A blessed portion of truth came out at the Reformation: but still the question ever agitated has been, " What is the church?" The answer in scripture is very simple. In chapters 1 and 2 of Ephesians, you will find the key to open out the truth, and to enable you to understand the doctrine of Christ in connection with what the church is. We find in these chapters three different things and three different positions, taken up first, in eternity (chap. 1:4, 5) second, in heaven (ver. 20); and third, down here on earth. (Chap. 2.) When were we chosen in Christ? Before the foundation of the world, and chosen to show with Him scenes of glory of which neither seraph nor angel could say, We know that." It was the Father tracing out to us the character of our relationship with Him in the Beloved, before the world was. It was not His thought to put these adopted ones in relationship less near than His beloved Son; not only He the head and they the members, but He the first-born of many brethren. The second is a scene that took place when man had been four thousand years in ruin. The only begotten Son came down here, God manifest in flesh. Ah, John, did you love that One on whose bosom you lay? And you, poor Peter, although you denied and forsook Him? Ah, yes and by faith you followed Him up to the right hand of God, waiting for the fulfillment of His promise to send down the Holy Ghost. How do I know that there is that risen Man seated up there at God's right hand? Because it has been revealed by the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost came down as the seal of the Father's delight in the Son, and the seal of our being His; but not only that, but Christ is up there as a life-giving Spirit: there is power in Him to give life to any poor devil-possessed sinner, even to a Saul of Tarsus. The third position views the church down here as the visible thing (chap. 2:19), builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. What gave the church visibility? The Holy Ghost: when He came down He made it manifest that Christ had a people on earth as heavenly saints, a people whom God claimed as His; and they were to be His light-bearers. A light-bearer is not invisible. He holds that which He sets up, responsible, till He puts it aside.
If you think of the church being manifested now on earth, the general state of professing Christians is such that their walk is a positive denial of it. Do you who, are vital members of the church live a life so heavenly that all around you can take notice of it? Ah, we do not see in believers that which was visible in the Lord whose whole course was the declaration of whose He was, having no will of His own; and in Paul who had the same mind as His Lord. That is how we are to show out the things we have in Him who is invisible, raised up to the right hand of God.
If you do not understand what God's present claims over you are, you may depend upon it that as days of testing come on you will not be able to keep your footing.