THE CHURCH OF HIS CALLING -July 2024
THE CHURCH OF HIS CALLING
June 2024
Let’s ask a question: When does the church you or I might attend become the real church of God? Answer: Most likely never. And this study has been written to show why.
To most people ‘church’ is that landmark building on the corner or perhaps a large auditorium accommodating hundreds of congregants. They see ‘church’ as the building rather than the people within. Then, again, for many the ‘church’ is their particular denomination. For others ‘church’ is their particular beliefs and practices.
Sadly, many believe in and trust the ‘church’ more than they trust God. To them ‘church’ is their mother. Certainly this was the Roman Catholic belief down the centuries and for many adherents it still is.
But is it right to trust in an institution led by fallible and sin-prone men? Better surely to put one’s faith in ‘the only wise God’ (Rom. 16:27, Jude 25)? This prompts a further question: Is there a church that is brought about by God Himself and if there is, how do we join it? One more question: What does the Bible say about this matter?
Fact is Scripture knows nothing of any church or churches other than the ones God Himself has actually called into being. What’s more, it comes as a shock to learn that there are only four such church ‘callings’ denoted in the whole Bible.
But before itemising them let’s look at what the word ‘church’ actually means. In Greek the word is ecclesia from ek (out of) and kleis (a calling). So, a church is a calling, a calling of God. Furthermore, it is a calling out of whatever the called ones were once in. Among ancient Greeks ecclesia was the word used to summon citizens to a meeting to discuss affairs of state.
Importantly, only key leaders and representatives were summoned. The mass of citizens was not invited. The same is true of the present church of God’s calling, the Church over which He is Head (Eph. 1:22-23). Only those ‘chosen in Him (Christ) before the world began (or begins)’ (Eph. 1:4) are summoned. Thus, it is only those He has specially ‘enlightened’ who see ‘the hope of his calling’ (Eph. 1:18) who comprise his specially chosen and out-called people.
In Old Testament Israel the equivalent Hebrew word for ‘church’, kahal, denotes a gathering for a specific purpose, again often of leaders representing the whole nation. Again, importantly, God did the calling. This is made clear Hosea 11:1-2:
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
Note that those God calls He also matures. Israel was a ‘child’ but was called into being as a mature son. Sadly, through much of her history Israel heeded the callings of God’s enemies rather than those of God Himself.
As ‘they’ called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images (Hosea 11:2).
Turning away from God and his calling, Israel succumbed to the siren ‘calling’ songs of other ‘gods’, powerful evil spirits masquerading as deity. They burned incense to graven images and made sacrifices to Baalim. And, believe it or not, some so-called ‘Christian’ churches do the same today.
Consider: When a Catholic priest offers up the ‘host’ he prays ‘let my sacrifice be acceptable’, meaning his own offering up of a cup, not Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice of Himself on the cross for our sin. And some Catholic churches burn incense before status of Mary. Are they, in doing so, heeding the calling of Baal and his female counterpart Ashtoreth?
More widely in Christendom it is not God but humanly organised and led institutions that do the ‘calling’ today. The sign outside may well say ‘Come worship with us’, but makes no mention of God’s calling in the matter.
So what are the four ‘church’ callings of God in Scripture? They are:
1. The Church in the Wilderness (Hosea 11:1, Ex. 18:23-26)
2. The Church of God (1 Cor. 1:2, Rom. 1:1, 6-7)
3. The Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27, Gal. 1:6)
4. The Church over which Christ Jesus is the Head (Eph. 1:22-23, 4:1).
Each of these churches were called into being by God Himself. They did not result from the endeavours of men. The sovereignty of God’s action in calling is well described by James in Acts 15:14-17, when speaking of the Acts period Church of God:
Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name. … That the residue of men seek after the Lord and all the Gentiles on whom my name is called, saith the Lord who doeth all these things.
Mark well, it is ‘…the Lord doeth all these things’. In sharp contrast in humanly led churches today it is the activities of men – and usually the money they solicit to do them – that do things.
Not only are the Bible’s four ‘churches’ called and founded by God but the Lord Himself chooses who will be joined to them. Thus in the Acts period ‘…the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved’ (Acts 2:4) and clearly He ‘chose’ members of the later ‘church which is his body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all’ before the foundation of the world [to come] (Eph. 1:4 and 22-23). Unhappily, such divine ‘choosing’ is noticeable by its absence in the morass of splintered, so-called ‘Christian’ assemblies today.
Now, if there are only four divinely appointed churches in scripture it becomes vital to know which one is operating now in our time. You see, clearly, God only calls one church at a time. Thus, while the Church in the Wilderness was Israel’s assembly for some 1500 years, today it is the Church over which Christ Jesus is Head – ‘the fullness of Him that filleth all in all’ (Eph. 1:22-23) in which God is calling out a people for his name. I can say without hesitation that this latter Church is God’s calling, power and purpose for today, not any of the others. Sadly, however, this Church, ‘which is the church of his body’, He who ‘filleth all in all’ is largely confused with the ‘body of Christ’ Church (1 Cor. 12:27-28) that was God’s called-out gathering during the Pentecostal dispensation of Acts.
What’s the difference? Consider the table below:
‘Ye are the body of Christ’ (1 Cor. 12:27) Church over which Christ is Head Eph.1:22.)
Baptised by the Spirit into one body Quickened together with Christ (Eph.2:1)
Many different spiritual gifts (1.Cor. 28-31) One gift – grace given by Christ (Eph. 4:7)
Ministries of healing and miracles (1 Cor. 12:28-29) No healing or miracle ministries (Eph. 4:11)
Body like the human body (1 Cor. 12:12-26) Building built on a foundation (Eph. 2:20)
Body tempered together by God (1 Cor. 12:24) A holy temple framed in the Lord (Eph. 2:21)
Spiritual gifts will cease, pass away (1 Cor. 13:8) Habitation of God through the Spirit (2:22)
You see, ‘when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be (is) done away’ (1 Cor. 13:10). Here the Apostle Paul clearly states that spiritual gifts, tongues speaking and prophecies will ‘vanish away’. Indeed, he tells the Corinthians it’s past time to ‘put away’ such ‘childish things’. And that’s still good advice, not only for churches, but also individuals who still practice such ‘spiritual gifts’ today.
But why did Paul tell the Corinthians to grow up and stop playing with childish things? Answer: Because God was about to call into being a new and different church with much better blessings. That being the ‘church which is his body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all’ (Eph. 1:22-23).
Importantly, when it comes to resurrection this ‘Church over which Christ is Head’ will be the first to rise from the grave. Others will come later. Thus, notice that in Phil: 3:11 the Greek word for resurrection is not anastasis (resurrection) but ex-anastasis, meaning first to rise out from the dead.
But why this church first and not the others? Answer: Because Jesus said: ‘The first shall be last and the last first’, speaking in Matt. 19:30, Mk: 10:31 and Luke 13:30 of resurrection entry into the pre-millennial kingdom of God, otherwise known as the ‘Day of Christ’ (Phil. 1:6, 10, 2:16).
So then the currently present but ‘last’ church calling of God on the list, the Church over which Christ is Head, will be the first to be raised and will appear with Christ in glory (Col. 3:1-4).
But are there verses that makes clear each of these four churches is indeed a distinct calling? Yes, there are. For example, in Eph. 4: I, speaking of the Church over which Christ is Head, the Apostle Paul writes:
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation [calling] wherewith ye are called.
That of the Church in the Wilderness is made plain in Hosea 11:1:
When Israel was a child then I loved him and called my son out of Egypt.
Romans 1:6-7 sets out the calling of the Church of God which, like the Apostle Paul, was at that time ‘separated unto the gospel of God). And, yes, that is a different gospel, based as it was on Old Testament prophecy. By contrast the ‘gospel of the grace of God’ (Acts 20:24) was that which Paul said was to finish his ministry.
That the Church of God is a calling is made amply clear in 1 Cor. 1:2: ‘Unto the Church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are …called to be saints’.
The calling of the Body of Christ Church is found in 1 Cor. 12:27, and its difference set out in
Galatians 1: 6: ‘I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel’. Importantly, the Church over which Christ Jesus is Head and which is his body, is the church God is calling together today. Are you in it?
John Dudley Aldworth.
Email: john.aldworth@hotmail.com