Apologetics and the Church
By Douglas Groothuis
Without the church, there is no Christianity. Without the church, there is no responsible apologetics. The church itself stands as evidence for the resurrection of Jesus—as baptism and communion testify—and without the church “the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3) would never have been preserved and promulgated throughout history. The gospel would have remained unknown. Without the church, the gospel will not be explained, expounded, propounded, lived out, and defended worldwide. This essay will explain the nature of the church and how it serves as an apologetic for the truth of Christianity.[1]
Most Protestant works on apologetics say little or nothing about the Christian church. Apologists may defend a worldview without defending the organization meant to teach it and live it out. This is akin to defending the Constitution of the United States of America and never applying it to the nation. Jesus Christ, the God-man, came to build a church. “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Mt 16:18). Jesus’ final charge to his followers to make disciples based on his teaching includes baptism in the name of the Trinity, a practice of the church throughout the ages (Mt 28:18-20). The church was no afterthought by the original followers of Jesus.
Christ’s identity and mission established an unstoppable movement defined by an institution, the church. Jesus was not a solitary prophet who launched ideas into the blue with a small hope that they would be appreciated by assorted freelance spiritual seekers. He said that heaven and earth would pass away, but his words—out of which the church is made—would never pass away (Mt 24:35; see also Is 40:8). This is not the kind of claim that a mere mortal would make.
What Is the Church?
First, what does “the church” mean in the New Testament? In brief, the church is composed of all the followers of Jesus. This is sometimes called the universal church, since it transcends any local body of believers. The New Testament word for church is ekklesia, which means an assembly or gathering of those congregated for sacred purposes. Several epistles are directly addressed to the churches in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, and Thessalonica, and help us discern what the church was and what it should be in its worship and conduct.
The church is not just another religious organization. Paul charged the leaders of the church at Ephesus to keep “watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood” (Acts 20:28; emphasis added). Thus, the church has a supernatural origin, constitution, and destiny that is as real and certain as Christ’s resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven.
The head of the church is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe as well the crucified and resurrected Redeemer, whose unmatched credentials ensure that he is supreme in and over all things. As Paul writes,
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. (Col 1:15-18)
The Church as an Apologetic for Christianity
Individual Christians and their association with the church are the prime witness to Christ’s redeeming work. In fact, Jesus gave the world the authority to judge his work on the basis of the conduct of his followers. “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so also you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another” (Jn 13:34-35).
Jesus loved his followers in self-sacrificial and heroic love, laying down his very life to be crucified in order that we might be forgiven and restored to God for kingdom work. Love is not merely a word or a feeling, but a dynamic and life-changing power. Jesus’ early followers shared their material possessions with others, supported one another in the face of persecution, and showed great joy and great sorrow over the conditions of their brethren. As Francis Schaeffer put it, love is “the mark of the Christian.” He writes this about Jesus’ saying: “Upon his authority he gives the world the right to judge whether you and I are born-again Christians on the basis of our observable love toward all Christians.”[2]
Paul bears his loving heart often in his letters to the young churches. When writing to Corinthian Christians in his second letter, Paul says, “For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you” (2 Cor 2:4). While his letter must correct their theological and moral errors, Paul cared deeply about them and lets them know. This is no quirk of Paul. It is the way of the Christian. Peter commends his readers and tells them to love. “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Pet 1:22).
The theme of love as witness to truth is found in another utterance of Jesus.
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (Jn 17:20-23)
To the degree to which Christians are one in love, they commend the costly love of God shown in the Father sending the Son to offer eternal life to those who believe in Jesus (Jn 3:16).
Schaeffer’s comments are apt: “We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus’ claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians.”[3] The unity of Christians consists in proper belief (orthodoxy) and proper practice (orthopraxy). This is actualized through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who gives the character traits (fruits) and ministry skills (gifts) to make the Christians who they should be and the church what she should be. Early Christians were known for breaking down barriers between groups historically opposed or at odds with each other. Paul sums it up:
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:26-28)
Do not lie to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free, but Christ is all and is in all. (Col 3:9-11)
The oneness in Christ Jesus is knit together by divine love. Paul captures the quintessence of love in 1 Corinthians 13, where he describes what seems to be an impossible state of existential rectitude and integrity before God and others. Without the Holy Spirit’s teaching, inspiration, and consolation, this would be unbearable, since the standard is so high and the guilt is so real. But we are not alone.
Without love, the greatest talent, sacrifice, or achievement is nil and counts for nothing. With love, any talent, sacrifice, or achievement is made immortal since “love never fails” (1 Cor 13:8). It is “the most excellent way” (1 Cor 12:31). Love is forged out of the sturdy and timeless materials of patience, kindness, and self-forgetfulness. It knows nothing of arrogance, rudeness, or haughtiness. It doesn’t strut (1 Cor 13 The Message). It doesn’t sniff or look down at others. It finds no pleasure in what is wrong, but rejoices with the truth. It hopes for the best, endures the worst. It never gives up or gives in, because it is perpetual and perennial, based on the unchanging and unchangeable character of the God of love (1 Jn 4:8; Mal 4:6). Hope will cease when it gives way to sight. Faith vanishes in the face of the Perfect, which brooks no possible doubt.
Divine love made flesh in the church reclaims unity in a fragmented and broken world filled with resentment, greed, jealousy, bitterness, and other soul poisons. When a church of imperfect and sinful people can be one with each other and gospel truth, it is a sign of contradiction against the fallen disorder of normal life. Schaeffer dilates on the meaning of the unity of the church:
In theological terms there are, to be sure, a visible church and an invisible church. The invisible Church is the real Church—in a way, the only church that has a right to be spelled with a capital. Because it is made up of all those who have thrown themselves upon Christ as Savior, it is most important. It is Christ’s Church. As soon as I become a Christian, as soon as I throw myself upon Christ, I become a member of this Church, and there is a mystical unity binding me to all other members.[4]
However, the unity of the church that Christ desires is more than a theological fact about our incorporation into the body of Christ. This unity also goes beyond organizational unity, important though that is. The unity based on love means self-sacrifice, repentance, forgiveness, and going out of your way for others, as Jesus taught: “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift” (Mt 5:23-24).
The earliest Christians were described as united in a divine love that leads to outreach.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47)
This type of corporate spiritual life is a “signal of transcendence” to the watching and waiting world. Evidence of the unseen is seen in God’s church. While a signal is not a full argument for Christianity, it may arrest the attention of an unbeliever and point her upward.
These are indicators that grow out of very positive experiences and, like beeping signals, puncture their present beliefs and point beyond them toward what would need to be true if these signals are to lead to a fulfilling destination. When people reach the point where such signals spur them to search, they become seekers, and they look for answers that lie beyond their present beliefs.[5]
As Francis and Edith Schaeffer taught, we should live together as families and in the church in such a way that demonstrates the reality of God. That is an existential apologetic that cannot be gainsaid.[6]
There is much more to the church. My case is that the church was founded by Christ himself and established through his chosen apostles. The New Testament speaks of it in exalted language—as the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and more. We find powerful manifestations of God’s saving work in the earliest record of the church in the book of Acts. The unity of Christian love inspired and required by Christ is a profound apologetic for the reality of the Gospel.
The Faults of the Church and the Fate of the World
One can always knock, blame, and reject the church—and any other institution. But the faults of the church ring louder, given its confession of Christ as her head, example, and friend. Failure in this cause and by this name is grievous indeed, since the higher something is, the farther it can fall. In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis imagines what a senior demon would write a fledgling tempter: “One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy.”[7]
But Christians, walking by rational faith in what has been revealed in the Bible, can imagine the church as “spread out through all time and space, terrible as an army with banners.” The church is both a hospital for the sick and a pilot plant for the kingdom of God. And it is immeasurably more. Apologetics without an apologetic for the church is inadequate and enfeebled, because there is no Christianity without the church. A church without an apologetic for its creed compromises its mission to edify the saints, to be salt and light, and to go forth in the name of Christ to bring truth, love, and learning to God’s world. Further, the church is an apologetic for itself, as women and men submit to the way of Jesus in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit and so live according to biblical truth.
Notes
[1] This essay is excerpted from Douglas Groothuis, “In Defense of the Church,” Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity-Academic, 2022). The chapter explains further the nature of the church and what it should do.
[2]Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian (1970; reprint, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 22.
[3]Schaeffer, Mark of the Christian, 27.
[4]Schaeffer, Mark of the Christian, 34.
[5]Os Guinness, Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 109-10.
[6]See Edith Schaeffer, L’Abri, expanded ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1992).
[7]C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942; reprint, New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 5.
— Douglas Groothuis is University Research Professor of Apologetics and Christian Worldview at Cornerstone University and is the author of twenty books, including, most recently, Beyond the Wager: The Christian Brilliance of Blaise Pascal (InterVarsity-Academic, 2024) and Christian Apologetics, 2nd ed. (InterVarsity-Academic, 2022).
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