Bible study.gif (13623 bytes)Upon this Rock!

Restoring the Church's Biblical Foundations

by John D. Garr, PH.D.

When Jesus asked his disciples who they understood him to be, Peter’s effusive answer encapsulated the most profound truth in Holy Scripture. "You are he, the Messiah, Son of the living God!" the impetuous apostle exclaimed. Realizing that the ultimate truth about his very nature had been revealed by the heavenly Father, Jesus replied, " . . .upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:16-18). Many have taken this statement to mean that Jesus’ mission on earth was to clean the religious slate and initiate something that had never been considered in the history of man–the church. Jesus was finally terminating and entombing a lifeless, failed religion and announcing the birth of a vibrant, new faith, they say.

In order to understand what Jesus said and did, however, we must return these words to their context, to Second-Temple Judaism, to the life and practices of first-century Israeli Jewry. We cannot understand these words if we transplant them into Gentile soil, for they were spoken by a Jew in the land of the Jews to no one but Jews. Only when we return to this place, this people, and this time can we truly comprehend the meaning and function of the church.

Theological Analysis

The term church is both very familiar and very misunderstood, generally at the same time. What is the church, who are a part of it, when did it begin, where does it exist, how does it operate, and why does it exist? These are the questions of ecclesiology, the study of the church. Does the church make Christians or do Christians make the church the church? Is the church merely a local congregation of believers? Is it a denomination? Is it the entire Christian community? Anyone who has interacted to any degree with believers of various communions knows that the answers to these questions are many and widely divergent.

In a theological analysis, it is essential that we stress the biblicity of the church–both the term, its definition, and its function. We must turn to the Bible for our understanding of ecclesiology. In analyzing Holy Scripture, however, we must also be careful that we engage in exegesis, not eisegesis. The use of the latter has resulted in the maze of confusion on the subject that already exists, for men of good intentions have read into the texts of scriptures the meanings which their cultures, politics, or other environmental conditionings dictated. We must exegete the biblical word church by literally "drawing out" the meaning of the words and texts of Scripture.

The Church Etymologically Speaking

The word church is derived from the Greek word kuriakov" (kuriakos) which means "belonging to the Lord." The word church must be understood, however, in the light of the New Testament Greek term ejkklesiva (ekklesia), which refers to an assembly or gathering of people. In classical Greek the word ejkklesiva meant an assembly of the citizens of a city (polis), with the understanding that those who were of this assembly had the right to vote on civic issues.

Ekklesia is derived from the verb ejkkalevw (ekkaleo), which means "to summon forth." Hence, it has been said to mean "the called out." For an full understanding of the word church, however, we must go behind the Greek text of the New Testament and return to the Hebrew in which the words of the apostles were either written or thought. In essence, we must return to the Hebrew foundations of Christian faith in order to arrive at a proper definition of the one word that most often denominates the community of believers in Jesus.

We begin to discover the spiritual meaning of the secular Greek word ejkklesiva when we turn to the Hebrew words which were rendered ejkklesiva by the translators of the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament. Seventy scholars in Alexandria translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the third century B.C.E. to make it possible for the Hellenized Jews of the diaspora to read the Scriptures in the lingua franca of the Mediterranean Basin. These scholars used the Greek word ejkklesiva to translate the Hebrew word lh;q; (qahal), which means "congregation, assembly." lh;q;is a derivative of loo/q (qol), the word for voice and ultimately refers to the summoning of an assembly or to the act of assembling. This term is generally used biblically to refer to the congregation of the people of Israel (e.g., laer;c]yI lh'q] (qahal Yisrael–congregation of Israel); hwhy lh'q] (qahal Yahweh–congregation of Yahweh); and !yhiloa>h; lh'q] (qahal haElohim–the congregation of God). The Jewish people are sometimes referred to as the qehillah, from this same root. The word lh;q; is usually rendered ejkklesiva in the Septuagint.

In Biblical language, then, the church is the assembly of those who are called out to be in covenant with God. Church is not exclusively a New Testament term, for the origin of the term is found in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament which the writers of the New Testament used. The word which the apostles chose to use as an expression of their corporate identity was the same as that which had been used by the Jewish people since the exodus. This is why Stephen calls Israel "the church in the wilderness" in Acts 7:38 and why Hebrews 2:12 quotes Psalm 22:22: "I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee" as "I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee." This is also why Hebrews 12:23 uses "general assembly" and "church of the firstborn" as virtually synonymous.

The New Testament writers understood that the word ejkklesiva (ekklesia) translated their Hebrew word lh;q; (qahal) and meant the congregation of God. For Jesus and the apostles there was absolute continuity between the congregation under the old covenant and the congregation under the new covenant, the church in the Old Testament and the church in the New Testament. Jesus did nothing new, therefore, when he called unto him whom he would and ordained twelve apostles to be the foundation of his reformed congregation or church (Mark 3:13, 14; I Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 2:20). He was merely restoring God’s congregation to its original purpose and reforming it by introducing a new covenant sealed in his own blood.

The term church, then, might more accurately be translated congregation. Perhaps if the Archbishop of Canterbury’s instructions to those who created the interpretation of the Bishops’ Bible that came to be known as the Authorized King James Version of the Scriptures had not proscribed the use of congregation in deference to the ecclesiastical term church, generations of Christians in English-speaking nations would have understood the church as the congregation of God, a perpetuation of the congregation of Israel in complete continuity. Then, we might have more readily understood that Paul’s olive tree metaphor in Romans 11 reveals Israel, into which Gentile branches were grafted to share in the spiritual root and fatness of Judaism. We could also have understood the church as the continuation, not replacement, of Israel and the new covenant as a renewed covenant as Hebrews 8:10, 11 reveals.

Who Are The Congregation?

Who are the people who comprise the assembly of those who are called out to be in covenant with God? The answer was very clear in the Old Testament: it was the entire assembly of the descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob who made the exodus from Egypt and appeared before the Lord at Sinai, and it was all of their subsequent posterity. While all of Israel was denominated and arranged accordingly around the tent of meeting in the Sinai desert, they were collectively considered qahal, the "congregation of God." While there were various elections within Israel (e.g., Judah–Psalm 78:68), all of Israel was the qahal, the ones called out to enter into covenant with Yahweh. All of Israel, therefore, was the church in the wilderness.

The answer is equally clear in the New Testament. Just as the Old Testament church was baptized into one body unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea (I Corinthians 10:2), so all believers have been baptized by one Spirit into one body (I Corinthians 12:13), buried with Christ in baptism (Colossians 2:12). This includes everyone who has been called out: "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling" (Ephesians 4:4). It is a calling into covenant with God: "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be dead" (Romans 7:4). All believers are the children of God who have been "espoused to one husband" (II Corinthians 11:2). Though there are diversities of callings and administrations within the community of Christ, the church is one–those who have been called out from the world to receive Jesus as Lord and to enter into relationship with God through the new covenant.

"No New Thing Under The Sun"

Most Christian scholars conclude that the church began on the Day of Pentecost. And, they are right, but in the wrong century! The church did not begin on Pentecost at Mount Zion in Acts 2. It began on Pentecost at Mount Sinai in Exodus 20.

The truth is that Jesus’ "I-will-build-my-church" statement meant, "I will restore my congregation." James declared this to be Jesus’ work: "After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up" (Acts 15:16). Jesus was a restorer, not an innovator. He never intended to destroy what God had been molding among the Jewish people for centuries so that he could start something totally different and completely new. He sought only to restore the house (congregation) of David that lay in ruin.

From Temple and Synagogue

The church of Jesus Christ was modeled after both the temple and the synagogue that were so intrinsically involved in the lives of first century Jews. The church came to be thought of as the spiritual temple, the new habitation of God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:21, 22). Local assemblies of the church were still termed synagogues by James thirty years after the resurrection of Jesus (James 2:2). Much of the church has not understood this truth because most translations render sunagwghv (sunagoge) in this passage as "assembly" or "gathering." The same translations render sunagwghv as "synagogue of Satan" in Revelation 2:9; 3:9 and as "synagogue of the Jews" in Acts 17:10!

Even after Christian congregations ceased to name themselves synagogues, the ongoing life of the church was still patterned after the synagogue. Its officers were merely an extension of the form with which the apostles had been familiar all their lives. Each congregation of the church was autonomous, like the synagogues before them. Congregational leaders were called president (nasi), rather than pastor, until at least the middle of the second century. The government of the early church was purely egalitarian, both in the democracy of the local congregation and in the yeshiva or Beit Din of its translocal leadership (Acts 15). Monolithic organizations with hierarchial episcopacies were later accretions patterned after the governmental and military structures of the Greco-Roman world and of the nations in which Protestantism later developed.

The liturgy of the earliest church paralleled the liturgy of the synagogue. Forms of prayer and praise remained consistent with the patterns of the Judaism in which Jesus and the apostles had expressed their faith. Jesus was not seeking to establish a new order; he merely brought a new covenant to God’s ancient system of praise, worship, and service–biblical Judaism.

Extended Family, Community

In reality, both synagogue and temple in the economy of Israel were patterned after Abraham and Sarah’s tent, so that even each Jewish family’s gathering for food and fellowship was thought of as in a mini-temple. The foundation of both the synagogue and the earliest church was the home, and congregations met in homes as had the synagogues of which they had been a part.

An accurate depiction of the church, then, is that of an extended family, the family of God. Community was foremost in the first century church and should be the guiding principle for the church today. It is in the small groups of extended family that believers receive the mutual support and reinforcement and the accountability that they need for successful Christian living.

Back to Basics

God’s command to Moses is good advice to us: "See that you make all things according to the patterns shown you in the mount" (Exodus 25:40). In this case, the Mount Zion community of the first century must be the pattern from which we contextualize the faith of the apostles in today’s multi-cultural world society. When we do, we will find ourselves building on the Rock, not on the sands of human tradition, and the lives that we build and bring to maturity will stand for all time.

Dr. John D. Garr, founder and executive director of Restoration Foundation, has pioneered research, writing, and teaching on the Hebrew foundations of Christian faith for more than thirty years. His international ministry has enlightened believers of various communions, teaching them the historical and theological emergence of Christianity from the matrix of biblical Judaism. John and his wife Pat, with the support of their sons, John, Timothy, and Stephen, are working to promote Restoration Foundation’s vision.