A New Humanity

By Elaine Poproski

A lot of people have a lot of different definitions of church. For some, it’s a building – a structure in which people gather to worship God. For others, it’s the actual people who gather to worship God. For some it’s a word that encompasses everyone everywhere who worships God as revealed in Christ. The Greek word we translate as church, coined by the earliest Christians, simply meant a gathering or assembly of people in a public place. The reality is that church is all these things. But in Ephesians, the New Testament letter we’re spending time in throughout July, church is something even grander than what I’ve indicated above.

Peter O’Brien, author of The Pillar New Testament Commentary on Ephesians,[1] suggests that we can’t fully grasp how church was understood by the author of this letter to the Ephesians, unless we first consider the picture painted in Hebrews 12:22 – 24. These verses read as follows:

You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant…

The church is “a heavenly gathering around Christ.”[2] In its local, earthly expression, it’s a manifestation of a heavenly reality.[3] It’s so much more than buildings or people. It’s a testament to God’s end game, to His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. It is glorious and awe-inspiring. It is extraordinary. It is created and sustained by God alone because it is so far beyond our sinful, mundaneness to realize in our power. I know it’s hard to imagine all this when we think of church, when we think of the people we meet with week after week in a crumbling building. But what if we could catch a glimpse of this vision of church? What if, when we gather this coming Sunday, we could glimpse, even for a moment, this majestic reality?

As you prepare for Sunday, I invite you to prepare to glimpse this reality. Don’t expect you’ll glimpse it because we’ll be extraordinary in our music or praying or preaching. Expect it because God will be with us. Expect it because it is reality as defined by God. Expect it; and perhaps a veil will lift and for a moment or two we will see reality as it truly is: the kingdom of God here on earth. To help you prepare, I invite you to spend some time reading Revelation 4 & 5. Spend some time reading Hebrews 12:18 – 24. Spend some time asking God to show you His reality when you come to the Theatre on Sunday.
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[1] Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdman’s Publishing: 1999.
[2] O’Brien, 146.
[3] ibid.