Chapter Twenty Nine - The Function of the Church
1. THE MANDATES TO THE CHURCH
The mandates for the function of the church are in the gospel passages containing:
the "Great Commission" (Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:46-48; John 20:21); and
in the charge of Acts 1:8.
1.1 The Commission of Matthew 28:18-20
The most complete form of the Great Commission is found in Matthew 28:18-20:
"All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, lam with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:18-20).
This mandate contains the following elements:
believers obey through the "authority" Christ gives them, ensuring their success if they act in dependence on the Holy Spirit;
believers have one major command - "make disciples"; and
believers accomplish this primary command in three ways - "going," "baptizing," and "teaching."
The Greek verb translated "going" is actually in a different tense than the other two verbs, as the following possible translation demonstrates: "after you have gone, make disciples of all nations, by baptizing.., and teaching ....""Go" is therefore not the focus of the mandate, and it need not be limited to going to a foreign country. It simply pertains to the activities of life that place the believer in contact with unbelievers.
Thus, "baptizing" and "teaching" are the primary means of "making disciples," implying also that we have not fully obeyed until the people we reach with the gospel have become bona fide, consistent followers of Jesus Christ. I believe this is initiated by "baptizing," a term used by Jesus Christ and the early church to encompass all we mean by evangelism. That is, baptism was the culmination of the evangelistic process when the convert confessed with his mouth, "Jesus is Lord" (Romans 10:9). Immediately the baptized disciple is taught the things of Christ to make him a productive disciple. This becomes a life-long process.
1.2 The Charge of Acts 1:8
Just before He ascended into heaven, Jesus is reported by Luke to have expressed the Great Commission in terms of witnessing:
"But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth" (Acts 1:8).
The major elements of this command are:
witnessing is to be done in the power of the Holy Spirit (note the phrase "all authority" in Matthew 28);
witnessing is simply an accurate report of what one has seen and heard. In regard to the gospel, it pertains primarily to the resurrection in the book of Acts. For believers today who are not eyewitnesses, it is a witness to what the risen Christ has done for us; and
the strategy of world evangelism is implied in the words, "in Jerusalem (one's neighborhood and city), and in all Judea and Samaria (one's nation), and even to the remotest part of the earth" (foreign mission).
2. THE THREEFOLD FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH
There are three basic functions in the church's mandate to "make disciples":
evangelism ("baptizing");
edification ("teaching"); and
exaltation or worship.
Evangelism promotes growth by adding disciples to the body of Christ, while edification trains those members to be productive disciples. Worship is putting God first as the ultimate value.
2.1 Evangelism
Evangelism includes three essential elements:
strategy;
method; and
content of the message.
2.1.1 Strategy
Matthew 28:19 stated that making disciples is accomplished by "going." This mandate established a radical departure from the manner of witnessing done in the Old Testament. The nation of Israel, its way of life and its unique worship, drew people from all over the world to receive a "witness." The easiest way to compare the Old Testament method of witnessing with that of the New Testament is to describe the Old Testament witness with the word "come," for Israel was never commanded to carry a message to anyone. The mandate to the church is "go." This implies a more aggressive strategy, with no emphasis on a building.
2.1.2 Method
Good evangelism must be done in an environment of influential involvement with people. The believer's oral message must be affirmed by his quality of life in order to be effective. In essence, people want to know if our beliefs make any difference in our lives.
Acts 2:47 very interestingly sets forth the only reference to evangelism in this section, which describes the activities of the early church. The early believers were "praising God, and having favor with all the people."
Furthermore, good evangelism allows God to do His work, as we have already seen. He, not the believer, is the one who adds to the church those being saved (Acts 2:47b).
2.1.3 Content of the message
The actual message must be no more or less than what God has prescribed. I fear that today's evangelism is often insufficient to produce genuine converts. A summary of the apostolic message as found throughout the book of Acts and clarified in the epistles is in order.
The apostolic message contained a "core" truth about Jesus: His death and His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3-4; Romans 10:9-10). A survey of the evangelistic messages of Acts reveals other important elements related to the knowledge of the various audiences. Jewish listeners knew the Old Testament truths about God, sin, and the meaning of sacrifice. Gentiles, however, needed to know more about the nature of God and sin. All audiences were told to respond either with repentance or faith.
Let's visualize the evangelistic message in the following picture:
From the picture, we can see that:
Sermons to Jews contained the "core" and "response" truths.
Sermons to Gentiles required the "necessary adjunct truths" due to their ignorance of the Old Testament.
Twentieth century people would fit this scheme also. Religious church-goers would correspond with the Jewish listener of the first century; the average pagan today would correspond roughly with the pagan Gentile of the first century. Thus, in order to be effective when we preach the gospel, we must be sensitive to our audience.
2.2 Edification
The distinction between evangelism and edification has been summarized by Gene Getz (Gene Getz, Sharpening the Focus of the church, Wheaton, III.: victor, 1984):
"Evangelism is done principally when the church scatters, while edification takes place when the church gathers."
Edification means "building up," and it corresponds with "equipping the saints" or "discipling" (in the narrow sense of bringing converts to maturity, not in the sense of Matthew 28:19-20).
According to Acts 2:42-46, edification consists of the following elements:
teaching;
fellowship;
the Lord's Supper;
prayers; and
discipline.
2.2.1 Teaching
"They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching." This for us today includes both the Old and New Testaments. Biblical teaching is the bedrock of edification.
2.2.2 Fellowship
Fellowship is demonstrated by sharing, more than anything else, in verses 43-46. These believers shared their time and possessions so that no one suffered need. It is a mistake to assume communal life took place here, for they continued to meet "from house to house" (Acts 2:46). Also, the extensive pooling of material resources met a temporary need. The rest of the New Testament affirms and assumes the stewardship of personal property (see 1 Timothy 6:17-19). The point is, unselfish sharing is a part of healthy fellowship.
2.2.3 The Lord's Supper
Luke defines this ordinance as the "breaking of bread," to be distinguished from merely "taking meals together." This would have been both a celebration of the believers' unity (1 Corinthians 10:17-18), which is an aspect of fellowship, and of the death of Christ, which is an act of worship.
2.2.4 Prayers
When they gathered, the early believers prayed. The word translated "prayer" is actually plural, which might imply a widespread participation in prayer by all or most of the believers gathered in small groups "from house to house."
2.2.5 Discipline
Though not mentioned in Acts 2:42-47, no less vital an element in the edification of the body of Christ is the discipline of its erring members. Acts 5:1-11 demonstrates the importance of discipline when two hypocritical members of the church are severely punished in a unique way for the sake of making them an example.
Discipline, as gleaned from numerous passages of the New Testament, has several phases before it reaches the stage where the whole church becomes involved. The purpose of discipline is:
to restore the erring member (Matthew 18:15; 1 Corinthians 5:5; 1 Timothy 1:20; 2 Timothy 2:25); and
to maintain a public testimony (Romans 2:24; 1 Timothy 5:20; 1 Corinthians 5:6).
First of all, discipline must be done in a spirit of concern and humility (Galatians 6:1). There are three phases of discipline, and every believer should be involved in two of these phases:
personal, private admonition, in which each believer sooner or later must rebuke, admonish, encourage, or counsel some fellow-believer (Matthew 18:15; Luke 17:3-4; Galatians 6:1; 1 Thessalonians 5:12-14);
the group admonition, in which a believer who fails to respond to the private admonition is approached by several others (Matthew 18:16; 1 Timothy 5:20; 2 Thessalonians 3:6); and
church exclusion, in which the whole church willingly cooperates in refusing to fellowship with an offender who has resisted all other efforts to restore him. The majority of the congregation must participate in exclusion for it to be effective (2 Corinthians 2:5-8).
What sorts of offenses should constitute an occasion for some form of discipline? Generally speaking, it is conceivable that any kind of offense could. On the personal level, anything that constitutes an offense against another believer demands "rebuke" (Luke 17:3-4). In the New Testament the examples of public, corporate discipline usually entailed some socially crucial scandal like incest (1 Corinthians 5), but conceivably any offense - gossip, for example - could so disrupt the life of the church that exclusion from fellowship would be necessary for the talebearer.
In all cases, God promises that the church's efforts to discipline are backed by His authority (Matthew 18:18-20).
2.3 Exaltation or Worship
In the various activities such as devotion to the apostles' teaching, fellowship, the Lord's Supper, and prayer, something else takes place called "worship." Though worship is edifying to the believer, it also is something which he renders to God, something which God Himself desires. Worship can take place, of course, outside the assembly of believers privately, but worship is also a corporate thing.
The word "worship" comes from the Anglo-Saxon "worthship" which means "attributing worth to God." The Greek word translated "worship" literally means "to bow down." In its broadest sense worship is putting God first as the ultimate value; thus materialism or covetousness is a form of idolatry.
In the Old Testament, worship involved formal acts of praise, singing, instrumental music, and recitations of praise in a formal manner as seen in the Psalms. Such forms of worship are not as obvious or explicit in the New Testament's description of the early believers' meetings, but it is certain that they used them. Thus, there have developed more ritualistic churches with elaborate liturgies, while others have avoided some of the more formal rituals.
Acts 2:42 mentions the worship of the early believers in the form of the "breaking of bread" or the Lord's Supper which is the clearest worship activity of the four listed. Acts 2:47 refers to the believers' praise of God which led to God's adding to the church. Acts 4:23-31 quotes a corporate prayer in which God is praised or worshiped. What did their worship consist of besides these things? Did they have a ritual or liturgy?
Few clues are available. One example of the role of music is found in Ephesians 5:19, clearly a reference to corporate worship ("one another"). Most ideas of liturgy come from tradition, but this fact must not necessarily be discounted, because early tradition may often reflect the apostolic age when little detail of apostolic liturgy is available.
3. REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDATION FOR FURTHER STUDY
Lectures in Systematic Theology, Chapters XXXVI and XXXVII, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1992 Edition, by Henry C. Thiessen.
The Church in God's Program, Chapters 6-9, Moody Press, 1972, by Robert Saucy.