Building on the Foundation

In the midst of revising my post on authority in the church (after a lot of feedback and more study), I realized that the main change to that post would be a great standalone article as well. There seems to be a lot of ideas about how churches should function, who should run them, what can be done inside the official meetings of those churches, etc, but one huge question remains that defines all those other things.  What is the “Church?”  I think we often think of a church as something we go to, and actually, that’s not terribly far from the truth, but in a different way than it’s often thought of. A church isn’t the building, a church isn’t even an organization, and a church isn’t exactly the people either. All of the mistaken ideas of what a church is come from a poor translation of the words used for church in the New Testament. In fact, the idea of a church, to hear many speak of it, seems to have sprung into existence out of nothing immediately upon the events of Acts 2....

There are many go-to verses that we are quite familiar with in the Church of God; verses for just about every situation you might come across, and to refute all kinds of modern pagan religion. The Bible is a sword, after all, and it is quite powerful in the real sort of warfare we engage in on a daily basis. For instance, people in the world will tell you to “follow your heart,” meaning that whatever desire might cross the screen of your heart should be followed. You should essentially let your desires and emotions rule your life rather than any form of discipline or written code as in the case of the Christian religion. Though the problem with this is obvious, many Christians buy into this false idea that the heart is something to be followed. Jeremiah said something about this when he said, The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9 (AFV) This is similar to the ideas that are echoed in Genesis and in Proverbs, the idea that the he...