The Church Catholic
Minister: | Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: | 12/19/2010 AM |
Text: | Ephesians 2:11-22; I Corinthians 12:13-27; Lord's Day 21 |
Psalters: | 85, 276, 228, 238 |
- The meaning.
- There are two mis-representations of the church?s catholicity.
- The church of Rome take to itself alone the name ?catholic.?
- Some liberal Protestants declare that in the universal church is every group that calls itself church.
- The Church extends over all the world from the beginning to the end of time, embracing the whole human race.
- It transcends natural differences without obliterating them: race, sex, social, and ethnic.
- The catholicity of the Church is determined by Christ.
- The manifestation of catholicity.
- In the Old Dispensation the Church was confined to the nation of Israel and did not display its catholicity.
- In the New Dispensation the Church?s universality became highly visible.
- A powerful example of the church?s universality is the uniting of Christian Jew & Christian Gentile (Eph. 2:11,12).
- Implied calling.
- A universal church, not a national one.
- The catholicity of the Church requires that we avoid sectarianism.
- One form of that is equating our denomination with the Church of Christ.
- Another form is racial bigotry.
- The calling to forbear one another and to forgive one another arises from the Church?s catholicity (Col. 3: 10,11).
- As God uses differences, so we must appreciate the differences in each other (Col. 3:12-15).
- Recognize what we have in common with each other is so much greater than our differences.
- Recognize the limitations of the manifestation of the Church?s catholicity on this side of Christ?s return.
- Geographic separations and the presence of sin makes impossible the perfect manifestation.
- But the catholicity is something we believe, not something we first see.