The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

by Mark Dever

The Bible calls individual Christians to live lives of justice and generosity toward others.

In other words, Christians should desire to see non-Christians know the common blessings of God's kindness in providence (e.g., food, water, family relations, jobs, good government, justice). It is therefore both appropriate and wise for Christians and congregations to take action to this end.

At the same time Christ gave the church a unique institutional mandate to preach, display, model, and express the good news of Jesus Christ.

congregations may take action in the cause of this-worldly justice, but they are not required to.

Scripture in no way denies the right or ability of a congregation to care for the physical needs of non-Christians in its area. But neither does Scripture require the local congregation to organize as a whole to alleviate the physical needs of non-Christians in the community.3

Churches should teach and pray for and expect their members to be involved in a wide variety of good works,

At the same time, social action or "mercy ministries" (e.g., soup kitchens, medical clinics, etc.) must never be mistaken for evangelism.

Expounding Scripture in the local church equips members to understand and express God's character of justice and mercy appropriately to the world. And this rightly means touching on issues of poverty, gender, racism, and justice from the pulpit.7 Such teaching, however, should normally occur without committing the church to particular public policy solutions.

The Scriptures do make Christians responsible to care for the needs of the members of their own churches,10 though even here the New Testament makes further qualifications.

It is proper for Christians to be concerned with education, politics, and mercy ministry, but the church itself is not the structure established by God for addressing such concerns.

Local church leaders should therefore be careful to protect the practice and priority of evangelism in the life of the local church.

The gospel's main thrust is not to renew the fallen structures of this world but rather to create a new community of those purchased by the blood of the Lamb (Rev 5:6–12) and washed with his Word

But the church is called to herald no vision of a this-world utopia. The trajectory of unredeemed human history as recorded in the Bible is always toward judgment.

we cannot be anything other than confident about the church. It will succeed.16 The church is God's plan and purpose.

By its nature the invisible church is united; the visible church is sadly mixed and divided.

There are not two separate churches, one visible and one invisible; these are two aspects of the true church.

structures have developed which are allowed and useful though not mandated in Scripture

All cooperation between congregations is understood to be voluntary and consensual.

some nineteenth-century Baptists and their heirs agree with this aspect of Roman Catholic thought—that the invisible church does not exist apart from a divinely given visible structure. However, they join this to the conclusion that the universal church is never discussed in the New Testament. This controversy was known as "Landmarkism," named after Prov 22:28: "remove not the ancient landmark which your fathers have set" (KJV).

To the Protestant reformers, "Not the pretended chair of Peter, but the teaching of Peter was the real mark of apostolicity. The Reformation made the gospel, not ecclesiastical organization, the test of the true church."

the Reformation introduced the notae ecclesiae, the marks of the church: the right preaching of God's Word and the right administration of the ordinances.

Roman Catholics have insisted on a visible unity of the church. Protestants have insisted instead on the primacy of a unity in doctrine and spirit.

Presbyterianism, congregationalism, and a belief in believer's baptism are all derived from Queen Elizabeth I's England (1558

In short, the rise of differing denominations represents the desire for faithfulness in purity rather than in visible unity.

Every congregation decides which beliefs and practices members must share before they can in good conscience experience and express unity with them.

In particular three areas have drawn much of the disagreement: membership, government, and discipline.

church membership is restricted to individuals who have made a credible profession of faith.

The profession of faith should include submitting to believer's baptism and making oneself accountable to a particular local congregation with whom the professing believer regularly communes.

If the boundaries of a parish could no longer define who should be included in a congregation's membership, what could? For many Christians the answer became subscription to a church covenant.

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, church covenants, often accompanied by a statement of faith, acted as the most basic document of a Baptist congregation.

If a church covenant represents the agenda (things to be done) of a local congregation, statements of faith or confessions represent their credenda (things to be believed).

Baptists produced more than any other group because of their decentralized, congregational polity.

Disputes between members (Matt 18:15–17), as well as matters of doctrine (Gal 1:8; 2 Tim 4:3), church discipline (1 Corinthians 5), and membership (2 Cor 2:6–8) are all recognized as congregational matters.

Nor may the congregation delegate this authority to an elder or bishop or any other structure, thereby deferring their own accountability before God for doctrine or discipline.

In the vast majority of cases, whether in Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist, or Methodist churches, congregational exclusion meant barring the sinner from communion and, ultimately, membership until repentance occurred.

Baptists had grown weary of holding one another accountable.

The abuse of discipline is reprehensible and destructive, but not more than the abandonment of discipline.

In everything from the church's obedience to its life and organization, the span of church history is a demonstration of Christ's faithfulness to his promises.

By affirming the sufficiency of Scripture and the requisite role of faith in participating in the ordinances, we can conclude that a biblically faithful church is a Protestant church.

By affirming the necessarily voluntary and consensual nature of membership in a local congregation, we can conclude that a biblically faithful church is a gathered church.

By affirming the nature and polity of a local congregation, we can conclude that a biblically faithful chu...

And by affirming Christ's command to baptize only those who believe and obey, we can conclude that a biblically faith...

"The church is not a group of people groping for a philosophy of life congenial to modern conditions, but a living body already being shaped by apostolic teaching. Holding steady to that teaching is a principal mark of the authenticity of the church."

the church became defined not by individuals who were baptized and who witnessed the mass but by individuals who personally believed the promises set forth in baptism and the Lord's Supper and who therefore participated in those rituals.

profession of faith in Christ and the act of submitting to the teachings and discipline of a particular church should regulate a congregation's membership.

is a common vision, budget, leadership, and board sufficient to constitute a "church"?

essential to their identity as a group.

The refractions of God's image in thousands of cultures and races and millions upon millions of individuals is presented, however partially and imperfectly, in the weekly meeting.

the visible gathering constitutes a significant part of the local church's eschatalogical witness.

A part of a congregation, especially a part that shares some kind of worldly unifying characteristic like age or ethnicity or hobbies, is not the whole. It's no witness to the unifying power of the gospel.