1. The catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the Head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all.
2. The visible church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.
via Confession of Faith.
I’ve run into people who insist that the descriptions in these two paragraphs are mutually exclusive. Thus, if the invisible church is called the body of Christ, then the visible church must not be the body of Christ.
This is false both to tradition and to Scripture (because the tradition is rooted in Scripture).
The tradition has an accurate witness in the PCA’s Book of Church Order. In part two of the Preface we read:
The Presbyterian Church in America, in setting forth the form of government founded upon and agreeable to the Word of God, reiterates the following great principles which have governed the formation of the plan
There then follows a list of these principles. The third one begins:
Our blessed Saviour, for the edification of the visible Church, which is His body, has appointed officers not only to preach the Gospel and administer the Sacraments, but also to exercise discipline for the preservation both of truth and duty.
So we have a straightforward definition of the visible church as the body of Christ. In fact we have more than one. For example, again in the BCO:
CHAPTER 2
The Visible Church Defined
2-1. The Visible Church before the law, under the law, and now under the Gospel, is one and the same and consists of all those who make profession of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, together with their children.
2-2. This visible unity of the body of Christ, though obscured, is not destroyed by its division into different denominations of professing Christians; but all of these which maintain the Word and Sacraments in their fundamental integrity are to be recognized as true branches of the Church of Jesus Christ.
2-3. It is according to scriptural example that the Church should be divided into many individual churches.
Note the consistency. If the visible church was not the body of Christ, then the divisions in the church could not possibly either obscure, or raise the issue of destroying, the unity of the body of Christ.
Nothing in this material is innovative or novel. I’ll let someone else go through all the evidence in detail, but this is standard ecclesiology in the Reformed tradition and probably other traditions as well.
And it follows from Scripture. First Corinthians 12 clearly describes a visible community with visible offices and it states in the middle:
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
In fact, this chapter has been used to explain visible church offices throughout Church history. It shows up in the prooftexts for the next paragraph in Chapter 25 of the Westminster Confession:
III. Unto this catholic visible Church Christ has given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints, in this life, to the end of the world: and does, by His own presence and Spirit, according to His promise, make them effectual thereunto.
1CO 12:28 And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues. EPH 4:11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; 12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: 13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
In fact that unity of the body mentioned in the Book of Church Order also comes from passages in the Bible about he body. For example: “This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Ephesians 3.6). In context this is plainly talking about a visible reception of Jews and Gentiles in one community.
So the body of Christ is not invisible (only). It is visible.
For further reading: