The Church’s Unity -- By: Joel R. Beeke
Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 08:3 (Summer 1999)
Article: The Church’s Unity
Author: Joel R. Beeke
RAR 8:3 (Summer 1999) p. 67
The Church’s Unity
The Nicene Creed confesses “one church” (unam ecclesiam), meaning the church is built upon one rock, one Messiah, one confession. The Westminster Confession adds that the church’s unity lies in Jesus Christ: “The catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the Head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all” (Chapter 25.1). That the church is Christ’s body, and He the head (Col. 1:18), implies that Christ and the church are complementary, for a body and a head cannot exist without each other.
Wilhelmus à Brakel stressed this by saying the church and Christ are each other’s property. Their union is affirmed by the gift of Christ to the church, Christ’s purchase of and victory for the church, the indwelling of Christ’s Spirit within the church, and the church’s surrender by faith and love to Christ.1 To think of Christ without the church is to sever what God has wedded together in holy union.
The church is organically related to Christ more profoundly than any organic relationship that falls within the realm of our experience; she is rooted and built up in Christ (Col. 2:7), is clothed with Christ (Rom. 13:14), and cannot live without Christ (Phil. 1:21). “The church is in Christ as Eve was in Adam,” wrote Richard Hooker.
RAR 8:3 (Summer 1999) p. 68
The church is Christ’s fullness because the plenitude of His grace is poured out upon her (John 1:16; Col. 2:9–10). The church, Christ’s mystical body, “is like a vessel into which the fullness of Christ is poured,” wrote L.S. Thornton. “He fills it with himself.”2 Christ’s attributes—truth, power, mercy, love, patience, goodness, righteousness, wisdom—are both the embodiment of the church’s virtue and her resources.
All the members of Christ’s body are likewise united to one another because of their common Head (1 Cor. 12). All true believers who confess Christ as their exclusive Savior are “joined and united with heart and will, by the power of faith, in one and the same Spirit,” says the Belgic Confession in Article 27. They are united as members of the h...
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