And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
Ephesians 1:22–23
It should be clear by now that grace is a profoundly existential matter. The life of Augustine indicates that. Grace was something that overwhelmed him. It does not simply explain how the Creator and his fallen creatures are brought back into communion with each other. It also grips Christians at the deepest level of their beings. The Christian can no more talk of grace in cool, objective, abstract terms than a husband can discuss his love for his wife in such a manner. Grace should hold us in its grip in such a way that our whole being is affected. That which brings us from being under God’s wrath to being his beloved children is surely something that we cannot contemplate in a dispassionate manner.
That grace is so existentially important is part of what leads to this second section of the book. The reader might be surprised to find the culmination of this volume to be chapters on the church, on preaching, on the sacraments, and on prayer. But this makes perfect sense, for these are the means by which God acts in the here and now in grace toward us, and these are things in and through which we encounter God’s grace and by which God’s grace should seize hold of us. To think of grace is not to think of the theological equivalent of a quadratic equation or a chemical formula. To think of grace is to be personally confronted with God, and thus no account of grace can omit discussion of the place, ways, and means of that confrontation.
If you are surprised by this second section, then you are probably not alone. If there is one area where much of modern Protestantism consistently deviates from its Reformation roots and does so often unwittingly, it is in the matter of the means of grace, and especially of church and grace. Even the typical vocabulary that is often used about the church betrays this: the phrase “doing church” and its cognates is a standard part of modern evangelical Protestant parlance. We ask how we do church; we look for new ways to do church; we wonder how other people do church. In each case, the church is presented as something that is an act of Christians, presumably in response to what God has done in Christ.
This way of thinking is highly significant. Like many positions that are adopted for reasons that may not appear at first glance to be theological, it actually rests on a set of profoundly theological principles. One’s understanding of what church is and who is the agent when it comes to “doing church” speaks eloquently of one’s theological convictions, whether consciously held or not. Throughout this book, we have seen how the great theologians of the church all regarded God’s grace as foundational to Christianity. It is because God has acted and acts that we are Christians. And this must shape our understanding of the church—not simply what it is in theory but how it is manifested in practice.
The Reformers and the Church as an Act of God’s Grace
While the Reformers did move away from the very strong institutional understanding of the church that we find in the Middle Ages, rooted as it was in a very high sacramentalism and an adherence to the concept of the apostolic succession of the episcopacy and priesthood, the Reformers nonetheless retained a very high view of the church as an organization with specific governance and tools. Above all, they knew that the church, even considered as an institution, was herself an act of God’s grace.1
This point is made in a powerful way by the very structure of the Heidelberg Catechism. It is one of the most beautiful catechetical texts in the history of the church and one which continues to be a confessional standard for Reformed churches of Dutch and German origin. Written in 1563 at the request of Frederick III, Elector Palatine, who resided in Heidelberg, both its content and its structure are didactically important and reflective of Protestant theology at its best.
The 129 questions of the catechism are divided into an introduction (questions 1–2) and then three major sections outlining the fallen human predicament (misery, questions 3–11), God’s gracious action of salvation (grace, questions 12–85), and the human response of gratitude for that salvation (gratitude, questions 86–129). Zacharias Ursinus, the principal author of the catechism, structured the whole as a commentary on the Apostles’ Creed, the sacraments, the Decalogue, and the Lord’s Prayer. The latter two provided the content of gratitude. They outline the ways in which Christians are to respond to God’s saving action. The Apostles’ Creed and the sacrament sections, by contrast, provide the content of grace, explaining that which God himself does. As “I believe in the holy Catholic church” is a basic part of that creed, so it is placed in the “grace” section of the catechism, because the church is an act of God’s grace.
The catechism offers this teaching on the church in question 54:
Q. What do you believe concerning “the Holy Catholic Church”?
A. That out of the whole human race, from the beginning to the end of the world, the Son of God, by His Spirit and Word, gathers, defends, and preserves for Himself unto everlasting life a chosen communion in the unity of the true faith; and that I am and forever shall remain a living member of this communion.2
What is noteworthy in this definition is the priority the catechism gives to the action of God in the creation and preservation of the church. God is the agent throughout. To use that inelegant modern parlance, if one asks who does church, the answer of the catechism is: God. He gathers, protects, and preserves her. The work of God in salvation is the work God does in creating the church and drawing men and women into her. And in making this point, the catechism does no more than reflect the Bible’s own teaching about the nature of the church.
The catechism also makes clear that the church has both a christological and a pneumatological significance. It is Christ, through his Spirit, who has always gathered, preserved, and protected the church. The church is thus a part of the work of Christ and part of the ongoing work of God here and now. The creation of the church is part of the economy of grace, one of God’s redemptive actions, and her protection and preservation is much the same. As such, the church is the historical outworking of the Reformation understanding of grace as that grace is manifested in God’s historical purposes for his people.
This should be very encouraging. If we “do” church, then church depends on our strength, and the fulfillment of the promise of, say, Matthew 16:18, depends on our strength. But such is not the case. God does it all, and therefore we can rest assured that his promises will be made good by the end of time.
In saying all of this, the catechism is scarcely unique. Rather, it offers an excellent and beautiful summary of what is in essence the Reformation Protestant position. For Luther, the fundamental definition of church is that body of people in whom Christ works through his Holy Spirit. In On the Councils of the Church, a later work written against the backdrop of Roman moves toward the summoning of a general council, Luther defined church this way:
Ecclesia . . . should mean the holy Christian people, not only of the days of the apostles, who are long since dead, but to the end of the world, so that there is always a holy Christian people on earth, in whom Christ lives, works, and rules, per redemptionem, “through grace and the remission of sin,” and the Holy Spirit, per vivificationem et sanctificationem, “through daily purging of sin and renewal of life,” so that we do not remain in sin but are enabled and obliged to lead a new life, abounding in all kinds of good works, as the Ten Commandments or the two tables of Moses’ law command, and not in old, evil works. That is St. Paul’s teaching.3
The church has a real, visible, material existence, and it is the place where God works out his purposes both corporately and for individuals. It is where Christ is to be found, where he rules people, where he nurtures them, and where he brings them to spiritual maturity.
John Calvin has a similar view. In a famous passage at the start of book 4 of the Institutes, Calvin describes the church in the following way:
I will begin with the Church, into whose bosom God is pleased to collect his children, not only that by her aid and ministry they may be nourished so long as they are babes and children, but may also be guided by her maternal care until they grow up to manhood, and, finally, attain to the perfection of faith. What God has thus joined, let not man put asunder (Mark 10:9): to those to whom he is a Father, the Church must also be a mother. This was true not merely under the Law, but even now after the advent of Christ; since Paul declares that we are the children of a new, even a heavenly Jerusalem (Gal. 4:26).4
The language of church as mother is powerful, particularly as Calvin parallels it to language about God as Father. He thereby makes the point that the individual is subordinate to, and dependent on, the church. No child can exist prior to, or independent of, its mother. Mothers feed, protect, nurture, and educate their children, and this is true with the church. His point is simple: there is a priority to the church as the gracious creation of God which provides the context for the nurture and growth of the Christian.
What is key for all of these Reformers is that the church has an objectivity to it in God’s grace because God is the one who creates and sustains it; but there is also a historical, material aspect to this. Christians are not simply part of a mystical body in which they are able to exist in isolation from one another. The church as an act of God’s grace has a historical, material manifestation. To say that the church must be mother to those to whom God is Father is a powerful claim which places connection to a church at the center of the practical Christian life. And in saying this, the Reformers are doing no more than drawing on the Bible’s own teaching about the church as the creature of God’s grace.
The Church as the Creature of God’s Grace
Calvin’s treatment of election makes it very clear that there is a historical, corporate dimension to the way in which God works out his electing purposes in history. God calls the head of a family, Abram, to be the father of many nations. He calls the Israelites to be his special covenant people. He constantly works out his gracious purposes by using such corporate bodies. This is not to say that salvation does not have a powerful individual component. Clearly it does. We believe in Christ as individuals, and his righteousness is imputed to us individually. But in our age of individualism and autonomy, we need to be reminded of the fact that God’s promises are to his people (plural) and thus to his church (a body of people). Matthew 16:18 makes the key promise of ultimate victory not to me as an individual but to the church as the creation, object, and vessel of God’s grace. I may perish before the Lord’s return. My congregation and even my denomination may do the same. But the church will not, indeed, cannot, perish for she is the creation of God to which he has attached very specific and powerful promises. She will triumph at the end of time and be the beloved bride of Christ the groom, not because she is in herself powerful but because God has promised that he himself will make sure she arrives safely at the marriage feast of the Lamb.
This is deeply rooted in biblical theology. The New Testament consistently presents the church as the action of God in history and not as a human response to what God has done. The very language that New Testament writers use about the church speaks to precisely this point: the church is variously described as the new creation, as the temple, as the body of Christ, and as the bride of Christ. Each of these has an obvious christological foundation that further serves to underscore the sovereignty of God’s gracious action.
The church as the new creation is highlighted by Paul in Colossians 1:15–20. Here, Paul parallels the work of Christ in the old creation with that in the new in a way that makes the church as an act of God’s grace as clear as it could possibly be. The old creation was brought into being solely by the word of God’s power. There was nothing, and then there was something. The difference was the action of God in creating, and this was obviously something in which no creature could have any part.
When Paul parallels this to the church, he is making a point: that the church is the result of God’s sovereign, unilateral, and powerful action.5 She is a new creation. We may think that we “do” church, but ultimately the existence of the church is an act of which the only possible analogue is that of creation itself. That should be a very humbling matter to contemplate because to be part of the church is to be part of the new creation. This means that our churches are not ultimately the work of men and women; they are the work of God, called into being by his mighty and creative word. As amazing as the first creation was, so is God’s work of the new creation in the church.
The New Testament makes it clear that the idea of the church as new creation has a christological aspect to it. It is founded in the work of Christ, which once again reminds us of its origins in the grace of God. In Colossians, Paul points toward Christ as the firstborn from the dead, the one whose resurrection is the foundation of the in-breaking of the new age. His rising from the grave was a miracle of God that marked the beginning of a new epoch.
This is a point worth pausing at and reflecting on. To be injured is one thing. One can go to a hospital; one can be healed from one’s wounds. But to be dead is quite another. Lazarus festered in the tomb for days before the Lord came and called him to rise from the grave. He could not raise himself. He needed the power of God to lift him back to the land of the living. He was necessarily passive in the process. This gives us a taste of what resurrection is like. Christ’s resurrection is, of course, the great paradigm of such and indeed the great power source for all others. He was dead, and the Father raised him back to life in a mighty, unilateral, and irresistible act of divine sovereignty. And that action, according to Paul, is the very foundation of the church’s existence. It is only because Christ is risen that we have the church. Because he is risen, then we who are united to Christ by faith are risen too and will rise fully at the return of Christ.
How, then, does this understanding of the church connect to the Reformation cry of “grace alone”? We experience grace both as individuals and communally, and the church is the community of those who are spiritually resurrected in Christ and who even now await the final resurrection. Paul’s language in Colossians is quite strong. In Colossians 2:12–13, Paul uses present-tense language to refer to believers as those who have died and already been resurrected. We know that he cannot be speaking here of the final resurrection, for elsewhere he criticizes those who claim that has already happened (2 Tim 2:18). What he is pointing to is that the Colossians are so identified by faith with Christ that there is a sense in which they have already died and been resurrected. Even now, their identity and their existence is determined absolutely by an act of God’s complete sovereignty and grace. They are who they are simply because God has graciously acted on their behalf in Christ and united them to him. Only by “grace alone” are we saved as individuals and as the church.
This sovereign, gracious priority of God for the church is also underscored by the way the New Testament uses temple language. This is an extremely rich vein of biblical teaching that ties together the Bible, from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, showing a setting for the temple that is entirely the work of God.6 The Jerusalem temple is designed by God and indwelt by him. It is the place where he chooses to meet with his people. Were it not for his specifications and his actions, there would be no temple. It is the same with the church. The church is designed and built by God, indwelt by his Holy Spirit. That is what makes her the church and not just one more association of human beings gathered together for some mutually agreed purpose.
Thus, for example, in 2 Corinthians 6:16 (“What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God”) the identification of the New Testament church with the temple is made explicit as Paul presents the church as the fulfillment of God’s gracious promises to his people. The church is not our human response to grace but is itself an act of God’s grace. Earlier in that same chapter, Paul had presented himself as bringing the message of God’s grace by setting his ministry in the context of Isaianic prophecy. Again, this also potentially points back to creation language, if the argument of G. K. Beale, that the garden of Eden is itself intended as a temple, is correct. The church is part of God’s sovereign plan of salvation and represents the restoration of that intimate relationship that existed between God and humanity in Eden. Certainly it also points forward to the final consummation in the book of Revelation. The sovereign, free, and gracious action of God is the basis for the new temple and thus for the church’s very existence. God builds the temple, not us.
This also connects very closely to the New Testament notion of the church as the body of Christ. In John 2:19–21, Jesus himself identifies his body with the temple. This language is expanded by Paul to include the church (e.g., 2 Cor 6:14–18), and thus the church is to be understood in the context of God’s fulfillment of prophecy, an act of God, not some kind of human response, as, for example, Peter’s speech in Acts 2:14–40 and its aftermath make clear.
The language of the church as the body of Christ, like that of new creation and temple, is remarkably rich and biblically suggestive. Among other things, it carries clear connotations of God’s sovereign grace. Christ himself took flesh from the Virgin as the result of the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit. The flesh, like Mary herself, was passive in the process, and the whole action was itself rooted in God’s gracious plan of salvation and executed by the Spirit. Thus, to refer to the church as the body of Christ also highlights the sovereignty of God in the action of constituting the church. The church is created by the Spirit and is where God freely chooses to enjoy intimate communion with his people via the same Spirit uniting people to Christ. It is where Christ rules, and where human beings are to live not as they choose but as they are called. The church is not a voluntary association, a social club that we can join and leave on a whim. It is a divine creation, and those who belong to it are called by God to be part of such.
So what does this mean for us today? The first practical point we should note is this: when we gather as a church, a biblical understanding of God’s grace means that we are only there because God has acted. Indeed, our gathering as the church is the action of God and not of ourselves. If we can ever legitimately make ourselves the subject of a sentence containing the phrase “do church,” it is only in a very subordinate and derivative way. The church that takes God’s grace seriously believes that the church is solely God’s creature—not our response to his grace.
The Church as Bride
While the New Testament describes the church as the new creation, the temple, and the body of Christ, it also calls her the bride of Christ. The language of bride underlines the grace of God toward the church in several important ways.
First, we need to understand the analogy not in terms of modern marriage but in terms of a biblical understanding of God’s love. In most modern marriages, mutual attraction lies at the foundation of love and the marital bond. I chose to marry my wife because I saw something beautiful in her. Presumably she chose me for similar reasons! As we noted in theologians such as Aquinas and Luther, they understood divine love as belonging to a different order. Divine love precedes any intrinsically attractive quality in the object of love, and this reflects the biblical teaching on the Lord and his bride. Indeed, the marriage analogy is not used in the Bible to highlight what God finds desirable or worthy in people, but rather to bring God’s grace into dramatic relief.
We see this in the consistent portrayal of God’s people as a faithless bride. Ezekiel 16 is the key biblical passage on this, describing how the Lord dealt mercifully with his people. He chose them when they were at bay and continued to lavish mercy on them even after they became his bride and still played the whore. A similar drama is played out in the life of the prophet Hosea, who is commanded by God to marry a prostitute and then to take her back after her infidelity. When the church is described as the bride of Christ, the point is not that the Lord has made her his bride because she is beautiful and delightful. It is because she was not so—and despite her ugliness and filth he has chosen to make her so. Bridal language in describing the relationship between God and his people is saturated with God’s grace.
Paul uses the bride analogy in a related but different way, to emphasize the sacrifice of Christ. Addressing husbands in Ephesians 5, he points out that a husband’s love for his wife is to be sacrificial precisely because his relationship to his bride is analogous to that of Christ to his church. This ties the church to the economy of grace. Grace is not simply God overlooking our sin; rather, it is God being motivated by love and mercy to give himself for the church, his bride. The bride is only the bride because God has acted to make her so by his sacrificial self-giving.
The bride analogy also ties the church into the historical unfolding of the economy of grace. The church is currently betrothed as bride to Christ, as Paul makes clear in 2 Corinthians 11:2, and this is a significant point. Modern marriage practice in the West has no precise equivalent to betrothal. While engagement comes closest (being the point where the intention to marry is made public), betrothal in ancient cultures was more significant. It was not only the public declaration of an intention to marry; it also carried with it a high level of exclusive, formal commitment such that it was virtually marriage, albeit prior to the formal consummation. Final consummation will come at the marriage feast of the Lamb, as described at the end of Revelation. To call the church “the bride of Christ” is to do justice both to her special, exclusive status as the creation and object of God’s grace here and now, and also to point to God’s coming fulfillment of his gracious promises to her at the end of time.
Christ as the Head of the Church
Christ’s resurrection means that the church is the creation of God’s grace, and his choice of her as his bride points to his electing love. But there is more to Christ’s relationship to the church than simply its origin. As the embodiment of God’s grace, Christ is also the source of ongoing life for the church. There is a vital, ongoing connection between the resurrected Christ and the daily life of the church here on earth.
In his commentary addressing Colossians 2:19, Calvin picks up on Paul’s language of headship, and he makes the point that the head gives life and order to the body as a whole. In other words, the church is dependent on the grace of God for its existence. Indeed, it is continually constituted by the gracious act of God in Christ.7 The direction of action is always from God in Christ to those who are united to him by faith. Just as my head is the control center for my body, from its basic vital functions to the way it moves and what it says, so Christ is head of the church. We as Christians draw our spiritual life from him, and we do that as we are part of his church, where his life-giving Spirit dwells and where the words of his life-giving gospel are proclaimed. We do not live in independence from our head, but in complete dependence on it.
This christological point about headship also serves to set the issue of church governance within the context of God’s grace. In Colossians 1:18 Paul describes Christ as head over the church. Headship carries with it not just connotations of life source but also of rule and governance. The head of a department runs the department. My head controls me. And Calvin sees Paul’s language of headship here as referring to the governance of the church as well. This demands that we look at the practical dimensions of church life in a christological context and that we see them as also being the result of grace.8
Because Christ governs the church as its head, it is necessary for the church to acknowledge that headship in the purposes she pursues and the manner in which she pursues them. Practically, this means that her purposes are not for her to decide. They are to be those that Christ sets forth and must be carried out in the manner in which he has decided. It may sound odd to us that even this is an act of God’s grace. We tend to think of grace as the unmerited favor of God in the face of our sin and rebellion, and so it is. But part of God’s response to the problem created by our sinfulness is his creation of the church, with her mission, her structures, and all of her means for accomplishing God’s purposes.
Were the church merely a human response to God’s grace, presumably there would be considerable flexibility in how these purposes could be understood and how the church’s response to Christ should be articulated. But as we pointed out earlier, the church is God’s response to human sin, not our response to God. Calvin sees Paul making the point that Christ is head of the church relative to her government. In this he means that she is God’s creation, not the invention of people, and is thus to be organized according to God’s specifications. As the Westminster Confession states, Christ’s headship means that no mere human being can claim to be head of the church, whether mortal king or the pope.9 That also means that no human being decides what the church is or does. Her head, Christ, does that. In other words, her purpose is determined by God’s grace.
In all of this, we are simply working out the practical implication that all of salvation is by grace alone. In all that we do, we are responding to a prior work of God. And this has very practical aspects to it. In the next three chapters we will address the means of grace, those things that God has appointed to be the instruments of his gracious actions in the present. But there is more to the church as an act of grace than just the question of her tools and purpose. One of the most egregious temptations that the language of “doing church” evokes is that of becoming pragmatic about church governance. If church is something we do, rather than something that God does, then we have the right to decide how best to organize it to achieve the best results. But if church is something that God does and Christ rules, then we must pay attention to the way in which that rule is to be exercised. “Church” in the New Testament is not simply a term used for the sum total of all believers. It refers to the organized gatherings of those who meet in Christ’s name.
We live in an age that is marked by suspicion of institutions, at least traditional institutions, with their established hierarchies and structures of authority. We have a deep distrust of those in power and a strong democratic urge to see those in authority as potential bullies or corrupt abusers of power. When we add to this mix the Protestant rhetoric on the priesthood of all believers, the stage is set for us to bristle at any notion that the church should have an authoritative structure, let alone that this structure should be one worthy of respect and possessing authority. Yet one of the implications of our salvation by grace alone is the recognition that the church is an act of God’s grace. God specifies in his word the way in which the church is to be governed, and church government is thus part of God’s gracious provision to human beings to bring them home to glory.
In 1 Timothy and Titus, Paul calls for the appointment of elders and deacons. Again, in our evangelical contexts today the appointment of church leaders is probably not something that comes to mind when we think about God’s grace. But a moment’s reflection suggests that this is an oversight. The church is the context in which Christians are discipled and grow in their faith. And in the next three chapters we will look at the means of grace—the word, sacraments, and prayer, which are all tasks of the church. So it makes sense that if the church is to be the place where God’s people grow in grace, God himself should determine how the rule of Christ is to be exercised on earth.
As Paul makes clear, the church is to be governed by elders. These are to be people who exhibit real spiritual integrity in their lives, who understand the gospel and are able to teach it to others. They are to embody in their own personal behavior those qualities to which all Christians are to aspire. They teach by precept but also, by implication, by example. They are to rule in the church and thus exercise care over the souls of those placed under their charge. Mindful of the fact that Christ alone is head of the church, their rule is to be what we might call a ministerial one. They cannot be despotic but should only exercise power to the extent that the word of God allows them. That is part of what it means to be an institution of grace: God’s word, not human decisions, carries ultimate authority.
This is why Paul adds another strand to the constitution of the church here on earth: he tells Timothy to hold fast to a form of sound teaching (2 Tim 1:13). The church is to have a doctrinal confession that sets forth the teaching of Scripture in a succinct form. Her message is to be regulated by God’s revelation rather than by the whims of those who claim to belong to her. Individual churches should not decide the message preached and taught based on a congregational vote or the doctrinal tastes and preferences of the eldership. Nor should pastors choose the topics or the texts on which they preach based on what they think will be most amusing to the congregants. The church’s testimony is not a function of what the consumer wants. No. The church’s testimony is given to her by God in the words of his Scripture.
We all know that no Christian simply believes the Bible. If asked what he believes, no Christian just starts reading out loud at Genesis 1 and ends at Revelation 22. In fact, every Christian believes the Bible means something, and that that something can be expressed using a form of sound words, a summary statement of vital biblical doctrine. Combined with a properly constituted eldership, this is part of good biblical polity and part of the economy of grace.
Both of these aspects of the church—elders and doctrinal confession—are counter to so much of modern culture and so much of modern church life. And yet if we take seriously the church as the creature of God’s grace and the vessel wherein that grace is made available, through word and sacrament, to believers, then we need to take seriously the Bible’s own teaching about the way the church should be constituted and governed.
Conclusion
As we recognize that the church is the creation of God’s grace in Christ and not our response to God’s grace, then we are able to think more clearly about what the church should look like. If the church is a component part of God’s plan of grace, then we need to structure it according to God’s design (forms of sound words, elders, deacons). This also points us to the tools the church must use for the accomplishment of her mission. While the Reformers had some debate over how many marks of the true church there were (Luther had seven, Calvin just two), there was basic agreement over which two were essential: the proclamation of the word and the administration of the sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It is to these means of grace that we now turn.
1. The Reformers spent a considerable amount of time on the matter of the church. In part this was because they needed to justify their institutional break with the Roman Church and thus faced the obvious polemical challenge from their opponents, “How can you claim to be the true church when we have institutional continuity on our side?” But they also understood that the New Testament placed a high premium on the church as a body of believers who were committed to one another and subject to the leadership of elders/overseers. They knew that God’s purposes were to be worked out through such a body using the tools he had designated for the task: the preaching of the word, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper.
2. Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 2:781.
3. LW 41:144.
4. Institutes 4.1.1 (Beveridge).
5. Cf. 2 Cor 4:6, where Paul makes a clear parallel between God’s action in creation and his action in the calling of sinners into his kingdom.
6. See G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004).
7. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, trans. John Pringle (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1851), 198.
8. “Here . . . in my opinion, he speaks chiefly of government. He shews, therefore, that it is Christ that alone has authority to govern the Church, that it is he to whom alone believers ought to have an eye, and on whom alone the unity of the body depends” (ibid., 152).
9. WCF 25.6.