The Invisible and Visible Church
Ephesians 4:1-16

I believe in the holy catholic church. We affirm this dimension of Christian faith each time we recite the Apostle’s Creed. The word “church” means an assembly. The Greeks used the term to describe the gathering of the citizens of a city-state. The first Christians co-opted the word “church” to describe the local gathering of Christians in a given geographic area for worship or fellowship.

The Creed further describes the Church as “holy.” "Holy" in this sense does not mean morally perfect. Instead, “holy” means set apart by God for particular service.

Finally, the creed describes the Church as “catholic.” This has always been an obstacle for Protestants. Protestant people recite the creed and think to themselves, “I don’t believe in the Roman Catholic Church,” but “catholic” is not an abbreviation for Roman Catholic. "Catholic" in this sense means universal or worldwide. When used in this way, “catholic church” is describing Christians in every time and place. This Church is invisible. The universal Church has no street address, or GPS coordinates, or physical building. Instead, the Catholic Church is comprised of all God’s chosen people whose exact number is known only by God. All this we confess in the Creed.

Admittedly, we are much more familiar and focused on the visible or local church. The local church is not an idealized theological construct. Rather the visible, local church is God’s petri dish, if you will, for the Christian experiment. The local, visible church is not pure or pristine. Instead, it is a mixture of the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of this world.

Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares illustrates the nature of the local, visible church. Listen to Jesus’ parable. “He put before them another parable: The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So, when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn’” (Mt. 13:24-30). The local church is an admixture of wheat and tares.

This morning’s reading from Ephesians 4 seems to be describing the catholic, universal, or invisible Church, but in so doing, our passage also describes the ideal for the local, visible church.

Paul reveals what God is in the process of accomplishing in and through the local church. This means we can discern what God is doing in and through Briarwood Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) too.

The first thing God is doing in our midst is helping us to lead lives worthy of our calling. Ephesians 1:4 speaks of our common calling. “He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” Our fundamental call is to be holy and blameless and loving in the sight of God. Paul further elaborates what this calling looks like by listing the following Christian attributes: humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another in love (Eph. 4:2).

The language of Ephesians 4 is very similar to Paul’s language in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 that describes agape (God’s love) and Paul’s language in Galatians 5:22-23a that describes the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Friedrich Schleiermacher, an eighteenth-century German reformed theologian, coined the phrase “the virtues of Jesus” to describe these Christian attributes. The first task of the Church is to produce people who embody Jesus’ virtues.

The second task of the Church is to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:3-4). The word “one” is repeated seven times in one verse! One body, one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God. We have seen the emphasis on unity in previous chapters of the epistle. “He has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:9-10). “He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it” (Eph. 2:15-16).

God, in and through the Church, is all about bringing people together, uniting disparate groups, creating something new and whole from broken and divided humanity. I liked what commentator Ralph Martin wrote about this dimension of the Church. “So, unity is a divine gift, but it must be cultivated and cherished as Christians live together in harmonious relationships.” We have been blessed with long years of unity and harmony in our family of faith. We must not take it for granted. We must pray for the unity of our church and do our part to preserve the peace of the church.

As an aside, this is why schism is such a heinous sin. Fracturing the body of Christ cuts at the very heart of the Church’s reason for existing. We have experienced the bitter fruit of schism. Many of you lived through the terrible division that occurred when the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) split off from the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) in the late 1970s, and in more recent years, we have experienced the trauma anew by the exodus of congregations in our presbytery to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC).

But the threat of schism extends way beyond the internecine warfare of Presbyterian denominations. From its inception, the Church has been threatened by divisions: Jewish versus Gentile Christians, the Church in Rome vs. the Church in Constantinople, the Roman Catholics vs. the Protestants, and the list of schisms goes on and on, but God is for unity. God’s plan for the fullness of time is to unite all things in heaven and on earth in Jesus Christ.

The way that God is realizing the Church’s vocation and purpose in producing holy, blameless, loving, and united followers of Jesus Christ is through the leaders of the local church! Look at verse seven. “But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” The grace given would seem to be spiritual gifts that come from Jesus Christ’s basic gift to the Church which is the Holy Spirit. Verses 8-10 are admittedly difficult to interpret. The basic concepts are of ascent and descent, going up and coming down. Jesus Christ descends from heaven to earth in the incarnation when he was born of Mary. Jesus further descended to the “lower parts of the earth,” to the realm of the dead, following his crucifixion and death. As we say in the Creed, “He descended into hell.” Following the resurrection, Jesus ascended to heaven and is seated at God’s right hand, but there is a sense in which Jesus descended to earth again when he poured out the Holy Spirit on the Church.

The particular gifts Jesus gave were leaders (Eph. 4:11)! Apostles and prophets were the primary leaders of the local churches in a geographic region. The twelve apostles, Paul, and others like Andronicus and Junia (Romans 16:7) served in this capacity. Evangelists were those who planted and established new churches. Timothy is an excellent example of an evangelist. Pastors and teachers were those responsible for the local church. They were to care for the members of the body of Christ and teach them the virtues of Jesus. We preserve these functions in the office of Teaching Elders (Ministers) and Ruling Elders (Session members).

I do not think it is a stretch to include other leaders in the gifts God has given to the Church. Our new Presbyterian Women leaders are also part of God's work in producing followers of Jesus who are holy, blameless, loving disciples, united together against every dividing wind that would toss the Church back and forth and blow us about (Eph. 4:12-15).

Leaders are the ligaments that join and knit the body together. They equip the body of Christ for ministry, they promote the unity of the faith, they help us to grow in maturity and to the measure of the full stature of Jesus Christ (Eph. 4:16).

It is worth noting that the emphasis throughout the text is on quality and not quantity. We long for quantity, for more people, but God seems more interested in quality disciples.

I remind myself, the Session, and our Presbyterian Women leaders that ours is a very high calling. Our vocation as leaders is to promote the body’s growth in building itself up in love. However, it is not all dependent on leaders. Members of the body of Christ have the calling to grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ too.

Together we are to embody love, the fruit of the Spirit, and the virtues of Jesus: humility, gentleness, and patience. We are to fiercely protect the unity of the Church. We must cherish and cultivate unity as we live together in harmonious relationships. We are to support and encourage each other and our God-given leaders in the work of the ministry.
So, in closing, I ask you, “Do you believe in the holy catholic church?” When we look at all the problems that characterize the visible church, we may stumble in affirming this lofty confession. People jokingly say things like, “God gave us the church to make us pray for the kingdom!” or they ask “How is the church like Noah’s ark? If it were not for the storm without, you could not stand the mess within!” There is always a measure of truth in humor!

The Church is a mixture of the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of this world. The tares and the wheat must grow together until the harvest, but let us not forget that the Church is an indispensable part of God’s great plan.

Through the ministry of the Church, God is cultivating the wheat. The saints are seeking to live lives worthy of our calling. The saints are being equipped for the work of ministry. The saints are growing into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ! The saints are speaking the truth in love and building themselves up in love.

So, thanks be to God for his mysterious will at work in Christ, and all praise be to God for we have been chosen to be numbered among the members of Christ’s body, the Church. Alleluia! Amen.