There are any number of answers to this question that are both distinct and all perfectly fitting. The answer generally comes down to how one defines the church. The answers run the gamut from Genesis 1 to Acts 2. We can define the church as that body of people called to worship the living God. If so we confess it was created with the creation of Adam and Eve.
Genesis 3 would also be a fitting answer. We can define the church as the people of God redeemed by the work of Christ. If we affirm that God in His grace redeemed our first parents, then once there were people, sin, and forgiveness, we have the church.
We could also choose Genesis 4. There we’re told that “then men began to call upon the name of the Lord.” This seems to suggest that this was the beginning of God’s people gathering together to worship Him in prayer. Which isn’t at all a bad definition of what the church is.
Don’t worry. We’re not going to make an argument for most of the chapters of Genesis. But we still could argue that it began with Noah and his family. They offered the first post-flood sacrifices at the end of Genesis 8. We could choose God calling Abraham out from Ur. Or Him establishing the sacrament of circumcision as the sign of the covenant.
Other Old Testament options include the Mosaic covenant at Mount Sinai in Exodus. There God’s people covenanted to be His people. Or when they first gathered in the tabernacle, or under Solomon, in the Temple.
Acts 2, the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, surely must be the best option in the New Testament. If the church is those who have been redeemed by Christ and indwelt by the Spirit, after the work of Christ, that’s where it would be. Those who are especially eager to emphasize distinctions between the people of God in the Old and New Testaments tend to pitch their tabernacle here.
Those of us more inclined to emphasize the continuity of the Old and New (remembering that both sides affirm continuity and contrast) are more comfortable defining the church as the people of God. The church consists of those redeemed by the work of Christ (whether it was yet to come, to them still future, or has already come) indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and gathered together in covenant to worship the living God. This, of course, rules out the slur of “replacement theology.” Affirming the essential unity of God’s people throughout time in no way suggests the replacement of Israel by the church. Rather, all those blessed with faith are the children of Abraham (Gal. 3: 7-9).
There remain assorted distinctions that have their place. The visible and invisible church are not co-extensive. The church militant and the church triumphant are one church, but in different places, with different callings and even different natures. Every distinction, however, takes place in the context of the unity of the body. The church is the people of God, by the grace of God, living for the glory of God.
This is the thirty-fourth installment of an ongoing series of pieces here on the nature and calling of the church. Stay tuned for more. Remember also that we at Sovereign Grace Fellowship meet this Sunday March 9 at 10:30 AM at our new location, at our beautiful farm at 112811 Garman Road, Spencerville, IN. Please come join us.