In order to be faithful to what the Bible teaches about the church's nature, shape, and outline, we must consider both what Christians have said in the past and what systematic conclusions have been established over the course of the church's history. And we do this always in the context of holding these findings up to the light of our own study of Scripture. Ultimately, we find that the various challenges which confronted the church through history have led to a clearer, more defined set of affirmations and entailments. By affirming the sufficiency of Scripture and the requisite role of faith in participating in the ordinances, we can conclude that a biblically faithful church is a Protestant church. By affirming the necessarily voluntary and consensual nature of membership in a local congregation, we can conclude that a biblically faithful church is a gathered church. By affirming the nature and polity of a local congregation, we can conclude that a biblically faithful church is a congregational church. And by affirming Christ's command to baptize only those who believe and obey, we can conclude that a biblically faithful church is a baptistic church. In this section each of these descriptions is examined in order to see how the Bible's teachings fit together in the life of a local church.
If in fact the Bible teaches that God creates a people for himself through his Word, then preaching takes a central role in the life of the church. And if in fact the Bible teaches that baptism and the Lord's Supper mark off the visible church from the world, then their correct administration is linked to faith in God's promises. Both of these understandings find expression in the biblical teachings of the Protestant Reformers.
The center and source of the congregation's life is the Word of God. God's promises to his people in Scripture create and sustain his people. Therefore the congregation is responsible to ensure, as much as lies within its power, that the Word of God is preached at its regular meetings.
By the sixteenth century the centrality of the Word had long been displaced by the sacraments, especially by the sacrament of the Eucharist. In the face of this near universal distortion, the Reformers correctly returned to Scripture to find a canon, or rule, against which to measure the Roman church's current teaching. In 1539, Luther wrote, "God's Word cannot be without God's people, and conversely, God's people cannot be without God's Word."1 The central role played by the Word in the New Testament church (e.g., 6:42; Acts 20:40–47; 2 Tim 4:2) was recovered in the teachings and lives of the Protestant Reformers. "The church is not a group of people groping for a philosophy of life congenial to modern conditions, but a living body already being shaped by apostolic teaching. Holding steady to that teaching is a principal mark of the authenticity of the church."2
If the Scriptures are "the word of life" (Phil 2:16), they should both generate and regulate the church's life. Christians gather in congregations to hear one who stands in the place of God by giving his Word to his people. Through preaching, Christians come to know and understand God and his Word. It is a word to which Christians contribute nothing other than hearing and heeding.
A Christian sermon is, even in its method, a picture of God's grace. Since faith comes by hearing (Rom 10:17), hearing God's Word rather than seeing the mass is appropriately placed at the center of the congregation's public assembly. Christians rely on God's Word, so preaching the Word must be absolutely central. And the preaching which most exemplifies this is expositional preaching—preaching in which the point of the passage of Scripture is the point of the message. Scripture is both authoritative and sufficient, and that should be evident in Christian gatherings.
The Protestant rediscovery of the biblical truth of justification by faith alone was a recovery of the biblical gospel.3 As Protestant congregations replaced sacramental ritualism with gospel preaching, the sacraments (or ordinances) themselves took on another purpose, or really, their original biblical purposes—marking out the church from the world and providing a visible picture of the gospel message accepted by faith. As a result the church became defined not by individuals who were baptized and who witnessed the mass but by individuals who personally believed the promises set forth in baptism and the Lord's Supper and who therefore participated in those rituals. Even Protestants who practiced infant baptism did not teach baptism effected salvation. They taught that it reflected salvation and that salvation would only come to pass if the one baptized believed, whether before or after his or her baptism. Therefore, faith became the essence of what separated the church from the world. This faith was given visible form in the ordinances. Thus the church is, as James Bannerman described it, "an outward and public witness for God on the earth."4
Faith's role in distinguishing the visible church from the world makes the Protestant church what it is. Faith shows itself initially in the believer's submission to baptism and then repeatedly in his or her participation in the Lord's Supper. Whereas obedience and submission to the visible church were also emphasized in the Roman Catholic Church, Protestant churches were marked by adherents who expressed personal faith in Christ, apart from which baptism and the Lord's Supper would be useless.
The Protestant impulse to place faith at the center of the ordinances has shown itself in many ways, from the presence of numerous Baptist movements, to American colonial minister Jonathan Edwards's adoption of believers-only communion.
In summary, Christianity requires a conscious belief in the gospel. When God's authoritative Word is taught, it must be consciously believed and trusted. This trust, or faith, is what distinguishes God's people, who have made an initial confession in baptism and a continuing confession through participation in the Lord's Supper. When the sufficiency of Scripture and the necessity of faith in practicing the ordinances are affirmed, it becomes clear that a biblically faithful church is a Protestant church.
1 Martin Luther, "On the Councils and the Church" trans. Charles M. Jacobs, Luther's Works, vol. 41 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 150.
2 Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 1992), 752. Edmund Clowney said, "God is not only present in the midst of his people. He speaks. The ministry of the Word of God in worship partakes of the solemnity of the occasion. Solemnity does not mean joylessness, for the Word calls to praise. Yet the authority of the Word of the Lord remains central for Christian worship" (Clowney, "The Biblical Theology of the Church," in The Church in the Bible and the World, ed. D. A. Carson [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987], 22).
3 For a, brief, accurate, and edifying recounting of the Protestant Reformation, including its relation to the doctrine of the church, see Michael Reeves, The Unquenchable Flame (Nashville: B&H, 2009).
4 James Bannerman, The Church of Christ, vol. 1 (repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1960), 1.