Naturally, as a confessionally Reformed church, one tool we have in answering a question such as, “Who is considered a member of Christ’s church?” is our Confession of Faith. In Confessing the Faith, Chad Van Dixhoorn offers a fresh look at a classic statement of the Reformed faith. The Westminster Confession of Faith finds itself in the first rank of great Christian creeds. Presbyterian and Reformed churches employ its doctrine for instruction; others acknowledge few texts to be so useful in the Christian’s quest to glorify and enjoy God.

This accessible, biblical, and thoughtful work digests years of study and teaching into bite-sized sections. Van Dixhoorn’s work is historical and practical in its focus. It deliberately presents readers with more than another survey of Reformed theology; it offers a guide to a particular text, considers its original proof-texts, and seeks to deepen our understanding of each paragraph of the Confession.

Challenging hearts and minds, Confessing the Faith hopes to edify and instruct both advanced and general audiences, as the authors of the Confession of Faith surely hoped their magnum opus would do.

In addition, this work includes a foreword by Carl R. Trueman!

You can purchase the book through Ligonier Ministries:
https://store.ligonier.org/confessing-the-faith-hardcover

Who Is Considered a Member of Christ’s Church? An Invisible Church

So, who is Considered a Member of Christ’s Church? Most broadly conceived, the “Catholic “church, which means the “universal “church, consists of all God’s people – all whom he has chosen or elected to save. It includes those that “have been, are, or shall be gathered “as one, under Christ. One only needs to look at the new Testament to see that there has been a church. One only has to be involved with a faithful local fellowship of Christian members and elders to see that there is still a church. One has only to read Ephesians 5 to see that there will be a church – there the apostle Paul eagerly anticipates the day when Christ will “present to himself a glorious church “without attracting spot, wrinkle or blemish of any kind (Ephesians 5:27).

Since this universal aspect of the church cannot be witnessed at one time, some theologians have spoken about the “invisible church”. This label, employed by the Westminster assembly, must always be deficient as a definition of the church. Nonetheless, in order to answer the question, “Who is considered a member of Christ’s church?”, it suffices as a phrase to capture one aspect of the existence of the church. We cannot now see the whole church in its depth across the years or its breadth across the continents. There is an aspect of the church that is not visible to us from any one vantage point in time or space. ¹

Van Dixhoorn, Chad B. Confessing the Faith : A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith. Edinburgh, Scotland ; Carlisle, Pennsylvania, The Banner of Truth Trust, 2016, pp. 335–336.

1. As one example of the equating of the elect with the church of Christ, the Westminster assembly pointed to Ephesians 1:10, which speaks of “all things ” – both in heaven and earth – becoming one in Christ. During the reformation and post – reformation. The one-ness in Christ, in the context of Ephesians 1, was understood to refer to the one-ness of the church. “all things “was commonly taken to mean either all elect people (both in heaven, and on earth), or all elect beings (both angels in heaven and people on earth). The latter interpretation was adopted by Calvin in his Ephesians commentary; the former by the Geneva Bible; both interpretations are mentioned in all the books of the old and New Testament, sub., and in the Dutch annotations upon the whole Bible and (London, 1657) sub lock. The assembly obviously follows the interpretation of the Geneva Bible, but another interpretive possibility, suggested by the early church father Irenaeus, is that the union of “all things” refers to the whole cosmos (Irenaeus, against heresy, ANF I:443). With the latter interpretation, orthodox Christians understand that “in him” does not teach a universal salvation (all united to Christ redemption), but a universal dominion (all under Christ’s authority).  ↩︎