Theologically, ideas of God as Father (Matthew 23:9– “for you have one Father, who is in heaven,”), Jesus as brother (Romans 8:29, “firstborn among many brothers”), believers as children of God and as co-heirs with Christ (John 11:52– “and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad,”), are all important here–all pointing to the church as a spiritual family, which serves as the community for disciples of Jesus. To speak of our fellow Christians as “brothers and sisters” as is common in the New Testament, presupposes that we belong to the same family and household of God.

In an age of growing uncertainty, increasing angst, and divisive tribalism, a number of strategies (often politically focused) have been proposed to stem the rising tide of unbelief and the social havoc of our times.  But one important area of doctrine which speaks to these issues is often overlooked—ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church.  In the first of this series (Christ’s Spotless Bride) I addressed some of the reasons why the doctrine of the church is not of interest to many, and why I think reflection on the nature and mission of Christ’s church offers important, if overlooked, answers to many of our current woes.  In this and the next piece in this series I will consider a number of the images given us in the New Testament in order to stimulate thinking about how the church offers solutions to these contemporary problems, and then address some of the ways we ought to think about the church.  These images of the church in the New Testament, along with the attributes and marks of the church (which will be taken up later), help us to better understand the nature of the church and the comfort to be found in the new covenant community.
New Testament Images of the Church
There are a number of images used in the New Testament to describe Christ’s church.  Such images are but one way of approaching the doctrine of the church.[1]  To understand the value of these images, an analogy to the doctrine of God (theology proper) might help.  Scripture teaches us about God (who is incomprehensible in himself) not only by ascribing certain attributes to him (e.g., justice, knowledge, power) but also by identifying him as a certain kind of person or having a certain kind of role (e.g., king, shepherd, warrior).
But these attributes of God are analogical and anthropological and cannot be absolutized.  God is like but also unlike human kings, and being a king does not exhaust who God is.  Similarly, the church displays the images given us in certain respects, but none of them describes the church comprehensively.  Louis Berkhof speaks of “figurative designations of the Church, each of which stresses some particular aspect of the Church.”[2]  That is my approach here.  There are certainly a number of these images given us in the New Testament which are well worth consideration.
The Inauguration of the New Covenant Community
In Acts 2:41-47, Luke reports the following events as a consequence of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.  And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common.  And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.  And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
These events were unique to that tumultuous period in redemptive history in which the age to come breaks in upon this present evil age, and the kingdom of God has come in the power of the Holy Spirit.  F. F. Bruce points out that “the conviction of sin that followed Peter’s preaching was no momentary panic, but filled the people with a lasting sense of awe.  God was at work among them; they were witnessing the dawn of the new age.  This impression was intensified by the wonders and signs performed through the apostles.”[3]
The apostolic church was composed of several thousand newly baptized believers, who devoted themselves to four particular activities spelled out in Acts 2:42: 1).  The apostles’ teaching, 2).  The fellowship, 3).  The breaking of bread, and 4).  “The prayers.”  These activities became the foundation of Christian worship and grounded the orientation of the Christian life in the apostolic age which commenced.  Word and sacrament are at the center.  Believers in this transitional period also practiced a sort of communal living, and witnessed the signs and wonders associated with the apostolic office.
Initially, public assembly and worship (the koinonia) took place in the temple precincts, but then moved into local dwellings for the fellowship meals, described by Luke as “the breaking of bread.”  Those who heard the word preached–the authoritative teaching of the apostles–were baptized and celebrated a fellowship meal with other believers.  The “fellowship meal” may be a carryover from a Jewish fellowship meal (the haburah), but given the connection made by Luke to “the fellowship” and “the prayers,” this likely points in the direction of the Lord’s Supper.  This connects the preaching of the word to the administration of the sacraments (the latter derive their efficacy from the preached word) from the earliest days of Christianity. 
Longenecker offers this summation: “what can be said here [in Acts 2] is that Luke shows, both in his emphasis on the early Christians’ meeting in the temple courts and on the favor accorded them by the people, that early Christianity is the fulfillment of all that is truly Jewish and that it is directed in its mission first to the Jewish world.”[4]  The future of Jew and Gentile in God’s redemptive purposes is explained in the subsequent ministry of Paul, especially in Romans 9-11 and Ephesians 2:11-22.
After Pentecost, the church is in many ways the fulfillment of Jesus’s words in John 14:12, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”  These greater works are already coming to pass with the conversion of three thousand souls and the first assemblies of the Christian church to worship the risen and ascended Christ.
The People of God
This image is not merely a generic use of “people” (as in, there are many people in the world), but a kind of social-political use: a community bound together through a shared identity as believers in Jesus, a common faith (as Christ revealed the gospel to the first apostles), and an allegiance to Christ as prophet, priest, and king.  As used in the New Testament, the “people of God” is a specific reference to those particular people whom God elects, calls, justifies, sanctifies, and then incorporates into the “people of God” (Romans 8:28-39).  1 Peter 2:9-10, also comes to mind in this regard.
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Atheists do not spend all their time and energy hating on and railing against flying spaghetti monsters for the simple reason that they know there are no such things. But they DO know that God exists, and they hate him for it. If God exists, then they cannot be god.

Yes they actually do hate God:
Having just penned another piece on the war against God, I of course got the usual angry atheists writing in with their fists flying. They hate it when you dare challenge their derelict worldview. And they always go on about how they do not really hate God. Yeah right.
Of course they hate God. Their entire life screams out this hatred. And it is no wonder: when they are told that they are NOT the centre of the universe, but only the one real and living God is, that incenses them. That outrages them. Atheists hate it when you point out the truth that there can be only one true God. And the reasons are obvious:
They want to be king, not subject.They want to rule, not be ruled.They want to give orders, not take orders.They want to call the shots, not be told what to do.They want to determine what is true and false, not God.They want to determine what is right and wrong, not God.They want to be independent, not dependent.They want to do their own will, not God’s will.They want to live like the devil, not God.They want to rule in hell, not serve in heaven.
Scripture of course often speaks about atheists. Twice in the Psalter for example they are called “fools” because they refuse to recognise God (Ps. 14:1 and 53:1). Rejecting their creator—and judge—is the height of foolishness. And this is a deliberate, defiant rejection of God. D. A. Carson, commenting on Psalm 14:1, puts it this way:
The word rendered ‘fool’ is in Hebrew a term of moral opprobrium suggesting perversity, churlish and aggressive perversity…The Bible’s view is that in the last analysis atheism is less the product of misguided searching, a kind of intellectual mistake, than a defiant and stubborn rebellion…The fact that atheism is not widely seen that way is itself an index of our depravity. In fact, the best-informed atheists commonly acknowledge the connection between morality and belief, between immorality and unbelief. There is a famous passage in Huxley that acknowledges that one of the driving forces behind atheistic naturalism is the desire to tear away any sort of moral condemnation of otherwise condemned behavior. In a passage scarcely less famous, Michael Foucault, one of the theoreticians behind postmodernism, frankly acknowledges that it became important for him to destroy traditional notions of truth and morality, because he wished to justify his own sexual conduct. A few years ago, Foucault died of AIDS.
But the classic text on the atheist mindset and value system is found in Romans 1:18-32. It reads:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
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Ezekiel’s vision is one not of an earthly temple (although the prophet uses earthly language his readers could readily understand), but of an eschatological temple, depicted in its consummated form and unspeakable glory by John in Revelation 21-22.

In light of periodic calls to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple (Time to Rebuild the Temple?), the matter of whether or not this will come to pass is part and parcel of the on-going debate about events associated with the end times and the return of Jesus Christ. The very possibility of rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple raises a number of serious theological questions which ought to be addressed, especially in light of the dispensational expectation of a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem at the dawn of the supposed seven-year tribulation period, which then functions as a center of worship during the millennial age.
As for the possibility of the temple actually being rebuilt, I am one who says “never say never” about future world events. I have no idea what will happen over the long run in Jerusalem and Israel. That said, I do not think such a thing is even remotely likely, given the current tensions in Jerusalem over control and access to the Temple Mount, much less the long-term political circumstances of doing so. Should Israel develop the religious and political will to occupy the Temple Mount (something unforeseeable at this point in time) and eventually take the steps necessary to demolish the Al-Aqsa Mosque (which is the third holiest site in Islam), the Jewish state would face the wrath of the entire Islamic world as well as that of much of the secular West. Since dispensationalists often connect the rebuilding of the temple to the geo-political tensions necessary to foster the appearance of the Antichrist, who, they claim, will make a peace treaty with Israel before betraying the nation leading to a final end-times catastrophe, such upheaval is not beyond the realm of possibility. Dispensationalists expect the Jerusalem Temple to be rebuilt and fervently hope for it.
As far the possibility of a rebuilt temple is concerned, the most important question is not geo-political, but theological. “What does a rebuilt temple mean to the larger drama of redemptive history?” “Why is it such a serious theological mistake to believe such a thing?”
Essential to a proper understanding of any future temple in Jerusalem is the prophecy found in Ezekiel 40-48, wherein we find the prophet’s vision of a new and still future temple. G. K. Beale’s important and stellar book on this topic should be read by anyone who has questions about Ezekiel’s vision (Beale — The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God).
As Beale points out, there are four main interpretations of Ezekiel’s prophecy and how it is fulfilled in the New Testament. Dispensationalists believe that this vision is a prophecy of an earthly temple to be built within Israel during the millennial age [1]. They base this interpretation upon their literal hermeneutic, which they say demands that a prophecy such as this one be interpreted literally, unless there is good reason to believe the prophecy should be interpreted figuratively. They reach this conclusion only by skipping over the profound echoes from Ezekiel’s prophecy found in Revelation 21. According to dispensationalists, what the New Testament seems to say about this temple cannot be applied in this case because such would mean that the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy would not be “literal.” Furthermore, this expectation for the temple also seems to require a return to memorial animal sacrifices, an act occuring after Jesus’ completion of the work of redemption which approaches blasphemy.
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