Ecclesiology Through Imagery
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
As we have seen in previous weeks, insights into the formation and function of a church can be gleaned from images such as a body, a bride and a building. This week Theology 101 adds another image — that of a household.
Ephesians 2:19 declares, “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” With similar imagery, Galatians 6:10 admonishes, “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.” From these two passages we glean the dual truths that the Church is both a household of faith and the household of God.
In New Testament times a household was often comprised both of family members and servants. From this common makeup of a household we can glean the twin truths that the Church is composed of people who are at the same time servants of God and members of His family. By spiritual birth sinners become children of God. By personal commitment God’s children choose to be His servants.
As children in God’s household we are His heirs. By virtue of being an heir of God, we also are joint heirs with Christ. As Romans 8:16–17a says, “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.”
Joint heirs
Herein lies a sense of security for members of God’s family. Since we are joint heirs with Christ, the only way God could disown a true believer would be for Him also to disown His only begotten Son since we are inseparably united with Christ as fellow heirs in the household of faith.
The imagery of a household or family serves to call attention to the Church in the universal or collective sense of all God’s children throughout all time and in all places, whether already in heaven or still here below. This is evident in Ephesians 3:14–15 in the Apostle Paul’s testimony concerning prayer, “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.”
In this image is also the suggestion of the spiritual kinship that should be celebrated by every believer with all other believers. Under the fatherhood of God all His children are related. The hymn writer expressed this truth in the line, “Who serves my Father as a child is surely kin to me” (“In Christ There Is No East or West”).
Such was the significance set forth in God’s word through the Apostle Paul in writing to the Ephesian church. At that time the two major groups that were targeted by that word from God were Jews and Gentiles.
Spiritual family
In Christ, believers from each group found themselves children in the same spiritual family. Hence, in Ephesians 4:6 the Bible asserted then and continues to assert today there is “one God and Father of all,” regardless of ethnic, racial, cultural or geographical differences.
Family love will always ideally be the badge of genuineness worn by every believer and the bridge that connects all God’s children. Thus, a major distinctive that exists at the core of being the Church is the truth of spiritual kinship of all believers under the fatherhood of God.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Jerry Batson is a retired Alabama Baptist pastor who also has served as associate dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and professor of several schools of religion during his career.
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