What is the Ecclesia?

“So with yourselves: since you are striving after spiritual gifts, seek to excel in them for building up the church” (1 Cor 14:12).

Most Christian don’t know their own identity. They don’t know what the Ecclesia is. Ecclesia is usually translated as “church.”

What would you answer if I asked you, “Where do you go to church?” The question would not be strange at all. You would answer that you go to such and such church at a particular address. To most people, a church is a building that one goes to on Sundays. Or Saturdays if you are a Seventh-day Adventist.

The Greek word for “church” is ekklesia, which is brought over into English as Ecclesia. And it does not mean a building. As the Encyclopædia Britannica explains, ecclesia refers to a “gathering of those summoned.” Vines Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words says the word literally means the “called out ones.”

Ecclesia refers to an organism, not an organization. Ecclesia can refer to the local gathering of Christians or the whole body of Christians scattered throughout the earth. It sometimes includes, says The NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon, “the assembly of faithful Christians already dead and received into heaven.”

For this reason, I prefer using the word “Ecclesia” instead of the word “Church” when referring to the children of God in Christ. When we confess that I believe in “the holy catholic Church,” we are really referring to the true Christian everywhere, irrespective of their labels. The Ecclesia is the gathering of those summoned by God.

And in the passage above, the Apostle Paul says, concerning spiritual gifts, that we should “seek that you may excel to the edifying of the church” (1 Cor 14:12 MEV). Clearly he is not talking about encouraging a building, but the people of God. We don’t go to church, we are the church. We are the called-out ones summoned by God.