Society & Culture

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God intends to have many peoples, i.e., many nations which are devoted to His worship and who are known by His name. The church is like these in that it is a people of God. It is unlike them, however, in its constitution as a people.

Biblically, a people or nation finds its identity in its solidarity with a common ancestor. Peoples are ethnic units in a very biological sense. Assyrians come from Asshur. Moabites come from Moab. Ammonites come from Benammi. And, of course, Israelites come from Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. While outsiders can be incorporated into the nation, the nation itself remains a fundamentally ethnic unit, an extended family.

The church, however, has its identity in its unique solidarity with Christ. Only church saints enjoy the status of being “in Christ” in the sense that they are baptized into His body in or by the Spirit. He is their head and they are His members. The church’s solidarity as a people is not ancestral, but spiritual. Rather than being genealogically connected with a progenitor, the church is spiritually united to Christ. This relationship to Christ means that the church is not only distinct from all other peoples, but even a people of a different kind.