coming to the answer to those questions.  In which church will sinners come to share in Christ and all His benefits?  IN THE CHURCH OF THE LORD JESUS!  That’s right, in the church of the Lord Jesus.

Obviously I say that very deliberately.  I do so because the Bible and Catechism teach us to think and talk this way.  You see, the trouble with a lot of talk about ‘the true church’ is that it is about what people do.  And that leads church folk to talk about ‘our church’ as opposed to ‘their church’.  So you can hear people argue: in our church we do this.  Or: in our church we would never do that.  As if things we do or don’t do determine the reality of the church.

So you also find people in various churches trying to outdo each other.  Both inside their local congregation and as congregations towards each other, or even as a denomination.  And the devil is laughing because there is no better way of making the church ineffective and self-destructive than by making it man-centred.  Make people think about the church as ‘our church’ and you’ve got them presenting themselves, instead of proclaiming Christ.

The Apostles Creed and the Heidelberg Catechism answer the question, “Outside which church is there no salvation?” by referring to something that belongs to God.  The church is brought into being by God, not by us.  That’s true of the whole world-wide church, but that is also true of the local church.

The local congregation to which we belong is never ‘our church,’ as if we own it and can do with it what we like.  It is not the church of a particular minister.  It is not his to mould as he sees fit.  It is not the church of a particular family or of a particular clan.  The church belongs to the Lord!  By His grace and choosing we may enjoy the extraordinary privilege of belonging to the church.  Yes, that’s a privilege.  It is a privilege to be chosen by God in Christ, and to be gathered, protected and defended by the Son of God for Himself.

Did you hear that?  That you are in the church of the Lord?  Not just for your benefit; not just for what you can get out of it.  You are in the church for the Lord.  And the question that should keep you busy is not “what do I like or don’t I like?” but “what does the Lord want me to do for Him in the church?”  You get the drift, I hope?  In the church which the Lord brings together and which the Lord runs by His Spirit and Word, we must be willing to serve.  We must be willing to do all kinds of tasks.  We must be willing to work together with all kinds of people for the Lord’s sake.

Let’s now have a closer look at how the church of the Lord Jesus comes into being.  The Catechism summarises the teaching of Scripture on this as follows: “I believe that the Son of God, through His Spirit and Word, out of the entire human race from the beginning of the world to its end, gathers, protects and preserves for Himself a community chosen for eternal life and united in true faith.”  The Son of God gathers the community chosen to everlasting life.  The Good Shepherd gathers the sheep for whom He has laid down His life.

The growth of the Christian church is therefore essentially the work of the Son of God – of the Lord Jesus Christ.  That’s what we see in the book of Acts, don’t we?  The risen Lord gathering His church from all the nations of the earth.  This is a marvellous truth to remember when it comes to thinking about church growth and evangelism.  This is the Lord’s work.  We can only be His instruments.

Which brings me to the next point; namely, that the means by which Christ gathers the church is His Spirit and the Word.  Here the Catechism is suggesting that in the proclamation of the Word both the speaker and the hearer need the Holy Spirit for an effective communication of Christ.  Without the presence and working of the Holy Spirit, preaching will not be the Word of God – the Word of Truth and Life.

How can a man preach the Truth if he has not grasped it himself.  And how shall he grasp it, without the Holy Spirit opening his mind and heart.  Preaching is just as much a matter of prayer as it is of study.  Jesus said, that when His people would be filled with the Spirit, rivers of living water would flow from their bellies.  That suggests that the word of life is not only spread by preachers but by all spirit-filled Christians.  What is the saying?  “Whatever the heart does fill, the mouth will spill.”

It is by the Spirit that our hearts are filled with Christ.  He takes of Christ and makes Him known to us.  It is also by the Spirit that hearers hear the word of Life – that they hear the voice of the Good Shepherd.  It is by the Spirit that men are enabled to hear, to pick up the message which Christ is sending through fallible people.

And what is the message by which Christ draws men to himself?  What is the message which the ambassadors of Christ must proclaim in this world of sinners among which some are chosen to eternal life?  In the words of the apostle Paul the message is, “Be reconciled to God.”  Come back to God.  Come to Me.  Believe in Me.  I am the Way the Truth and the Life.  Come to Me, for no one can come to the Father except through Me.

The way back to God is through Jesus.  Through Jesus there is forgiveness for those who have sinned.  Through Jesus we hear that God loves us – that God will take us back.  God will restore our life and heal our brokenness.  Come back to God.  That is the message.  That is the appeal which comes with the good news that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

Well, there you have the answer to the question: Who belong to the church.  Those who believe in Jesus!  Those who are reconciled with God in Christ!  Those that have been bought by the blood of Christ!  Now, you can be sure that that will be a motley lot.  They are people from all walks of life, from all sorts of cultures.  People with pasts that are horrible, with problems you wouldn’t believe.  But they belong to the church of the Lord because they share this one thing, they are His!  The Father has given them to Him.  He has sacrificed Himself for them and by the power of His Spirit they have heard His voice calling them to Life.  And because they belong to Jesus they belong to each other whether they like it or not.  What qualifies us for membership of the church is belonging to Jesus.

Now, that only makes sense to those who believe, those who have faith in Jesus.  In that faith they are proud to say: ‘Of this community I am, and always will be, a living member.’  By the grace and power of Jesus Christ who bought me with His precious blood, and whose voice I heard calling me, I am a member of the holy church which belongs to Jesus.  I am a member of that world-wide community that rejoices in the Saviour, who not only gave His life-blood for us, but who has risen from the dead and is now interceding for His own that they may be kept in the faith.

Christ gathers, protects and preserves His church.  What a comforting truth.  The future of the church is in the hands of Christ.  He not only brings the church together.  He protects it against the onslaught of the world and the powers of darkness.  He provides the weapons in the church’s battle with the powers of darkness in the spiritual realm.  The risen victorious Christ, to whom all power and authority has been given in heaven and earth, takes care of His own.  All that God-given power is exercised for the benefit of the church.  (See Eph.1:20ff)

And our Lord not only protects His people from evil forces outside, He even defends them from evil forces inside.  There is a beautiful passage in the first letter of Peter about the inheritance kept for God’s people in the heavens.  But those people themselves are also kept by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

Christ is keeping His people.  He continues to be their righteousness, holiness and redemption.  He continues to pray for them.  He is our Advocate who pleads for His own on the basis of that all-sufficient sacrifice once made on the Cross.  He prays that their faith shall not fail.  He calls, He warns, He disciplines.  He uses every means at His disposal.  His Word, His Spirit, His church, His people.  For the Lord cares for His own.  “Nothing,” He said in that beautiful passage in John 10, “nothing will be able to take my sheep and lambs out of my care, It is the Father’s will that I should lose none of all that He has given me.”  It is in the faithfulness and power of our glorious Redeemer, the Head of the church that our eternal security is found.

Halleluiah!  What a Saviour!

Amen.