The People of God: The Story of the ChurchSample

Isn’t it interesting that the word ‘church’ has not come up once in any passages so far?! The Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, was, as we might expect, written in Hebrew. The New Testament was written in Greek, and this is where we get our word for church from. The Greek word is ekklesia which refers to an assembly of people or ‘the called out ones.' Even in the gospels, this word only appears three times and comes in the passages we are reading today. Does this mean that the Church is not as important as we might think? Well, of course, that depends on what we think of church, however as we have seen throughout this plan, God does want to use people in order to bring humanity back into community with God. So much so that God appears as a ‘Son of Man,’ a human being, in order to bring about redemption and then establish the church, the ‘called out ones,’ on earth.

In our passages today, we get the only two teachings of Jesus on the Church that we have available to us. Firstly, we have Jesus’ promise to build His church upon Peter’s revelation of Jesus being the Messiah. Secondly, how disputes should be handled in the church. Let’s notice the context in which Jesus gives these teachings and what themes emerge. Once we have received the revelation of who Jesus is and what He has accomplished in His death and resurrection, our lives should look completely different. We are to be people of humility, unity, and forgiveness.