Paul’s Christian Church

Most Bible students never think that there is any difference between believers in the New Testament. In fact in my day most teaching has been to move believers to be exactly like the believers in the early Church. It is necessary to state first that the so-called “early Church” was a Pentecostal church. This is obvious when you begin to read the first two chapters of Acts. It was a church that began on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came. The coming of the Holy Spirit was to form a new body of Christ on the earth. It would be like Jesus Himself had returned to earth. The Holy Spirit was on the mission to place Christ in every one of the 120 believers gathered in the Upper Room. And that is exactly what happened. Every one of those believers, the 120 first and later, the 3,000 converts, were all placed in Christ (I Corinthians 12:13).
    You see, Christ Himself in His last message to His disciples had plainly said, “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” The day He mentions would be the forthcoming Day of Pentecost. It was God’s intention that every person saved in the New Testament would be put in Christ. This baptism into Christ would be the means of creating the new body of Christ on this earth. It would be the true and only Church. This had been in God’s intention from before the creation of the world (Ephesians 1:4).
    Now the Father kept the word of Jesus that He spoke in John 14:20 and did exactly as Jesus had told His disciples. Every one of the people involved on the day of Pentecost, all 3,120 of them, were placed into Christ. Later on, another 5,000 were saved at the Beautiful Gate and all of them were placed in Christ. The Holy Spirit had come and His great mission was to place every believing sinner in Christ. Being placed in Christ constituted membership in the body of Christ, the true Church on earth. Now there would be a new gospel, a new understanding of God’s plan and new group of people that never before had been on earth.
    But amazingly as it must sound, the early Church never understood this. On that day, the Day of Pentecost, they were to come to the knowing that they were in Christ and Christ was in them, but sadly the outer events of the day, the mighty rushing wind, the cloven tongues of fire and the “drunkenness” in the Spirit, overwhelmed the knowledge that the Holy Spirit had baptized them into Christ. To this day, nearly 2,000 years later, many in the institutional church still do not have the revelation from the Holy Spirit that Christ lives in them. Neither does, by my own conclusion, at least ninety percent of born-again believers living today.
    In the days of the early Church the Lord had a remedy, because all saved believers already had Christ in them, for there is no other kind of true salvation. What he would need was a new messenger to bring the final gospel to the Church. That messenger would be the Apostle Paul. There were innumerable preachers and teachers available, but each of them had some kind of hang-up that prevented them from seeing what God was actually doing in the Church of that day. The unneeded baggage the early Church carried made the critical difference between the early Church and the new Christian Church established by Paul. Understanding these differences is necessary to the modern believer’s growth.
    The big church at Jerusalem believed that salvation came from the death of Jesus. They believed in the works of Jesus of Nazareth, practiced them and had great results. But the extra baggage they connected with these truths bedimmed the glory of what Christ had done. That extra baggage was the continued practices which were distinctively Jewish Old Testament and Judaistic. None of these things were to be carried beyond the cross and carrying them provoked a duel loyalty for those believers who hindered what God was doing in their lives. Keep in mind that the Christian Church did not start until the Lord raised up Paul, and that was some years away at Antioch, for it was at Antioch believers were first called Christians (Acts 11:26). This was some years after the first operation of the early Church. While the early Pentecostal Church did not have Paul’s teaching, it did have the teaching of the Holy Spirit that was to specifically teach them that they were in Christ. They may not have known truths about the body of Christ or the full grace of God given to believing sinners, but they could have known about the Christ that was in them, a gift of God to all who believed, starting at the Day of Pentecost (John 14:20). They, as many today, believed that the coming of the Holy Spirit was the return of the Spirit of Christ.
    It would be impossible to investigate every point regarding this subject, but I will consider at least four of the early Church doctrines and practices that kept it from being a Pauline Christian Church.

Their Christology

The Jerusalem Church made a basic distinction between the person of Christ before and after Pentecost. All of their background and training dealt with Jesus as the Messiah. They continued to accept only the Jesus of history. The new Christianity, based on Gentiles — for Paul was the Apostle to the Gentiles — had no background of the Messiah or any of the prophecies concerning the Messiah in their understanding. The early Church continued preaching Jesus of Nazareth as their fulfillment of prophecy and the new Christian Church proclaimed Jesus as Lord of the believer’s life. Jesus of Nazareth had taught them a life of power that was contingent on their faith and obedience. This ignored the Christ that was in them and put the emphasis and burden of living godly lives on them and what they did, rather than on the Christ who lived in them.
    This same practice continues today as believers attempt to become within themselves and through their own efforts what they already have and are by Christ in them. The simple issue came down to this — the early Church preached what Jesus could do if you had enough faith and the Christian Church preached you could do all things through the Christ in you. The years that went by from the Day of Pentecost to Paul lifted up Christ in a way that was different from the Christ Paul would preach (II Corinthians 5:16).
    There were great and significant things done in the early Church up until the seventh chapter of Acts. This spelled out God’s grace that would be for everyone regardless of what they believed (it was a day of signs, wonders and miracles). From that point onward it is evident that the Lord would bring the final gospel to Paul and grace would be the theme.
    Even though both had the same Jesus, the life of the early Church believers would be greatly different from the life of a Christian. All because of how the person of Christ would be handled. Works, even supernatural works, would be the theme of the early Church, and grace would be the theme of Paul.

The Church

What was meant by the term church was different in the two groups. The early Church saw the church as a place, a building. This was because the early Church, like in Old Testament times, placed great emphasis on the Tabernacle in the wilderness and Solomon’s Temple. Going to the building was an essential act of spirituality. Also, the church building was the place where much legal and secular state business was done. When Jesus ran the money changers out of the Temple, it was because they were desecrating the house of the Lord. To this day there is a mindset that going to the church building is the initial act of spirituality. This has become so deep a law within some believers that fellowship is broken with them if you don’t go to a church building. Consequently, the building had become the place where one’s personal religion or one’s personal relationship with God was sanctioned or judged. It was at the building that confession was made, water baptism was affected, the teaching was presented and worship was promoted. The Apostle Paul would bring about a radical change in this understanding.
    In grace, the Church is not a building, you can’t go to church; you are the Church. The Church is a people. Christianity was destined, in this regard, to put the spiritual emphasis on what God does to humans rather than what others do or what you do. The revelation given to Paul concerned a body, the body of Christ, which Paul would call the Church. Certainly, if there is any merit to I Corinthians 12:13 where Paul says plainly that the Holy Spirit places the believing sinner into Christ’s body, there could be no misunderstanding as to what that means.
    The “in Christ” aspect is clearly the basic and continual motivation for the Christian that lives by the grace of God. The body of Christ, made up of many members, is the true Church. It may meet in a building, or a home, or a barn, or a tent, or on a street, or any where; it does not matter. The meeting place does not constitute who the people are. A grace believer is “in church” wherever they are. They cannot “go to church;” they are the Church wherever they go.
    If a believing sinner is placed in Christ the moment of believing, then what could possibly be added? Paul would say that Christ is all and in all (Colossians 1:17-19). A Christian is one in whom Christ lives. Going to a building, being baptized in water or joining yourself to a doctrine of some sort cannot add to the regeneration that took place at the initial moment of belief. The whole bucket of grace was dumped on the sinner the moment he accepted Christ. These religious things, the things we do within ourselves, are not wrong within themselves; they are wrong if they are added to grace, or are an attempt to make one’s salvation complete. The Christian Church is based objectively on the finished work of Christ at the Cross. Paul would encourage all believers, especially those of like faith, to gather together whenever and wherever they could.

The Doctrine

For the early New Testament Church, their beliefs were based on what we now call the “kingdom message.” The kingdom message was based on the prophecies in the Old Testament that the Messiah would come and set up a millennial kingdom where Christ would reign and the earth would be without sin as it was in the days of Adam before the Fall. This was prophesied and will take place. However, this is strictly a Jewish thing, and for it to happen a multitude of laws and rules must be observed. Thus, the early Church believer of the New Testament picked up all the rules and laws out of the Old Testament as well as the rules Jesus of Nazareth laid out in Matthew chapters 5-7.
    This causes anyone who preaches the kingdom message to lay down heavy law to the hearers. The purpose of this, even to this day, is to bring about more signs, wonders and miracles. This heavy stress on law is added to the work that Jesus did at the Cross, nullifying much of the free grace that was in Christ’s sacrifice. It is important to recognize that in the early Church age the majority of the Jews regarded Jewish Christianity as an offshoot or just another sect of Judaism. The first church of Jerusalem regarded itself as the “true Israel living under Moses law”, a point made obvious by James, the pastor of the church, in his epistle. This meant that what happened at the Cross and what happened on the Day of Pentecost was to be threaded into the age-old doctrines of Israel. The doctrine was clearly pointed out by the Apostle Paul (Colossians 2:13-23). These verses plainly show that these works from the Law of Moses and the Torah of Israel do not belong to the regenerated Christian.
    Paul, on the other hand, would spell out that being a Christian was based on a whole new gospel — new to the age he lived in, but certainly not new to God’s eternal plan. Paul’s gospel, he called it “my gospel” three times, was based on two events that happened before the world was created. One was written by Paul in Ephesians 1:4 which says the human was chosen to be in Christ before the creation of the world. The other was written in I Peter 1:18-20 that says the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world. These two points form the basis of doctrine for the Christian.
    It must be seen that these two events are all of God. Humans have nothing to do with either one and can do nothing about changing either. Israel, the Old Testament, the kingdom message or the institutional church, have no part in effecting these events. Going to church, being water-baptized, paying your dues, and obeying the religious doctrines have nothing to do with this salvation based on God’s ultimate plan before the foundation of the world. It is by grace and grace alone that one is saved. Paul’s “my gospel” is the unpreached message in religion today. As a result of this, the majority of saved believers do not know or understand what it means to be in Christ.
    Jesus of Nazareth said to Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again.” This could not and did not happen until the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2. Every believer on that day was put in Christ, and ever since that day, every sinner saved by grace has been put in Christ. This means, in Christ’s own words, they were born again. This event of re-birthing a human was the foundation of Paul’s gospel. To him, this idea that a human could be reborn in spirit was so far out of human ability to understand that he called it a mystery.
    As Paul writes the final gospel, he clearly says that the hope of all believers is Christ in you (Colossians 1:26-27). Perhaps of all the things that could be said about the difference between the early Church kingdom message and Paul’s gospel is that the former says you must do it according to the law and you may become righteous. Paul says you already are everything God can make you. God’s part is finished in the human who believes, the human part is to grow up in what you already are. In grace, the believer has Christ joined to his spirit and the Holy Spirit is joined to his soul.

The Holy Spirit

It was the Holy Spirit who began the Christian Church, the body of Christ on the earth. He did this by placing believers in Christ. It was the work of the Holy Spirit that began the early Church. The difference between these two ministries of the Holy Spirit indicates one of the great differences between these two bodies of believers. To the Christian Church, it is the Holy Spirit who places Christ in the believer and makes the believer a new creation in Christ. To the kingdom church believers, the coming of the Holy Spirit to one’s life is to make the believer something and somebody within themselves.
    This is what happened on the Day of Pentecost. Even though Christ was in them, it was what happened to them personally, their power, their gifts and their ministry that was most important. From that day on, through out the book of Acts and even to this day, it was what men who were filled with the Holy Spirit did that was the essence of the ministry. Paul would say this differently, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20). The Christian Church has just as many signs, wonders and miracles today as God allows, but the ministry is not man’s, rather it is Christ alive in the believer. Grace believers come behind in no spiritual gift (I Corinthians 1:7). They are able to do all things through Christ who strengthens them (Philippians 4:13); they can rely upon their heavenly Father because He birthed them and they are His offspring. The Christian believer can come into a rest knowing that he can do nothing within himself, but by simply trusting the Father, he can live victorious. The kingdom believer today cannot rest; his whole relationship with the Lord is based on his faith and his effort. The Christian believer enters his rest because he knows in spirit he stands perfect before God; he knows Christ in him is his salvation. The issue of Christianity today comes down to: Is it me who lives, or is it Him?

This page Copyright © 2004 Peter Wade. The Bible text in this publication, except where otherwise indicated, is from the King James Version. This article appears on the site: http://peterwade.com/.

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