WHAT IS SO SPIRITUAL ABOUT CHURCH GOVERNMENT?

 Posted at Reformation Scotland:

There is no shortage of books and conferences and blogs and even movements on the church. But how often do we hear talk of church polity? If anything, many avoid the topic. After all, church government is said to divide Christians, not unite them. Why pay any heed to it at all? Is it that important for the average Christian and for Christian discipleship? If so, how? Does the Bible speak decisively in this area? And if we think it does, how firmly should we hold our convictions when other Christians disagree? But if the gospel is about being governed by Jesus, maybe church government matters more than we like to tell ourselves. Far from being a luxury, or a fundamental threat, or even a boring technicality, the running of the local church in my life is the very place where I get to experience the good news of Christ Jesus’s shepherding care over me. In this updated extract, some of the members of the Westminster Assembly show how every aspect of church government is spiritual – and therefore deserves our thankful respect.

The power or authority of church government is a spiritual power. It is not so perfectly and completely spiritual as Christ’s supreme government, for He alone has absolute and immediate power and authority over our very spirits and consciences, ruling us by the invisible influence of His Spirit and grace as He pleases (John 3:8; Rom. 8:14; Gal. 2:20). But church government is purely, properly, and merely spiritual enough that it really, essentially and specifically differs from civil government, and is contradistinguished from the civil, secular, and political power in the hand of the civil magistrate. The power of church government is properly, purely, merely spiritual, in its rule, fountain, matter, form, subject, object, end, and all.

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