Church, Nara Vista New Mexico This is a summary of Dr. RC Sproul and Dr. Michael Horton’s lectures on the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church on board the Celebrity Cruise liner Mercury as we sailed around beautiful Vancouver Island in Canada. (Of course, going out to sea to international waters whenever possible to open the Casino.)
The term One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church comes from the Nicene Creed which was called to help settle heresy about the nature of Christ. This is important because the Church and Christ can not be separated. This can be seen at Peter’s preaching at Pentecost where as soon as someone belonged to Christ they were counted among the church.
Christ wants us to be one with each other just as he is one with the Father. Growth of a church is only identified with the spreading of the Gospel, and only the Gospel separates the church from other organizations in the world. The real church is identified by persecution.
Church in Greek means “the called ones.” We are called out of the world to him for we are to be a Holy people. Holy meaning to be set apart. The church belongs to Christ because he bought it. The price He paid was His blood.
Dr. Sproul stated that the church needs to be a place where you can get Holy. He also said that it is the most corrupt institution in the world. This is because as the Bible says when much has been given then much is expected. The church often falls short. The church, however, is not full of hypocrites as is often stated, but it is full of sinners. We are sinners who are all in the process of being sanctified. Since Christ has us covered by his blood, we also need to “cover each other”. (This does not mean ignoring gross sin that requires church discipline.)
The church is Catholic which means universal. (The term Roman Catholic is, of course, an oxymoron.) Dr. Horton said that the church connects us back through history and removes us from our “own dead end stories and plots.” It puts us in His story connecting us all the way back to the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The church is an organic institution where each local body is part of the whole. Local church bodies should consist of at minimum three elements: Preaching of the Word, the sacraments, and church discipline. Americans tend to be too individualist, and many of us want to equate individual spirituality with being part of a local body. This is a bad view. Preaching calls us to catholicity.
Dr. Horton made an impassioned plea against niche marketing in the church giving the example of problems it caused in helping start apartheid in South Africa. As an example, he believes that church youth groups are unintentionally drawing kids away from the church. Many young people graduate college having never participated in a church body or having dealt much with people of different backgrounds and ages. How can we pass on the covenants of the faith if this is true? (60%-80% of today’s Christian kids aren’t Christian by the time they leave college.)
The church is also apostolic. This is important because many today (militant feminists,those who teach Jesus as only a moral teacher), just as the Gnostics back in the time of the early church, want to have Jesus but not the Apostles. Most specifically, they don’t want Paul.
This is not possible. If you deny Paul, you are also denying Jesus Christ who passed on the position of Apostle to Paul. Paul was confirmed as an Apostle by the other Apostles. Dr. Sproul believes one of the major reasons the book of Acts was written was to show the authority of Paul. The Apostles are the foundation of the church as pointed out in the book of Revelation. Without the teaching of the Apostles, the church will crumble because it will have no foundtion.
