Introduction
John, to the seven churches which are in Asia:
Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth.
Revelation 1:4-5 NKJV
Today we are going to look at the churches in Revelation and in Rome for the sake of uncovering a few important questions.
We read in Revelation 2-3 that Jesus provided seven messages which John sends to the seven churches of Asia (modern day Turkey) via the “angel of the church”. These were prophetic letters addressed to seven city congregations to provide correction, exhortation, and hope. Their primary function, at the time of John’s writing, was for very specific groups of people during a very specific time. Even so, these words have been preserved in Scripture to provide profound lessons for us even today. We can learn from each message, applying them to our lives, families, and congregations.
While it may not be as straightforward as the main message of these letters, the letters to the seven churches can also inform us regarding the ecclesiology of the body of Christ in the first century. The reason I am addressing this today is because I believe we have tragically undermined and misunderstood the true identity of the body of Christ, meaning the universal body of believers we often call the Church. The letters to the seven congregations contained within the book of Revelation may help us sort out this mess, or at the very least, get us asking some important questions.
If our understanding of church is a mess, what are some examples of the mess we’ve made for ourselves, and what can we do to fix it? There are numerous approaches I could take, but today, we’ll start with a more modern example from the 19th century and consider its effect on our ecclesiology, soteriology, and eschatology. After we examine a modern example, we’ll look to Revelation and Romans for some answers.
Picking on Dispensationalism to Make a Point
The two most recognized features of Dispensationalism involve belief in (1) seven dispensations and (2) a pre-tribulational rapture of the church in which the church will be snatched to heaven before a coming seven-year Tribulation Period.
Dispensationalism began in the 19th century and has been embraced by many churches and bible teachers, primarily within western evangelicalism. In some ways, Dispensationalism has helped many within the body of Christ return to a more biblical view of the Millennium, and has aided in fueling Christian evangelism. Thankfully, Dispensationalism teaches important doctrines such as the physical return of Jesus at the end of the age, salvation through faith in Christ, and the restoration of the nation of Israel at Jesus’ return.
On the other hand, like many of the theological traditions which preceded it, Dispensationalism also teaches that the church is a unique and holy entity which is separate from Israel. I often hear their bible teachers refer to “The Church and Israel” in such a manner it is clear they understand the church to be an institution that is both separate from, and during the supposed ‘church age’ (one of the dispensations), more important to God’s plan than Israel. Dispensationalism teaches that the church is God’s primary agency of grace on earth (through Jesus, by the Holy Spirit) until the day of the rapture, where they believe the church is taken up into heaven while Israel suffers the great tribulation.
The true Dispensationalist believes that the church (meaning the universal, global, and spiritual institution) is the bride of Christ, and they believe Israel is a separate entity that is not the bride of Christ. Of course, good Jews can become part of this church if they choose Jesus. While there is a grain of truth here as it pertains to receiving Jesus for salvation, this theological view is mostly off base due to a faulty understanding of the true nature of the church.
The good that exists within this faulty theology is the emphasis on the Great Commission via the preaching of Jesus unto salvation. The salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ is certainly very good, and vital news. I love my Dispensational brothers and sisters for making this emphasis. There is no other name under heaven by which mankind can be saved, where both Jew and Gentile alike come into the faith only through trusting in Jesus. It doesn’t matter who you are, salvation is by the grace of God, through faith in Jesus.
The bad part of this faulty theology is that it gets the relationship between Israel and the church wrong, leading to errors in how we perceive the identity of the church and the role of Israel in the earth. Many of the things taught about the church are truths that must be realized first through Israel, not the modern Gentile creature that is called the global church. Ethnic, territorial, and covenantal Israel is the true Israel of God through Christ’s redemption. It is also the kingdom of heaven and the “city on a hill which cannot be hidden”. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is a prayer that is completely fulfilled when the Jewish Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, comes out of the heavens to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth. This kingdom is realized only through the restoration of the Davidic throne in earthly Jerusalem. In other words, saved and resurrected Israel is the kingdom of heaven.
What does this mean for the Gentile, that is, the non-Jew?
It means exactly what the apostle Paul emphasizes in his multitude of letters. Gentiles have been grafted (joined, gathered) into Israel. That is to say, Israel is the true “church” and we non-Jews have been welcomed to join their glorious party. Jesus, the King of the Jews, is going to return and establish His heavenly kingdom as the Messianic Jewish kingdom on earth. Establishing His kingdom on earth, in Israel, from Jerusalem, will be the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, and through the fulfilling of this promise all nations (non-Jews) who receive Israel’s Messiah, (as a fruit of salvation they will bless Israel), will themselves be blessed and adopted as children of Abraham and made co-heirs with Israel in these great promises. THIS IS THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM.
According to Matthew 24, this gospel of the Kingdom, including the suffering and tribulation which will take place before the coming glory, must be preached as a witness throughout all nations (ethnic groups) and then the end will come. God reveals His love and desire for the salvation of the nations through His covenant love with Israel, and He promises to send messengers to every tribe, nation, and tongue as a witness of His coming kingdom.
The end Jesus speaks about in Matthew 24 is the end of this wicked age and the end of the suffering that precedes glory. Immediately after the end, Jesus returns to the earth to establish the kingdom of the age to come, that is, Messianic Israel. The prophet Isaiah speaks of this coming time, saying, “Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end.” What Isaiah means is, that which starts in Israel will spread throughout the whole earth.
Dispensationalism captures a godly fervor for the Great Commission, yet they do so in a way that can sometimes separate them from the true witness of the Kingdom. This is because the dispensational emphasis is on getting saved so that one can go to heaven, rather than getting saved so that one can be joined together with Israel as a co-inheritor of promises on earth in the age to come.
To think of it another way, we can look at Romans. We do not get the fullness of our eternal promises until Jesus is reigning in Jerusalem. Paul articulates in Romans 11 that Israel’s acceptance into the gospel is life from the dead. The resurrection of the dead happens at Jesus’ return, which coincides with all Israel being saved. Yet, all Israel will not be saved until the “fullness of the Gentiles comes in”. The gospel of the kingdom demands that the preaching of Israel’s kingdom (the throne of David) and Israel’s Messiah King (Jesus of Nazareth) must go out into all nations so that Israel can be saved. Yet, until Israel is saved there is no realized kingdom of God on earth, and this means no rapture or resurrection from the dead until the day of Israel’s salvation. In other words, we’re in it together if we want the promises.
As an aside, this addresses the issue of the rapture in a way you may not have heard before. If Israel is the true “church”, and the tribulation is Israel’s most severe time of persecution, how can the church (as understood by most Christians) be raptured prior to the tribulation? If we Gentiles have been grafted into a brotherhood with Israel through the blood of Jesus (Eph 2:11-18), how can we escape Israel’s time of persecution?
The Church in Revelation
You might be wondering what all this has to do with how the church is identified in the book of Revelation and Romans.
I could take this moment to pick on Catholic and Reformed theology, but I won’t go down that road today, except for one point. The Church of Catholic, Orthodox, and Reformation traditions is not actually a thing according to the bible, and I will explain why. For most of Christian history, the idea of the church has been largely beholden to something called replacement theology. Replacement theology teaches that their Church is the true Israel, or in other words, their Church has replaced Israel. If your local church is not Dispensationalist, the betting odds are good that your church comes from a denomination or theological tradition that holds to replacement theology.
Do you notice how replacement theology is different from what I was explaining earlier?
I was saying that Israel is the church, though I prefer not to use the term church, preferring instead the terms ekklesia, community, or body of Christ. According to most Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants, they might argue that the Church is now Israel (or has replaced/superseded Israel). While Dispensationalists do uphold God’s covenants with Israel, they even support a back door form of replacement theology by teaching that we are now in a “church age”.
The bottom line is this: According to scripture, Israel is an entity, and a very important one. The Church, as most Christians understand church today, is not. It is a man-made organism, institution, and/or religion. The true church of scripture actually risks cutting itself off from its biblical identity and mandate if it supposes the idea that it has become something greater than and/or replacing Israel. The notion of “Israel and the Church” cannot be supported by scripture. There is only Israel, and those who have been accepted into Israel’s beloved ekklesia through the cross.
The Book of Revelation leaves behind a breadcrumb trail of ideas to help support what I am trying to communicate. One of these breadcrumbs can be found in chapters 2 & 3.
“To the angel of the church…”
Revelation 2:1, 8, 12, 18 & 3:1, 7, & 14
The phrase “angel of the church” is translated from the Greek “Angelō tēs en ekklēsias”. A better translation in English might be, “messenger of the assembly”. But how do we know that?
The messenger of the assembly is a Jewish term referring to a person who led synagogues in public prayer and was understood by the community as someone who demonstrated sincere moral and spiritual maturity within the community of believers. In Hebrew, this is called the shaliach tzibbur. Regardless of what language you are speaking, the point is that the “angel of the church” was a title given to someone who served in a synagogue.
There is not much of a leap here. In Revelation 2 & 3, we see the followers of Jesus are still meeting in synagogues. By the Holy Spirit, through the apostle John, Jesus is addressing synagogue leaders and entrusting them with corrections, warnings, and exhortations which are intended to be heard by the body of Christ throughout their respective cities.
I believe the main point to be made here is that the book of Revelation was written during a time when the Holy Spirit was still speaking to the leaders of the synagogue as an avenue of imparting prophetic commands to the body of Christ. In other words, there were Jewish synagogue leaders (for a Gentile would not have been allowed such a position in the synagogue), who would have been required to practice Jewish customs (maybe not the full Torah to the letter, but I digress), who were followers of Jesus, and entrusted with communicating the oracles of a prophet (in this case, the revelation given to the apostle John).
The Church in Rome
In the book of Revelation, the ekklesia/church was a body of multi-ethnic believers who were represented by some degree of Jewish synagogue leadership. This is how the believers in Jerusalem interpreted the ekklesia (Acts 15) when they applied the “laws of resident aliens” to Gentile believers, and also how the earliest Gentile disciples were classified by the Roman government. Rome considered the synagogue a “collegia” according to the privileges previously granted to the synagogues under Julius Caesar, which allowed for legal recognition. This legal recognition granted the right to assemble, share common meals, common property, and common fiscal responsibility. In addition, the Jewish communities (which were legally recognized through their collegia, the synagogue) were allowed under these provisions to live according to their ancestral laws and customs. While this provides some context for what Christian synagogue adherence might have looked like for the ekklesia in the Book of Revelation, it also provides context for Paul’s letter to the Romans.
In Romans, Paul is primarily addressing Gentile followers of Jesus who were members of the Jewish collegia in Rome. If you are a Protestant like me, you are probably well aware of Paul’s established doctrine in Romans 1-8. Many of us curiously miss the main point of Romans, which isn’t fully developed until chapters 9-11. The application of the main point is explained in chapters 12-16.
In a macro summary of Romans, saving faith comes through Christ alone. The Law is a tutor and a shepherd, not our saving righteousness. The spiritual sons of Abraham, by faith, have been grafted into the promises they now share with ethnic Israel. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking ethnic Israel has been entirely cut off due to the hardness of heart by some, because Jew and Gentile followers of Jesus will not receive their promise of resurrection until a future time when all Israel is saved. Therefore, serve one another as those joined together by a spiritual bond of love and liberty. Submit to your governing authorities because they are God ordained, and you know, the very civil authority that allows (at the time of Paul’s writing) the assembling together so that you may practice the lessons being taught in this letter. Bear one another’s burdens and glorify God together. Amen.
Jewish Context for the Church Today
In Acts, to Romans, and as late as the Book of Revelation, the “church” is addressed through the avenue of Jewish leadership, sometimes specifically to synagogue leadership. On one hand, we can look at the church today and simply say, “That’s not our present context for church.” You would be correct, and any attempt to force Gentile believers to go back to synagogues would be foolish. Gentiles are not required by the gospel to “become Jewish or adhere to Jewish customs.” To make such an argument would be an argument against many other lessons which Paul articulates in his letters. Even so, we must also understand that the modern Church is not the same thing as the ekklesia of the New Testament. They are not even synonymous with one another. When Jesus said, “Upon this rock I shall build My ekklesia”, He was not talking about the modern church.
The foundations for the modern church were laid in the 3rd and 4th centuries, through the ecumenical councils. It was formally institutionalized and adopted its modern form through the recognition of the church by Constantine. The original ekklesia, the one Jesus founded, had already become largely irrelevant to the Roman Christian world by this time. Even so, the true ekklesia continued to exist through the lives of genuine believers within the Catholic, Eastern, Coptic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Jewish Messianic congregations throughout our history. Nevertheless, with the exception being the Jewish Messianics, we have largely existed within the confines of institutions that define themselves as an entity largely unaware of (or antagonistic towards) its Jewish genesis. To use a marriage analogy, the church has separated, and in some instances, divorced itself from Israel.Separating ourselves from Israel is a massive identity problem because Paul defines Jesus’ body as an ekklesia consisting of Jew and Gentile, and the kingdom we are submitting ourselves to as members of Jesus’ ekklesia is a Jewish Messianic Kingdom. These ideas are difficult for us to conceptualize because many of us are conditioned to see our churches as the primary expression of God’s kingdom on the earth. The true function of our congregations is to provide a sort of pilgrimage community and spiritual beachhead for the proclamation of the Messianic Jewish kingdom which is to come at the return of Jesus. It is hard to preach the benefits of a coming Jewish Kingdom if we ourselves have rejected the Jewishness of the gospel.
The Bond of the Spirit and the Return of Jesus
The return of Jesus is connected to our unity in the bond of the Spirit, and it is a mystery of God that we will be joined together as one body of Jews and Gentiles PRIOR TO the return of Jesus. We can see this truth evidenced in such passages as Psalm 133, Isaiah 19, 25, & 56, Romans 9-12, Ephesians 2-4, John 17, and Revelation 10 among many others. While there are certainly other factors at play (see: all of the prophets), unity within the ekklesia between the races, and primarily between Jew and Gentile, is rarely emphasized on the same level as end-times charts and talk about the rapture. Regarding the Great Commission, if the world knows us more by our evangelization methods than by how we love one another, we have major problems.
At the foundation of the church in Revelation were communities who were connected enough to the Jewish synagogues that they received prophetic instruction and correction from the synagogue’s messenger of the assembly. At the foundation of the church in Rome there existed a freedom to assemble, which was granted special protections by Roman civil authorities, which Paul exhorted the believers to take advantage of for the purpose of building the bridges of unity between Jew and Gentile believers. If it were not for passages such as Romans 11, or Ephesians 2-4, it would be possible to claim these observations are just that, mere observations that provide no prescriptive instruction for how we should understand the ekklesia.
Yet, when we consider the broad scope of scripture pointing us to the promise of unity between multi-ethnic Gentiles and their Jewish brothers and sisters through the union of Jesus’ broken body and shed blood (He tore down the dividing wall of enmity between Jew and Gentile), we must understand that any church which does not embrace this unity is fostering enmity between themselves and the will of God.
As the ekklesia of Jesus, we must see Jew and Gentile as one body, on the earth, awaiting the return of our Messiah King, Jesus the Nazarene.
Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 3:2-6 NIV
Now when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, “Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and do not write them.”
The angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised up his hand to heaven and swore by Him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and the things that are in it, the earth and the things that are in it, and the sea and the things that are in it, that there should be delay no longer, but in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets.
Revelation 10:4-7 NKJV
I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
Ephesians 4:1-6 NKJV
J. S. Marek
*For more on these topics, check out one of the following articles from jsmarek.com
J.S. Marek 