The Marks of a True Church
The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord,” and yet, in this age between Christ’s two advents, the church is “by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” As the Belgic Confession states, since “all sects in the world today claim for themselves the name of ‘the church’,” how can we ensure that a local church is part of the true Church?
The Sovereign Grace Statement of Faith identifies three marks of a true church: “the faithful preaching of the Word, the right administration of the sacraments, and the proper exercise of church discipline.” These three marks are not the only attributes and activities of a true church, but they are the distinguishing marks. Preaching identifies Christ as the head of the church (Eph. 1:22, 4:15, 5:23, Col. 1:18), and the sacraments and church discipline identify the church as the body of Christ that is spiritually united to him (Rom. 12:5, 1 Cor. 12:12, 27, Eph. 4:12, 16, Col. 1:24).
Faithful Preaching of the Word
Jesus is building his church on the foundation of the apostles (Matt. 16:18-19, cf. Eph. 2:20), who “once for all delivered to the saints” “the faith” of the gospel (Jude 3; cf. Luke1:2; Acts 2:42). A voluntary association that stands on another foundation might be a synagogue, a mosque, a lodge, or a temple, but it is no church. Even if an apostle or an angel from heaven preaches a dierent gospel, we must reject them and their message, for there is no other gospel (Gal. 1:6-9).
In 1 Timothy 3:15, Paul uses two metaphors to describe “the church of the living God.” The first one is familiar, “the household of God,” but the second less so, “a pillar and buttress of the truth.” The church exists to prop up “the truth,” namely the mystery that “[Christ] was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory” ( 1 Tim. 3:16). The church stewards “the knowledge of the truth” by which “people [are] saved,”—that “there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 5:6). “The word of truth, the gospel of ... salvation” (Eph. 1:13) is the keystone of the church, and a congregation that does not uphold it cannot properly be called a church.
More broadly, a true church upholds the written, God-breathed Word, the Scriptures—all thirty-nine books of the Old Testament and twenty-seven books of the New Testament. The Bible itself does not save us, but only the Bible leads us to Jesus who alone saves, for it is "able to make [us] wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 3:15).
Shawn Woo, Lead Pastor, Trinity Cambridge Church (Cambridge, MA)
Reposted from the Sovereign Grace Journal, March 2023.