Ekklēsia

Ekklēsia (“assembly”) was the term applied to many types of public gatherings in the ancient Roman world, whether civil or religious. In Scripture, ekklēsia can refer both to assemblies of people in a nonreligious setting and to organized gatherings of the followers of Christ. For example, ekklēsia was used to designate a confused mob opposed to Paul’s message in Ephesus (Acts 19:32, 41). The same term was used to describe a regularly constituted legal assembly of the city (Acts 19:39). Elsewhere in Acts the word is used in the sense of “the people of God” or “the church,” both universally (e.g., Acts 8:3; 9:31) and locally (e.g., Acts 5:11; 8:1). Ekklēsia is also used to refer to the covenant people of God in the Old Testament, the assembly in the desert at the giving of the law (Acts 7:38).

Elsewhere in the New Testament, ekklēsia refers to either a local church or the universal church. For example, Matthew 18:17 states that the third step of church discipline is to tell the matter “to the ekklēsia.” This likely refers to a local assembly of believers. The universal sense is most fully developed in the letter to the Ephesians (e.g., Eph 1:22; 5:23).

In Matthew, Jesus announced that His mission was to build His ekklēsia (Matt 16:18). Here the term has the sense of a new community of followers, a new people of God that are united based on Jesus’ teaching and work. The same passage, regarding the ekklēsia, recounts that Jesus told Peter He will give him the keys of the kingdom of God, suggesting a significant connection between the kingdom of God and the Church. Therefore, in various ways, but not all, ekklēsia is an expression of the kingdom (e.g., 1 Cor 1:2).

For Paul, ekklēsia did not always comprise the people gathered together in one locale. This is apparent when he states, “So if the whole ekklēsia comes together …” (1 Cor 14:23), confirming the church was not bound to a specific physical space.

The sense of ekklēsia as a unified family of people bound by their relationship to Christ is suggested when Paul admonishes the un-brotherly love exhibited by the rich towards the poor when the Corinthians gathered for the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:22). The lack of compassion was antithetical to the idea that ekklēsia represented a coherent family of God. Ekklēsia has a familial connotation elsewhere when Paul draws a parallel between a man’s lack of ability to manage his personal home as a disqualification to serve as an elder managing the ekklēsia of God (1 Tim 3:5).

While ekklēsia in its basic sense refers simply to any public assembly, the nt usage emphasizes the ekklēsia of believers as a community united by their common faith in Christ.

David Seal