With which of the following statements do you most agree?
- “Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.”
- “Away from [the church] one cannot hope for any forgiveness of sins or any salvation.”
For the average evangelical Christian, the first statement may lack some balance, but the second sounds downright Romish. If this describes your reaction, then your ecclesiology is closer to the author of the first, Lenny Bruce, than to the author of the second, John Calvin (Institutes, 4.1.4). Bruce, a satirist of organized religion and nemesis to hypocrisy, and a comedian notorious for his vulgarity and impiety, nevertheless expressed a common contemporary assessment of organized religion, while Calvin’s statement seems to betray his role as one of the primary catalysts of the Protestant Reformation.
While most of us will admit that the church is a vital aid in nurturing people in the faith, few of us might go as far as Calvin’s statement. We’ve seen deadness and apostasy in many parts of the visible church. We’ve watched navel gazing, lethargy, and infighting in the church become a stumbling block to the world. We’ve accepted and endorsed evangelistic ministries that operate outside the church. We believe deeply in that central Reformation doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone, not by church membership. But at issue is not an archaic, hierarchical, colonial view of the church. At the heart of the matter is the very nature of the gospel. I invite you to reconsider your understanding of the gospel through a better understanding of the church and the biblical connection between the two.