Dennis Peacocke comments

Dennis Peacocke

Words can both serve us or hinder us depending upon the clarity of concept and usage behind them. If their content is murky, or if they fail to evoke God's intended response from us, they can damage our effectiveness far more than most Christians ever imagine. Since God is the author of language, and He has given language to serve His purposes, we should expect language warfare by satanic forces. My intent here is to deal with that language warfare as it relates to our oft used word, "the Church."

Let us begin by examining the language history of the word itself (its etymology). The word translated "Church" comes from the Greek word "Ekklesia." Since I do not pretend to be a Greek scholar, let us hear from several who are universally recognized as such as they discuss the Greek word "Ekklesia":

• "from ek-kaleo; used to summon the army to assemble"


• "used in ancient Greece as denoting the popular assembly of the competent full citizens of the city- state to adjudicate and rule over city-wide affairs"


• "any public assembly of citizens summoned by a herald"


• "an assembly of citizens summoned by the crier... the legislative assembly"


• "to hold an assembly or a decision-making debate"


• "one (or body) called forth, selected to arbitrate"


• "a cry to those called out to adjudicate and rule" (1)

You will please note that the word translated "church" from "ekklesia" has in its root usage not a single hint or connotation denoting a building, heaven, or a religious body. Its root meaning is "an assembly of those called out to rule." Paul tells us exactly the same thing when he speaks of the ekklesia's glorious calling to co-rule and co-superintend God's Creation under the senior headship of Jesus Christ. (2) The "Church" is not a meeting, a building, a place, or a religious group. Rather, it is those elected and called out to rule under Christ by God the Father. (3)

Kurios In The Kirk

Co-mingling conceptually with the Greek word "ekklesia," the word "church" is also a linguistic translation from the Scottish word "kirk" which is rooted in the Latin word "Kurios" or Lord. "Jesus Christ is Kurios or Lord," said our ancient predecessors in the faith. So then the "church" was the particular place (kirk) or people where that Lordship was fully recognized and proclaimed in both word and deed.

Jesus Christ rules in the kirk because He is Kurios of those assembled there. From that base of understanding, the Church goes out to exercise increasing proclamation and the discipling of the nations. It both judges the world by its witness and lifestyle as well as by the settling of its own disputes and grievances independent of the world court system. (4) The Church, when it is summoned together, is the place where the Lordship of Christ empowers His subjects to proclaim and demonstrate the coming of His Kingdom in its progressive power until Christ comes at last to consummate His Lordship with His physical presence. This is the language concept the Holy Spirit superintended through the Greek, Latin, and Medieval Scottish language.

But what has the word come to mean to us in the close of the twentieth century? Obviously it has been drained of much of its original meaning. To some it means a place to gather on Sunday with folks of similar conviction. To others, especially church pastors, it is something that is to grow numerically without necessarily growing up in corresponding maturity or changing the lives of people around them. Bigger is better than maturity. To still others, it appears to be a congenial fortress in which we spend the vast majority of our available time, in spite of the fact that it keeps us from doing the evangelizing and prophetic work of the gospel out among the unsaved and enslaved. Unwittingly, it becomes the building that serves as the physical focal point of the Christian ghetto.

War of Words

I am hardly judgmental of the Church: To the contrary, I am literally spending my life endeavoring to serve her. But in serving her we must not let her people continue on in the faulty concepts of her task. Much of our current confusion is through language that has been conceptually poisoned.

So what word or words can we use to best free our minds and release our thinking and our action? We must not let the enemy's corruption of biblical words chase us from the language warehouse of God's Word, for indeed it is our warehouse not his! This war of words, this battle to keep them sharp and empowering, is no small task indeed.

Making words serve us and not numb us is very difficult amidst a corrupt and superficial society where there are an increasing number of language-content thieves. Even our Christian jargon, those good biblical words chanted and tossed repeatedly among us in song and greetings and print, seems somehow to be dulling us to their depth and imperative for action. For example, how many believers who say, "Praise the Lord," are really hiding lazily behind the phrase rather than exercising themselves mentally and stating exactly why they are praising Him and how His latest act of faithfullness is helping them become more and more like Him? I have no masterful answer to the problem, but it is a beginning to recognize the warfare and to identify the crippling use of Christian jargon or biblical words drained of biblical content. I know that to act clearly I must think clearly, and to think clearly, the words in which I think must be sharp and illuminating rather than dull and unexamined.

I find myself increasingly tempted to drop the English word "church" and return to the original word the Holy Spirit used in the beginning, the "ekklesia." At least I know what it doesn't mean, and that is a start. We can't meet in an ekklesia because we are the ekklesia. And it reminds me that we are called out by God to rule in His world rather than meeting endlessly inside "the church," sheltered from the task at hand.

1.Sources:
Colin Brown: Dictionary of New Testament Theology
Moulton and Milligan: Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament
Berry: Classical Greek Dictionary
Liddell and Scott: Greek English Lexicon
Billinger: A Critical Lexicon to the English and Greek
New Testament
2. Romans 8:17; Ephesians 1:17-22
3. John 17; 1 Peter 2:4-10
4. 1 Corinthians 6:1-11

Reprinted by permission. This article is excerpted from Dennis Peacocke's book "The Emperor Has No Clothes" available at www.gostrategic.org