The Vis­ible Church

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 5^[2]). 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 con­tro­versy^[5], 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 king^[6] or to a mer­chant^[7]. 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.