Biblical Theology, Ecclesiology, Spiritual Formation

The Church as House

Posted by Brandon Munson on

This is the first installment in the Church Identity series, which consists of “big picture” paradigms for creating a biblical worldview.  The author desired to fuse it with The Church as Temple, but it was necessary to cover these themes as separate articles. For that reason, the theme of cosmic house is emphasized in a familial sense here, while the next article will speak more in terms of structural imagery.

God made a house

When reading Genesis 1, people often overlook the imagery of the narrative, getting lost in the melee of culture wars and origin debates. What people miss is that, when God orders the earth, He is essentially making a cosmic house.  Thus we see, in the first three days of Creation, God brings order to chaos. He creates the foundation of the house by creating light so that there was evening and morning. God creates a dome, or expanse, which is equivalent to a ceiling and walls. Then, when God separates the waters from the dry land, He creates borders within the house, similar to rooms. In the next three days, God fills the cosmic house He has constructed.  He creates vegetation, orbs of light in the expanse to govern day and night, and creatures of the sea, the air, and the land. God is furnishing His house and decorating it. Even with all of these things there was something missing.

There was once a magnanimous theologian by the name of Luther (Vandross) who once sang, “A chair is just a chair, even when there’s no one sitting there. But a chair is not a house, and a house is not a home when there’s no one there to hold you tight and no one there you can kiss goodnight.”1

God made His house a home by placing residents within. God made Adam in His image, similar to the way that Seth was in the image of Adam, showing a kind of familial relationship.2 Indeed, “God saw that it was not good for man to be alone,” so He made a companion who is later  called “Eve.”

Unlike many of the creation myths of the other nations, the cosmos was not the side effect of some chaotic battle between a god and a primordial monster. Creation was not an accident, but a wise and intentional act of a singular deity. Humans are an  intentional creation, but they are not  slaves or entertainment for the deity. In the biblical narrative, humans are created to “walk with God.”3 We see a God of wisdom and order seeking a relationship with a good creation. That’s a pretty unique feature in the ancient world.

A Broken Home

Of course, it all goes horribly awry when God’s children sign “emancipation papers,” so to speak, like Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son. Adam & Eve listen to another voice, making gods of themselves and doing “what was right in their own eyes.” They wanted to decide what was good and evil on their own terms. The family bond was broken and the children estranged themselves from their Father. In this sense, all humanity are children of God; the children are estranged, however, and are without legal rights. They do not have a relationship with their Father, nor are they heirs.

This was not an exclusively vertical effect, but a horizontal one as well. Human beings were not only estranged from God, but from each other. Immediately, Adam and Eve realized they were naked and were ashamed. They were no longer a harmonious unit; vulnerable, intimate, and focused wholly on the other. The focus switched from “other” to “self.” Love,tainted by insecurity, became self-seeking.

When God finds them hiding, He asks Adam what he has done. Instead of taking responsibility and repenting, Adam blames God and passes the buck to Eve, “the woman You gave me.” Eve deflects blame to the serpent. The family unit has come into discord, which passes to the next generation with Cain killing his brother Abel. The entire story from this point on is about God working towards reconciliation, drawing a people to Himself, and the constant back-and-forth between God’s reconciliation and mankind’s rebellion.

Jesus Makes a House

Jesus is the perfect Son of God, being God from God and perfect Adam (man) in one person. When Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove hovering over the baptismal waters. The imagery corresponds to the Spirit of God hovering over the waters of creation.4 Baptism is the water of the new creation, and Jesus is the Adam of the new creation. When we receive baptism by faith, we “put on Christ” and are united to him, so that we exchange the household of the old Adam for the household of the new Adam.5

The relationship between the Church and Christ are often depicted as a relationship between a groom and his bride.6 Jesus left the Father to “cling to his wife.” When we are baptized we receive the name of Jesus, akin to how a wife takes the family name of her husband. Traditionally, if there was no family name for a bride to receive, the wife would be identified with the name of her husband. For example, Mary (wife) of Joseph. We receive a seat at the table in the family of God through our union with His Son. The inheritance that rightfully belongs to the Son is also ours through union with him. When the husband inherits land it becomes the wife’s also, by extension.

By regeneration, we leave our previous patrimony, the old Adam, and take on the new patrimony of the second Adam. We become children of God—reconciled prodigals—and regain our forfeited status as children of God. In a mixed metaphor, the Church’s marriage to Christ makes the Church the “daughter-in-law” of God, adopting us as His own.7

The crucifixion is analogous to the groom’s   bride wealth (or bride price).8 In baptism, we are betrothed to the groom so that the marriage is legally binding, yet incomplete.9 Jesus goes to prepare a place for his betrothed in his Father’s house. The bride purifies herself prior to the groom’s return, which is our process of sanctification. When Christ returns, there will be a glorious ceremony and feast, and the “beatific vision” will be our consummation.10 Heaven and earth will reunite and the Church will be the everlasting family of God.11

In some passages Jesus calls us his brothers and sisters. 12 I know that this may be an awkward analogy to follow what has been said; nevertheless, it is a relevant analogy. 13 When God the Word joined human nature to his own divine nature, he became a descendant of Adam and Abraham according to the flesh. Jesus stood with his fellow Jews as a Jewish man, in particular, but he stood universally with all of humanity. As Athanasius said, “For [God] was made man so that we might be made God.” 14 That is, God took on a human nature so that humans could become “partakers of the divine nature.” 15

In becoming a brother to the sons of Adam, Jesus invites us to become brothers (and sisters) of the divine Son of God. This is no small mystery, but an unfathomable honor. Who are we that the Lord of all creation would not only save us, but make us the sons and brothers, daughters and sisters, of God Himself? It would have been blasphemy if it did not come from God’s very mouth.

Take a moment and contemplate this mystery. What does it mean that believers are brothers and sisters of God-Incarnate? The Church is literally a gathering of “godly” people. We are supernatural people indwelling a natural age.16 It is one thing to give this mystery mental assent, but what would it mean to believe this existentially? What would it look like to live in a way that was consistent with this biblically revealed reality?

We Are family

The implication of biblical theology is that we are brothers and sisters (as alluded to by the shameless Sister Sledge reference in the sub-title). I know I’m not dropping earth-shattering knowledge with this one, but it is true. We are family in the household of God. It is worth mentioning, however, that this is not a metaphor. It is analogous, perhaps, because we are using our experienced reality to talk about a higher reality, but it is not just a helpful fiction. We aren’t “like” brothers to Christ, nor are we “like” children of God. We truly are brothers of Christ and born of God.

We often call fellow church goers “brother” and “sister,” but the truth is that the Church, as a whole, does a very poor job living consistently with this principle. Have you ever left your family over their choice of music? Over the color of the carpet? Have you ceased to see or speak to your family ever again because a family member offended you? Indeed, we do not often treat our local church as we would a real family. We would feel terrible if we forgot our mother’s birthday, but how bad do we feel when we blow off a major feast day? If we lived as though the Church was family, we would have parishioners over to our house. We would be involved in each others’ lives beyond Sunday. If a dispute arises and arguments get heated, we return to one another and work it out. Healthy families will not abandon each other when times get hard.

I imagine you see my point by now. It can be so easy to acknowledge axiomatic truth, but another thing entirely to embrace it as part of our lived experience. We should be no less committed to our church family as we are to our biological families. Does that sound extreme? Jesus told us to hate our family to follow him, if necessary.17 Blood may be thicker than water, but the new covenant in Christ’s blood, sealed by the sacrament of water baptism, covers all of those bases.

This is why we must “rethink” Church. By “rethink,” I do not mean innovation in an effort to stay relevant, but the renewal of our minds by reclaiming a biblical worldview. The Church is not a club, nor is it a community center, it is a house. It is not a house merely in the sense of a building, but in the sense of the “House of David.” We are a divine household with Christ as the head of our family.

 

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Brandon Munson
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Footnotes

  1. Luther Vandross, “A House is not a Home.“
  2. Genesis 5:3 It is the author’s opinion that this passage also emphasizes that the Image Seth received through Adam was a corrupted Image of God.
  3. Genesis 3:8, 5:24, & Micah 6:8
  4. Genesis 1:2 and Mark 1:10 
  5. I Cor. 15:45 & Gal. 3:27 
  6. Rev. 21:2-10 
  7. Yes, the Bible calls us the sons of God, not daughters. Keep in mind that the word for children is the same word for sons and that the masculine word is always used for mixed groups. Nevertheless, I say daughter-in-law as an extended analogy and would like to limit it to that.
  8. Anyone who wants to understand  , as opposed to a dowry, should see Jason Staples, “Dowry and Bride Price are not the Same Thing.”
  9. Betrothal in the ancient world was much different from today. It will be helpful to know how betrothal works in Ancient Judaism. See Marcus Jastrow & Bernard Drachman, “Betrothal” in The Jewish Encyclopedia.
  10. The beatific vision refers to seeing God “face to face.”
  11. Though an important one, marriage is only one theme among many to describe the Church’s relationship to Christ. In other words, don’t make this the sole paradigm and try to apply it to every biblical event, doctrine, and sacramental rite.
  12. Matthew 12:46-50, Hebrews 2:11 
  13. On the other hand–awkward as it may be–this mixed metaphor is poetically reminiscent of Abraham and Sarah.
  14. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54:3 
  15. II Peter 1:4
  16. John 17:15 & 16
  17. Luke 14:26; By hate, Jesus did not mean you should harbor negative emotions or seek the downfall of your family. It was a hyperbolic way of saying that following Jesus may result in estranged relationships and broken hearts. Remember, Jesus spoke in a context in which following him meant you could be disowned by your family and forsaken by your community. A husband may divorce a wife and take the children or visa versa.