Word of Salvation – March 2025
The Glorious Body Of Christ
Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp on W.C.F. ch.25 & Mat.16:18
Reading: Isaiah 64:1 – 65:1; Matthew 16:13-20;
Westminster Confession of Faith – ch.25:1,2,5
Singing: BoW.048 Great is the Lord our God
– BoW.483 Jesus, with Your church abide
– BoW.489 The Church’s one foundation
– BoW.243 The day You gave us Lord has ended
Theme: The Church as the community of those chosen for eternal life participating in the means of grace.
Introd: To say that there is no perfect church on earth is probably a huge understatement.
Let’s just stick with Reformed Churches… in fact with Reformed Churches in Queensland.
There’s not a congregation out of those eight that hasn’t had some major issue over the years.
Churches have seen pastors stood down or resigning.
There have been splits in a number of our churches.
I’m sure each church had people leave because they didn’t get on with others.
None of that is new. ‘Problems in the church’ – is precisely why Paul wrote most of his NT letters.
Corinthians was written because people argued over spiritual gifts and took each other to court.
The church at Galatia was troubled by false teachers who cut the heart out of the gospel.
In Thessalonica Paul had to admonish people for being lazy and not pulling their weight.
Even the best letter… the one to the Philippians has a sour note at the end.
Two ladies, Euodia and Synthyche (Odious & Soon-touchy) couldn’t get along together.
We can understand why people sometimes decide to give the church ‘the flick’.
Some time ago I wrote in our Bulletin about American author, Anne Rice.
She is reported to have said on her Facebook page that she no longer wants to be identified
with such a “quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group”.
She also added that although she has quit being a Christian she remains committed to Christ.
We understand why someone would say that.
There may even have been times when we felt the same way and wanted to give the church ‘the flick’.
A] THE CHURCH AS THE PLACE OF ELECTION.
- The problem with the Church is that the church is people.
We easily lose sight of that in our day and age.
We talk about church and we mean the building/facilities. Our church is on Boundary Street.
Or we talk about church as if it was some impersonal kind of human organization.
When talking about “The Church” we may even mean it’s leaders, the elders and deacons.
Or we say that we’re “going to church” and we mean by that ‘the worship service’.
The Greek NT’s word for church is ‘ekklesia’ – a word that never means a building.
It’s only ever used of a building metaphorically… not literally. The poet summed it up well:
The Church is not a building, the church is not a steeple,
The Church is not a resting place, the church is a people.
Ekklesia literally means “called out”.
Not “called out” as in yelled… but “called out” as in “called out to a meeting”.
It usually meant a public assembly of citizens… particularly when called out to vote.
But behind that NT word is a deeper shade of meaning.
This word Ekklesia was used to translate the OT Hebrew word for ‘congregation’ or ‘assembly’.
So as they translated the story of Israel in the wilderness into Greek they spoke of an Ekklesia.
There was that congregation… that assembly of the people of Israel in the desert.
So the word has behind it the idea of a community – a very special community.
The community of the people belonging to God.
That’s why in the Apostles’ Creed we not only confess to believe a holy catholic church.
But we immediately add: the communion of the saints.
Those two belong together. Those called out are the congregation of believers.
- What we especially need to remember is that it is God who builds this community.
That comes out in many, many different ways in the Bible and I want to explore that with you.
If the church is those who are called out – then they are called out by God.
If the church is a gathering – then it is because they are gathered together by God.
We see that most clearly in Matthew 16.
We have there that beautiful confession by Peter of who Jesus is:
You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
But in two ways Jesus makes clear that the church is the community that the Lord builds.
First Jesus tells Peter, “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church”.
Peter is not told that he and the disciples will build the church… Jesus will.
Today it is not your pastor(s), elders and deacons who build the church… Jesus does.
It is Jesus who is forming this community.
And the pity is that the Anne Rices of this world do not see that.
They think that they can have Jesus Christ without the Church.
But this Jesus, whom they do want, is building that Church that they don’t want.
There is a second way in which the Lord makes clear that this is His community.
When Peter makes that confession about Messiah it’s interesting to read Jesus reaction.
Does he say, “Well done, Peter, how clever of you to work that out.”? No!
He says: “This was revealed to you by my Father in heaven.” IOW: It’s all God’s doing!
That’s why our WCF introduces election: the church “consists of the whole number of the elect.”
It is God who gathers His elect people into this special community… into this ekklesia.
In Isaiah 65:1 God says the same thing in that beautifully profound statement:
“I revealed myself to those who didn’t ask for me; I was found by those who didn’t seek me.”
Which ever way you look at it the Church is God’s special community built by the Lord Himself.
- That helps us to understand why Jesus said: Even the gates of hell will not overcome the church.
If the Church was just a human organization we would have no such assurance.
Human organizations come and go.
They might begin in amazing ways… but they have a ‘use-by’ date.
But that is not true of the Church.
That’s why the WCF says: there will always be a church on earth.
There always has been and always will be.
That Church can be traced right back to our first parents in Eden.
And to that lovely declaration at the end of Genesis 4:
“At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord.”
There you have the first gathering together… being called out to worship God.
You can trace the story of the Church right through the O.T.
In many ways that is exactly what the O.T. is all about… it’s the story of the Church.
In this case the Church waiting for the first coming of its Messiah and Saviour.
Just as the Church today is the community of God waiting for His second coming.
There will always be a church on earth.
That’s a wonderful assurance. But we must not become complacent about that.
When Jesus says that the gates of hell will not overcome the church…
that is not an invitation to sit back and to wait for the final victory.
It’s a call for us to participate in the building of the church by gathering in God’s elect.
Because the reality is that God uses us and our witness to the gospel to grow His church.
In that way the church is also the means whereby God works out His decree of election.
B] THE CHURCH AS THE PLACE OF COMMUNITY.
- I want us to consider a little further this idea of the church as a community.
I want to do that because it troubles me that many think they can be Christians apart from the Church.
I recently asked a Christian couple which church they worshipped at.
They said, “We don’t!”
They went on to explain how they felt private devotions and family worship was sufficient.
One of the problems is the stark individualism of our culture.
Many people see Christianity as being only about my personal salvation.
There have been religious movements – such as pietism – that contributed to that idea.
I think of that highly emotional pietistic song, “I come to the garden alone.”
In that song Christians sing that Jesus “walks with me and talks with me.”
It ends with: “and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.”
Really…! Is it all just about Jesus and me…?
Again… it’s enlightening to examine Jesus’ reaction to Peter at Caesarea Philippi.
Jesus didn’t commend Peter for his clever deductions.
But neither did He say what is often said to people today when they confess Jesus:
They say: “Okay, now you are saved…!”
Jesus didn’t say to Peter: “Because of this confession you are now saved from hell.
No! He announced the Church… His gathered community that even hell could not overcome.
It’s true that you must believe in Jesus as your personal Saviour.
You need to trust that His death was for you and that He obeyed God perfectly on your behalf.
But when you’ve done all of that you need to understand that you belong to “the Ekklesia”.
You have been called out to join a community – together with many other believers.
- The point I want to make is that we cannot separate these two things.
Commitment to Christ cannot be separated from commitment to the Church.
You cannot really have the one without the other.
And if you try to live that way as a Christian your spiritual life will be the poorer for it.
Let me come at this another way through two things mentioned in our WCF in 25:1.
It uses two Biblical images to show the close connection of Jesus and His Church.
First it speaks of the Church as the spouse of Christ.
That imagery is very familiar to us: Christ is the Bridegroom, the Church is His Bride.
You find that kind of language in the Gospels… in Ephesians… in Revelation.
But what are you saying if you commit to Jesus but not to His Church?
You want a relationship with the Bridegroom… but not as the Bride.,,??
But you cannot relate to the Bridegroom except as the Bride.
The second Biblical image in the WCF is the metaphor of ‘the Body’.
And again that imagery is familiar to us: Christ is the Head, the Church is His Body.
You find that kind of language in Romans… in 1Corinthians… in Ephesians.
But what are you saying if you commit to Jesus but not to His Church?
You want a relationship with the Head… but not as part of the Body….??
That’s absurd…! It’s like being an independent eye or ear that is not part of a body.
Okay the WCF says these things about the “invisible Church” – the spiritual reality.
But we need to be careful. You can’t drive a wedge between the visible and invisible Church.
That’s precisely why some opt out. They say: It’s enough to belong to the invisible Church.
- The reality is that in this life the invisible Church takes on form and shape in visible churches.
And when we think of that visible Church we do need a healthy dose of realism.
Many years ago I had a friend who had been in half a dozen different churches.
When he resigned yet once again to go elsewhere I said to him:
“I think your trouble is that you are looking for a perfect church on earth.”
The trouble is that you’ll never find it this side of glory.
When I think of the local church with all its problems I can so understand why people “move on”.
And it’s perfectly understandable that some want Christ but not His Church.
Anne Rice is correct. We often are a “quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious” group.
Because we are a community of sinners redeemed by grace.
I love the realism of the WCF at this point – in fact I prefer it to what the Belgic Confession says.
The Belgic Confession says that it’s easy to distinguish the true church from the false church.
Up to a point, that is certainly true. But what the WCF says in 25:5 is even more true:
The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error.
IOW All churches are “more or less” pure.
There is an additional Biblical image of the Church that the W.C.F. does not mention.
In Galatians 4 Paul speaks of the church as our Mother.
All too often she is not a very good mother… in Hosea she is pictured as a prostitute.
But no matter how poor a mother the church is, she is the only mother we have.
And there is a sense in which we must love her despite her many failings.
At least – up to the point where it is clear that this is no longer a church of Jesus.
The WCF also speaks of churches deteriorating to the point of becoming synagogues of Satan.
That language from Rev.2:9 & 3:9 shows that churches can fall away so as not to be a church.
C] THE CHURCH AS THE PLACE OF SALVATION.
- There is one other matter that I want to touch on in this chapter of the W.C.F.
That’s the matter of salvation.
The WCF says that outside of the church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.
Years ago the RC church taught that you can’t be saved if you don’t belong to the RC church.
(They have modified that and now call us Protestants ‘separated brethren’)
But aren’t we teaching the same thing here in the W.C.F.?
Let me take you back to Matthew 16 and Peter’s confession of Jesus.
Peter is certainly saved because that confession had become his conviction.
(And – by the way – Jesus builds His Church on that confession, not on Peter himself.
It’s not as our RC friends teach – that Peter became the first Pope)
Jesus is building His Church wherever and whenever that confession is made.
But Romans 10 makes clear that wherever this confession of Jesus is made, people are saved.
“If you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart
that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved.” (Rom.10:9)
So why does the WCF say that outside of the church there is no ordinarily possibility of salvation?
Okay, it does allow for the extraordinary and the extremely unusual. Consider a possibility:
Someone in a totally pagan community comes to salvation – maybe thru reading Scripture.
And that person never in his life has any contact with any other believers. That’s possible.
But it’s not the ordinary way in which God brings people to faith. He does that thru the Church.
Within that Ekklesia – that called out community there is what we call ‘the means of grace’.
And people are normally saved as someone from that community brings them the Word.
- That brings us to the whole matter of the structure of the church: The organization and the leaders.
Jesus speaks about that too in Matthew 16.
He ends by talking about the role and the importance of the leaders.
He says that all His power and authority in the church works thru those leaders.
He even expresses that in terms that we might struggle with today.
I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of heaven;
whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven,
and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
That’s quite an amazing thing to say.
This fallible, called-out community is entrusted with the keys of the Kingdom.
Even to the point where actions here on earth are linked to consequences in heaven.
Today we might even wonder whether it was really safe for Jesus to do that.
Those leaders of the church then… those disciples to whom he was speaking were imperfect.
And we know only too well that the leaders of the church today are imperfect.
Can we really trust them with those keys of the Kingdom of heaven?
In fact, we know that those keys have often been misused by the church.
Churches have excommunicated people who should never have been excommunicated.
It again reminds us that the church too struggles with the brokenness of life.
What we need to remember here is that these keys are especially the preaching of the gospel.
So we’re still talking about what the WCF says when it links the Church to salvation.
That outside of the church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.
It’s because people are brought to faith thru the preaching of Jesus Christ.
And that faith is nurtured thru the Church’s process of Christian discipline.
- Again that highlights for us why we cannot just dismiss the Church as unimportant.
If it’s true that outside of the church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.
then the role of that community of called out people is vital.
The church exists not only for God’s glory and to be a blessing to the believers.
It also exists to be God’s appointed means of grace to others who don’t yet know the Lord.
This humble community (that often fails) has an awesome responsibility.
Jesus has establishes His Body on earth for the salvation of the world.
This is the community that is to be salt and light in a fallen and sinful world.
In our individualistic culture where folk often think they don’t need the church we need to teach this.
Becoming a member of the Church is not an optional extra to Christianity.
It’s not just something only for those who naturally like to mix with other people.
No! When, like Peter, we confess that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God…
Then Jesus makes us part of His Body… we become part of the Bride of Christ.
And within that community our faith is then nurtured.
And from within that community we reach out to others.
Knowing that through us the Lord God is still gathering in His elect.
In this life the Church will always be less than perfect.
It’s a struggle to maintain purity of doctrine as falsehood constantly threatens.
It’s an ongoing battle to be the welcoming community Jesus wants us to be.
And reaching out to others with the Good News is not always easy.
But today we do all that in the knowledge that the gates of hell will not win out.
And one day… we the Church… will be presented to Christ without stain or blemish.
Amen.