The Local Church and the Kingdom

The Church and the Local Churches as the Kingdom of God in the New Testament

The first revelation concerning the church in the New Testament appears in Matthew 16:18, where the Lord Jesus proclaimed, “I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” In this verse, the church is characterized as an entity that will resist the gates of Hades, the power of darkness that wars and constantly seeks to prevail against the church. Herein is implied the first mentioned function of the church—to wield God's authority as His kingdom and to war against the dominion of Satan. This identification of the church in the present age with the kingdom of the heavens is further strengthened and confirmed in the following verse where the Lord says, “I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of the heavens, and whatever you bind on the earth shall have been bound in the heavens, and whatever you loose on the earth shall have been loosed in the heavens.” The juxtaposition of the church in verse 18 with the kingdom in verse 19 is no accident. According to this scriptural context, the church in this age must also be the kingdom of God to oppose Satan, as Witness Lee explains in a footnote to Matthew 16:18:

Gates of Hades refers to Satan’s authority or power of darkness (Col. 1:13; Acts 26:18), which cannot prevail against the genuine church built by Christ….This word of the Lord’s indicates also that Satan’s power of darkness will attack the church. Hence, there is spiritual warfare between Satan’s power, which is his kingdom, and the church, which is God’s kingdom.

(Witness Lee, Footnotes, 99)

The authority to bind and to loose according to God's will, which was conferred on the church in general (Matt. 16:18-19), should be exercised within each local church in particular (Matt. 18:18). The exercise of this authority, however, requires that a local church first possess the reality and practicality of the kingdom of the heavens. The case in Matthew 18 of a local church dealing with an unrepentant sinning brother illustrates such a living out of the reality of the kingdom. More specifically, the Lord’s charge to the local church to bind and loose through prayer in Matthew 18:15-19 reveals the way for believers to live the reality of the kingdom in the local church life. Witness Lee explains the practical application of these verses:

The church may have no way with this brother, but should we give him up? The Lord Jesus said that we should let him be to us like a Gentile and a tax collector. But the Lord went on to say that we have to bind Satan….

We have to bind the binding one, Satan, and we have to release the sinning one, the one bound by Satan, through our prayer in harmony….

We should not give up on anyone. We have to go to the Lord again and again with prayers touching heaven by binding and releasing in harmony. Heaven means God. We touch God, and God comes in to do something. This is what it means to live the kingdom life.

(Witness Lee, The Vital Groups, 5-6)

Based upon these verses in Matthew 18 and according to Witness Lee's exposition of them, the exercise of the kingdom in the local church consists of the believers in the local church exercising God's authority through their prayer to bind Satan and to release the sinning brother.

Witness Lee points to another verse in Matthew 16 that hints at the relationship between the kingdom of God and the local churches. In Matthew 16:19, the Lord Jesus gave specifically to Peter the keys of the kingdom of the heavens. This verse inevitably prompts the question, where in the New Testament could Peter be said to have used the keys of the kingdom? Witness Lee provides an insightful answer to this question by pointing to Acts chapters 2 and 10. In Acts 2, on the day of Pentecost, the Lord used Peter to lead the first Jews to enter into the kingdom through repentance, thus establishing the first local church in Jerusalem. Then in Acts 10, at the house of Cornelius, it was again Peter who led the first Gentiles to enter into the kingdom by believing in the Lord Jesus, thus inaugurating the local churches among the Gentiles. Although the ministry to the local churches among the Gentiles would later be entrusted to Paul (Gal. 2:7), it was Peter who initially unlocked the door of the kingdom to the Gentiles. In both Acts 2 and 10 then, Peter used the two keys of the kingdom given to him by the Lord in Matthew 16 to unlock the doors of the kingdom to all—Jews and Gentiles—who would later believe. Witness Lee also points out that the hearers of the gospel at that time who repented and believed in the Lord were added to the local churches, yet the keys in Matthew 16:29 were not the keys of the local church, but the keys of the kingdom. This demonstrates that the local churches into which the believers enter are the practicality of the kingdom of the heavens in the church age (Witness Lee, The Kingdom 33).

The most crucial and most compelling passage in the New Testament correlating the kingdom of God with the local church life is found in Romans 14 (addressed more fully here). This chapter deals with the more mundane matters in the local church life; for example, Paul cautions the Christians in the local church in Rome not to judge their fellow believers concerning the keeping of the dietary and sabbatical regulations. Why must the believers in a local church refrain from judging, but rather receive one another in love? “For,” Paul says—and his choice of conjunction here is meaningful—“the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (v. 17). In this context of the local church life, Paul could have more logically said, “For the church of God is not eating and drinking.” In Paul's mind however, the proper living in the local church life is tantamount to living in the reality of the kingdom of God; the believers must therefore conduct themselves in the light of God's judgment (v. 10), for the local churches today are the kingdom of God. Concerning Paul's use of the word “kingdom” instead of “church”, in this verse, Witness Lee says:

This verse is strong proof that the church in the church age is the kingdom of God, because the context here deals with the church life in the present age. The church is a matter of grace and life, whereas the kingdom is a matter of exercise and discipline.

(Witness Lee, Footnotes, 663-664)

In the New Testament, the kingdom of God is not so dissociated from the local churches of God as some might think. The excerpts above from Witness Lee show us that each local church serves as the necessary visible practicality of the kingdom; conversely, the spiritual reality of the kingdom must be the essence of the local church. May the reality of the kingdom of God pervade every the local church in these days, that God's will may truly be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The Kingdom—A Brief Overview

The Church and the Local Churches as the Kingdom

Reality of the Kingdom in the Local Church

Its Organic Development in the Local Church

Bibliography

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