The Way to Build up The Church, Part 1 of 3

Joe: Hi everyone, thank you all for joining us again. My name is Joe and today I'm joined by Hector. Today, we will be covering Chapter 2 from Volume 3 of the "Basic Elements of the Christian Life." The title of this chapter is "The Way to Build up the Church." Hector, in order to get started, can you explain to us what the church is and define the church for us? Hector: Yes, and it's good to do that because traditionally we refer to the word "church" as the place where believers meet. We ask questions like, "What church do you go to?" But it's very clear in the Word that the church doesn't refer to the place but it refers to the believers. Maybe we can read Ephesians 1 verses 22 and 23. Joe: So it says, "And He subjected all things under His feet and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, which is His Body, the fullness of the One who fills all in all." Hector: Amen. So we see there, that all things have been subjected under Christ's feet and it talks about, "all things to the church, which is His Body." So this verse makes it very clear, that it's not a place but it's actually the Body of Christ, the believers. Joe: Amen. That's very good. So this helps us to see what the church is and then the book goes on to talk about three points related to the church. What can you tell us about those? Hector: Yeah, this was good. It talked about three aspects in God's plan for the church. And these were: number one, sonship. So, we receive the life of God; that makes us sons of God, but the church needs to grow and mature in the divine life unto full sonship for the expression of Christ to be able to express God. That's the first aspect.The second aspect is defeating Satan God's enemy and putting him to shame. So, through the church, Christ will defeat God's enemy and put him to open shame. And the third aspect is: the heading up of all things in Christ. Again this is done through the church, Christ heads up all things through the church. Joe: In this segment we've seen, first of all, that the church is not a building or a place where we meet. But actually the church is the people who have received Christ as their life and who are members of His body. And we've gone on to see these three points related to the church. And really we've seen that God's desire is that the church would express Him and represent Him. Hector: That's right. Joe: So, thank you for these three points. We'd like to thank you all for joining us and in the next segments we'll continue our discussion on "The Way to Build up the Church."