Church: Universal and Local

Definition

The universal church is the heavenly and eschatological gathering of all believers, past, present, and future, who belong to the new covenant and the kingdom of Christ. The local church is the community of new covenant members and citizens of the kingdom of God who support one another and regularly gather in the name of Jesus to hear the preaching of the Gospel and to administer the sacraments.

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The New Testament word translated "church" (church), means «assembly.» The New Testament presents two types of assemblies: one in heaven, and many on earth. These two types of assemblies correspond to the universal and local churches. Becoming a Christian means becoming a member of the universal church, through which God raises us with Christ and «seats» us in heaven. However, this heavenly membership must be manifested on earth, and this happens when Christians gather in the name of Christ, preach the Gospel, and mutually confirm each other’s belonging to Him through the sacraments.

In other words, the heavenly universal church creates earthly local churches, which in turn reflect the universal church. Throughout history, Christians have tended to focus on either the local church or the universal church, often neglecting one or the other. However, biblical teaching emphasizes the importance of both. This teaching calls for personal discipleship in the local church, which at the same time cooperates with other churches.

Two ways of using the word "church"«

What is the church? A new Christian who begins to read the Bible may initially feel confused as he tries to answer this question. On one page, Jesus says that he will build his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). The new Christian ponders the way Jesus uses the word «church» here and rightly concludes that he is referring to something broad, consisting of a vast number of members from all over the world and over many centuries. Then, a few pages later, the young believer encounters Jesus telling his disciples that they should go to «the church» for unresolved sins (Matt. 18:17). Now he or she begins to wonder if the church is a specific group of people who meet in one place.

A review of Paul’s letters also reveals two different uses of the word «church.» In one instance, Paul is speaking of believers when he writes, «when you come together in church,» meaning a local congregation (1 Cor. 11:18). In another instance, he notes that «God has set some in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers,» indicating that this concept is much broader (1 Cor. 12:28).

What the young believer discovers is how the Bible uses the word «church» in both a universal and a local sense. At the most basic lexical level, the Greek word church, which is translated «church» in the Bible, means «assembly.» However, Scripture uses this word to refer to two types of assemblies: heavenly and earthly. Christians refer to these two types as the universal and local church, respectively.

The Universal Church — Heavenly Assembly

The universal church should be foremost in our thoughts, for people «join» the universal church or heavenly assembly by becoming Christians. Salvation is ultimately covenantal. Through the new covenant, Jesus Christ has not only won individuals but also a whole people for Himself, which He accomplished through His life, death, and resurrection. However, in uniting the people to Himself, He has also united them to one another.

Listen to how the apostle Peter puts it:

«You were once «not a people,» but are now the people of God; you were once «not having received mercy,» but are now having received mercy» (1 Pet. 2:10; see also Eph. 2:1-21).

Peter parallels the second line about receiving God’s saving grace with the first line about becoming God’s people. Both of these facts happened simultaneously.

It is fitting that one of the key images of our salvation is adoption (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:5; Eph. 1:5). To be adopted by a father and mother means to receive—in a derivative way, but at the same time—a new set of brothers and sisters. This is the universal church—all the new brothers and sisters we have received from different times and corners of the world who belong to this new covenant people.

Why then do we say that the universal church is in heaven?

After salvation by grace, Paul says that God «raised us up with him and seated us together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus» (Eph. 2:6; see also Col. 3:1, 3). Because of our union with Christ, we occupy a place in the heavenly realms, which means we have a right to be in God’s heavenly throne room. All the privileges and protections of that place are ours because we are sons and daughters of the King. We are there. But Paul continues: not only are we vertically reconciled, resurrected, and seated in the heavenly realms.

Horizontal reconciliation follows: «But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ,» for «he himself is our peace, who has made the two one, having broken down in his flesh the middle wall of hostility» (Eph. 2:13, 14). This means that if you sit with Christ in heaven, you also sit with all the others who sit in the same heavens. This is the heavenly assembly or universal church that Paul speaks of in the following chapters (Eph. 3:10, 21; 5:23–32).

The author of Hebrews emphasizes even more clearly the heavenly location of this gathering for his Christian audience:

«But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel» (Heb. 12:22–24).

Again, how can the saints on earth be gathered to heaven even now? They have been declared righteous before the judgment seat of God through the new covenant of Christ. There, in heaven, God counts all the saints—living and dead—as those who have a right to be there.

Moreover, this heavenly gathering presupposes the final gathering of all the saints who have ever lived, gathered around the throne of God—what the apostle John calls «a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, tribe, people and tribe, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes» (Rev. 7:9). For this reason, theologians call the universal church not only a heavenly gathering but also an eschatological (final) gathering.

Definition #1: The universal church is the heavenly and eschatological gathering of all—past, present, and future—who belong to the new covenant and kingdom of Christ. It is the church that Jesus promised to build in Matthew 16. It is the entire body of Christ, the family of God, and the temple of the Spirit. Membership in it is contingent only on salvation.

The Local Church — The Assembly on Earth

However, the Christian’s heavenly membership in the universal church must be manifested on earth, just as the righteousness that is credited to the Christian in Christ must be manifested in works of righteousness (Jas. 2:14–26). Membership in the universal church describes a «positional» reality—a heavenly position or status in God’s presence. So it is as real as anything else in or outside the universe. However, Christians must realize, embody, or live out this universal membership concretely. As Paul says, we must «clothe» our positional righteousness with existential works of righteousness (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10, 14).

In other words, our membership in the universal church and the heavenly body of Christ cannot remain an abstract idea. If it is a reality, it must be manifested on earth—in real time and space with real people, people with names like Betty and Said and Jamar, people we cannot choose but who step on our toes, disappoint us, encourage us, and help us follow Jesus. Membership in the universal church must become visible in the local assembly of Christians.

Summarizing this relationship, we can say that the universal church creates local churches, while local churches confirm, testify, demonstrate, and even defend the universal church, for example like this:

If a person claims to belong to a church but has no relationship with the church, it is quite reasonable to ask whether they truly belong to the church, just as we ask about a person who professes faith but has no works.

The local church is the place where we can see, hear, and literally encounter the universal church—not the whole church, yes, but a manifestation of it. The church is the visible, earthly outpost of the heavenly assembly. It is like a time machine that has come from the future to give us a foretaste of this final, eschatological assembly.

Gathering, Mutual Confirmation, and the Keys of the Kingdom

More specifically, the universal church becomes a local church—it becomes visible—through the regular gatherings of people who mutually acknowledge each other as Christians, through the preaching of the Gospel, and participation in baptism and the Lord's Supper.

Let’s go back and explain. Every nation and kingdom has some way of identifying who its citizens are. Today, countries use passports and borders. Ancient Israel used both circumcision and Sabbath keeping, which were signs of the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, respectively. The church is not currently an earthly kingdom that owns the earth, but this heavenly kingdom also needs a way of identifying its citizens on earth. How does it do this? How can these heavenly citizens know who they are, both to themselves and to all nations?

To answer this question, Jesus provided covenant signs for members of the new covenant: the sign of entry is baptism, through which people are baptized in His name (Matt. 28:19), and the permanent sign is the Lord's Supper, through which they mutually confirm each other as members of His body (1 Cor. 10:17).

Moreover, Jesus gave local churches the authority to publicly confirm their members as citizens of His kingdom by applying these coveted marks, much like a coach handing out team jerseys. To do this, He gave the churches «the keys of the kingdom» to bind and loose on earth what has been bound and loosed in heaven (Matt. 16:19; 18:18). What does this mean? It means that the churches have the authority to judge what is the true gospel confession and who are true believers. Having received these keys, Jesus authorized the churches to say, «Yes, this is the gospel confession that we believe and that you must accept in order to be a member of the church.» Or, «Yes, this is a true believer. We will baptize him, and he will become a member of the local church.» They might as well say, «We excommunicate him from the church and exclude him from the Lord’s Supper for unrepentant sins.» In everyday terms, Jesus gave this assembly the keys of the kingdom to formulate statements of faith and determine membership.

Definition #2: A local church is a mutually affirmed group of New Testament members and Kingdom citizens who identify themselves through regular gatherings in the name of Jesus, preaching the Gospel, and administering the sacraments.

Jesus describes this gathered local church in Matthew 18. It is an expression of the body of Christ, the family of God, and the temple of the Spirit.

Early Church History: The Trend Towards a Universal Church

Throughout the history of the church, different individuals and traditions have emphasized either the universal or the local church.

In the first generations after the apostles, the emphasis was rightly placed on both, at least if we judge by the early letters to the churches and their leaders written by pastors such as Clement of Rome and Ignatius. The second-century document Didache also indicates this, emphasizing both the practical activities of the local church and Christian faithfulness in a broader context.

However, as is sometimes the case, people can shift their weight from both feet to one, and in the writings of the Church Fathers, who moved into the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, there is a growing emphasis on the universal church, albeit in institutional form. There were historical reasons for this. Numerous theological heresies arose. The churches were also divided over how to treat Christians (especially bishops) who had renounced Christ during persecution and then asked to be readmitted. Such pastoral challenges led men like Cyprian and Augustine to emphasize the importance of unity with the one, holy, apostolic, and catholic—that is, universal—church. They began to argue that unity with the one true universal church required unity with the right bishop; and unity with the right bishop ultimately meant unity with the bishop of Rome, or the pope. In other words, catholicity or universality became an earthly reality as well as a heavenly one. It belonged to the institutional structures that formally united the global church—the episcopacy, which supposedly traced back to Peter and centered on the pope.

The Protestant Reformation broke this pattern by proposing a more spiritual understanding of Catholicism. They also recognized the need for external structures in the life of the church, but began to distinguish between a visible and an invisible church. They argued that a person could belong to the visible church but not to the invisible, or vice versa, since salvation was not achieved mechanically through baptism or the Lord’s Supper, but only through regeneration and faith. This emphasis on the invisible church effectively made the catholicity or universality of the church a spiritual rather than an institutional characteristic. The universal church, in other words, would be revealed on the Last Day as the invisible church in space and time, not simply as all those who claim to be members of the visible churches.

Later Church History: The Tendency to a Local Church

However, early reformers such as Luther, Calvin, and Cranmer still left room in their reasoning for an institutional form of unity and catholicity (ecumenism). Their denominations were "united," meaning that the churches were formally and authoritatively connected to one another. From their perspective, such a formal connection was a requirement of unity and therefore catholicity.

They therefore saw the visible church as consisting of more than just the local church—the assembly of people who meet in one place. It also included larger church hierarchies, whether presbyteries or episcopacies. They therefore called their churches «the Church of England» or «the German Lutheran Church.» Not surprisingly, their theologies also emphasized the distinction between the visible and invisible church as much, if not more, than between the local and the universal. The practice of infant baptism and the fact that unregenerate infants are considered members of the churches emphasized the need for a distinction between the invisible and the visible church. For unregenerate infants belong to the visible but not to the invisible church.

However, within a few decades of the Reformation, the Anabaptists, and eventually the Baptists, had completely transferred the unity of the Catholic or universal church back to heaven. They argued that each church should remain institutionally independent and consist only of believers. The visible church on earth, they believed, was only a local church—a gathered, geographically located church. The «Church of England,» they said, was not a church. It was a parachurch or administrative structure linking several churches.

However, among Baptist groups there was a risk of shifting the weight of the body entirely to the other foot, where Christians gave all their attention to the local church and paid little attention to the universal. Some trends in Baptist churches, such as the "Landmarkers" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, did indeed assert that there was only a local church. They also refused to share the Lord's Supper with anyone who was not a member of their church. Fortunately, such trends were rare.

Much more common was the functional disregard for the universal church among church leaders who focused on commerce and marketing in churches in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Such churches verbally affirm the existence of the universal church. They glorify God for Christians worldwide in their sermons. But their practices, which rely on self-reliance, too often ignore the universal church. The market mentality uses language and methods of ministry that effectively promote the church’s unique identity, like a fast-food restaurant advertising its own way of making hamburgers. This probably inadvertently creates competition between churches. For example, the church missions that have become popular in the past few decades emphasize the church’s unique missional emphases, as if Jesus did not give every church exactly the same mission (Matt. 28:18-20). This emphasis on what is unique, instead of an emphasis on shared partnership, is consistent with working separately from other churches, rather than together.

So when the building is full, the church’s first desire is not to start another church. Instead, it starts a second ministry or branch. Churches may invite pastors from other countries to visit and share prayers on stage, but they do not do this with the pastor who is nearby.

In general, the marketing and branding mentality is not intended to compete with other churches, as it might be among fast food restaurants. However, it does mean that neighboring churches ignore each other. Worse, they have effectively set themselves up in a vast field of unnamed competition, where the most charismatic preachers with the best brands and programs draw people away from neighboring churches. As a result, partnerships between churches in the same area or city are becoming rare.

Emphasis on the local and universal church

However, the biblical picture supports the weight of the body on both legs—local and universal. The universal church is «manifested» in the local churches, as I argued at the beginning. But it must also be «manifested» in the willingness of each church to cooperate with other churches, as we see among the churches in the New Testament. New Testament churches:

• They shared love and greetings (Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 16:19; 2 Cor. 13:13, etc.).
• Preachers and missionaries were shared (2 Cor. 8:18; 3 John 5-6a).
• They supported each other financially with joy and gratitude (Rom. 15:25–26; 2 Cor. 8:1–2).
• They imitated each other in the Christian life (1 Thess. 1:7; 2:14; 2 Thess. 1:4).
• They cared for each other’s financial support (1 Cor. 16:1–3; 2 Cor. 8:24).
• Prayed for one another (Eph. 6:18). And not only that.

Christians today may disagree about whether the Bible is intended to establish institutional unity or connection between churches (I do not believe it is). But each local church should love the universal church by loving, cooperating with, and supporting other local churches, including those closest to us. We should be willing to share the Lord’s Supper with baptized members of other churches when they visit us.

Furthermore, every denominational tradition must affirm that Christians should join local churches because these local churches are expressions of the universal church. Our homeland in heaven has sent messengers and built embassies here and now. The gathered churches are an outpost, a foretaste, a colony, a representation of the final gathering. If you belong to the universal church, you will certainly want to join a church. This is the place where we embody our preaching, our faith, our fellowship, and our membership in the body of Christ.