Part 2
Builder and Owner

“I will build My church.” Whatever might have existed in earlier times and have been called “church” was not what Jesus here promised to build (Acts 7:38). What He anticipated would be something that He would initiate and would be peculiarly His own. It is true that Jesus did not personally construct the church while on the earth but left such work for His apostles to carry out after His ascension to heaven (Acts 2). For this work He sent the Spirit of truth to guide them (Jn. 16:13). Through their proclamation of Him as Lord and Christ and people’s reception of the gospel message, the church began to take shape as the materials were being formed. This building process was possible because Jesus had laid the foundation by this time through demonstration of His messiahship and deity. It was for the belief of people that He demonstrated beyond honest and reasonable doubt that He was who He claimed to be; apart from that belief and the willingness to act upon it there could be no church. From heaven He sent the Spirit and from heaven He supervised the building of is His church. It was and is His because all that pertains to it is part of His work: (1) His deity was His by essential nature and His messianic role was His by the Father’s appointment, giving the foundation its divine quality. (2) All who compose the church are His by their willing reception of the gospel, including its message that He is God’s Son with power, giving the superstructure its relationship to Christ. To state the same principle another way, we would say that all members of Christ’s body have been filtered through the gospel, which admits only penitent, baptized believers into the church. By virtue of their belief of the gospel and their penitent obedience in baptism, they are saved from their sins and added by Christ to the church (Acts 2:38, 41, 47). Thus saved and added by Him, they are His—“My church.”

Only as we believe Him and act according to His instructions as head of the church do we honor the One who built the church. There ought to be no inclination to speak or act as if the church is “our church.” Whatever positive traits characterize the body of Christ derive from Christ, our foundation and builder. Redeemed with the price of His blood, all in the church are His property, with no property rights of our own. Paul explained that “ye are not your own, for ye were bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:19-20). Only by viewing ourselves as being His possession and conducting ourselves in accord with His will can we glorify the Lord, whose we are.

Time of Building

Jesus looked to the future in His promise to build the church. “I will build My church.” Nothing that originated before this discussion between Jesus and the disciples was the Lord’s church, for Jesus said it still had to be built. It is sometimes claimed by men that the church had its inception at creation, in the call of Israel out of Egypt, or during the preparatory ministry of John the baptizer; but each such claim falls on its face as untrue against the clear light of Jesus’ promise of the future building of His church.

A bit of study will reveal why Jesus could not have earlier built His church. Though Jesus was divine before His entry into this world by being born to Mary, His deity was not demonstrated to men. The same can be said of His role as messiah, for the Father’s plan to send Him into the world with His approval did not become obvious to men until Jesus had come to earth, lived, died, buried, been resurrected from the dead, and ascended to heaven. Peter confessed Jesus in Matthew 16 because divine revelation caused him to do so. Divine revelation that would benefit all people awaited future events. Only when Jesus had completed His earthly career did people in general have a firm basis for belief in Him, and only after His coronation at God’s right hand did He begin to exert His regal power as king. The foundation of the church thus depended on His life, death, resurrection, and reign. If the church had been build before Jesus ascended, there would have been no foundation. It is no surprise that Jesus built His church only after He had left earth. Only then was it demonstrable that the gates of Hades could not deter the building of His church. Only then would the gospel message be proclaimed in the name of the risen Christ (Lk. 24:26-27). Only then were people called upon to repent and be baptized in the name of Christ (Acts 2:38). Only then were baptized believers added by the Lord to the church (Acts 2:47). Any attempt to build the church before Pentecost in Acts 2 would have been truly premature, lacking the certainty that it could have later enjoyed.

By Bobby Graham

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