What Is the Church According to the Bible?
Ekklesia is not a building, a hierarchy, or a ritual. Discover what Jesus really meant when He spoke of His Church.
“Invite someone to your church.”
What will they picture? A building with a steeple. An altar. Rows of pews. A priest or pastor behind a pulpit. Maybe a choir, maybe an organ, maybe a worship band with guitars. A ritual, an order of service, an official liturgy.
This is what “church” means for most people. A place you go to. An institution you belong to. A building where ceremonies take place.
The problem is that this has almost nothing to do with what Jesus called His Church.
When Jesus said “I will build my church” (Mt 16:18), He was not talking about a building. He was not talking about an institution with a hierarchy, bylaws, and a budget. He was talking about something entirely different - something the first Christians understood perfectly, but centuries of religious tradition have nearly buried.
Ekklesia - What It Really Means
The word Jesus used is the Greek ἐκκλησία (ekklesia). It comes from ek (out of) and kaleo (to call). Literally: “the called-out ones,” “those summoned forth.” In ancient Greece, ekklesia referred to an assembly of citizens called together for deliberation - not the building where they met, but the people who gathered.
When the New Testament authors used this word, they meant exactly the same thing: a gathering of people called by God. Not a place. Not a structure. People.
For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.
- Mt 18:20 (ESV)
Two or three. No building. No priest. No liturgy. Just people gathered in Jesus’ name - and He is among them. This is the Church in its most basic form.
What did the Church look like in practice? Acts gives us a picture:
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.
- Acts 2:42,46-47 (ESV)
In homes. With gladness. With generous hearts. They shared meals, supported each other, prayed together. No church buildings - because none existed yet. No hierarchies - because they had not had time to grow. There was Christ, there was community, and there was the Word.
Jesus vs. the Temples of His Day
Jesus had an unambiguous attitude toward religious buildings and the system built around them.
When He entered the Temple in Jerusalem, He did not bow before its majesty:
And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”
- Mk 11:15-17 (ESV)
“A den of robbers” - that is what He called the holiest site in Judaism, because religion had turned into business. But even stronger words came during His conversation with the Samaritan woman:
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
- Jn 4:21-24 (ESV)
“Neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” Worship in spirit and truth - not in a building, not at a designated location, not through a priestly caste. Jesus dismantled the foundational idea that religion had rested on for millennia: that you need to go to a specific place, through specific intermediaries, to reach God.
And as for those intermediaries? Jesus did not spare the religious leaders of His time:
They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.
- Mt 23:5-7 (ESV)
Titles, robes, places of honor - a religious spectacle. And right after this, Jesus added:
But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.
- Mt 23:8-10 (ESV)
“You are all brothers.” No hierarchies. No titles. One Teacher - Christ. Everyone else is a brother.
If Jesus Walked Into a Modern Church
Imagine Jesus walking into a typical 21st-century church.
He would see a building worth millions. Marble floors, gold trim, stained glass, an organ that costs more than several homes. He would see a hierarchy with an elaborate system of titles: Father, Reverend, Excellency, Eminence, Holy Father. He would see sacraments that come with a price tag - baptisms, weddings, funerals all have their fee. He would see the faithful sitting in pews like an audience in a theater, watching one person tell them what God wants.
Would He not say the same thing He said in the Temple in Jerusalem?
Jesus said:
You received without paying; give without pay.
- Mt 10:8 (ESV)
And we built a system where almost nothing is free.
Jesus chose as His apostles fishermen, a tax collector, a zealot. Not graduates of theological schools. Not people with titles. Ordinary people who knew Him and followed Him.
Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.
- Acts 4:13 (ESV)
“They recognized that they had been with Jesus” - that was the only credential they needed. Not a diploma. Not ordination. Being with Jesus.
And yet this simple model - living faith instead of dead structure - has somehow been lost. Modern churches increasingly resemble institutions where faith has become routine and zeal has given way to comfort. I write more about this problem in Sleeping Christianity - Why Is the Church Losing Its Power?.
The Church Is You
Paul wrote to the Corinthians something that should change the way we think about the Church:
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
- 1 Cor 3:16 (ESV)
You are the temple. Not a building made of stone. You - people who believe in Christ. The Spirit of God does not dwell in cathedrals. He dwells in people.
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
- Eph 2:19-22 (ESV)
The foundation: the apostles and prophets. The cornerstone: Christ. The building: people - not bricks. The temple grows not through new additions of stone, but through new people who become part of the Body of Christ.
Do not look for the Church in a building. Do not look for it in an institution, a hierarchy, or in rituals. The Church is people who gather around Christ - in spirit and truth. Two, three - or millions. In a cathedral, a home, a meadow, or the catacombs. It does not matter where. What matters is who - and around Whom.
For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.
- Mt 18:20 (ESV)
This is the Church. You need nothing more. Nothing less will do.
If you want to see how human tradition has obscured these simple truths over the centuries, read: Tradition vs. Scripture - Human Teachings That Killed Jesus.