What the Church Actually Is

As we begin a brand-new series in the book of Ephesians, Dr. Abidan Shah starts where the whole letter points — with the church. Almost every major doctrine is found in Ephesians, and before we can understand how the church fits into prophecy and the end times, we have to answer a more basic question: What is the church actually? The Greek word is ekklesia — assembly. Dr. Shah traces it from the Greek city-states, where the ekklesia gathered and then scattered and was no longer the assembly, through its use in the Old Testament Greek translation, and into the New Testament, where believers took the word for themselves. He shows where our English word "church" even comes from — kuriakon, "belonging to the Lord," worn down through kirche into church — and walks through what the early believers actually did when they gathered: reading and preaching the Word, baptism, communion, declaring their faith, caring for one another, welcoming outsiders, and sending missionaries. The message lands on the three pictures Paul gives of the church in Ephesians: the community of the new covenant, brought near by the blood of Christ; the temple of God, built on Christ the cornerstone, where every believer is a stone with a part to play; and the body and bride of Christ. You cannot say "I love Jesus but not the church" any more than you can tell a groom you love him but hate his bride. Christ is the head; the church is His body — and the church still matters.