To God Be The Glory In The Church Pt. 3
The third installment of our current blog series features the marks of a biblical church as spelled out by our brother Michael Leach.
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The Marks of the Church
The church held to these four attributes throughout the ages but the Reformers later considered them to be inadequate because they thought that some specious claims could be made to them. In other words, they feared that it could be possible for individual churches to boast of these attributes in a formal sense while they yet lacked them in an experiential sense. The Reformers insisted that the true churches of Jesus Christ were to be further delineated by marks or nota which they described as The True Preaching of the Word of God; the Right Administration Of The Sacraments and the Faithful Exercise Of Church Discipline.
Briefly:
The True Preaching Of The Word of God.
As the chief mark of the church, the true preaching of God’s Word identifies the church, enables and maintains it, Jn 8:31-32, 47; 14:23, and undergirds the sacraments but is separate from them. It requires that, for all preaching to be biblical, it must be Christocentric, Lk 24: 24-27, 44-47. This means that whether we are preaching from the Old Testament or the New Testament, our preaching is not biblical if it is not grounded in the redemptive-historical context which has its fulfillment in the Person and work of Jesus Christ. It entails that we are to, in Graeme Goldsworthy’s terms, “preach the whole Bible as Christian Scripture,� being extremely careful to understand and acknowledge the centrality of the gospel throughout Scripture- see the Lucan texts quoted above, for example- and, quoting Goldsworthy again, understanding that “the Christological significance is the highest application of the Old Testament.�
The Right Administration of the Sacraments.
Calvin correctly describes a sacrament as “An outward sign by which the Lord seals on our consciences the promises of his good will toward us in order to sustain the weakness of our faith; and we in turn attest our piety toward him in the presence of the Lord and of his holy angels and before men.� In part, they are:
signs representing the saving grace of Christ, cf. Gen 9:12-13; 17:11; the forgiveness of sins, Mt 26:28; Mk 1:4; etc.; seals attesting to and confirming the possession of God’s promises to His elect, 2 Cor 1:20; Rom 4:11-17; etc;
and indicators pointing inward to the spiritual reality of God’s saving grace in our lives; upward reminding us of God’s promises to us and of our participation in them; and outward, setting us apart from the world and unto God.
The Faithful Exercise of Church Discipline.
Always redemptive in content and restorative in purpose, its faithful exercise serves to maintain the peace, unity and purity of the church; to protect the holiness of the sacraments; and to guard the church against apostasy, Mt 18:18; 1 Cor 5:1-5, 13; 14:33; Eph 4:11-16. Discipline is necessary for the spiritual bene esse or well-being of the church.