Statement 7: On the Authority of the Church
We have all grown up in times where it is assumed that the church has authority in the spiritual realm and the state in the physical realm. This is a misunderstanding. Yes, the church’s authority is a spiritual authority, but we misunderstand spiritual if we presume it means non-physical. The church’s spiritual authority has effects in the physical world. When an adulterer is excommunicated he is excluded from the Lord’s table and from the fellowship of believers until such time as he repents.
This misunderstanding of ‘spiritual’ has caused an unhealthy spiritual/physical divide. The church now has abdicated its authority in the material world to such a degree that when the state government orders it to close for months because of a virus, it complies. Without even a whimper. There seems to have been no widespread outrage at the state presuming it has the authority prevent Christ’s church from gathering.
Now part of this of course is fear. Anyone in New Zealand who is even half aware of what’s going on will realise that we have not been led by particularly courageous men in these times. (I do not write this because I am courageous. I’m not and would be no better if I were a leader in the church.) We know there would be public outrage against us if we decided to flout these man-made rules. So there has been barely a whisper on the closure of the churches. So let’s not berate our leaders too much. Most of us laity too have been cowed in these times. We need to assist them and help them develop courage. They need to know we the laity are behind them. We need to encourage them. So encourage your pastor, minister or priest. Ask them about standing up to this seemingly endless shutdown of the gathering. We are, after all, the ecclesia, the church or the gathered. It’s somewhat ironic that we aren’t gathering.
Yet perhaps another reason we have closed down our churches is dualism. Some actually do believe the state has the authority to do this. We might say that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Christ (Matthew 28:18), but when it comes down to the practical details of who has the authority to call for the church to gather, we have delegated that to our godless state leaders. Christ’s actual authority and the authority of his church is relegated to the heavenly and ethereal realm of the heart while the state has authority in the material world. This despite the clear biblical limitations on the role of state government (see Ethan’s article here) and the clear expectation of Scripture that the church government has the authority to conduct church business whether the state likes it or not (Acts 5:29).
The dualism that has enabled us to justify the closure of churches is also seen in the justification of online church. As mentioned in our discussion on pink tutus and unicycles, we are embodied souls. We gather physically because of this fact. We have bread and wine as physical symbols of what Christ has done and is doing in us as he sanctifies both body and soul (1 Thessalonians 5:23). But we have emphasised the ‘ethereal spiritual’ view of the essence of man over the embodied soul view of the human individual. What does it matter if we aren’t physically present? We are there in spirit. This is more Greek than it is biblical. God created a good material world and made us for that world. The incarnation indicates his willingness to redeem this earthly and physical realm. Physical gathering is an essential part of the truly spiritual life.
Conclusion
Christians, because of a dualistic approach to the world have retreated and abandoned applying Christ’s lordship in more and more of daily life. This has led to an ever shrinking realm in which the “faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” is allowed to apply. The ‘every good’ work of Paul in 2 Timothy 3:17 has been neutered to ‘every good work within an ethereal spiritual realm’ and certainly does not include applying Christ’s lordship to education, law, politics, economics and spheres of government. Although the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ’ (Revelation 11:15), we’ve assumed that the kingdoms of this world can go along merrily without Christ’s input and interpreted the fact his kingdom is not of this world to mean it’s not in this world (John 18:36) which of course is another thing entirely. Christians in the West, as they have abandoned the heritage of men like Calvin and the Puritans have slowly drifted into this error. As this drift has occurred they have consequently lost influence. It’s a vicious spiral. There has been a loss of belief that Scripture speaks to all of life, and a consequent Christian retreat from speaking into these areas of life leading to an abandonment of the civic square. Christianity is seen to have less and less relevance and is abandoned. And into these vacuums enter seven spirits more evil than before.
What we need is the development of a thoroughly Christian worldview in the Christian populace. Gary Demar in God and Government put it this way:
Viewing the world dualistically forces the Christian to abandon society and its institutions (because they are material and earthly), thus the effects of the gospel message are internalized and made irrelevant to the society in which the saved person lives. A biblical worldview takes the things of this world and uses them for God’s glory. Music, art, gold, silver, land, factories, homes, schools, and every other material thing can be used for good or evil. The word of God shows us how they are to be used.
So what should we do? Again, there is the need for repentance of the dualism we see in our own lives. Dualism is in fact idolatry. If Christ is not Lord of all, then someone or something else has been made Lord in his place. But Christ is Lord of all, and true spirituality recognises this in very earthy ways as we have seen. True spirituality applies the lordship of Christ to every earthly endeavour whether it is education, law, politics, economics, the functioning of the church, work and leisure. Let’s get out there and reclaim these areas for Christ bit by bit as we see more people submit to Christ and apply his lordship in each and every realm.