Many words over the years have changed their meaning. For instance, awful used to mean worthy of awe. Now as we all know awful means very bad or unpleasant. Awful is just one word on a long list of words that have changed meaning in one way or another. It should come as no surprise that words that we as Christians hold as significant have changed too. The meaning of Church has changed from what it once meant in the time the Bible was written to the meaning we all know today.
What changed?
To many of us today the term Church is used to refer to a place. When you hear someone speak of “the Church“ you would easily assume they are talking about the church they attend.
When you read through the Bible you will quickly discover that references to the Church are more about the group of believers as a whole than a specific place. Take 1 Corinthians 15:9
“9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” Or Galatians 1:13 “13 For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it.” for example.
In both of those verses, Paul is referring to the time before he was saved. Paul persecuted many Christians from many different areas during this time. We know his goal was not to destroy a single church, but instead to try and stop Christianity as a whole from spreading. With that information, we can easily see that in both verses Paul is using the term Church to refer to the all those with faith in Jesus.
This is all to say that when the Christian religion was in its infancy the term Church often referred to the group of believers as a whole. It is also important to realize that the idea of a dedicated Church building with four solid walls is a western idea. The Church building we think of is often not what believers in many other countries have access to. Church services in other countries are often held outside or in very rudimentary buildings.
Why Does It Matter?
What difference does it make if the word Church means something different than it did all those years ago? We now have the word Christian which is used to describe all the believers of Jesus Christ. While that is true and it may not seem like it makes a big difference there are a few important factors at play.
First, the Church building often gets put on a pedestal that it may not deserve. That is not to say that a Church building is not important or does not matter. It has great meaning to the believers that meet there on a regular basis. Since they have worked hard to get it where it is. The true issue is that we began to treat the building as a spiritual building in its own way. Like it is the only places acceptable to pray or worship God or sadly for some even the only place where is okay to talk about God. Add those things together and it is easy to get to a place where you believe that God lives in the Church, that his spirit resides there.
While prayer, worship, and the proclaiming of the gospel happen in a Church building it should also leave the building with you. These things need to be a daily part of lives. Not something reserved for when we are in some special building. In actuality, we are taught to praise God and pray at all times. You can see this in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 “Always be joyful. 17 Never stop praying. 18 Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.”
While God may move through your church during service, that does that mean that he lives there. The Spirit of God lives inside his people. 1 Corinthians 3:16 actually refers to us as the temple of God. It states “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” God is with us at all times, not just in the building that houses your Church. Everywhere we as believers go we bring the spirit of God with us.
We need to know all these things. It keeps us from falling into the idea that the Church building is some special spiritual place. When we have an inflated view of the building we may start to make it into an idol. Instead of using the building the meeting point where we can come together to worship the one, God.
What Do We Do With This Knowledge?
With this information, we need to make sure that we are not causing ourselves to sin by putting our faith into the church. We need to go forward remembering that we are the church. Going forward we should take the respect we have for the Church building and give that respect to God. It is also important to remember that God is in us and with us at all times. I hope this post has helped you with your understanding of what the word Church means. Also that it will shape how you act moving forward.
