What is the Church, and why does it matter?” The answer to that question very much depends on the narrative that one places himself into. What is the story that surrounds our life?
Secular narrative is evolutionary where all change is progress. Anything that’s happening must necessarily be contributing to the betterment, the evolution, the growth of this naturally occurring world. This concept, however, does not present those who adhere to it a sense of purpose.
Christians who adhere to the biblical narrative have a very different story. In that narrative, God is expanding the God (Elohim) family. We look forward to the return of Christ, the Kingdom of God, and the continuing creation of God’s family. That story has motion and purpose.
A central feature of a good portion of the Bible is the ancient nation of Israel. Some look at the Old Testament as a compilation of fables and stories that aren’t applicable to modern day Christians. However, you cannot tell these stories unless we have the nation of ancient Israel at the center of it.
An Old Testament scholar, Christopher J. H Wright, helps to structure most of the content of this article (see references at end of article). His fundamental paradigm is that the nation of Israel is recorded in the Bible to a large extent for us to understand how we are to function in our relationship with God.
“In the third month after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on the same day, they came to the Wilderness of Sinai. For they had departed from Rephidim, had come to the Wilderness of Sinai, and camped in the wilderness. So Israel camped there before the mountain. And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself” (Exodus 19:1–4).
Exodus 19:1-4 is the origin story of the nation of Israel. That origin story is God’s redemptive action on their behalf. Exodus 19:4 informs us of the central theme of God dealing with His people in both the Old and New Testament. For Israel, God acted first. He extended grace to Israel. In Exodus 2 He heard their groaning. In Exodus 3 He saw their oppression and in Exodus 6 He redeemed them from bondage. They did nothing to save themselves. It was God’s action to rescue them from Egypt.
We think of the Ten Commandments as a list of instructions of laws they were given at Sinai. But it’s important to note that the preamble to the Ten Commandment sets this same ethic. The first thing God says as He leads into the Ten Commandments is “I am the God who brought you out of bondage.” That is the precursor to the law that He gave them – that He had acted. He gave them redemption first. Then the law. His instructions to Israel were framed by what He had already done for them. That is the ethic of the Old Testament.
However, the bigger plan for God’s new nation is for the entire world and Israel’s service to it: “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel” (Exodus 19:5–6).
The nation of Israel was special. The Church is special. However, God didn’t stop there in this scripture. Israel and the Church are special because of God’s purpose for the entire world. Their job, their purpose, is for the benefit of all of humanity. They are to function as priests. More importantly, they must be holy. That requires them to be distinct, different. Importantly, that they function as a community that is holy and a community that reflects the God family.
Israel was not all God cared about. His mind was set on all of humanity from the very beginning. He reminded Israel repeatedly that they were relatively unimportant in many ways. They’re only special because of what He did. Deuteronomy 7:7 says: “The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose [Israel] because (it was great), for you were the least of all peoples; . . .”
God’s thinking about His people and His purpose for His people was imbedded in the very core of the covenant He struck with Abraham: “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice” (Genesis 22:18).
Clearly the ultimate fulfillment of that prophecy is Christ. But it doesn’t mean that it didn’t include the nation of Israel and what they were to be for all the nations. In Ezekiel 39:7 God emphasizes Israel’s purpose again: “I will place My holy name on My people Israel…so that the nations shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One of Israel.”
God clearly chooses to work through people. The Church has a parallel role to the way God worked with Israel. It’s the same origin. It’s the same mission. Isaiah 60:2 is a prophecy about the future of the nation of Israel, of which the Church of God is a spiritual type: “For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, And deep darkness the people; But the Lord will arise over you, And His glory will be seen upon you. The Gentiles shall come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising” (Isaiah 60:2–3).
God intends that all the nations might see the light of God through His people. And that the world would know that He is the Lord, the Holy One in Israel. This is a story that requires engagement, being in the world but not of it.
God required Israel to be holy. However, that’s unsatisfyingly vague. What does that mean? Leviticus 19:2 starts with the phrase, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” Then proceeds to describe what holy looks like. It talks about very practical things. It talks about morality, family life, social welfare, employment, labor rights, libel law, health and safety, criminal justice, equality under the law and fair trade among many other principles. Being Holy is something one does. It is a way of being.
We are talking about Israel as a paradigm for God’s church. Israel is a type, a parallel to the Church and the Church is a parallel to Israel. Christopher J. H. Wright highlights some characteristics of Israel that are very instructive: Israel was real, it was different, and it was values-based. That’s how God set up His people. They were real. They had a history. They existed at a time and a place. They had context. Their existence and experience in the time that they lived showed who God is. God was working out His plan through them.
In Exodus 23:24 regarding the pagan nations roundabout them Israel was instructed, “Do not do according to their works.” They were told to be different in religion, traditions, the food they ate, the entertainment they engaged in, money, politics, sex. Everything about their nation was to be distinguished by the specific way that God gave them to live. Doctrine and tradition are the things that distinguish His people from the nations roundabout. The community identity is only established through what members individually do with that law that God has given to His people.
A third aspect of the characteristics of Israel is that it was values-based. It was ethical. Israel was given a way of being. It was set up as a nation to be value centric. What they were given was not an arbitrary code of conduct. They were given principles that needed to be learned, interpreted, understood, and practiced.
Being the people of God is a community thing. You can’t develop godly character if you’re in isolation. It requires interaction. You can’t serve God’s purpose if you’re in isolation. His law is social.
It’s important to look at the nation of Israel and how God built them. Land was central to the people of Israel, and it is important to what God gave them. Land was widely distributed. It was given out to families, and they were made landowning households. That land could not be sold permanently, which had tremendous economic consequences for their people. It limited their ability to aggregate wealth but most importantly it braced up the family and the continuity of that family.
Their system of law preserved equality. It protected the poor and the weak. And it distributed responsibility for caring for those who had needs to the local communities. Moral obligations that they were given as a nation started with the individual, lifted up to the family and extended out to the tribe and to the entire nation. And that’s how law worked in the nation of Israel.
Their government was very decentralized. It was across a network of community elders. It was based on kinship. It was not set up by God to have a system of dynastic kings.
Their economy was agricultural. It was a system that encouraged them to be individually self-sufficient, to be producers not consumers. Again, it was very difficult in that system to really aggregate tremendous wealth. But you were almost assured of having enough. It was a flat, free, family centric community that was dependent entirely on God.
Norman K. Gottwald in a book called “The Tribes of Yahweh said that Israel was: “an egalitarian, extended-family, segmentary tribal society with an agricultural-pastoral economic base… characterized by profound resistance and opposition to the forms of political domination and social stratification that had become normative in the chief cultural and political centers of the ancient Near East.” (Pg 10)
The way God structured His community was in direct opposition to everything that they saw around them. But maintaining that sort of society only works if every individual adheres to the moral principles that uphold it, that allow it to exist. God has applied those principles but the whole society, the whole structure of freedom breaks down or is suffocated as soon as the individuals start violating those moral principles. It can exist only if we each hold up our own individual responsibilities.
The success of implementing those moral principles is most powerfully exhibited when seen as a community. The benefits and the power of those individual decisions are observed collectively. Because if Israel could have pulled it together and done what God gave them to do, they would have been an unstoppable witness for who God is.
The nation of Israel was to make God manifest as a community. That had to be expressed. The idea of what God was doing and the message He had to send, He wanted expressed in a fleshly way, to be shown in a tangible, real community that exemplified the fruits of His way of life. An incarnation of God’s mind, demonstrated in their life as a nation. Not individually but as a nation.
God said of Israel in Isaiah 43:10 “You are My witnesses, . . .” Christ said of His Church in John 13:35, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” This again, takes us back to the “why”. Why does God want witnesses? Why did He want a light to the Gentiles?
“… I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles, That You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth…. in the day of salvation I have helped You; I will preserve You (God had redeemed) and give You As a covenant to the people (He’s giving His people as a promise to all nations), To restore the earth, To cause them to inherit the desolate heritages; That You may say to the prisoners, ‘Go forth,’” (Isaiah 49:6,8-9).
Through God’s work, through those He sanctified by the truth, all people can be freed from bondage and brought into a redeemed relationship with the Creator. The people of the nation of Israel were to be a personification of God in a way that had to benefit mankind. It was not for their own holiness. It was outwardly focused. Their mission was outside themselves. They were distinct, they were separate, but they were for the nations roundabout. A nation, among the nations, for the nations. Israel was supposed to serve all of humanity.
Israel was redeemed, given an inheritance, a distinct way, and a mission for all humanity. How they lived, together, was the Work. The Law that set them apart was good. But the community that law cultivated was very good. The law was not the end. The community that it created was.
Israel had to be individually transformed by the distinctive way of life that God had called them to. Their hearts molded to reflect God’s character. But that change had to be manifested collectively. This is also true for those sanctified by the truth now. We are to be transformed by the distinctive way of life that God called us to.
God’s way has to produce something to be of value. What it is supposed to produce is a people. It is supposed to produce relationships. And ultimately a family, His Family.
Staff
- Christopher J. H. Wright God’s Anomalous People
- Christopher J. H. Wright Living as the People of God: The Relevance of Old Testament Ethics
- Norman K. Gottwald The Tribes of Yahweh, (pg10)