The Seal of the Church
I was arguing (in the traditional sense) with someone earlier today about the nature and purpose of the Church, and naturally the topic of non-Christians came up. What is the Church's function toward those who don't follow Christ? Do we turn them away? shall we be seeker-friendly? of course a church can not satisfy both Christians and non-Christians, as it will be inevitable that they will either conform to one or the other, but what about separate functions in order to accommodate both (i.e. church for Christians on Sunday, and church for non-Christians on another day)? Well, in search for an answer to this question, I came upon this outstanding quote from The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:The Church is designed to be purposely and perfectly sealed off from the world, aided by the Holy Spirit, to directly maintain sanctification. Bonhoeffer states that sanctification means "that...Christians have been judged already, and that they are being preserved until the coming of Christ and are ever advancing towards it." It is one of the utmost duties of the Church to remain pure, in this sense; to preserve sanctification. When churches sacrifice this sanctification and training in order to be 'seeker-friendly,' they are going directly against God's design for his holy Church; they are breaking the seal that the Holy Spirit protects. Isn't it ironic, in this age, how this seal is usually broken from the inside of the church rather than from the outside?The sanctification of the Church means its separation from all that is unholy, from sin; and the method by which it is accomplished is by God's sealing the Church and thus making it his own possession...The Church's claim to a place of its own in the world, and the consequent line of demarcation between the Church and world, prove that the Church is in the state of sanctification. For the Spirit seals off the Church from the world. This seal gives the Church the strength and power to fulfill its duty of vindicating God's claim over the whole world...Because it is sanctified by the seal of the Holy Spirit, the Church is always in the battlefield, waging a war to prevent the breaking of the seal, whether from within or without, and struggling to prevent the world from becoming the Church and the Church from becoming the world. The sanctification of the Church is really a defensive war, for the place which has been given to the Body of Christ on earth. The separation of the Church and the world from one another is the crusade which the Church fights for the sanctuary of God on earth.
Any thoughts on the matter? Am I looking too far into this?
posted by andre | 8:19 PM
7 Comments:
hey man you can't wash the feet of a dirty world if you are not willing to touch it.
I think sometimes weget confused by our overly simplistic answers. We say that the church isnt the building but the people then we insist that the point of Christianity is to bring people to a building ao that we can do something to/for/with them.
Consequently, we confuse 2 questions: 1.) What should Christians do as the church in the world? and 2.)What should Christians do when they gather together as the church?
I dont think most people have a good idea of how to answer Question #2 without some reference to evangelism.
In other words, they answer question #2 with answer #1.
But it's even worse than that. Because their answer to #1 involves sales and marketing, and an assumption that the gospel is weak, marginal, and boring on its own; and it therefore needs to be spiced up, slicked up, and neatly packaged with slogans, gimmicks, and money-back guarantees.
Where do we (the Church) connect the charge to "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.." with the typical method of evangelism of bringing friends to make the pastor do your job for you.
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While we rightfully bemoan the sales-and-marketing approach taken by evangelical churches in America, let's also thank the Founding Fathers for the 1st Amendment's Establishment Clause, which in opening our minds to possibilities beyond the state-church paradigm made such abuse of the Marketplace of Gospels possible.
I'm not sure about the exclusivity of Bonhoeffer's (or his translator's?) claim that "The sanctification of the Church is really a defensive war... The separation of the Church and the world from one another is the crusade which the Church fights for the sanctuary of God on earth." I could counter that that war is as much offensive as defensive.
Indeed, sanctification involves seizing back territory originally lost to the Curse: "to destroy fortresses... destroy arguments and every lofty opinion... and take every thought captive" (2 Cor 10:4-5). Continuing the martial metaphor, the Light is invading The Darkness, and our activity as the Body Assembled (#2) involves whatever rest and rejuvenation God deems necessary between our sorties as the Body Unleashed (#1). Our souls should of course be armored and armed (Eph 6) as we repeatedly descend into the muck and madness of our broken surroundings (whether without and within) on various missions of redemption, but in that mode of sanctification the Spirit's sealing (like the integrity of a commando's helmet on a rescue mission) hardly renders our struggle "really defensive." We're to guard against false teachers and our own sins, yes, but we're assaulting the gates of Hell (Matt. 16:18) as much as we are patrolling the walls of some heavenly "Fortress Ekklesia."
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