The Church, Salvation, and Assurance

David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss the church's role in a believer's salvation and assurance, the church in God's plan of redemption,  various images of the church in Scripture and the Great Tradition (ark, bride, guardian, mother), and the ecclesiology of the church fathers and Reformers.

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SPEAKER_01 0:01

When God sends the Son and from them proceed the Holy Spirit, what happens in that natural sequence is the church.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

The Bible knows nothing of a Christian who is not a member in a local visible. If someone is saved like the thief on the cross, apart from that, it's an extraordinary circumstance and exception, not the norm.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

You're listening to the Holy Joys Podcast, co-hosted by Jonathan Arnold and Dr. David Fry. Visit us at holyjoys.org and stay tuned for weekly discussions of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

And also a subject that we've touched on in various articles, including one that you just wrote for the Bible Methodist on the church's role in our salvation, and then one that I wrote and we're going to be working on together and co-publishing on the church's authority and responsibility for to forgive sins from John 2023. And both of us, I think, share a concern for the way in which salvation, soteriology, has sometimes been separated from ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church, in a way that it hasn't been historically.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Yeah, I think first of all, the um the whole doctrine of the church from me coming into the church as a pastor uh 20 years ago, actually now, um, 2001, um, it was just not on my radar at all. I had no appreciation really for the church. It was for me, it was, you know, it's the place where you gather people to um you know to teach them and send them out. And like that was the extent of it. Like there's no uh you know, the extent of the accountability of a relationship and the responsibility to one another. I mean, that was just not really present in my thinking. So through obviously 20 years, um my understanding of the church has really been urged forward because of a prevailing uh lack of appreciation for what the church is and God's in God's salvation. Um and especially in reading the early church fathers and their description of the church as as an ark, uh, much like Noah's Ark. And I started realizing, you know what, the church today, for for most people, uh at least in in um you know our world, our our country, our Western civilization, it's it's really optional. It's not uh it's not something that is really viewed as necessary, and it's nothing for a person to uh make a choice of church based on personal comfort and amenities and what do I get out of it. And I begin to realize, wait a second, like God has God has something for the church that's not incidental to my salvation, and we need to recover that. And uh so from there I started reading you know different authors and realized that there are uh other traditions that have done a better job of holding on to the importance of the church. And I didn't jump ship to those traditions because they have other problems, right? So uh you know, we can get into into some of those things as we go along in this conversation. But it really does come down to you know why the church? Why does it matter?

SPEAKER_03 4:16

Yeah. Yeah, I think of comments that I've heard that just kind of make my insides tense up. Uh, preachers who, in an attempt to emphasize the importance of personal salvation and of being born again and of knowing that your sins are forgiven, have um overreacted, I think, against what they perceive to be people who are placing their assurance of salvation in their church membership, in the fact that they were maybe baptized as a child. So see, I think we've all encountered this, right? You have somebody who says, I was baptized as a kid, or I'm a member of this church, so I'm, you know, I'm saved. They just kind of assume that that they're saved. And I do think there are people like that. Um, but I but I've heard preachers say, I don't really care at the end of the day, I don't really care if you were baptized, I don't really care if you're a member of a church. What really matters, you know, is that you're you're born again, that you're you're saved, right? And boy, that is not at all. Um, that is not at all the way that scripture treats those things. And it's definitely not the way that the church, you know, has has approached it. Whereas baptism, which is about like our covenant membership in the body of Christ, uh, but you're baptized by the church into the church. You're you're you see that in Acts 2, that they repent and are baptized, is not separated from salvation. And different traditions throughout history have had different ways of getting getting at that. You know, some have treated baptism kind of as the ordinary place of your salvation, some have treated it as a necessary means of saving grace, right? Um, and and those importance are those differences are important, but what the church has always agreed about is that salvation, personal salvation, is not separated from participation in the covenant community through the sacraments. That's just never been a matter of serious disagreement.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Right. And I think that key point there is that our salvation is within a covenant community. When we enter covenant, yes, a personal covenant with God, we are entering into a body, a corporate covenant, a a covenant that God has made with people, with a particular people that we uh know as the church, that he calls the church. God calls the church. These are the called-out ones, the ones who are called out first from Egypt, out from a place that represents idolatry, and they're not only called out, but they are called to gather at the tabernacle. We are called to tabernacle where God's presence was manifest in the wilderness and then later in the temple. We as a church, all those symbols have meaning for us as the church, uh, because then Israel was called the ecclesia. They were it was called the church, and we are uh the church that you know the apostle Paul and even Jesus uh uses that word you know three times in Matthew's gospel. Um and he is they are uh referring back to those images from uh Israel's uh history, and and so we have to draw from that and say, okay, this is uh God has formed a covenant people and uh circumcision what uh at you know eight days uh eight days old, right? So this child has no no decision, no, it doesn't matter what they want. They are they are circumcised, every male is circumcised as a symbol that they are part of the covenant people of God. And uh it's just that's that was life. And today a typical Christian family just views things so differently than that. Uh there's we're certainly uh have very low view of uh the salvation of children and their incorporation into the into God's people. Um many Protestants have a very low view of that, some don't. Uh, I think that's something that we need to go back to our roots too. I think you wrote something about that recently, right? It's coming up. Oh, it's coming up. Okay. Um, so so there's there that's part of that's part of this discussion, though, too, is what about our children? Um, and so the I I begin this article. Let me get back to this article uh in the Bible Methodist, which while you're while you're pulling that up, let me just just plug this in.

SPEAKER_03 8:49

I think you know, at this point, so many people might just say, Hey, so far I'm with you, right? Yeah, yeah, the church is the people we're saved. I'm part of the bride. But um, they're thinking very much, very much in spiritual and mystical terms. So, yeah, the important thing is that you're personally born again, not that you are received into the church through the visible baptism or through the, you know, through the visible formal membership, because what really makes you a member of the church is not those things, but it's the new birth. So what happens is you fall back onto an over-spiritualized view of the church. And we've had some of those conversations before, which I think are so important, that scripture holds together the visible and the invisible more tightly. Yes, there are some who are in the visible body who are tares, right? They're they're wheat, they're weeds, and God's gonna pull them up at the end. But ordinarily, there's no wheat that isn't in the visible body, the visible field. Ordinarily, outside of the visible church, as the Westminster Confession says, uh, which many of our Methodists would have affirmed, uh, most of the articles, including this one, uh, outside of the visible church, there is ordinarily no salvation. So I think we have to be careful of uh drawing on a necessary distinction of systematic theology between the visible and the invisible church, and making that our primary way of thinking about the the people of God, because that's not how scripture primarily thinks about that.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Yeah, yeah. So I want to say, make two points. One is that our incorporation in the body of Christ, the church, uh has several points of significance, but there are two I want to point out here. One is is that it gives us visible testimony of belonging to to Christ and to his people, to the covenant people. So that that the idea of testimony, our witness, we are we are a witness of the body uh in the body of Christ, of Christ. The second concept is assurance. So the Holy Spirit bears witness, and that bearing of witness, which is personal, individual, but it is it is also always corporate because the church is the witness of the spirit. And uh I'm I may be you know equivocating there on the in the uh idea of witness. So there's there is certainly individual witness of our our mission to the world. Okay, that's one I what's one meaning of witness testimony. What I'm saying is the holy the church is the witness that the spirit has come and is present in the world. The spirit comes at Pentecost, gives formation to what we know as the church. That's often viewed as the birthday of the church. Uh, there's variation on that, but in any case, there's certainly formation. And so I want I I think the statement is true that the church is the witness of the spirit. And so when it comes to individualization, um it seems to me that that personal witness of the spirit to my salvation personally uh cannot be separated from his witness, which is the church.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Does that make sense? Yeah, it does, because we often treat the witness of the spirit as something so incredibly subjective, right? The spirit witnesses with our spirit. So it's like, well, like, well, do I like get a warm, fuzzy feeling? Like, does that mean I have to pray through at the altar, like until I feel or experience something? Is that the witness of the spirit? Does that mean like, do I have to have the witness of the spirit right now? Like I've heard people say that you've got to have the witness of the spirit right now. Don't rely on something that happened back then. But they're not really defining what the witness of the spirit is. And so you're like, I don't know, I just had a really bad day. Like, am I still saved? You know? But I think you're exactly right. So I think I want to say that in like the context of that original statement in Romans, like Paul's talking of is talking about something that's like inward desire for God, the upward longing for God, crying on Father. But I think where what you're saying is so important is that then in John's epistle, he shows how this is worked out in the context of the church in very objective means. So, you know, in the context of the community, how do you know that you're saved? How does the spirit assure you or witness to you? Well, you love one another, right? So that love in scripture isn't something that you can you can have outside of a local community. Like if you're not going and being, you're not a member in the church, how can you, how can you do that? It's by, you know, you have in your article, 1 John 2, 19. It's by belonging, it's by fully owning this community and buying into it completely. So, you know, they went out from us, but they were not of us. If they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, and you have in parentheses there left the church. And again, here you're talking about the visible church, right? Right. So that's a key verse. They left the visible church that it might become plain that they all are not of us. I mean, the Bible knows nothing of a Christian who is not a member in a local visible body. If someone is saved, like the thief on the cross, apart from that, it's an extraordinary circumstance and exception, not the norm.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Yeah, right, right. So extraordinary. So we always, as believers of provenient grace and the initiation of God for our salvation, uh, God works ordinarily through uh the ministries of a local church. That's his ordinary way of working. There are also, of course, extraordinary ways of working, right? Uh, some of them are are found even even within scripture. Um, you know, once once the church has has set out on this mission, there you we still see uh you know, we get glimpses of what the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit's always ahead of us, right? Always going before us. Um so I think um if someone is is struggling to associate the witness of the spirit so strongly with ecclesiology, uh that wouldn't surprise me, first of all, uh, because I think it's a new concept to probably a lot of people, but I want to connect it to something that has been around for a while, um, at least uh in my lifetime, kind of the reading that we would have uh as say ministerial students. And I'm wanting to say, is it Robert Shank? Um it's Shank, but some of you who were in you know Bible college taking theology or uh studying you know the doctrine of of election, uh I think it's Robert Shank, who wrote a couple of books, and one of them, uh one of them is Elect in the Sun, and the other I don't remember, but a lot of people read it. I don't know if you're familiar with those books, uh they're before your time. But uh a lot of us read those books back in the 80s, 90s. I don't remember when they were published, but for me in the 90s. So that was and and and uh Robert Schenk's uh book on was it chosen in the sun? Uh but it was had was very widely accepted within uh you know conservative Westland circles. Very and it was just people like, oh wow, this is a good argument against uh other ideas of say Romans 9 through 11, you know, that sort of election. And and it was very emphasized, very much emphasized that election is corporate, that God elects uh uh Christ, his son, and through the son, a body of people. What that that is um that's a concept that I think is very acceptable in particularly obviously in Westland circles. I don't think Schenko's Westland either, but uh we have an understanding of corporate election. What I'm adding to that or suggesting we need to also understand with that is corporate assurance. And uh the my mind always um so frequently goes forward to the book of Revelation and uh particularly in the last two chapters, 21 and 22, the role that the bride has, right? So the bride is saved, all right? Who's the bride? It's all of us. You know, our salvation is ultimately corporate, we are saved as a group. Yes, I, you know, David Fry, the person, you know, me, the individual, I am saved, along with you, Jonathan Arnold, and others. Yes, there's it's individual. So we're not we're not removing the personal testimony of I have been born again by the blood of Jesus Christ, right? And I have the witness of the spirit. But but uh we must not disassociate that from the corporate nature of our election and of the witness of the spirit through the church.

SPEAKER_03 18:33

What we're what we're actually saying here is something that I think is really uh liberating because I I uh have somebody in my family, their little girl went to uh a youth, a children's camp, a children's camp, basically. And there was like a real dramatic presentation of the gospel, and this little girl goes to the altar and she prays, and um she's trying to say everything that they tell her to say, and and then they they all celebrate about how what a wonderful service it was and how God came and and you know did all these things in the lives of these children. But then this little girl goes home and she's like, like, I'm really scared, I'm really like anxious, I don't know, like nothing happened, did I do something wrong? Did I not pray the right thing? How do I know that I'm a Christian? And my counsel to the parents were was, you know, if if you think about salvation strictly in terms of something individual and personal, you're gonna say to that child, well, do you know, you know, you got to keep praying until you pray through. You know, make sure you you sense the witness of the Holy Spirit. And then that child, you could literally set them on a trajectory for the rest of their life where they're under this incredible bondage because they they know they prayed for salvation, but they didn't have an experience. Whereas my, if you believe what we're talking about, if you believe this, this is what the church has always taught, I believe, is plain in scripture. If we retrieve this, this is what you say to that little girl. You say, Did you, did you confess Jesus is Lord? Do you believe that Jesus is Lord? Yes. Did you ask him to forgive you of your sins? Yes. Okay. Then we, as your parents and as the church and your pastor, we're gonna, we believe that if you've done this and you're you show a desire to serve the Lord and you're showing, you're showing evidence of a desire to learn the Bible and do what Jesus wants you to do, we're gonna baptize you and we're gonna bring you into membership in the church, and we're gonna tell you you're saved. And we have the God-given authority to do that because Jesus told us in John 20, 23, whoever sins you forgive or forgiven. So don't think about this in terms of like, you know, I think assurance is the key. I love, I love going this route. Don't think about this primarily in terms of authority or in terms of like, you know, power dynamics, or in terms of uh whatever. Think about it primarily in terms of community and assurance. We are we're being the body to one another, and when we do that, we liberate one another from the bondage of a merely individualistic salvation, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:09

Right. And there are people who who I've encountered who are afraid of the church exercising that sort of what you know scripture calls authority, uh, but exercising you know the keys. And and the reason is because people who have experienced church authority have have experienced authoritarianism and domination and abuse. And so the first message in this understanding of the church is that pastors better make sure that they have a good and proper understanding of the church and the role of the church, and that our role as pastor. Is a shepherd. There's gentleness, there's patience, there is guidance, there is comfort, there is feeding and provision, there is suffering, there is great risk, there is that that that's what it means. It does it. This is not uh let me go back to this. Um uh Scott McKnight and the other authors uh slip in my mind, but uh both of them make this point that uh the pastoral leadership and the way it happens today, particularly in America, is a magnet for narcissism. Is a magnet for narcissists who see and take advantage of an opportunity to build their own spiritual business, you know, I'm putting that in quotes, uh, and and to build their own little kingdom and to find meaning by the sycophants who they surround themselves by and who uh who are quick to just put them on this sort of pedestal of authority. That's not the picture of a shepherd. The picture of a shepherd is the one who is first into the valley of the shadow of death, right? A picture of a shepherd is one who puts himself between his flock and and the you know the wild beasts who would devour them. You know, the shepherd is going to be the first one to be devoured. That's what it means to be a pastor. And then we have to understand what is the church, what is the flock? It's the flock of God, Paul says. This the f or Peter said, pastor, the flock of God. Um and so it's so important here for pastors to get the church right. If you're a lay person out there, we want you to get it right too. But you may get it right if if the pastors aren't getting it right. This is disaster. Because like pastors, if you're not if you're if you're a narcissist, if you're a billionaire, don't read John 20, 23. All right. Just don't read it. Don't read the book of John. All right. Stay stay out of Peter's epistles too while you're at it. Uh because because you're you're going to you're going to come across you know uh Matthew 16, Matthew 18, or especially John 20, 23, and you're gonna be rubbing your hands together thinking, oh boy, I've been wanting to do this for a long time, you know, to the person that you don't like. No, that's not that's not what this is about. That's why in John 20, 22, Jesus is first of all breathing his spirit into his disciples. These are spirit-filled uh individuals who are now being entrusted to exercise this uh tremendous authority. But that's a that's scary because people have experienced authority as abuse.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

So one of the keys here is that we're talking about corporate affirmation of salvation, corporate offering of assurance. Not just this is not something that's exercised only by one pastor or a senior pastor, but this is something that's exercised by a plurality of elders, which we need to talk about sometime. So important, so vital important. I'm if the Lord wills, love to plan a church here within the next few years. One thing I really want, even from the get-go, is I don't want to be the only, the only pastor. I don't want to build a community around me or my personality or my, I need, I need plurality, I need a team, I want to do this with others. And then I want to involve as many mature lay people as I can, you know, as many people, give them a voice, give them a chance to share, give them a chance to ask questions. Because when it comes to something as serious as incorporating somebody into the, into the the company of the saved, right? Into the body of Christ, when it comes to something as as important as extending to somebody the forgiveness of sin, John 20, 23, you know, baptizing them, offering them forgiveness in the blood of Christ in the Eucharist, these are things that we, these are the keys. We we've got to exercise this together because I don't, I don't even want to do it alone, right? That's it's it's a it's a scary thing. I mean, it's it's a weighty, it's a weighty thing. And so I think, I think this is corporate. This is something we share this responsibility. So when we speak of, when we speak of the church's authority and responsibility to forgive sins, or the church's authority and responsibility to incorporate, it's so easy to hear authority or whatever, and and not to hear church, right? It's the church, not the pastor's authority and responsibility to forgive sin, the church's responsibility. So it's gotta be exercised corporately. That's why, you know, I'm not, I can't say I'm a congregationalist, but I do sympathize with congregationalism, and I do appreciate the corporate emphasis because when it comes to something like excommunication in Matthew 18, it is tell it to the church. This is not just one person who's power hungry and and wants to control, and uh, we've got to emphasize the corporate, the corporate nature of this.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Right. So in this article, I ask a couple of questions. Uh, you know, the article title is what's the church's role in our salvation? Uh the the opening question is, what why does the church matter? And I think it would be a good exercise for pastors to ask themselves first, but uh to talk to their leaders, uh, talk to your board members, talk to your elders uh individually, and just ask them, say, you know what, I I've been trying to think about you know my ideas and my understanding of God's purpose for the church. Why do you think the church matters and see what kind of answers you get? So I try to address that question first, and uh in doing so, I make several references to uh how the early church understood uh scripture's teaching on the church. Uh let me share this because I think this is uh a good example of what the early fathers thought. Augustine said uh he said, whoever is separated from the church by this single sin of being separated is separated from the unity of Christ. Uh there is this common idea through through church history, rooted in uh really in John's writings, uh, but Paul as well, that there is no salvation outside the church. And what that means is it does not mean that a person cannot come to Christ through the Spirit's work outside the church, but followers of Christ will always be drawn to the body. And so I have I've heard a number of stories through my lifetime of missionaries who have gone into places and they've said, you know, there was one believer in this village and who you know had just had had faithfully served God for so many years. There was no church there. Okay, sure. Like that doesn't surprise me. Um that fits great within this because guess what? That believer was thrilled when a missionary arrived with the gospel, right? Because they're drawn to other believers, they're drawn to the church. And so what I say in those extraordinary cases is yes, that those are certainly true cases. And what you find is that in all of those cases, those who are truly spirit-filled are longing for the companionship that comes through the church and only through the church. They're not look, these are not people looking to separate themselves, these are people looking to join themselves. What John is talking about in John chapter, 1 John 2.19, what Augustine's talking about, what Cyprian uh you know talked about uh in his uh you know doctrine of outside the church, there's no salvation. They're talking about people who are born again in the church and leave the church thinking that their salvation is individualized only, and that they can do their own thing and not come under the fullness of Christ, which is the church. That's that's what they're talking about.

SPEAKER_03 30:27

Yeah, and you know, you you quote Cyprian, uh, his famous maxim outside the church there is no salvation, you know, was not just affirmed by the ancient fathers, by the patristic fathers, the medieval fathers, but it was affirmed by the reformers. And that's one of the misconceptions that I think is that that the reformers kind of deconstructed this institutionalized religion and brought it back to the individual, right? The individual reading his Bible, the individual having a personal relationship with Jesus. Whereas the reformers were, yes, they were they were uh pushing back against some abuses, but their ecclesiology was like really strong. So here's Augustine in his sermon to the catechumens. You begin to have him for your father when you have been born by the church as your mother. And you think, whoa, that's Roman Catholic, until you read Calvin, who says in Institutes Book 4, to those whom he is a father, the church must also be a mother. He says the same thing, right? You go to Luther and he says, outside of the Christian church, there is no truth, no Christ, no salvation. You go to the Westminster Confession, which I already mentioned, and again, you have outside the visible church. So the reformers are saying the same thing that the church fathers said. This is not a Roman Catholic doctrine, this is a Protestant doctrine, and their church is basically reading scripture the same way.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, so there's um yeah, well, that yeah, a lot of thoughts here. Um you know, we could we could talk about why uh why salvation has become so individualized for people. And I and again, as we talk about the church, I don't want to deny the personal nature, it's deeply personal. Sure. Many of the you know the ethical commands that are given to the church are to be practiced by persons, right? Person to person. So it's that's that's very real. But our salvation is more than, it's not less than, but it is more than a personal matter. And so I don't want to take anything away from somebody's personal testimony. That's important that we give personal testimony, sure. But we that that testimony takes place within a body, and we must not ignore that. We've got to get beyond the church being something that is there to serve us, to make us comfortable, to feed us so that we can get on with our individual lives and do what we want to uh while while not having to answer or to submit to any sort of ecclesial authority, right? I mean, that's that's American church life. And it doesn't matter if you're conservative Wesleyan or or liberal, you know, something else. It it's it's church life in the in today's uh Christian world. It just is, and that's and that's a sad place to be.

SPEAKER_03 33:29

Yeah. Yeah, I think you make a key point, you know, to answer your question, uh, your first question there in your article on why does the church matter? I think you're right. That's what most people would say. Something like, well, you know, I go to church to hear the word so that I can be fed so that I can be ready to face my week. And so like the church is kind of like you go to get your gas tank filled up for the week, but like what the real Christian life, the driving, right? That's that's the rest of the week. Whereas in scripture, it's much more like you enter into this new community and like your whole life is like absorbed into this community. This you enter the ark, right? You live life in the ark. And so you see, like there in Acts 2, I love that picture of the church where like they sell everything and have all things in common. They, you know, they they provide for the needs of the poor. So when you talk about like the church being salv being playing a role in our salvation, you can almost go further and say, the church is salvation, because what God saves you unto is a life in community, and what he saves you from is a life in isolation. So, you know, when we talk about like say something like uh justification is salvation, we meet we meet we can say that because justifice justification saves us from legal guilt. We can say adoption is salvation because adoption saves us from uh enmity with God, being enemies with God. Like it brings us into a right relationship, filial relationship with God. We can say holiness or sanctification is salvation because holiness, sanctification brings us, saves us from the defilement of sin. We can also say the church is salvation because the church, that life in community, that entering into the covenant people of God, not just stopping off there to get something to live the real Christian life, but actually entering into this community saves us from a life that's individual individual, isolated, um, and and broken and fractured, which was the result of the fall. That's not God's will for us. So the church ultimately is salvation.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Yeah, right. And so so it's always sin that isolates, right? The Holy Spirit doesn't lead people into isolation. Now, the Holy Spirit may lead us to solitude and to quiet, all right. That's that's different. That's not isolation, right? That it that is you know, that is for our health and for the health of our own relationships. But sin is what leads to separation and to schism and to uh the the that kind of loneliness that people experience. You're right. You know, God came to save us from that. It's not good for man to be alone. And uh and so the the in describing uh what the church's role in our salvation is, uh in this article I I choose three three metaphors. Uh the first one is the bride, that we our salvation is corpor uh corporate. Uh we kind of touched on that already. Uh the second, though, is goes along with uh what I've heard you say before. I think uh you mentioned, I think Ben Myers is the one who said that the church is salvation. Was it was it Ben who said that?

SPEAKER_03 36:49

Yeah, he says something along that line. Let me pull you go ahead. Let me pull that book off my shelf here.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

I think I've heard you say that before, so we'll credit that to Ben Myers. Anyway, um the church church is our salvation, and I and I like that. That resonates because again, the uh uh Peter first and then the early church, they they liken the church to the ark, uh to Noah's Ark. The ark is is as Ben Myers said, the the ark is salvation, the church is salvation, and it's this is not to say that the church saves us. We're saved through uh by faith in Jesus Christ, through his grace, right? So Jesus Christ is our Savior, but the church is the vessel that is given to us as a gift from Christ, just as the ark was given to Noah as a gift from God Himself, who gave the instructions to Noah to how to construct the ark, uh, and and it was his salvation and his family's salvation. And so it is with the church. And so this is uh this is uh true of uh uh the you know the New Testament mentions this, uh the early church uses the imagery of the church as the art of salvation. And and I've actually I have heard preaching uh in my lifetime, uh revival preaching, camp meeting preaching, that that has touched on that as well. And now I look back and I think I don't know if they understood how profound that was uh when when an evangelist you know said that. It's a very profound thing. And and then the third point, I'll just throw it out here, is uh the church is our guardian. Uh that is uh the the you know the pillar foundation of the truth, the um the guardian of what has been received. Uh we are you know the apostolic church and that we've received from the apostles the gospel that was entrusted to them and we pass it down. So the church is the guardian. So throw those out there, and uh I think you were looking up the Ben Meyers.

SPEAKER_03 38:58

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because I'd love to just have this included in this podcast. I think this is this is excellent. In his comments on the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, um he talks about how salvation, the gospel, is addressing like the fracturing of humanity. And I don't think he includes it in the book, but I've listened to his lectures or his sermons on the creed. And he talks about how there's a patristic image of Adam that when before the fall, Adam represents like the whole human race. So it's as if the whole human race is contained in the one man Adam. And when the fall happens, it's as though Adam gets thrown to the ground and fractures into a thousand pieces that scatter into isolation and separation. And in Christ, the new man, all the scattered members of humanity are reunited into one man, one body, which is Christ. And this is the new community that Christ came to found. So he says the message of the gospel is directed not primarily to individuals, but to this new community. God's plan of salvation all along has been to create one human society as the bearer of the divine image. In that sense, the church isn't just the way people respond to salvation, the church is salvation. The church is what God has been doing in the world from the beginning. It is a representative microcosm of what God intends for the whole human family.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so so often we disconnect ecclesiology, this the doctrine of the church, from our Christology and pneumatology, our understanding of Christ and the Spirit. Because what we what we think is we have you know, the Father sends the Son for our redemption, the Spirit, the Son is crucified, dead, buried, rises again, ascends, sends the Spirit. And like that's all the essential part of salvation. Incidentally, then the church comes about. No, no, no, no. No, the church is what happens when God sends the Son, when God the Father sends God the Son, and from them proceed the Holy Spirit. Yeah, what happens in that natural sequence is the church. It's not an add-on, it is part and parcel with what God is doing and intended to do from the very beginning. So it's the church is not incidental. Now, our challenge today, and I begin the article with this, our big challenge today is that the picture of the church, the reality of the church world today is not that. We have, I think in our little county of you know 35,000, 40,000 people, I think we have 72 churches, church congregations, you're right, right? Buildings and so on. It's hard to have a robust ecclesiology when you live in the kind of world that we live in. It's hard because there are there are differences. Um and I remind people often, uh, among the you know, Bible-believing, you know, Christ-worshiping churches, uh, not all of them are, but you know, most of them are, among those, we have more in common than we have different. And so you know, there's there's uh and yet the picture, what people see, believers and unbelievers, what they see is a very fractured uh entity, yeah, that they there's there's no concept hardly of there being one church unless it's only spiritual.

unknown 42:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:56

Yeah, I uh I highly recommend the there's a discussion, maybe I can find it and link it in our show notes between Peter Lighthart and Kevin Van Hooser on this discussion. And I think uh Lightheart goes further, quite a bit further than um than Van Hooser does on um in an ecumenical direction, but uh in an institutional and a visible unity. Um, but the discussion is so edifying and and it's true. You know, what do we do to promote more um more cooperation, more sense of community and unity? Um and I, you know, I just heard somebody say, this might be going down a rabbit traw, but I just heard somebody preaching the other day, and they're like, there are hardly any cities in America with holiness churches, and those cities are are burning and going to hell. And I'm like, okay, were those two comments supposed to be taken together? Like they're they're they're going to hell because there's not a holiness church there, so the the light isn't there. Like, because there's a lot of cities and a lot of churches on everyone. Every street corner that preach the gospel, right? So I think it starts in our own church. We've got to create a Catholic culture. Like before I pray, for maybe some people would disagree this, but before I pray for other churches in our denomination, I pray for other churches in our community. So I pray for, you know, I pray for the Bible, Bible believers church and the and the Baptist Church. Pray for these churches, create a sense of like we are, we're one with with those who preach the gospel. And, you know, pray for something like that they would hold fast the true gospel, that they would preach the word. You know, we're not saying that necessarily, you know, every church that calls themselves a church in our community is a true church, right? That kind of mushy ecumenicalism. But I think we do need to really think about how, um, and here's here's the here's the way that I think this fits with our discussion. If we are going to reclaim a sense of the church's role in our salvation and salvation as something corporate, I think we're also going to have to work harder to emphasize the importance of a visible unity with other believers in our community. I think that's the key. And so it starts with us in our own congregation preaching, teaching the Apostles' Creed. We're a Catholic church, having a Catholic spirit, and then from there trying to work at creating healthy ecumenical dialogue and cooperation and partnership with other churches in our community.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

Right. Now, I think the biggest fear that I've encountered, or and let me just say this, the biggest reason why why pastors and leaders are scared of that sort of ecumenicalism is because they are afraid that our young people will learn or believe that people who think differently differently than we do are true believers. Now, I really think in some cases, some people think really it's it's totally a matter of they will think that they are true believers and we know they're not. All right. So I think there's some of that, you know. So it wouldn't surprise me. I don't know who it was, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone would say there's no holiness church in this city of two million, they're all going to hell. Never mind, there are a thousand churches in the city. Right. So that wouldn't surprise me. But but I think there are others that that's not like they know that's not true. Like they know that's wrong. You know, our fear is not that they would think that someone who thinks differently about us about tertiary issues, you know, are not Christians, or or that they are Christians, that's not their fear. I think their fear is that they will just lose them from our local church for quote, an easier way, right? I think there's a lot of fear of that. And I want to say, first of all, um you know, if they are truly passionate after Christ, if they are true followers of Christ and they are eager to learn what it means to love and serve Jesus, they're gonna realize pretty quickly that there are a lot of other people in the world that love and that love Jesus with all their heart, right? And are passionate about serving him who don't think exactly like we do. So, number one, you're not gonna keep that from happening, right? And so I think it actually is counterproductive. I think we ought to go ahead and teach our young people that, hey, there are Christian, there are wonderful, godly, holy, you know, Christ-following, Bible-loving preach uh uh uh Christians out there who think differently than we do. And we thank God for them. And they're there are brothers, there are sisters. In fact, we want to serve beside them in some capacity. And here are the reasons why we're two different churches. You know, that maybe they're Presbyterian, you're a reformed church, and we are, you know, a wesley Armenian Holiness Church. Yeah, there's some important differences, but you know, these are these are on secondary issues. We agree on the primary things. And I I think I think we'd be better off to go ahead and let young people know, hey, there are believers, the church is bigger. The church is bigger than ours. Uh, we and and uh let's not hide behind this this false pretense of you know we don't care what church you belong to. Yeah, we do care what church you belong to. Let's not lie to ourselves, we do. Um but we but we but there is a sense in which we I I think we should just be up front and say, you know what, there are other believers uh who are true and are godly, they think differently than what we do, instead of building up these false notions of, you know, we're we're the only ones.

SPEAKER_03 48:46

I think the reason that the discussion naturally leads us here to talking about a more expansive view of the visible church is because we tend to only think about other churches in in terms of more or less pure and other churches being less pure than us. But that was the second way in which the Protestant reformers assess churches. Before they talked about more or less pure churches, they talked about true or false churches. And so if we if we understand that a person's salvation um is largely dependent on or wrapped up in their participation in a local visible body, then we're gonna have to be thinking about other churches first and foremost as true or false churches. And the true church exists wherever the gospel is embodied in word and sacrament. Um so, yes, that's we don't have to lose our distinctiveness. You know, as you said, we don't have to lose our identity. We can be who we are, uh, but we need to be very, very careful about undermining other churches in such a way that um so focuses on their what we see what we perceive as a lack of purity, uh, that might imply in fact they're not even a true church.

SPEAKER_01 49:57

Yeah, and that doesn't have to compromise or water down who we are. Right. You know, what what our church, you know, my our local church right here where I pastor, what we believe, what we teach, you know, we're we're firm in what we believe, and some of the things that we understand in regard to you know the particulars of salvation. Uh, you know, the we I just had a conversation the other day, typical conversation between the sovereignty of the God and the responsibility of man and and how different traditions understand that differently. Well, yeah, so we have some differences. And those those are important differences, but they are secondary. Uh, but it they do in part define who we are as a local church, and that's important. Um so as we as we think about the church's role in our salvation, then uh let me let me go and answer this for those who haven't read the article while also pointing you to read the article. I don't know if it's posted online yet, but it will be uh at BibleMethods.org, and then uh we'll publish it later on Holy Joys as well. Uh but uh so first of all, what is the role, uh church's role in my salvation? As the bride of Christ, the role of the church is that it is the church that is saved. I'm talking about ultimate glorification, uh ultimate salvation. When Christ finally saves us, it is in the church. Christ comes and takes his bride. He he we as a as a people are wedded to Christ. So it's the corporate nature of the church. That so the church's role is that it is the church that is saved. Uh that's that's number one. The uh church uh is salvation as we talk. Uh that is is the ark of salvation. Uh it is, as I said, I think early in this podcast, uh, the vessel uh which God has given to us. Uh just as God gave the instructions to Noah to build the ark, uh, so uh Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit uh they build the church, and it is God's chosen vessel for uh for our salvation. And with that, there's then that corporate assurance. Uh we have our assurance is not only individual, but it is also uh corporate. And I think we both agree that there needs to be more emphasis on that. That needs to be added to our whole conversation of the assurance of salvation. And then uh, you know, what else is the role of the church? Uh, the role of the church is our guardian. Now that's a big one. We have a series on restoration uh that people should listen to, and we've done some writing on that. Uh so that's all part of this uh restoration, holding uh people accountable uh when they have fallen into sin and making sure they're restored. Uh there is you know the whole exercise of the keys. We talked about a forthcoming article uh that we're uh jointly writing on John 20, 23. All of that is very, very important. So this is more than what we can talk about now, but the church is the guardian. The church is my guardian, it's our guardian, uh, and in several senses. One of those is that our faith, my faith, our faith, is a corporate faith. I believe the gospel that I have received. And those, you know, my children, for instance, they believe what others have believed and have passed on. So my faith is not in my own little gospel, it is in the gospel that has been passed down. So, in that sense, the church, the church's role is essential. It must pass on the truth, which has been given to us by the Holy Spirit in God's word. Um, it is the guardian in that it holds us accountable. Uh it holds us and it restores us. The church has that role to to hold us accountable and to restore us when restoration is needed. So uh that again, those are just a few uh highlights of how I would answer the question what is the role of the church uh of the church in my salvation? Uh those are some of the particular roles.

SPEAKER_03 54:19

Yeah, I think if I you know would add like one more um major metaphor would be like the church is our mother. And we already mentioned that with Cyprian, Augustine, Calvin. Um, you see that through the tradition, like God our father, the church our mother. So, you know, if my little boy rejects his mommy, he rejects me too, which would be a tragedy. Um so you can't reject your mother without rejecting your father. Um, if my little boy uh stops responding to his mother, especially when he was a baby, um, he's gonna die because his mom's giving providing him with food, like this life-giving source. The mother is like this life-giving source. We see that with a nursing infant. And there's a sense in which a uh a spiritual child never leaves the breast of his mother. We're always drawing life from the church, which is this life-giving source. So that the mother is nourishing us constantly, and if we reject that source of nourishment, we're going to wither and ultimately die.

SPEAKER_01 55:26

Yeah, certainly, certainly. And that that whole metaphor can be tracked through the New Testament, through all of the um the spiritual sustenance that comes through one another, through the church, right? The the comfort and the prayer and the and yes, the accountability, the the feeding of one another, the the healing of one another. I mean, all of those fit into this metaphor of we go to the church for for our health. You know, God through the church is you know, he's extending his hands through the church, and that has been understood as a motherly ministry that the church has.

SPEAKER_00 56:10

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