Jeffrey Johnson writes:

Finding a Church

The Son: “Dad, why do we keep moving from one church to another? Just when I was making friends at the church in Ephesus, we moved to Smyrna, then to Pergamum, then to Thyatira, then to Sardis, and then to Philadelphia. I really loved that church. And now we’re leaving the church in Laodicea? I just wish we could settle down and remain part of a church family.”

The Father: “Son,” the wise father replied, “the church is not what it used to be. When I was your age, the apostles were still alive and overseeing the churches. Now only one apostle remains—John—and there isn’t much he can do, for he is imprisoned on the island of Patmos. But when I was young, the apostolic church was vibrant and full of life. I remember when the believers were fully devoted to the apostles’ teaching and to breaking bread together. Back then, no one lacked anything because they took care of their own. Those were the good old days.”

The Son: “But I thought you and Mom really liked the church in Ephesus. Didn’t you agree with its doctrine? And unlike the other churches, it takes personal holiness seriously and practices church discipline.”

The Father: “All those things are true, and they are very important to your mother and me. We didn’t leave because of those things. It had all the marks of a healthy church without being healthy. We left because the church had left its first love. There was something missing—something very important. Sometimes, my dear son, a person can do everything right on the outside and still be missing something vital on the inside. Though your mother and I couldn’t quite put our finger on it, we both agreed that we could not remain in such a church.”

The Son: “So that’s why we left Ephesus. But what about Smyrna? I thought that church was one of the best we had ever attended.”

The Father: “In many ways, it was. But, son, your mother and I couldn’t stay there. We were too concerned for your safety. We learned that the authorities were watching the pastors and even some members of the congregation. The church was too provocative, and the preacher couldn’t leave controversial topics alone. It was no longer safe for us to stay.”

The Son: “Then why didn’t we stay in Pergamum?”

The Father: “At first, we really enjoyed the more relaxed atmosphere. Coming from Smyrna, it was refreshing. Yet, in time, it became evident that the atmosphere was a bit too relaxed. There were no safeguards over the teaching ministry. There was no way your mother and I could remain in a church where false teaching was welcomed.”

The Son: “And Thyatira?”

The father sighed deeply.

The Father: “Thyatira was a difficult place. There were many loving and devoted believers there. In fact, their works of service were increasing. But it seemed that the more the church sought to impact the world, the more the world impacted the church. There was little accountability and no real church discipline.”

The Son: “I never understood why we left Sardis. Wasn’t it a growing and thriving church?”

The Father: “Yes, the church was growing, but it was hard for your mother and me to find true spiritual fellowship. We stayed as long as we could, but in the end, it became evident that we needed to leave, even if it meant moving again.”

The son walked quietly for a moment.

The Son: “Philadelphia was my favorite.”

The father smiled.

The Father: “Yes, but just as Sardis was too big, Philadelphia was too small. There were no special programs for the youth, and for years the church had hardly grown at all. We simply didn’t feel that we could get plugged in there.”

The Son: “Then why are we leaving Laodicea?”

The father paused before answering.

The Father: “To be honest, son, your mother and I can’t tell whether it is cold or hot. At times it seems zealous, but for the most part it appears content to remain lukewarm.”

The son looked at his father thoughtfully.

The Son: “Dad, do you think the church will ever get back to the good old days? Do you think we’ll ever be able to settle down and remain faithful to one church? Do you think there will ever be a church that you and Mom are completely happy with? Will there ever be a church without sin to overcome or tribulation to endure?”

The Father: The old man was silent for a moment.

“Maybe not in our lifetime, son. But I’m sure that 2,000 years from now, things will be different.”

The Son: “Dad, until then, don’t you think it’s better to remain faithful to an imperfect church—one that Christ continues to speak to, rebuke, and correct—than to forsake the local assembly altogether?”

The Father: The old man smiled.

“My boy, shouldn’t you be fetching some fresh water for your mother so she can get dinner started?”

Have you ever heard of term the invisible church? The idea of the invisible church was first developed in depth by Saint Augustine. He made a distinction between the invisible church and the visible church. This distinction by Augustine has often been misunderstood. What he meant by the visible church was the church as an institution that we see visibly in the world. It has a list of members on its rolls and we can identify them.

Before we consider the invisible church, let’s ask a question: do you have to go to church to be a Christian? Is church attendance, if you’re physically able, a requirement to go to heaven? In a very technical sense, the answer is no. However, we need to remember a few things. Christ commands His people not to forsake the assembling together (Heb. 10:25). When God constituted the people of Israel, He organized them into a visible nation and placed upon them a sober and sacred obligation to be in corporate worship before Him. If a person is in Christ, he is called to participate in koinonia—the fellowship of other Christians and the worship of God according to the precepts of Christ. If a person knows all these things and persistently and willfully refuses to join in them, would that not raise serious questions about the reality of that person’s conversion? Perhaps a person could be a new Christian and take that position, but I would say that’s highly unlikely.

Some of us may be deceiving ourselves in terms of our own conversion. We may claim to be Christians, but if we love Christ, how can we despise His bride? How can we consistently and persistently absent ourself from that which He has called us to join—His visible church? I offer a sober warning to those who are doing this. You may, in fact, be deluding yourself about the state of your soul.

The invisible church is sometimes mistakenly thought of as something antithetical to the visible church, something that’s outside of, or apart from, the visible church. Augustine didn’t think in these categories. Augustine said that the invisible church is found substantially within the visible church. Imagine two circles. The first circle has “the visible church” written on it. That’s the outward, humanly perceivable, institutional church as we know it. The invisible church, as another circle, exists substantially within the circle of the visible church. There may be a few people in the invisible church who aren’t members of the visible church, but they are few and far between.

Why does Augustine speak of an invisible church? He does this to be faithful to the teaching of Jesus in the New Testament. Augustine taught that the church is a corpus permixtum. What does that mean? We know what a corpus is. It’s a body. Corpus Christi means what? The body of Christ. Corporation is an organization of people. Corpus permixtum means, the church is a mixed body.

Within the physical confines of the institutional church there are people who are true believers, but there are also unbelievers inside the visible, institutional church. They’re in the church, but they’re not in Christ because they’ve made a false profession of faith. Jesus said of some of His contemporaries, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Matt. 15:8). Jesus recognized that there were people within Israel who were not true believers. Paul said something similar: “Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel” (Rom. 9:6). These Jews went through the rituals and were part of the visible community. They were participating in all of the activities, but they were still aliens and strangers to the things of God.

In the New Testament, the metaphor that Jesus uses with respect to this is the metaphor of the tares and the wheat. Tares are weeds. The metaphor is a simple one in the agricultural environment. In order to get maximum productivity out of a garden, one has to minimize the tares because they seem to grow more easily than the produce.

Jesus uses this metaphor to give a warning to the church that, on the one hand, the church is to be engaged in discipline so that those weeds that threaten to destroy the purity of the church are removed. He also told us to take great care in exercising church discipline, lest in our zeal to purify the church we rip out the wheat along with the tares.

God looks on the heart and what always remains invisible to me is the soul of another person. I can listen to your confession of faith. I can observe your life. But I don’t know what’s in the deepest chambers of your heart. I can’t see your soul. I can’t read your mind. But God can read your mind, and God knows exactly what the state of your soul is at any given moment. What is invisible to me is visible to God. This is a distinction with respect to our limited perception.

Who is in the invisible church? According to Augustine, all those who are true believers. And he referred, of course, to the elect, because all of the elect, according to Augustine, finally come to true faith. And all of those who come to true faith are numbered among the elect. So when he spoke about the invisible church, he was speaking about the elect, those who truly are in Christ and are true children of God.

John Calvin said that we ought not to think of the invisible church as something that is imaginary or lives in a twilight zone. Following Augustine, Calvin insisted that the invisible church exists substantially within the visible church. He said it is the principal task of the invisible church to make the invisible church visible.

What did he mean by that? Calvin was going back to the ascension of Jesus and the last question the disciples asked of Jesus before he departed this world when they asked, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus said: “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:7–8).

This statement made by Jesus is often misunderstood because of our Christian jargon. If a Christian is asked, “What does it mean to witness?” the normal answer given is “to tell somebody about Christ.” That’s not entirely false. There is a sense in which evangelism is a form of witnessing. But it’s not the only form. The purpose of witnessing is to make something manifest that is hidden. Calvin said that it is the task of the church to make the invisible kingdom visible. We do that, first of all, by the proclamation of the gospel—by evangelism. But we also do it by modeling the kingdom of God, by demonstrating justice in the world, by demonstrating mercy in the world, and by showing the world what the kingdom of God is supposed to look like. That means the church is to embody and to incarnate the life of God’s Spirit in all that it does so that its good works are not hidden under a bushel, but they are plainly in view. We should bear witness to the presence of Christ and to His kingdom in the world.

There is a danger when we use the terms visible and invisible. Some people think that if they’re in the invisible church it means they can be secret service Christians. But we know that the New Testament mandate is for us to bear witness to Christ, to show forth the light of the gospel, and to make His kingdom visible. And that’s what the church is to do.

The church in any environment, in any location, in any generation is always more or less visible and more or less authentic. But even churches can lose their lampstand, and can stop being churches. Churches can become apostate. Denominations can become apostate. Whole communions can depart the invisible church and no longer be true churches.

Are you a member of the invisible church? The invisible church is a church that always enjoys unity because we are truly one with Christ. The point of unification of the invisible church, the thing that unifies and transcends church boundaries and denominational lines, is our being in-grafted into Christ. All who are in Christ and all in whom Christ is, are members of His invisible church. That unity is already there and nothing can destroy it. That doesn’t mean that we can rest at that point. It’s not that we can simply be satisfied with the unity of the invisible church. We should still be working as much as we possibly can for a genuine unity of the visible church.

-R.C. Sproul, What Is the Church?, First edition, The Crucial Questions Series (Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust, 2013), 23–30.