Church - The Jesus Mission

Home > Personal Study > Got Questions? > Church - The Jesus Mission

The correct, literal translation of the Greek word ekklesia from the original text of the New Testament is "assembly," not church." Interestingly enough, the English word "church" and its relatives in other languages, such as the German word Kirche, come from another Greek word altogether, kuriakos, meaning "the Lord's"3 which should not have been used to create a substitute for the real translation assembly." Used correctly in secular or sacred literature, the word ekklesia is never translated to mean anything other than a local assembly of people who have been called together for a specific purpose, regardless of what that may be.

The word ekklésia has a very narrow meaning. It is the compound of the preposition ek—out of and the verb kaleo—to call. When we put it all together we see plainly that it means an assembly of people, secular or sacred, who come together for a specific purpose, and should be translated as such. It certainly doesn't mean a crowd of people. The very idea of a universal visible or invisible assembly is a physical impossibility and an obvious oxymoron, for how could people assembled together for a specific reason in a certain place be worldwide or invisible? It is not treated this way in secular literature. The sad news is that the majority of christianity holds to this false interpretation of the important word church that God holds so dear to His heart.

• What is the difference between the universal and local church?

The Greek word ekklésia in the manuscripts gained new meanings in the 2nd century A.D. from the Roman Catholics, and later on from the Protestants during the Reformation in the 16th century, that were not true to the original text. The Catholics pioneered a new meaning for ekklesia by stretching it to refer to a universal (catholic), visible church, as a means to secure control over the churches. This definition included all churches worldwide in order to bring them under Rome's umbrella, thus also giving birth to denominationalism. It was changed again by Augustines in the early 5th century, when he expanded the meaning of the word church further to refer to an invisible collection of Catholics from all over the world, whom he considered to be true believers, apart from the many visible Catholics who regularly attended mass. From this the idea of an invisible, worldwide assembly gained acceptance in Catholic circles. Certainly this was an abuse of this simple word.

The problems began for us English-speaking people when King James authorized a translation of the Bible in 1611 into English, and agreed to a list of rules to guide the translators under pressure (see note 10) to please the many factions and their political power originally these rules were listed at the beginning of every King James Version of the Bible for all to see so that each person could draw the correct conclusions about the faulty translation; however, later editions omitted them, and today most people aren't even aware that they existed as a guide to the translators and the reading ofthe Scriptures. One of the words they were commanded by King lames not to translate correctly was the word ekklésia. They were instructed to keep the old ecclesiastical word "church" as a translation.

At the same time, in their enthusiasm to break away from the Roman Catholics universal, visible church, the Protestants embraced Augustine's idea of a universal, invisible church and took it even further, making this the real church of importance. Without realizing it, their attempt to righteously soothe their rebellious anti-Catholic consciences inadvertently started a whole new debate: Which is more important, (1) embracing local churches, or (2) the invisible one they alleged was the real church that all believers were automatically supposed to belong to?

Real damage was done closer to home when in the early twentieth century C. I. Scofield popularized this Protestant departure, presenting his own bias in the reference Bible that bore his name.7 The sad truth is that it spread like wildfire, and most evangelical theologians since then have gone along with how he dealt with this word, at the expense of the true function of local churches and the glory ascribed to them by God Himself. Thus satan had found a foothold to attack the power of the very thing that Jesus said would have the power and authority to destroy him, and he won't let go without a fight.

Since that time, there are those who claim that we can believe in both church concepts, saying that there is room for this without taking too much away from local churches; nevertheless, such a compromise cannot work and is false according to the text, and invariably leads to embracing the invisible rather than the local The result of making an invisible church the true church, as they do, has rendered the local ones of lesser value, tearing down the role God designed them to play in this dispensation, not to speak of confusing the original intent of the writers of the New Testament. This kind of thinking has led people to justify abandoning local church life for an invisible one and eventually down the path to lawlessness.

It's amazing how understanding the word "assembly" in our New Testaments increases the important role of local churches in this dispensation of grace and makes anything else an oddity, to say the least. In the preface of the A. S. Worrell translation of the New Testament, which correctly translates ekklésia, he wrote: "Then a failure properly to translate ecclesia has, likewise, wrought untold mischief. The word rightly translated, would have afforded no shelter for the vast ecclesiasticisms that have overshadowed and well-nigh crowded out of being the simple, independent, local assemblies, that were established in the first centuries of Christianity. Ecclesia should have been translated assembly or congregation; and this would have been a rebuke to those who would swallow up all local assemblies in a consolidated denomination, or ecclesiasticism."8

• Isn't the word church used in several different ways in the New Testament Bible?

Yes. The word church is used in three different ways, but always as a particular assembling group:

1. It is used to describe the city or community-based bodies of believers, who each functioned as individual called-out-of-the-world-around-them assemblies. They were addressed in letters by Paul, for example "to the church in Rome, Galatia, Ephesus, Corinth..." In that regard churches were used in the plural, where the singlular word church might have been used to speak of its theology.

2. The church of the firstborn, or all collective believers, who will gather at the end. The Hebrew writer references it as the collective parts of the New Creation who will assemble in the end.

3. Lastly, the church is also used to speak of the Assembly in heaven today, gathered as the great cloud of witnesses. They are there today as the ones who have passed on before us.

In all three cases, the churches gather for their respective purpose.