Revisiting The Church | Behold Your God Podcast

The Church Defined by Its Marks

Welcome to the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Teddy James, content producer for Media Gratia. This episode is part of a series in which we wanted to present to you some of the teachings from previous projects and studies Media Gratia has produced over the years.

If you've been through these studies before, then we pray that these episodes are just a simple reminder of truths that God has taught you previously. If you've never been through the studies, we want to let you know what they are and kind of what they're about.

This week's episode is from our project on the church with Dr. Jeff Johnson. Filmed in front of Canterbury Cathedral in England, Dr. Johnson discusses the marks of the church. This is week one of a 12-week study.

We pray it's a blessing to you.

We must start our study on the doctrine of the church by asking this question. What is the church? What makes the church what it is? Well, historically, the church has been defined by its marks. And what we mean by the word marks is attributes.

In particular, what are the essential attributes that are necessary for the church to exist? By 381 in the Council of Constantinople, the Nicene Creed was expanded to include this phrase. We believe in the one, holy, catholic, apostolic church.

And this phrase become known as the four marks of the church. And these four marks include, one, the church is one. Two, the church is holy. Three, the church is catholic. And four, the church is apostolic.

Now, by the time of Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages, this became known as the holy Roman Catholic church. That only the Roman Catholic church was the church that Christ established. It's the one church.

It's holy. It's catholic, meaning it's universal. And it's apostolic. But we have to understand by what they mean by apostolic is not only apostolic confession. That is, that it believes in the doctrine of the apostles.

But also, primarily, apostolic means apostolic succession. The church is one because there is one leadership over the whole church. And this leadership can be traced back to the apostles themselves through the apostolic succession of the apostles appointing their successors.

And those successors appointing their successors all the way down to the present. And the catholic church says we are the true church because we have the direct line of leadership that can be traced in this unbroken chain back to the apostles.

And by the time of Thomas Aquinas, those outside of apostolic succession were outside of the one holy catholic church. They even believed that if you're outside of the Roman Catholic church, you're outside of salvation.

Inside the church, you're holy. Outside the church, you're unholy. You see, there's only one holy catholic apostolic church. Thomas Aquinas would use this to argue against anyone who would split away from the papacy.

For apostolic succession was primarily seen in the succession of bishops of Rome. That in the bishops of Rome, they could trace their lineage all the way back to the apostle Peter. Anyone who was not in submission to papal authority was simply outside of the one holy catholic church.

Now, this is important, especially as we stand at the gates of the Cathedral of Canterbury, is because in 1534, King Henry VIII was seeking a divorce. And when the pope refused to allow him to divorce, he and the parliament separated from the catholic church on November the 3rd, 1534, when English parliament passed the act of supremacy.

Ultimately, Henry VIII declared himself to be head of the English church. And Henry VIII was looking for support, theological support, to back his position. Thus, he went to his younger cousin, Reginald Pole, and asked Reginald Pole to support him in his separation from the catholic church.

Well, Reginald Pole was, again, Henry VIII's younger cousin, and in 1536, wrote a book arguing against the separation of the Church of England from the Church of Rome. Essentially, he wrote against his cousin.

And this put him in danger. Reginald Pole had to flee to Italy, and he was always concerned about assassination. In fact, many of his families, his nephew, his mother, were executed in retaliation by Henry VIII in 1541.

Reginald Pole was one of the leading minds behind the Council of Trent. In fact, he was even elected to the papacy, but turned it down. After Henry VIII died, Edward VI reigned, and then after his short reign, Mary came to the throne.

And at that time, Reginald Pole came back to England in 1554. Then in 1556, Reginald Pole was elected or appointed as the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the very place we stand today. And he died two years later, the same day that Queen Mary died.

But what's important for us to know is that Reginald Pole argued against the Reformation, argued against the Church of England, and he used the argument of Thomas Aquinas to do so. According to Reginald Pole, the church is one, holy, Catholic, apostolic.

And to break away from this one true church is to break away from salvation, to break away from Christ himself. Reginald Pole said, the church does not exist without apostolic secession of its leaders.

The Church of England cannot claim to have apostolic secession, therefore it can't claim to be the true church. According to Reginald Pole, moreover, apostolic secession is held together by the Pope himself.

He writes this, I can conceive of no greater injury you can inflict upon the church than to abolish the head of this church from the face of the earth. You do exactly this when you deny that the Roman pontiff is the head of the church on the earth, the vicar of Christ.

Basically, he told Henry VIII that you're separating from the Pope, you're separating from the church, and ultimately you're separating from salvation, for there's no salvation outside of the church. And there's no church outside of submission to the papacy.

Now, this is the argument of Thomas Aquinas, this is the argument of Reginald Pole when he wrote his book on the unity of the church. Well, this makes sense if you define the church with these four marks.

But in our study, we want to look at what are the true marks of the church. And I don't believe the four marks are to be defined the way Thomas Aquinas and Reginald Pole defined them. I believe ultimately there are three essential marks to the church.

Unity in Christ Rather Than Apostolic Succession

Three marks that must exist for the church to exist. And wherever you see the church, you'll see these three attributes. First of all, the first mark is unity. The church is unified by its very nature.

There's only one church. But we have to ask, what is the source of this unity? Reginald Pole said the source of the unity is found in secession of bishops. Ultimately, the unifying nature of the church is the papacy itself.

But is that what unifies the church? The reformers said the unity of the church is not found in the papacy or in apostolic secession, but rather in apostolic confession, apostolic doctrine. Ultimately, unity is found in the person of Jesus Christ.

Thus, unity is not a physical, visible unity. It's a spiritual or invisible unity. And this is true. By faith, in the Word of God, we know Jesus Christ. And by faith, we're united to the person of Jesus Christ.

And once we're united to Christ directly, not united to Christ through the means of the church, but through means of believing the truth of scriptures. And once we're united to Christ, we're united to all those who are in Christ.

Now, this union with Christ and with the body of Christ is not a physical, tangible union, but it's a spiritual or invisible union. You see, Jesus Christ is the one who unifies his body. There's only one church because there's only one head, Jesus Christ.

But this is not only an invisible unity, this unity spreads to all believers. Romans 12, 5 says, there's one body in Christ, and individually, you're members of one another. Ephesians 4, 4 says, we're all one in Christ Jesus.

Thus, James Betterman says, the primary and normal idea of the church, as set forth in the scriptures, is unquestionably that the body of men, spiritually united to Christ, and in consequence of that union, are united with each other.

This is why R .C. Sproul says, one of the most precious realities of the Christian faith is the unity that binds the hearts and souls of every Christian, not only with Christ, but with each other. But this unity is not just an invisible or universal unity that binds all individual Christians together in Jesus Christ.

It also binds all local churches together. Every true church is united to Jesus Christ, its head. And this brings a universal unity among all believers and all true churches. But this unity is also manifested visibly and locally in churches themselves.

Because we're united spiritually to Jesus Christ, we're united to all the other saints. And this unity with the saints leads us, I would even say compels us, and draws us to come together in local assemblies.

The Greek word for church is ekklesia, simply meaning assembly. We're compelled to come together, to gather together, by a love that binds our hearts together. We're a family. And this leads to local assemblies gathering together based upon the spiritual unity that we all have in Christ.

And that's because the church is designed to grow together as a body. Ephesians 4 .16 says,. That is, the body by its very nature, the local church by its very nature, is codependent. It's like your watch.

Your watch needs every part to function. And the body needs the spiritual gifts of all the members of the body to function properly. Not one Christian is sufficient to live his Christian life to the fullest, independent of the other brothers and sisters.

For this reason, Francis Tererton says,. So this is the first mark of the church. What is the church? It's God's unified body. Yes, there's a single unified body that is invisible and visibly manifested.

Purity and Regenerate Membership

This leads me to the second mark of the church, and that is purity. Not only the church is unity, it's purity. The church is holy by its very nature. You see, God's church is the people that God has called out of this world and set apart unto himself.

This holiness doesn't manifest itself in this world as perfection. We will be perfected on the great day when the Lord returns. But in this life, we're set apart out of this world. We're called out of corruption and sin and bondage.

The true church by its very nature is holy. R .B. Kuyper says,. You see, church is set apart for God and is also the means of sanctification of the saints. The church is God's primary means to grow us in grace and the knowledge of the Lord until we come to glory where Christ presents us to the Father without spot or blemish.

And in this sense, the church is meant for the saints. The church is designed to have a regenerate membership. This means that the functions of the church is to make disciples, to teach all that God has commended.

And this also means that we need to carry out church discipline when we see sin unrepented of. So this is the second mark of the church. It's pure. It's holy. Then the third mark of the church that is essential to its very nature is verity.

The Church as the Pillar and Ground of Truth

The church is the pillar and ground of truth. The word verity just simply means truth. And this is what the church is. It's the pillar and ground of truth. God has deposited and entrusted His Word, the Scriptures itself, to the body of Christ.

God has given the church the truth. And it's the responsibility of the church, and I would say it's the chief responsibility of the church, to preach, to proclaim the Word of God. You see, 1 Timothy 3, 15 says, If I'm delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

First of all, the church is established on the truth. It's on the foundation of Christ. And Christ taught His teaching to His apostles, which is revealed to us in the Word of God. So the church is founded on the Word of God.

The Bible is the foundation of the church. We're to not expand that foundation and add new doctrine or truth to that foundation, but rather, after the foundation has been laid, the church is called to build up on that foundation.

Also, secondly, the church is governed by the truth. The Word of God is what tells the church how to function and how to conduct itself. Thirdly, the church is sanctified by the truth. The church is constantly growing in the knowledge of the Lord by the Word of God.

Fourthly, the church is called to be the stewards of the truth. God has given the church the responsibility to proclaim the whole counsel of God and to guard the truth. And fifthly, the church is called to confess the truth.

You see, we can say the church is apostolic, but we're not talking about apostolic secession. Because the unity of the church, the existence of the church is not found in an earthly leadership model. It is apostolic because the church is built upon the teachings of the apostles.

This is why Acts chapter 2, the church devoted itself after it was baptized and after the people were added to the church. They devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles. The church is where preaching and the sacraments are rightly administered.

This is what the church is called to do. This is why the reformers and the Puritans placed doctrinal preaching and observance of the ordinance as crucial to the church's very existence. Calvin and the other reformers would say if you want to know where the true church is, you don't look at apostolic secession.

You look where the gospel is faithfully preached and the ordinance are carried out according to scriptures. In fact, the Augsburg Confession of 1530 puts it this way. The church is the congregation of saints in which the gospel is rightly taught and the sacraments are rightly administered.

John Calvin said it this way. Wherever we see the word of God purely preached and heard and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution, there is not to be doubted a church of God. In conclusion, there are three essential marks or attributes to the church.

Attributes that must exist for the church to exist. Purity, unity, and verity. And this tells us what the church is to be about. The church is to grow in purity, the church is to grow in unity, and the church is to grow in the knowledge of the truth.

Moreover, these three attributes, unity, purity, and verity, are interconnected. You cannot find one without finding the other two. And to grow in one will lead us to grow in the other two. We need to grow in unity by growing in holiness.

But we cannot grow in holiness without growing in the knowledge of the truth. These are three interconnected, interrelated marks that God has established for the church. This is so important to understand, for unless we understand the nature of the church, we will not understand its purpose, its authority, and its worship.