What is a real church?

There is another conversation I am watching where the idea of “real” versus “unreal” churches is being bandied about. It is a common topic among my brothers in the reformed camp. We love to spend time quibbling over confessions and creeds and “marks” of a true church. I have written about this before, in fact this may be a poorly worded rehash of those prior posts, but I feel compelled to work through my thoughts here again.

Most groups of people assembling together (i.e. “local churches”) are a mix of believers (i.e. the church) and unbelievers (i.e. the world). There may be some smaller gatherings where everyone in the room is a born-again believer. There almost certainly are gatherings where no one, from the pulpit to the back pew, is a believer. By and large though there is a mixture.

The presence of a majority of believers in a given assembly doesn’t make that group a “real church”. Nor does the reality of an apostate organization make the believers assembled in that group not part of the church. Likewise, being a part or a “member” of a group of people consisting primarily of believers doesn’t make an unbeliever part of God’s covenant people. If you are a believer, you are the church regardless of where and with whom you meet on Sunday. If you are an unbeliever you are not part of the church, no matter how shiny your dress shoes are or what title or office you hold in a particular church.

The church is the church and that truth has nothing to do with liturgical/non-liturgical, Calvinist/Arminian, Presbyterian/Episcopalian/Congregational, simple church/house church/institutional church. A basic truism of the doctrine of predestination and election is that we didn’t choose to join His church, He chose us to be in His church and likewise He chose others to also be part of His church. We have no more say in passing approval on who is or is not in the church than we did in being made part of His church in the first place. So the whole exercise of the presence of this mark is the mark of a “true church” and the absence of this mark makes it a “false church” needs to get chucked out of the window. Few things weaken the efficacy of the witness of the church like dividing ourselves into little camps of believers that set ourselves against all other camps in our area.

If you want to know what a true church is, look to the Scriptures. There you will find a noticeable absence of denomination, of local churches competing for members and money, of holding up a list of secondary doctrines to grant or withhold the stamp of “true church”. The only mark of a true church is the presence of those bought by the blood of the Lamb. Adding anything else to that is foolish and is a return to the dividing wall between people that Christ destroyed with His flesh.

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility (Ephesians 2: 14)