Marc Minter’s Kindle Notes & Highlights for The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

The church arises only from the gospel. And a distorted church usually coincides with a distorted gospel.

Honest Christians have long differed over a number of important issues in the church. But just because a matter is not essential for salvation does not mean that it's not important, or that it's not necessary for obedience.

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Christ founded the church (Matt 16:18), purchased it with his blood (Acts 20:28), and intimately identifies himself with it (Acts 9:4). The church is the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12,27; Eph 1:22–23; 4:12; 5:20–30; Col 1:18,24; 3:15), the dwelling place of his Spirit (1 Cor 3:16–17; Eph 2:18,22; 4:4), and the chief instrument for glorifying God in the world (Ezek 36:22–38; Eph 3:10). Finally, the church is God's instrument for bringing both the gospel to the nations and a great host of redeemed humanity to himself (Luke 24:46–48; Rev 5:9).

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Christian proclamation might make the gospel audible, but Christians living together in local congregations make the gospel visible (see John 13:34

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The church is the gospel made visible.

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They assume that the immediate response of non-Christians is the key indicator of success.

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As long as quick numerical growth remains the primary indicator of church health, the truth will be compromised. Instead, churches must once again begin measuring success not in terms of numbers but in terms of fidelity to the Scriptures.

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Yet not only does the preached Word create the Christian life; it sustains and grows it. The Bible is our lifeline, our feast.

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It should be our desire to search out everything that God has revealed about himself and then to joyfully accept it, adopt it, explore it, submit ourselves to it, and enjoy God's blessings in it.

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As in every other topic, our regular practice as Christians should be to seek God's will in his Word, either by explicit command or by reasoning from principles in the Word. We want to see that the answer is in the Bible.

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God has always been concerned with how the people called by his name would live.

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By direct command, example, implication, or principles, God's Word tells us everything we need to know about every aspect of following him in life

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In many ways a church is simply a group of people who are living lives of love (John 13:34–35) because they all agree on how they have been loved in Christ.

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In Scripture, God tells us how we should approach him in public worship. We read the Bible, sing the Bible, preach the Bible, pray the Bible, and see the Bible (in baptism and the Lord's Supper).

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Think about it: Christians are required to gather as churches. Therefore, when a church decides to implement a nonbiblical practice, it effectively requires Christians to approach God through that nonbiblical practice.

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People can creatively devise how to approach a mute God, but they must listen to a speaking God.

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Everything my own church does in our time together on Sunday morning we intend to do in obedience to God's Word.

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But to observe that Scripture is "sufficient" is to observe that it's sufficient for helping us do whatever God would have us do.

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The first and most basic matter of church polity is, "Who is the church?" And the answer is fairly simple: the members comprise the local church.

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Discipline draws a circle around the membership of the church. Careful practices of membership and discipline are meant to mark off the church from the world and thereby define and display the gospel.

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Churches which practice no formal membership and discipline at least make it more difficult for the believers who are part of it to follow Christ and more difficult for those elders to know for whom they are to give an account

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A second topic of polity which the Bible addresses is, "Who is finally responsible for what happens in a church?" The last example touched on this, but I want to make it explicit: the New Testament gives ultimate responsibility to the congregation.

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It appears to give final responsibility to the congregation in matters of discipline and, by implication, membership.

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With all due respect to those who would disagree, I think the Bible clearly teaches that local congregations should be led by a plurality of elders.

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If Paul and the apostles encouraged and instructed the earliest churches to follow this pattern, it would seem we should follow this pattern as well.

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Churches that preach the gospel but possess a biblically deficient form of polity can be considered "true" but "irregular" churches.

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The role of good pastors is then to move their congregations—as they should their own lives—toward increasing conformity to God's Word, even if such work is slow.

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My hope is that the reader sees how Scripture's beautiful sufficiency frees us from the tyranny of mere human opinion.

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God has entrusted to his church the glory of his own name."

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The church is the body of people called by God's grace through faith in Christ to glorify him together by serving him in his world.

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The church is literally an assembly (see Heb 10:25). It is God's assembly because God dwells with the church.

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And the church is comprised of people who are beginning to know the reversal of the effects of the fall.

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In the New Testament, the English word church can be used to describe both a local congregation or all Christians everywhere.

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According to Matthew's Gospel, Jesus first names his New Testament people as "my church" (16:18).

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As Adam named his bride, so Christ names the church.

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One scholar therefore observed, "When he speaks of ἐκκλησία, [Paul] normally thinks first of the concrete assembly of those who have been baptized at a specific place.

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The richness of descriptions of the church teaches us that no single image can comprehend all aspects of the church.

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herald of the gospel

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obedient ...