Can the Church of the New Testament exist today?
In the pages of the New Testament we read about the church that was established by Peter and the apostles on the day of Pentecost. It was here, in this church of the New Testament, that people found salvation in Jesus Christ. Sinners found forgiveness from their sins and became Christians and the Lord added them to His church (Acts 2:47). The apostles were men who had been with Jesus, and who were guided by the Holy Spirit into all truth (John 16:13), and the church of the New Testament was obedient to their teaching (Acts 2:42; 2John 9). It was this church that Christ died for.
How can that first century church exist today in the twenty-first century?
The New Testament clearly reveals a picture of what the church of the time was like in its composition, its organisation and its worship. The New York Times newspaper carried and article on June 15, 2005 about the germination of a Date seed that had been found in the 1960’s at Masada, an ancient fortress built by Herod the Great, near the Dead Sea. The seed has been dated as coming from this era, but when planted it germinated and grew – a 21st century plant from a 1st century seed. (A similar article was later published in June 12th 2008, in the New Scientist magazine – a respected medical and scientific journal based in London – titled “Jesus Era Seed is the Oldest to Germinate”. Why talk about seeds in connection with the New Testament church? “The parable is this: the seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:11). When the word was preached by Peter and Paul and others in their time, it produced results. Paul likens the growth of the church in Corinth to that of a plant when he reminded the Christians there, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6). So, if we use the same seed as the apostles and preachers of the first century (i.e. the word of God), is it likely that that same seed will produce the same results today? Apples grow from apple seeds, Oak trees grow from acorns, so surely the New Testament church can grow from the New Testament.
The New Scientist article discussed the failure of other similar projects to grow modern plants from ancient seeds. The failures were put down to the seed deteriorating and mutating. But isn’t that exactly what we see around us in the religious world today – churches that try to be similar, but have changed their structure and composition into something else. Paul warned of these dangers at a very early stage. “Brothers, I urge all of you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to be in agreement and not to have divisions among you, so that you may be perfectly united in your understanding and opinions … This is what I mean: Each of you is saying, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided?” (1 Corinthians 1:10-13). Quite clearly today Christ has been divided! We are far too sophisticated to use Bible names, but try these verses and replace ‘Paul’ with ‘Luther’, ‘Apollos’ with ‘Calvin’, ‘Cephas’ with ‘Rome’ and ‘Christ’ with ‘the church’. It is not a matter or taking the denomination out of people, as some would claim. If the spirit of denominationalism is sinful, and Paul clearly states that it is (1 Corinthians 3:1-4), then we must move beyond division. We must abandon anything that leads to or perpetuates sectarian, worldly attitudes. Unscriptural names and the glorifying of men is not what we read in the pages of the New Testament. Paul’s attitude might well be summed up in 2 Corinthians 6:17; “‘Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them,’ says the Lord.”
The church of the New Testament worshiped the Lord in ways that some today would consider strange. That church confined itself to the teaching of the apostles, not adding or subtracting anything, in order to be pleasing to the Lord (Revelation 22:18-19; 2 John 9; Acts 2:42). That church met each Sunday in order to commemorate their Lord’s death with bread and grape juice (Acts 20:7). That church sang songs in worship of God (Colossians 3:16). That church listened to God’s word being preached (1 Timothy 4:13) and they gave a free-will gift of money to help other Christians (1 Corinthians 16:1-2). That church was established when people listened to the Holy Spirit, believed in Jesus, repented of their sins and were baptised in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of those sins (Acts 2:38). When Peter preached on the day of Pentecost it states, “Those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41). Of course there were those on that day who did not welcome his words, were not baptized, and were not added. Examine the Bible verses carefully and ask yourself, “Is my church doing this?”
The New Testament can be understood today, just as it was understood in the first century. Just as Christians at that time followed their Lord without being joined to a denomination, so many today do the same. We can defeat the mindset of denominationalism by sowing the same seed in our hearts. The church of the New Testament was not and is not a denomination. The commands given by Peter were simple enough that 3000 could understand them and accept them in order to be saved. The commands haven’t changed, and they are still as difficult or as simple as they were when Peter preached them. And the worship by Christians was and is the same today.
Can the church of the first century exist today? Yes it can, and yes it does. Jesus promised, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Look for a church that insists upon book, chapter and verse for all that it does in work and worship. Look for the seed.
