Who needs the church? Anyone who wants the truth about God!
In previous posts we learned that God leads into truth even the newest believer through three divine guides: the inerrant Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and the church. We now look more closely at the guidance given by the church.
3. The church
The apostle Paul described the church as “the pillar and support of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15, LSB).
Jesus commissioned his apostles, taught them the truth, and assured them that the Holy Spirit would further lead them into all truth (John 14:17, 15:26, 16:13). Then the apostles taught the church the essential doctrines of salvation and God’s nature.
These core teachings from the apostles became the cardinal doctrines summarized in the church’s early creeds: The Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian Creed.
With regard to God, he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the mystery of the Trinity: one God, three persons.
Jesus Christ is God’s eternal Son, uncreated, fully God, who became fully man. He died for our sins, rose from the dead in a resurrection body never to die again, and ascended to the right hand of God as Lord and Christ.
With regard to mankind, all people have sinned and stand under the just wrath of God, but can be saved from eternal condemnation because of the atoning, substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. We are saved not by relying on the merit of our own supposed righteousness but rather through faith in Jesus Christ, relying exclusively on the righteousness he credits to us as a gift.
The church that the apostles of Jesus founded, that is now worldwide, and that is two-thousand years old agrees on these essential truths of salvation as the teaching of the Bible and the leading of the Holy Spirit.
What about when we seek the truth on matters that are not of first order importance, matters on which orthodox churches disagree? I will have more to say about that in future posts.
Next week I will add one more crucial guide into truth, which I did not identify earlier and which will bring us to four guides into truth. This fourth guide is prayer. These four guides, used in harmony, enable even the newest believer to know the truth with confidence.