“The church (read a gathered-church) does not need a ‘sacred place’ to worship, have fellowship, and to offer (apostolic) instruction–three things the apostolic and early church would not have separated–for those gathered are the sacred space. In fact, the local gathered-church is the liminal space between the heavenly places and earth; the human beings, who have gathered together, are the most sacred space, the holy of holies as it were (literally), in all of creation at that moment; they are, not the space or place, the address, they occupy, the temple of the Most High, the Creator God of all creation; they are the mystical, yet visible body of Christ, that is, the presence of God in Christ on earth, right there, because their ascended Head, Messiah Jesus, is now seated at the right hand of God in the heavenly places and they, these gathered believers are His body” (CMA).
Church matters (#churchmatters)
Church matters (#churchmatters)
| *Some texts to give support for my thoughts: Acts 7:48-50;17:24-25; Ephesians 1:15-19, especially 20-23; 2:6, 10, 18-22; 3:14-21. Additionally, I have been investigating the interpretive significance of the church in Acts (the the rest of the NT) as a house-movement–see my previous ETS paper thread here: Seditious Households. I am also developing a paper on Ephesians 3, specifically verse 16's reference to “the inner man” (τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον), which I take corporately rather than individualistically as it typically (but wrongly) is taken to mean; corporately, meaning a reference to the local church or churches in the Asian Minor region (to whom there is evidence Ephesians as a circulatory Letter, along with Colossians, was written). In the LXX OT ἔσω (inner) is associated with the temple and, very much so, the inner construction and the Holy of Holies, i.e., the space where YHWH's manifest presence . . . and thus, you can see where I am going with this. Stay tuned for posts of that paper. |
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