Providence and the Church

I WAS A GUEST PREACHER IN A CHURCH LAST SUNDAY. The congregation numbered about 150 persons. When I stepped into the pulpit I mentioned that I was intimidated when I had to give a sermon in the presence of millions of people.

The congregation looked at me in bewilderment as there were no television cameras present to broadcast this sermon beyond the hearing of those present. I explained that when we gathered as the people of God, our worship was in the presence of all the host of heaven, all the angels and archangels. Not only that, but we were assembled with the entire communion of saints (communio sanctorum), with those believers who have gone before us into heaven. In addition, we were gathered in that particular place at the same time millions of others were gathered for worship around the world.

When the people of God gather for worship, there is an intersection between time and eternity, between heaven and earth. This point should not be a novelty in our understanding because it is written large in the pages of Scripture.

Consider the exposition of the author of Hebrews: For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore. (For they could not endure what was commanded: "And if so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow." And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, "I am exceedingly afraid and trembling.") But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. (Heb. 12:18-24)

Here the author alludes to the assembly of Israel at Sinai in the Old Testament, a moment of supreme dread and terror. The people had been consecrated for this event and warned not to go up the mountain or even touch its base on penalty of death. For three days they waited in anticipation of the event: Then it came to pass on the third day, in the morning, that there were thunderings and lightnings, and a thick cloud on the mountain; and the sound of the trumpet was very loud, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was completely in smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. And when the blast of the trumpet sounded long and became louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by voice. Then the LORD came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mountain. And the L O R D called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.

And the LORD said to Moses, "Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to gaze at the LORD, and many of them perish.

Also let the priests who come near the LORD consecrate themselves, lest the LORD break out against them." (Exod. 19:16-22) This was when Moses went up on Mount Sinai to meet with God and to receive the Decalogue from His hand. At Sinai God manifested His presence, an event punctuated by the sight of a thick cloud that concealed God from the eyes of the people, by thunder and the loud blaring of the trumpet. It was most unlike what is experienced in the normal Sunday church service of today.

Next the assembly focused on the meeting of God with His people at the tabernacle and then later in the temple. The tabernacle was called the "Tent of Meeting." It was portable so that wherever the people went in their wanderings God would go with them. When the twelve tribes encamped they pitched their tribal tents in a circle, and the tabernacle was then pitched in the middle to indicate that God was in their midst. But God was not only among them; He

pledged to "go before them" to lead them in the wilderness. Later, when the temple was built to serve as their central sanctuary, the people would customarily "go up to Zion" to meet with God.

But when the New Testament was written, things changed. The time for temple worship was over. The priesthood of Aaron was over. The rites of the sacrificial system of the Old Testament had reached their culmination in the priestly work of Christ. A new order had been established; a new covenant had been ratified.

The old system was but a shadow of things to come. With the crucifixion of Christ, the veil of the temple had been rent.

The book of Hebrews was written shortly before A.D. 70, when the temple was destroyed and the cultic practices of Israel ended. The old was passing away, being replaced by an entire new system.

The language and imagery of the New Testament reference saying the old system was merely the "shadow" of things to come are reminiscent of the language of Plato. This is not to suggest that the New Testament is but warmedover Platonism. Far from it! Yet the parallel to certain aspects of Plato's thought is obvious. In Plato's "Theory of Ideas" the realm of ultimate reality was conceived of in terms of the ideal realm of eternal reality. The physical realm of earth was conceived of as the realm of receptacles. Plato defined a receptacle as an imperfect copy of the eternal ideal. For Plato all physical things were shadows of the real, like the shadows on the wall in his famous cave analogy.

What Plato didn't conceive of was the real presence of the ideal in the physical world. He had no room for the incarnation of God in history.

The biblical categories are not Platonic, yet the Bible does speak of shadows.

These shadows have a vital role to play in the history of redemption. They serve as precursors, or pointers, to the reality that was to come in real history. The reality came in Christ. Plato was never able to escape the tension of dualism that separated heaven and earth.

In Christ we have the ladder, or bridge, that connects the eternal with the temporal. In His priestly work He bridges the gap between heaven and earth; His priestly work is accomplished on earth, yet it gives His people access to the

heavenly realm. Paul speaks of this in his letter to the Ephesians: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him.

(Eph. 1:3-10) These words are somewhat mysterious to us. They point to the finished work of Christ by which, after making His atonement, He entered into the heavenly sanctuary, into the transcendent temple, and gave access for His people in heaven. There is a mystical aspect to our union with Christ. The church is His mystical body; when we gather for worship He is in our midst, and we are made present in the heavenly places with Him. Worship for the people of God is now a taste of heaven itself. In our earthly assembly we celebrate the intersection between ordinary history and redemptive history. This intersection is invisible to us but is nevertheless real.

The Invisible Church

In the history of theology a distinction is made between the visible church and the invisible church. This distinction, which received prominence in the thought of Augustine, is important for more than one reason. In the first place, it calls attention to the fact that the visible church on earth contains people who are not truly numbered among the elect. The earthly church contains tares along with the wheat. It is what Augustine described as a corpus per mix-tum, a "mixed body" of believers and unbelievers. Not every person who makes a profession of faith

actually has the faith he or she professes. Jesus warned of those who would honor Him with their lips while their hearts would be far from Him. He warned that on the day of judgment people will call out, saying "Lord, Lord" and He will respond with the blood-curdling words, "Depart from Me ... I never knew you."

The invisible church is called invisible because it is invisible to our eyes. Only God can read the hearts of people. We look on the outward appearances while God examines the heart. The church is never invisible to God. It is clearly known within His purview. For Augustine the distinction did not separate groups or people. He argued that the invisible church exists essentially and substantially within the visible church. Likewise, Calvin maintained that it was the task of the people of God, the true believers, to make the invisible church visible by their worship and service.

But there is another sense in which the church is invisible. This is the sense in which we cannot see the broader congregation of its members who are already in heaven. This is the church that is no longer found at the base of Mount Sinai or in the earthly temple in Jerusalem. It is the church that now resides in the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. This is the church that includes the innumerable company of angels, the general assembly, and the church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven. It is the church that includes the spirits of just men made perfect.

In light of the innumerable references to this heavenly dimension of the church, it is strange indeed that this idea remains so foreign to our thinking. We seem to be stuck with the kind of thinking that was evident in the woman at the well: The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship."

Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and

those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4:19-24) The woman of Sychar was convinced that the worship of God was a local matter.

The dispute between the Jews and the Samaritans focused upon the question of where it was proper to worship God, in Jerusalem or at Mount Gerizim. This did not reflect a Jewish belief in the restricted presence of God as if He were not omnipresent. The question of "Where?" was not so much a question of where God was but rather where the church was to be gathered for worship. It involved a question of where God would meet with His people.

Jesus' answer to the woman's question was deeper than what appears simply on the surface. That God is a Spirit was no new insight. Jesus did not say "God is a Spirit; therefore He is not contained in His presence to either Gerizim or Jerusalem," although that would certainly be true enough. Jesus clearly understood the axiom Calvin would express as finitum non capax infinitum, the finite cannot contain the infinite. Rather, Jesus was directing His comments more to the question of the "How?" of worship. Since God is a Spirit, it is proper to worship Him "in spirit." True worship is spiritual worship; it is also to be done "in truth." The worship of the people of God was about to undergo a significant change. Jesus said that an hour was approaching, indeed had already arrived, that ushered in a new kind of worship. Again, this did not mean that in the Old Testament worship was not to be spiritual or according to truth.

With the incarnation of Christ, the Great High Priest was on the earth. The old was passing away. The curtain in the temple would soon be rent, and the temple itself was soon to be destroyed. Our Messiah was about to enter into the heavenly sanctuary and open its doors for the communion of saints.

God cares for His church with a special providence. From the cry of Abel's blood from the earth, through the Exodus and exile, He preserved His remnant by His providential care. The church of the new covenant would be established upon a new foundation, the foundation of the apostles, which stood not over against but along with the foundation of the Old Testament prophets. The new did not destroy the old but built upon it. It was given a special praise of providential care:

He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"

Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

Jesus answered and said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

(Matt. 16:15-19) Jesus called Simon Petros, or "the rock," declaring that He would build His church upon this rock. The tendency in church history is for the Roman Catholic Church to read too much into this designation and for Protestants to see too little.

Jesus did not here establish a papacy, but He did point to the apostolic foundation upon which He was building His church.

Jesus also declared that the gates of hell would not prevail against His church.

What does this mean? This is not an easy statement to interpret because it can have more than one meaning. In the first instance the reference to gates means the entrances to strongholds. In the ancient world, large cities were surrounded by high walls. These were fortified cities, built to withstand attacks from hostile forces. The city gates were often mammoth in size and weight, built to withstand assault by battering rams. In this sense the gates were defensive structures. To say then that the gates of hell would not prevail against the church may mean that the church is called to be an offensive force, invading the world with the power of the gospel, which cannot be withstood by the strongholds of hell.

Another possibility, which I think is less likely, is that the reference to the gates of hell may refer to the source from which emerges satanic forces that aggressively assault the church. In this case it is the forces of hell that are on the attack, and the church is on the defensive against them. In this interpretation we have the promise of Christ that the church will never be vanquished by evil.

I am not sure which of these views Jesus had in mind when He made His

statement to Simon Peter. One thing is clear, however; both interpretations express a sound view of God's promises to His church. Certainly the New Testament makes it clear that the offensive power of the gospel is greater than the strongholds of hell. It is equally true that God so protects His church that it will never be vanquished from the earth. Modern historians who have declared this to be the post-Christian era in which God is dead and the church is His mausoleum have been premature in their obituaries. The church is not dead because it cannot die. Individual parishes may disappear, and whole denominations may become apostate, but the invisible church is impregnable and will always have some visible manifestation on earth.

Because of the providence of God, no Christian can ever afford to be, or be justified in being, pessimistic with respect to the future of the church. The church may go through dark periods when its light seems to fade and its flame begin to cool, but the Lord of the church has so subjected His body to His care that it cannot die.

It has been said that the church is the most corrupt institution on earth. That may be true from the perspective of evaluating institutions in terms of their gifts and relative responsibilities. We know that of those to whom much has been given, much will be required—and no institution has been so richly gifted by divine grace than the church. If our sin is measured against this backdrop, then perhaps the church is the most corrupt institution on earth. But at the same time this institution, which is populated by sinners, is also the most holy institution on earth. The church is holy because it has been consecrated unto a holy task and because its members (at least in the case of the invisible church) have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The church on earth has spots and wrinkles, but these blemishes are being made clean as Christ adorns His bride for her future wedding feast with Him. The church is not the only place where God's providence is at work, as we have said, but it is the place where the means of grace are most clearly concentrated. As God steered the course of Noah's ark in the midst of the deluge so His invisible hand remains at the helm of the church.