The Church is...

What is the Church? The word has come to be a label for a building for multiple denominations, but the Church is not a building, but a people. The word church comes from “ekklēsía(from /ek, "out from and to" and /kaléō, "to call") – properly, people called out from the world and to God, the outcome being the Church (the mystical body of Christ) – i.e. the universal (total) body of believers whom God calls out from the world and into His eternal kingdom.

[The English word "church" comes from the Greek word kyriakos, "belonging to the Lord" (kyrios).  /ekklēsía ("church") is the root of the terms "ecclesiology" and "ecclesiastical.” (Ecclesia, Strong’s). The Church is the “Call Out Ones,” call out from world which Jesus said was the status of His followers, “If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first. If you were of the world, it would love you as its own. Instead, the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world” (John 15:18-19). The Church is us, the called ones out of the world and to God. The apostles illustrate this, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him,” (1 John 2:15), “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God,” (Romans 12:2), “Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world,” (James 1:27), and “You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.” (James 4:4)

The first time the world Church was used was by our Lord Jesus, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18). The Roman Catholics use this verse to prop up the idea of the See of St. Peter, The Pope as successor of Peter. However, it is the revelation Cephas had, “And Simon Peter answering said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), it is this revelation Christ builds His church on, “All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God” (1 John 4:15). 

We our the Church. God does not dwell in temples made of stone, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands,” (Acts 17:24, cross ref Acts 7:48), but He dwells in us, “Do you not know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is holy, and you are that temple,” (1 CORINTHIANS 3:16-17), “For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building,” (1 Corinthians 3:9), “What agreement can exist between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be My people,” (2 Corinthians 6:16), and “But Christ is faithful as the Son over God's house. And we are His house, if we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope of which we boast” (Hebrews 3:6). The Church is God’s House, “so that, if I am delayed, you will know how each one must conduct himself in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.” (1 Timothy 3:15). It is not a building or temple, it is us called out ones, Christians. Amen.