The Mystery of the Church

Ten years ago, our former pastor, Matthew Raley, while preaching on Paul’s prayer for the church in Ephesians 1:15-19, said something I’d never heard before: God has invested his riches in the church. Later I asked him what his basis was for that statement. He pointed me back to the text, and, sure enough, there it was: “the riches of his [God’s] glorious inheritance in the saints” (1:18). That moment changed my perspective on the church forever.

We are an individualistic culture. But God is not individualistic. To the core of his being, he is triune. We like to fly solo and chart our own paths. But God does nothing alone. Everything he does, he does in fellowship. The three persons of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit—have always and will always live and work together as one.

This is why, when God created the world, he declared everything in it good, except for one thing. After fashioning the man, the only being he made in his own image, he declared: “It is not good . . . .” Why? Because Adam was alone (Gen. 2:18). Since God is not alone, his image-bearer could not be either. So, God fashioned a woman from the rib of the man—bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh (Gen 2:23)—and ordained that through this one-flesh union mankind's mission to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion” would be fulfilled (Gen.1:28).

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians contains some of the Bible’s loftiest teaching about God’s eternal plan, his sovereignty and power, and the riches of his grace. But from our individualistic perspective, it is easy to overlook the focus of all this divine attention. The outpouring of “the immeasurable greatness of his power” is “toward us who believe” (1:19). But this “us” does not refer to isolated individuals. Rather, when God “raised [Christ] from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places . . . And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things” it was “to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (1:19-20, 22-23).

Though bodies are made up of many members, they are one. Body parts don't survive on their own. So, though God saves us each individually, he does not leave us alone. He places us in his body, the church. In Ephesians Paul piles up metaphors to convince us to give up our independence: We are, he tells us, citizens of the same city, members of the same household, individual bricks who together form a holy temple (see 2:19-22). And, Paul informs us, this task of bringing us together is the particular work of the Holy Spirit: “In [Christ] you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (2:22).

This is where Paul's mind is when, in the middle of his instructions to Christian households, he reaches all the way back to Genesis and lifts the veil:

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . . . In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. . . For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:25-32).

The “profound mystery” is that from the beginning God intended the institution of marriage to point to something far bigger and far better: Some day, God's beloved Son would sacrifice his own flesh to create his bride. Joined in one-flesh union with Christ, the church would become “the fullness of him who fills all in all” perfectly fulfilling the mission of Genesis.

This is God's eternal plan, and, in case you've missed it, there is nothing individualistic about any of it. The triune God's eternal plan is for the church. The Father's riches are invested in the church; the Son's love and affection are poured out on the church; the Spirit's ongoing work is to build together the church. This was the realization that changed my life: I am not the church. You are not the church. WE are the church. If I am going to experience God's riches and grace and the power of the Spirit in my life it is going to be in the context of the church. And if I want to experience the fullness of Christ, I'm going to have to commit to growing together with you.