The aim of this arti­cle

In the fol­low­ing arti­cle we would like to show that the Chris­t­ian Church, as the Bible describes it, is a vis­i­ble body of believ­ers. It can be seen by the world and gives tes­ti­mo­ny of God’s love, puri­ty and holi­ness.

1 Introduction

Many peo­ple are aware that not every­one who goes to a Sun­day “church ser­vice” is real­ly a Chris­t­ian. Such peo­ple are con­sid­ered to be “nom­i­nal Chris­tians” (Chris­tians by name only), who do not have a rela­tion­ship with Jesus. These “Sun­day-Chris­tians” usu­al­ly attend church meet­ings, pray, sing and often even take com­mu­nion along with the oth­ers even though they have not com­mit­ted their lives to Jesus. This sit­u­a­tion is regard­ed as bib­li­cal by the var­i­ous denom­i­na­tions and is referred to as the teach­ing of the invis­i­ble church.

Accord­ing to this teach­ing there is both a “vis­i­ble church” and an “invis­i­ble church”. The vis­i­ble church takes the form of dif­fer­ent denom­i­na­tions and church­es (e.g. Roman Catholic, Angli­can, Reformed, Luther­an, Bap­tist, Methodist etc.). These vis­i­ble church­es con­sist of both believ­ing mem­bers (or born-again Chris­tians) and mem­bers who are not real­ly believ­ers (or nom­i­nal Chris­tians). The invis­i­ble church, on the oth­er hand, is con­sid­ered to be the one true church com­pris­ing all the born-again mem­bers of the vis­i­ble church­es across the globe. It is not a vis­i­ble organ­i­sa­tion or denom­i­na­tion; its mem­bers are con­nect­ed by their faith with­out even know­ing one anoth­er or hav­ing per­son­al fel­low­ship with each oth­er. These peo­ple see it as their duty to evan­ge­lize the unbe­liev­ing mem­bers of the local vis­i­ble church­es which they attend and where God has “put” them–a kind of inter­nal evan­ge­lism.¹

The New Tes­ta­ment shows us a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent pic­ture of the church from the one described above.

2 The Church in the First Century

The first church in Jerusalem, which came into exis­tence after Peter’s ser­mon at Pen­te­cost, is described in the fol­low­ing words:

Now many signs and won­ders were reg­u­lar­ly done among the peo­ple by the hands of the apos­tles. And they were all togeth­er in Solomon’s Por­ti­co. None of the rest dared join them, but the peo­ple held them in high esteem. And more than ever believ­ers were added to the Lord, mul­ti­tudes of both men and women… (Acts 5:12–14)

The mir­a­cles which hap­pened among the Chris­tians, their devo­tion to God and love for each oth­er aroused respect and awe among the Jews. They real­ized that join­ing them would mean giv­ing their lives to Christ com­plete­ly. Those of them who had the wish to love God with all their heart believed and joined the church. The rest of the Jews who were not ready to live such a life, did not dare to join.

If an unbe­liev­er came to the church, every­body assessed the “secrets of his heart”:

If, there­fore, the whole church comes togeth­er and all speak in tongues, and out­siders or unbe­liev­ers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds? But if all proph­esy, and an unbe­liev­er or out­sider enters, he is con­vict­ed by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are dis­closed, and so, falling on his face, he will wor­ship God and declare that God is real­ly among you. (1 Corinthi­ans 14:23–25)

The whole church endeav­oured to help the new­com­er to under­stand what he had to repent of. Some­times this process was quick­er and in oth­er cas­es it took longer. If, how­ev­er, the new­com­er did not want to repent after hear­ing the assess­ment of the Chris­tians, there was no base to bap­tise him, nor did he join or take part in the fel­low­ship.

There were excep­tion­al cas­es in which peo­ple like Simon the sor­cer­er joined the Chris­tians after hear­ing the Gospel. When Philip preached about Christ to the Samar­i­tans, a large num­ber of them believed and were baptized–including Simon, although he had not changed his way of think­ing. Since so many peo­ple repent­ed at the same time, it was not easy for Philip to rec­og­nize that one of them (Simon) was not hon­est. Thus, Simon suc­ceed­ed in deceiv­ing the oth­er Chris­tians for a short while. Soon, how­ev­er, the truth about him emerged, and Apos­tle Peter, who lat­er arrived from Jerusalem, opposed him res­olute­ly:

Now when Simon saw that the Spir­it was giv­en through the lay­ing on of the apos­tles’ hands, he offered them mon­ey, say­ing, “Give me this pow­er also, so that any­one on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spir­it.” But Peter said to him, “May your sil­ver per­ish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with mon­ey! You have nei­ther part nor lot in this mat­ter, for your heart is not right before God. Repent, there­fore, of this wicked­ness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if pos­si­ble, the intent of your heart may be for­giv­en you. For I see that you are in the gall of bit­ter­ness and in the bond of iniq­ui­ty.” And Simon answered, “Pray for me to the Lord, that noth­ing of what you have said may come upon me.” (Acts 8:18–24)

We see a sim­i­lar­ly strict assess­ment in such cas­es when some men who lived or thought in a dif­fer­ent way to what Jesus and the apos­tles taught slipped into the church.

For cer­tain peo­ple have crept in unno­ticed who long ago were des­ig­nat­ed for this con­dem­na­tion, ungod­ly peo­ple, who per­vert the grace of our God into sen­su­al­i­ty and deny our only Mas­ter and Lord, Jesus Christ. (Jude 4)

Jude’s aim was to express that these men have no place in the church. Even if they suc­ceed­ed in slip­ping in, they were only able to remain in the church for a short time, until the believ­ers under­stood that they were not actu­al­ly broth­ers. We find sev­er­al oth­er admon­ish­ments in the let­ters of the New Tes­ta­ment urg­ing the church­es to expose and sep­a­rate from such peo­ple: Acts 20:29–31; Matthew 24:23–26; 1Timothy 4:1–3; 6:3–5; 2 Tim­o­thy 3:1–9; 1 John 2:18–19.

3 The Purity and Holiness of the Church

If a mem­ber of the church sinned in a way that made him become unwor­thy of the fel­low­ship with the saints and he did not want to turn from his sins in spite of the patient help and repeat­ed admo­ni­tions of his broth­ers, the church ceased hav­ing fel­low­ship with him: he was exclud­ed. This was based on Jesus’ com­mand­ment:

If your broth­er or sis­ter sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they lis­ten to you, you have won them over. But if they will not lis­ten, take one or two oth­ers along, so that ‘every mat­ter may be estab­lished by the tes­ti­mo­ny of two or three wit­ness­es.’ If they still refuse to lis­ten, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to lis­ten even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax col­lec­tor. Tru­ly I tell you, what­ev­er you bind on earth will be bound in heav­en, and what­ev­er you loose on earth will be loosed in heav­en. (Matthew 18:15–18 NIV)

The Jews did not have fel­low­ship with Gen­tiles because they con­sid­ered them unclean (see Acts 10:28). They treat­ed tax col­lec­tors in a sim­i­lar way because they com­pro­mised with the Romans (Matthew 9:10–11). This cat­e­gor­i­cal rejec­tion was not right, yet this was the Jew­ish prac­tice. Jesus refers to this prac­tice but shows that the rea­son for sep­a­ra­tion should not be someone’s social sta­tus or nation­al­i­ty, but his refusal to accept the help and cor­rec­tion his broth­ers and sis­ters repeat­ed­ly tried giv­ing him, choos­ing instead to remain in his sin.

There is a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of this instruc­tion of Jesus being applied in the Corinthi­an church:

It is actu­al­ly report­ed that there is sex­u­al immoral­i­ty among you, and of a kind that is not tol­er­at­ed even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arro­gant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spir­it; and as if present, I have already pro­nounced judge­ment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assem­bled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spir­it is present, with the pow­er of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliv­er this man to Satan for the destruc­tion of the flesh, so that his spir­it may be saved in the day of the Lord. Your boast­ing is not good. Do you not know that a lit­tle leav­en leav­ens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leav­en that you may be a new lump, as you real­ly are unleav­ened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sac­ri­ficed. (1 Corinthi­ans 5:1–7)

Some vers­es lat­er Paul con­tin­ues:

But now I am writ­ing to you not to asso­ciate with any­one who bears the name of broth­er if he is guilty of sex­u­al immoral­i­ty or greed, or is an idol­ater, revil­er, drunk­ard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judg­ing out­siders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those out­side. “Purge the evil per­son from among you.” (1 Corinthi­ans 5:11–13)

Paul shows here that there are clear con­di­tions for belong­ing to the church. God’s church can­not have fel­low­ship with some­one who clings to sin. Such a per­son rejects God and has no rela­tion­ship with Him. The church would deceive them if it did not show them this spir­i­tu­al real­i­ty by exclu­sion. If they remained in the church, they would influ­ence oth­ers like “leav­en”: There would be a great dan­ger that oth­ers in the church will no longer clear­ly assess such sins and will tol­er­ate them in their own lives, too. The sep­a­ra­tion described here (i.e. exclu­sion) is hard and painful, but Paul express­es hope for the sin­ner’s repen­tance (verse 5²). If they repent, they can return to the church with a renewed deci­sion to live a life wor­thy of God and his church.

This is how the first Chris­t­ian church­es guard­ed their puri­ty so that peo­ple who had not real­ly repent­ed would not remain among them. That is why Paul can address the broth­ers and sis­ters in his let­ters as “saints” (e.g. 1 Corinthi­ans 1:1–3; 2 Corinthi­ans 1:1–2).³

In the New Tes­ta­ment the term “saint” means the same as “Chris­t­ian” (Acts 9:13; Eph­esians 5:3; Philip­pi­ans 4:21–22; Hebrews 3:1). All Chris­tians are saints and peo­ple can only belong to the church if they let them­selves be sanc­ti­fied and let God reign in their lives (Hebrews 12:14; Eph­esians 5:5; Gala­tians 5:19–21). Saints are not sin­less peo­ple (this is vis­i­ble espe­cial­ly in the let­ters to the Corinthi­ans) but peo­ple “who are sanc­ti­fied in Christ Jesus”, who have accept­ed Jesus’ for­give­ness and sal­va­tion. Even if they do stum­ble and sin, they will lis­ten to the admo­ni­tions of their broth­ers and want to change. Each and every mem­ber of the church fights against sin. A Chris­t­ian can­not live a dou­ble-life. He can­not serve God while his heart is in the world (see: Matthew 6:24; Matthew 10:38–39; James 4:4; 1 John 2:15–17; John 12:25–26; 1 John 2:4–6; see also our arti­cle “What Does It Mean to Be a Chris­t­ian?”). Like­wise, the church can­not accom­mo­date sin­ners who do not want to change.

If Chris­tians accept­ed peo­ple who fol­low the way of this world as par­tak­ers in their spir­i­tu­al fel­low­ship, they would be deceiv­ing them, because they would be treat­ing them as their broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ, although in fact they are not. In this way they would also be por­tray­ing a false image of the church to unbe­liev­ers.

Do not be unequal­ly yoked with unbe­liev­ers. For what part­ner­ship has right­eous­ness with law­less­ness? Or what fel­low­ship has light with dark­ness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what por­tion does a believ­er share with an unbe­liev­er? What agree­ment has the tem­ple of God with idols? For we are the tem­ple of the liv­ing God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my peo­ple. There­fore go out from their midst, and be sep­a­rate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will wel­come you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daugh­ters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthi­ans 6:14–18)

The Greek word for church (eccle­sia) means an assem­bly that is called out. This word was orig­i­nal­ly used to refer to the cus­tom of mes­sen­gers call­ing out the cit­i­zens of ancient Greek towns from their hous­es for offi­cial assem­blies. Thus, the mes­sen­gers of the Gospel also call God’s peo­ple out of the world into his assem­bly. Chris­tians con­tin­ue liv­ing in this world and among the unbe­liev­ers, but they do not have spir­i­tu­al fel­low­ship with them.⁴

As we see, the prac­tice of the first Chris­t­ian church­es was total­ly dif­fer­ent from that of today’s denom­i­na­tions. Today every­body can become a mem­ber of the “church” (after com­plet­ing some for­mal­i­ties), and usu­al­ly exclu­sion is not prac­tised either. In order to be able to dis­tin­guish who should be accept­ed as a part of the church and who should be exclud­ed, it is impor­tant to spend more time togeth­er and take part in each other’s spir­i­tu­al lives. With­out this devo­tion to our broth­ers’ sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, Christ’s com­mand­ment can­not be ful­filled, and the puri­ty of the church can­not be pre­served, jeop­ar­diz­ing its very exis­tence.

4 The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds

The wrong prac­tice, how­ev­er, did not just begin in our time. As ear­ly as the fifth cen­tu­ry, in the con­text of the Donatist con­tro­ver­sy⁵, Augus­tine used the New Tes­ta­ment para­ble of the wheat and the weeds to jus­ti­fy the pres­ence of unbe­liev­ers in the church. Augus­tine claimed, based on this para­ble, that the church is a “mixed body” (cor­pus per­mix­tum) in which the wicked live togeth­er with the right­eous.

Let us look at what Jesus actu­al­ly said in the para­ble:

He put anoth­er para­ble before them, say­ing, “The king­dom of heav­en may be com­pared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleep­ing, his ene­my came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the ser­vants of the mas­ter of the house came and said to him, ‘Mas­ter, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An ene­my has done this.’ So the ser­vants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gath­er them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gath­er­ing the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow togeth­er until the har­vest, and at har­vest time I will tell the reapers, Gath­er the weeds first and bind them in bun­dles to be burned, but gath­er the wheat into my barn.’” (Matthew 13:24–30)

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his dis­ci­ples came to him, say­ing, “Explain to us the para­ble of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the king­dom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the ene­my who sowed them is the dev­il. The har­vest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gath­ered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gath­er out of his king­dom all caus­es of sin and all law-break­ers, and throw them into the fiery fur­nace. In that place there will be weep­ing and gnash­ing of teeth. Then the right­eous will shine like the sun in the king­dom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.” (Matthew 13:36–43)

In this para­ble, the field is the world, not the church (verse 38). The church is in the world and shines as a light in it; there­fore, the church can­not be iden­ti­cal to the world! This is what Paul writes to the church of Philip­pi:

…that you may be blame­less and inno­cent, chil­dren of God with­out blem­ish in the midst of a crooked and twist­ed gen­er­a­tion, among whom you shine as lights in the world, hold­ing fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labour in vain. (Philip­pi­ans 2:15–16)

Jesus used the para­ble of the wheat and the weeds in order to help the Jews to cor­rect their ideas about the Mes­si­ah. The Jews at that time expect­ed the Mes­si­ah to come as a glo­ri­ous king and a right­eous judge; he would res­cue his peo­ple from the oppres­sion of the god­less and cut off the evil­do­ers from the land.

Jesus, how­ev­er, did not come to rule as a polit­i­cal king, nor did he come to pun­ish the evil­do­ers. The last judge­ment will take place on the day of his sec­ond com­ing. Until that time, both the good and the evil have to live on earth togeth­er. His king­dom is spir­i­tu­al and has over­come the world in a spir­i­tu­al way:

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribu­la­tion. But take heart; I have over­come the world. (John 16:33)

In Matthew 13:41 the Son of Man gath­ers the evil­do­ers out of his king­dom. Yet here, his king­dom does not stand for the church, but for the world. Jesus at his sec­ond com­ing will be the Lord of the whole cre­at­ed world and he has the author­i­ty to rule over it as the Mes­si­ah:

Then the sev­enth angel blew his trum­pet, and there were loud voic­es in heav­en, say­ing, “The king­dom of the world has become the king­dom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever.”  (Rev­e­la­tion 11:15)

A sim­i­lar inter­pre­ta­tion applies to the para­ble of the net.

Again, the king­dom of heav­en is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gath­ered fish of every kind. When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sort­ed the good into con­tain­ers but threw away the bad. So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and sep­a­rate the evil from the right­eous and throw them into the fiery fur­nace. In that place there will be weep­ing and gnash­ing of teeth. (Matthew 13:47–50)

The fact that Jesus com­pares the king­dom of heav­en with the net does not mean that the net refers to the church. In oth­er para­bles he com­pares the king­dom of heav­en, for instance, to a king⁶ or to a mer­chant⁷. In these para­bles, there is no grounds to think that the king or the mer­chant sym­bol­ize the church. Jesus often used the expres­sion “the king­dom of heav­en” when he want­ed to explain some­thing con­cern­ing God’s King­dom. “God’s King­dom” (in Matthew: “King­dom of Heav­en”) to the Jews meant the king­dom of the Mes­si­ah. With his para­bles Jesus main­ly want­ed to cor­rect their wrong under­stand­ing of this.

5 Other Frequently Misinterpreted Passages

5.1 Different vessels in a house (2 Timothy 2:16–21)

But avoid world­ly and emp­ty chat­ter, for it will lead to fur­ther ungod­li­ness, and their talk will spread like gan­grene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Phile­tus, men who have gone astray from the truth say­ing that the res­ur­rec­tion has already tak­en place, and they upset the faith of some. Nev­er­the­less, the firm foun­da­tion of God stands, hav­ing this seal, “The Lord knows those who are His,” and, “Every­one who names the name of the Lord is to abstain from wicked­ness.” Now in a large house there are not only gold and sil­ver ves­sels, but also ves­sels of wood and of earth­en­ware, and some to hon­or and some to dis­hon­or. There­fore, if any­one cleans­es him­self from these things, he will be a ves­sel for hon­or, sanc­ti­fied, use­ful to the Mas­ter, pre­pared for every good work. (NASB)

In sup­port of the false teach­ing of the “invis­i­ble church”, the house men­tioned by Paul (v. 20) is iden­ti­fied with the church and the ves­sels to hon­our and dis­hon­our are wrong­ly referred to the believ­ers and unbe­liev­ers, respec­tive­ly, who are togeth­er in the church.

It is cor­rect to refer the house to the church since the con­text is also about the life of the church. How­ev­er, the ves­sels to “hon­our” and “dis­hon­our” do not refer to believ­ing and unbe­liev­ing mem­bers but, based on the con­text, to those mem­bers who stand firm in their faith and in the teach­ing and to oth­ers who are weak­er and could be more eas­i­ly influ­enced by false teach­ers (There were Gnos­tic false teach­ers out­side the church who should be avoid­ed because their teach­ing spreads like gan­grene and they had already con­fused many in their faith). To cleanse one­self from “these things” is sim­i­lar to the thought in verse 19: “every­one … is to abstain from wicked­ness…”. So “these things” do not refer to the ves­sels to dis­hon­our, but to the false teach­ings and teach­ers. The “ves­sels to dis­hon­our” may have start­ed to give in to the influ­ence of Gnos­tic deceivers but if they sep­a­rate them­selves from them, they will become “a ves­sel for hon­our, sanc­ti­fied, use­ful to the Mas­ter, pre­pared for every good work.”

5.2 Some have no knowledge of God (1 Corinthians 15:34)

Wake up from your drunk­en stu­por, as is right, and do not go on sin­ning. For some have no knowl­edge of God. I say this to your shame.

In the con­text, the top­ic in this pas­sage is the cor­rect under­stand­ing of res­ur­rec­tion. It seems that some Chris­tians in Corinth—influenced by the Greek con­cept of the afterlife—became uncer­tain about what exact­ly would hap­pen to their bod­ies after death and start­ed to ques­tion the res­ur­rec­tion of the body. Gen­er­al­ly, Greeks believed in the immor­tal­i­ty of the spir­it but bod­i­ly res­ur­rec­tion was unimag­in­able for them. Paul, on the one hand, thor­ough­ly explains the right Chris­t­ian teach­ing about res­ur­rec­tion, but on the oth­er hand he rebukes the Corinthi­ans for their doubts, as in this way they ques­tion the pow­er of God who is able to raise the dead. This is why he says that some of them have no knowl­edge of God—they do not ful­ly grasp how pow­er­ful he is and that it is not too hard a thing for him to raise the dead in immor­tal bod­ies. It does not mean that some of them were not Chris­tians. In the ini­tial greet­ing of the let­ter we can see that he regard­ed all of them as saints.

To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanc­ti­fied in Christ Jesus, called to be saints togeth­er with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours… (1 Corinthi­ans 1:2)

5.3 Five wise and five foolish virgins (Matthew 25:1–13)

Then the king­dom of heav­en will be like ten vir­gins who took their lamps and went to meet the bride­groom. Five of them were fool­ish, and five were wise. For when the fool­ish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bride­groom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at mid­night there was a cry, ‘Here is the bride­groom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those vir­gins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the fool­ish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, say­ing, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the deal­ers and buy for your­selves.’ And while they were going to buy, the bride­groom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the mar­riage feast, and the door was shut. After­wards the oth­er vir­gins came also, say­ing, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Tru­ly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Watch there­fore, for you know nei­ther the day nor the hour.

The para­ble is a warn­ing for believ­ers to per­se­vere to the end and even to be pre­pared for a longer peri­od of wait­ing until the return of Jesus. Those believ­ers who do not per­se­vere to the end (who do not have enough oil) will not be allowed to enter his heav­en­ly king­dom (the wed­ding feast). If some­one decides to fol­low Jesus and thus becomes a mem­ber of Christ’s body but lat­er aban­dons his faith will lose his eter­nal life.⁸ We should be always aware of the lim­its of a para­ble. Jesus want­ed to encour­age to per­se­ver­ance and to be always ready for his com­ing. This para­ble is, how­ev­er, not a descrip­tion of church life. So it can­not be used as an argu­ment against the need of sep­a­ra­tion between believ­ers and unbe­liev­ers.

5.4 Sheep in different folds (John 10:14–16)

I am the good shep­herd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have oth­er sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will lis­ten to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shep­herd.

Jesus says that there will be “one flock” in the future. That is why many peo­ple refer the flock to those believ­ers whom Jesus will gath­er togeth­er from dif­fer­ent vis­i­ble denom­i­na­tions on the last day. At that time the believ­ers who are scat­tered through­out many dif­fer­ent flocks will sup­pos­ed­ly be unit­ed into one flock. But why should we refer this future event to the last day? It could just as well refer to anoth­er future event. Jesus speaks about those who are “of this fold” and those who are not. He had already called the sheep from the first fold and he would call the oth­er sheep lat­er. All the sheep that lis­ten to the voice of the Good Shep­herd would form one flock. In verse 16, he speaks about “this” fold, which must refer to Israel, since dur­ing his earth­ly min­istry Jesus’ mis­sion was to call the “lost sheep of the house of Israel”:

These twelve Jesus sent out, instruct­ing them, “Go nowhere among the Gen­tiles and enter no town of the Samar­i­tans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And pro­claim as you go, say­ing, ‘The king­dom of heav­en is at hand.’” (Matthew 10:5–7)

It fol­lows that the “oth­er sheep” refer to the Gen­tiles. Jesus want­ed to hint at the fact that there were peo­ple from among the Gen­tiles, too, who would lis­ten to his call. Some years lat­er the dis­ci­ples were to expe­ri­ence this great event: the uni­fi­ca­tion of Jews and Gen­tiles. This is sum­ma­rized by Paul in the let­ter to the Eph­esians:

There­fore remem­ber that at one time you Gen­tiles in the flesh, called “the uncir­cum­ci­sion” by what is called the cir­cum­ci­sion, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time sep­a­rat­ed from Christ, alien­at­ed from the com­mon­wealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, hav­ing no hope and with­out God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he him­self is our peace, who has made us both one and has bro­ken down in his flesh the divid­ing wall of hos­til­i­ty by abol­ish­ing the law of com­mand­ments expressed in ordi­nances, that he might cre­ate in him­self one new man in place of the two, so mak­ing peace, and might rec­on­cile us both to God in one body through the cross, there­by killing the hos­til­i­ty. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spir­it to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fel­low cit­i­zens with the saints and mem­bers of the house­hold of God… (Eph­esians 2:11–19)

Con­se­quent­ly, the uni­fi­ca­tion of the sheep from the two folds already took place in the first cen­tu­ry when Jew­ish and Gen­tile Chris­tians were joined togeth­er as one flock in the church.

6 Summary

The teach­ing of the “invis­i­ble church” does not occur in the Bible. Even if there are dif­fer­ences between the mem­bers of the Chris­t­ian church in matu­ri­ty, faith or obe­di­ence, each mem­ber has a rela­tion­ship with the Head, Christ (1 Corinthi­ans 12:12–27; Eph­esians 4:15–16). This church is seen by the world:

A new com­mand­ment I give to you, that you love one anoth­er: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one anoth­er. By this all peo­ple will know that you are my dis­ci­ples, if you have love for one anoth­er.” (John 13:34–35)

…I in them and you in me, that they may become per­fect­ly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:23)

The world has to be able to see the church. The Chris­t­ian church must always be aware of this respon­si­bil­i­ty. A “church” that lives as a “mixed body” is not the body of Christ and does not ful­fil the mis­sion that Jesus entrust­ed to his church. Chris­tians live in deep fel­low­ship based on the teach­ings of Christ. Only in this way can their tes­ti­mo­ny about Christ’s love be authen­tic to the world.

If what mat­ters is only whether some­one believes and belongs to the invis­i­ble “church” of indi­vid­ual believ­ers scat­tered over all the denom­i­na­tions, then it is the same which denom­i­na­tion they belong to or whether they at all belong to any. In this way, what Jesus said con­cern­ing the church about broth­er­ly love, mutu­al help, and uni­ty as a tes­ti­mo­ny for the world would be impos­si­ble or extreme­ly lim­it­ed. If this invis­i­ble kind of fel­low­ship were enough, it would mean that the church which exist­ed in the first cen­tu­ry A.D. is not need­ed any­more. The result of this approach twists the mean­ing and nul­li­fies the pur­pose of the church. It also makes peo­ple indif­fer­ent towards pro­tect­ing it from sin and unbib­li­cal teach­ings.

1. The well-known reformer John Calvin (1509–1564) for­mu­lat­ed the teach­ing of invis­i­ble church as fol­lows: “I have observed that the Scrip­tures speak of the Church in two ways. Some­times when they speak of the Church they mean the Church as it real­ly is before God – the Church into which none are admit­ted but those who by the gift of adop­tion are sons of God, and by the sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Spir­it are true mem­bers of Christ. In this case it not only com­pre­hends the saints who dwell on the earth, but all the elect who have exist­ed from the begin­ning of the world. Often, too, by the name of Church is des­ig­nat­ed the whole body of mankind scat­tered through­out the world, who pro­fess to wor­ship one God and Christ, who by bap­tism are ini­ti­at­ed into the faith; by par­tak­ing of the Lord’s Sup­per pro­fess uni­ty in true doc­trine and char­i­ty, agree in hold­ing the word of the Lord, and observe the min­istry which Christ has appoint­ed for the preach­ing of it. In this Church there is a very large mix­ture of hyp­ocrites, who have noth­ing of Christ but the name and out­ward appear­ance: of ambi­tious, avari­cious, envi­ous, evil-speak­ing men, some also impur­er lives, who are tol­er­at­ed for a time, either because their guilt can­not be legal­ly estab­lished, or because due strict­ness of dis­ci­pline is not always observed. Hence, as it is nec­es­sary to believe the invis­i­ble Church, which is man­i­fest to the eye of God only, so we are also enjoined to regard this Church which is so-called with ref­er­ence to man, and to cul­ti­vate its com­mu­nion.” (Calvin: Insti­tutes of the Chris­t­ian Reli­gion, Book 4, Chap­ter 1)  ↩
2. “…for the destruc­tion of the flesh, so that his spir­it may be saved in the day of the Lord.” (1 Corinthi­ans 5:5)  ↩
3. A sim­i­lar address can also be observed in oth­er let­ters: Romans 1:1–7; Philip­pi­ans 1:1; Colos­sians 1:1–4; 2 Peter 1:1–4 ↩
4. See also Peter’s ser­mon at Pen­te­cost: Acts 2:40: “Save your­selves from this crooked gen­er­a­tion.” ↩
5. The Donatists (named after their leader, Dona­tus, bish­op of Carthage) held that the church must be a church of “saints”, not “sin­ners”, and sacra­ments, such as bap­tism, admin­is­tered by bish­ops who denied their faith dur­ing the per­se­cu­tion under the Roman emper­or Dio­clet­ian (fourth cen­tu­ry AD) are invalid. Augus­tine dis­agreed with this view and was an ardent oppo­nent of the Donatists. ↩
6. Matthew 18:23 ↩
7. Matthew 13:45–46 ↩
8. See e.g.: Hebrews 6:4–8; 10:24–31 and many oth­er pas­sages men­tioned in our top­ic on Apos­ta­sy. ↩