The Church Jesus Built

The church Jesus built is a spiritually transformed body of believers not limited to a particular locale, organization or denomination. The Holman Bible Dictionary, in its article “Church,” explains the background of the word church: “Church is the English translation of the Greek word ekklesia or ecclesia. The use of the Greek term prior to the emergence of the Christian church is important as two streams of meaning flow from the history of its usage into the New Testament understanding of church. “First, the Greek term which basically means ‘called out’ was commonly used to indicate an assembly of citizens of a Greek city and is so used in Acts 19:32, 39.

The Hebrew term (qahal) simply means ‘assembly’ and could be used in a variety of ways, referring for example to an assembling of prophets (1 Samuel 19:20), soldiers (Numbers 22:4). The use of the term in the Old Testament in referring to the people of God is important for understanding the term ‘church’ in the New Testament.

For the first Christians to use a term given by Christ in Matthew 16:18, that was common in the Old Testament for the people of God, reveals their understanding of the continuity that links the Old and New Testaments. The early Christians, Jew and Gentile, understood themselves to be the people of God, who had revealed Himself in the Old Testament (Hebrews 1:1-2), and the true children of Israel (Romans 2:28-29) with Abraham as their father (Romans 4:1-25), and as the people of the New Covenant (Hebrews 8:1-13).

As a consequence of this broad background of meaning in the Greek and Old Testament words, the term ‘church’ is used in the New Testament for a local congregation of called-out Christians, such as the ‘church of God which is at Corinth’ (1 Corinthians 1:2), and also of the entire people of God, such as the entire body of believers. Thus, affirming that Christ is ‘the head over all things to the church, which is his body’ (Ephesians 1:22-23)”.