When Did The Church Begin?

From Lesson 180 of the Biblical Framework Series

Charlie Clough

And it says “by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” He talks about the body and he’s developing the concept of the body of the Church. So Spirit baptism results in the calling out, it’s a picture of the separation of the population and being identified with this thing called the Church. In ritual baptism it’s just a way of expressing that reality, but the Holy Spirit says “we are all by one Spirit baptized into one body.” And the body in the context is talking about the universal church. So the function of baptism is that it creates the Church.

When did Spirit baptism start? When does the Church start? Well, if baptism causes the Church then the beginning of Spirit baptism must be the beginning of the Church. So here’s a time line, here’s the virgin birth, here’s the death of Christ, here’s the ascent into heaven, here’s the coming of the Holy Spirit and Pentecost. The question is, where on this time line do we put the beginning of the church? So, the Church, some theologians down through history, Roman Catholic theologians for example, many in the Reformed camp, would say well, we use the word “church” to refer to all believers. In other words, there was a church in the Old Testament. But what they’re talking about there is all believers, without looking at the distinctions down through history. What we’re asking is another question. When did the Church, in the sense of the body of 1 Cor. 12, when did that start? On page 54 of the notes I give four arguments why it had to have started on the day of Pentecost, the day of Pentecost, when the Church formed.

Notice I did not say that the Church was recognized at that time as a separate entity. We’ll get into that next, that’s the next event. But in actual reality the Church was born that day, on Pentecost. The four arguments are “Paul teaches that the Church is a ‘mystery’ not revealed in the Old Testament. Therefore the Church could not have begun before John the Baptist. Second, Jesus taught that it was future to His time,” because in Matt. 16:18 what was the tense of the verb when He said “I build My church?” I have built My church? I am building My church? Or I will build My church? Future! It’s future to Matt. 16 so the Church did not begin during the earthly ministry of Jesus. The third argument, “The Church depends upon an ascended and seated Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, it had to originate after the ascension and session.” The Ephesian passage. “Finally, Spirit baptism prophesied by Jesus to occur after His session occurred for the first time at Pentecost,” the baptism of the Spirit and in 1 Cor. 12 Paul identifies that as that which generates the Church. Conclusion, “the Church began on the day of Pentecost.”

So we’ll say that the Church, which we are calling the universal church, let’s get the vocabulary, you can’t think without an active vocabulary, “Church” is being used as I’m using it here to mean believers since the day of Pentecost, believers who are baptized into the body of Christ. It is the universal church; we’re not talking here about local churches, we’re talking about the universal church. Theologians sometimes call this the Invisible Church. Why do you suppose theologians call it the Invisible Church, are we all invisible? No, what they’re saying is that it can’t be identified with any physical social group of people because you could have 122 church members, and maybe 92 are born again. So the universal church doesn’t correspond to church membership. It doesn’t correspond to this denomination or that denomination. You can have believers and unbelievers in any denomination. Being a member of a denomination doesn’t prove you’re a Christian. It just means you’ve identified yourself socially as a Christian, but it doesn’t mean you’re really born again, trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for your salvation. So that’s what we mean by universal church.