Imperium means supreme power or absolute dominion

Okay, what about local churches? Do local churches exist by permission of the state?

At the same time, there is one thing that should be utterly clear in a Christian’s mind: the local church does not exist by permission of the state. It exists by the express authorization of Jesus. After all, Jesus has imperium, not the state.

But the fact of Jesus’s imperium should have the opposite effect on our view of the local church: it should raise it. The local church is also one of Jesus’s agents, and he gave it an authority that you and I as individual Christians do not have

If you are a Christian living in a Western democracy, chances are that you need to change the way you think about your church and how you are connected to it. Most likely, you underestimate your church. You belittle it. You misshape it in a way that misshapes your Christianity

We’ll start with what a local church is not. If you are a Christian, the local church is not a club. It is not a voluntary organization where membership is optional for you. It is not a friendly group of people who share an interest in religious things and so gather weekly to talk about the divine.

is the assumption that we have the authority to conduct our Christian lives on our own. We include the church piece when and where we please.

That is to say, we treat the local church like a club to join—or not. And this assumption leaves us conducting our Christian lives somewhat aloof from the local church

the local church is the authority on earth that Jesus has instituted to officially affirm and give shape to my Christian life and yours.

Just as Jesus instituted the state, so he instituted the local church. It is an institutional authority because Jesus instituted it with authority.

So Jesus has instituted the state by giving it the power of the sword. Narrowly, this means the state can take your life (under the authority of God’s Word). By implication, this means it has the enforcement mechanism necessary for establishing the basic structures of society, such as deciding who is publicly recognized as a citizen.

Similarly, Jesus has instituted the local church by giving it the “power of the keys.” Narrowly, this means it can remove a person from church membership (under the authority of God’s Word). By implication, this means it has the enforcement mechanism necessary for establishing the basic structures of the kingdom life, such as deciding who is publicly recognized as a citizen

membership is a club word. Clubs and political parties and labor unions have memberships. But you don’t often use the word membership in relation to governments and the citizens of nations. You don’t say, “So how’s the membership of the British nation doing? Aren’t you guys running, like, sixty million members these days?”

Clubs begin with a point of common interest. Service providers begin with a common need or desire. Churches have all this, but they have something more: a king who requires the obedience of his people.

It talks instead about how God’s people gather together under his supreme rule. It’s interested in the citizens of a kingdom, not club members

A church’s authority gives shape to the family aspects of church life, the body aspects of church life, and so on.

A church is not the kingdom; it’s an outpost or embassy of that kingdom.

What is an embassy? It’s an institution that represents one nation inside another nation.

The embassy didn’t make me a US citizen that afternoon, but it did officially affirm it. Even though I’m a US citizen, I don’t have the authority to officially declare myself as one before the nations. Yet the embassy’s affirmation gave me the ability to continue living in a foreign city protected by all the rights and benefits of my citizenship.

That’s what the local church is. It represents the whole group of people under Christ’s lordship who will gather at the end of history

Christians’ homeland is nowhere on planet Earth. We’re strangers and aliens. Christians must look forward to their homeland.

find official recognition and asylum: the local church. Churches represent Christ’s rule now. They affirm and protect his citizens now. They proclaim his laws now. They bow before him as King now and call all peoples to do the same.

A church member, therefore, is someone who is formally recognized as a Christian and a part of Christ’s universal body.

But we start here because it represents the kingdom authority that Christ has given not to us as individual Christians but to us as local church members. Jesus didn’t leave us to govern ourselves and to declare ourselves his citizens. He left an institution in place that both affirms us as believers and then helps to give shape and direction to our Christian lives.

The embassy-like authority of the local church gives individuals who mouth the words, “I’m with Jesus,” the opportunity to demonstrate that those words mean something. The local church guards the reputation of Christ by sorting out the true professors from the false

If Jesus instituted the local church with authority over us, we don’t just join one like we join clubs or voluntary associations; we submit to them as we do to governments. And this is the fifth big idea:

Christians don’t join churches; they submit to them.

Once you choose Christ, you must choose his people, too. It’s a package deal. Choose the Father and the Son and you have to choose the whole family—which you do through a local church.

Christian authority also works by the tender, effective, and heart-changing power of the Word and Spirit, not by the manipulative powers of persuasion and coercion.

Still, Jesus means for Christians to willingly give themselves—submit themselves—to a local church.