“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

About halfway through Jesus’ earthly ministry, He took His disciples on a little field trip. They went deep into some nearby Gentile territory to a region that was about as pagan as it could be. It was pagan, and it had been pagan for a very long time. They were near the city of Caesarea Philippi, named both for the Emperor as well as the grandson of Herod the Great who ruled over the region. They were not far from the site of an ancient shrine to the Greek god Pan, located in a cave that was believed to be one of a handful of entrances to the underworld, also known as the “Gates of Hades.” There, when the distractions of home were about as far from their minds as they could be, Jesus asked them a question: Who do you say that I am? This led into a key confession from Simon whose name was there changed to Peter. Even more importantly than that, Jesus revealed to them His plans to leave behind an institution that would carry on His work when He departed from them. This institution would be known as the church, and this is perhaps the most foundational passage in the Scriptures as far as shaping our understanding of what the church is and what it should be doing. You could write a whole book on these few verses, but today, I want to explore just one idea Jesus introduced and an implication it has for what the church should look like today.

In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian believers, he calls Jesus followers ambassadors for Christ. What is an ambassador? This is someone who represents the interests and priorities of her home nation in the context of a foreign one. Being an ambassador is a serious position. When an ambassador speaks in an official capacity, her words are taken by those around her as representing the official position of her home nation.

If she says something or does something that is out of line with what the President or King or Prime Minister or autocratic dictator thinks or believes, there’s going to be trouble. There will be double trouble in fact. There will be trouble caused by her errant words between the nation she represents and the nation where she is stationed, and there will be trouble between her and her home nation. She’ll get fired. At least. Depending on the severity of her offense, she could get prosecuted. Or, if she’s an ambassador for Russia, she might even come down with a sudden case of defenestration. Either way, her words must be in line with the thoughts of her boss. Otherwise, things are not as they should be, and they won’t be left that way for long.

Sticking with this particular analogy, where does the ambassador for a particular nation operate when she is in the field? The embassy. Well, what is an embassy? Technically, it is the residence of the ambassador, but it’s more than that. An embassy is a little spot of officially foreign soil sitting in the middle of a host nation. If you are an American citizen traveling abroad, for instance, if you run into a problem, you go to the embassy. Why? Because once you cross that threshold, you are legally considered to be on American soil.

The laws of America apply there regardless of what the laws of the nation where the embassy resides are. As long as you remain in that embassy, the host nation can’t legally do anything to you, not without creating a major international incident anyway. They can’t have access to you. They can’t prosecute you for anything. They can’t harass you. None of that. And there are generally soldiers stationed at the embassy whose job it is to protect the lives of everyone inside the embassy just as if they were defending Americans on American soil…which is because that’s what they are doing. Now, of course, a nation can overthrow and take the embassy of another nation, but that would be considered an act of war.

Just as that embassy can take you into its doors to offer you all the rights and privileges and protections afforded to any American citizen – thus officially recognizing your citizenship – it also has the authority to refuse to do so. The embassy can leave you out in the cold, at the mercy of whatever your current host nation decides to do with you. The embassy holds, if you will, the keys to the kingdom of the country.

The analogy here is pretty apt. The church is like an embassy of God’s kingdom. And we who are members of the church are the employees of the embassy. More than that, we are the ambassadors of our King. When we speak as a church, we speak with His authority. What we allow or don’t allow is as if He is allowing it or disallowing it. If we let someone in, they are to be considered a member of God’s kingdom. If we don’t, they aren’t.

As I’m sure you can quickly and clearly see, the potential for abuse here is enormous. If one church says someone is in, but another church says someone is out, who’s right? If one church says something is okay, but another church says it isn’t, what are we supposed to do then? Churches exist all over the theological and cultural and political map. How are we supposed to know for sure which ones are right and which ones aren’t? And besides, the whole idea of telling someone they are or aren’t a follower of Jesus or drawing lines between followers of Jesus and people who aren’t seems way out of line for us to be doing.

Except, I stand up before my congregation and do just that on at least a monthly basis. Every time we observe the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, I say that if you are not a follower of Jesus, then this isn’t for you, and I go on the ask people to voluntarily refrain from taking the bread or the juice. Other churches and other denominations take a more or less vigorous an approach to what is often called “fencing the table,” but the basic principle is the same in each case. We are saying as a church that some people are in God’s kingdom and some people are not and treating them accordingly.

There is undeniable difficulty here baked into the cake and the potential for problems. Big problems. If I were God, I wouldn’t have done it this way. I wouldn’t have created something like this. There’s just too much potential for things to go sideways and mess up everything I was trying to do. And, it is without question that some self-professed churches have departed from God’s plans and path and done enormous harm to the broader church’s reputation in the world.

And yet, the church has persisted for 2,000 years. The gates of Hades have indeed not overcome it. The church has been right at the heart of every single effort to improve the lives of people, to advance the cause of human rights and justice, to bring relief to the suffering and hope to the discouraged, to give grace to the sinners, and so on and so forth since its inception. Pick a social or cultural movement that has accomplished some long term social good and you will almost assuredly find the church right at the center of it. Abolition? The church. Universal human rights? The church. Civil rights? The church. Voting rights for women and minorities? The church. Justice for the least, last, and lost? The church. Universal, free, basic education (i.e. the public school system)? The church. Modern science? The church. Prison reform? The church. Banning child labor? The church. Improved working conditions for workers? The church.

God’s kingdom has been advanced in more ways that we could even begin to count because the church has been operating mostly in line with His design for 2,000 years. This is because God has stayed active and involved with the church through His Spirit’s indwelling the lives of His followers. God didn’t create the church and then leave us to our own devices. That would have indeed been foolish. No, God created the church and then stayed actively involved in it, helping to keep us mostly on the tracks He had laid out for us to follow in the beginning.

There are absolutely stories of abuse and injustice. But those are the exceptions to the rule, not the rule themselves. You can tell this because whenever someone tries to attack the church, they typically only bring up one or two of about a dozen groups of stories, mostly from the past. And most of those are presented without their full historical context, and are framed in ways to make things look a lot worse than they actually were even where they were bad. Yes, you can go and spend all your time on various “deconversion” blogs and come away thinking that Christianity is just what all those bitter critics (understandably so given their experiences) negatively caricature it as being, but this would be like your hating a local coffee shop or bakery with a thousand five star reviews online because you decided the ten one star reviews must be correct…without ever actually visiting the coffee shop for yourself.

Let’s think through just one more thing related to this and then we’ll be done for today. If the analogy of the embassy is an accurate one for our understanding of the church, what does that mean when it comes to our relationship to it as followers of Jesus who consider ourselves to be members of His body?

Well, let’s use our analogy here as our guide. Do you remember the Tom Hanks film from several years ago called “The Terminal”? It was about a man named Viktor from a made up Eastern European country who travels to the United States. While he is on the flight over, there is a coup d’etat in his home nation of Krakozhia, and the United States refuses to recognize the new government as legitimate. Without a recognized government backing his travel documents, Viktor’s passport is no longer seen as legitimate by the United States, thus he is not going to be allowed to enter the country. But because the country that issued his passport has been overthrown and replaced by a new nation, he can’t return home either. He is a man with no country.

Now, the movie is cute and heartwarming, but in real life, that kind of a situation would be horrible and terrifying for someone stuck in it. A person with no country has no one to speak for him, no one to vouch for his identity, no one to safeguard his rights, no one to extend legal protections to him if he should need them. You couldn’t work. You couldn’t buy or sell anything (legally anyway). You couldn’t get housing. You would be all alone with no one to help you. You couldn’t call anywhere home.

Do you see the connection here? A follower of Jesus without a church home is like a traveler without a country. As a follower of Jesus, if you don’t have a church body with whom you are deeply connected and with whom you are learning and serving and worshiping and observing the ordinances and fellowship and both giving and receiving loving accountability and so on and so forth on a regular, consistent basis, then you don’t have anybody who is vouching for your kingdom citizenship to God.

Now, that does not by any means necessarily mean you don’t have it, but you don’t have anybody vouching for you. You don’t have anybody who recognizes you. And although someone could try to claim in response to this that God is all they need to recognize their kingdom citizenship, that’s not how modern nations work. That’s not how God designed His kingdom to work either. His recognition is given through the church just as the recognition of your citizenship when you are traveling abroad is given through your embassy. If you don’t have that, you are adrift and in need of a home. As for where that home needs to be, that depends on you and God’s leading. But delaying that connection for any longer than is absolutely necessary is a risky business. And, like Viktor experienced, simply living in the airport of a host nation without having your citizenship recognized by anyone is not a good solution to this problem. Being a fully connected and invested member of a church really does matter.

If you are a follower of Jesus, you need to be part of a church. You don’t just need to be part of a church, you need to be a fully connected and invested member of a church. Your salvation doesn’t necessarily depend on that – that’s something that can happen between you and Jesus no matter what your current situation happens to be. But just like a person without a nation won’t survive long in the world, especially when he is living in hostile territory, you won’t last long in God’s kingdom if you don’t have a place to go where your citizenship is recognized and affirmed and where you can receive the encouragement and support you need to keep living it out when you do have to go out into the world. So, find a church and join that church and have the impact on and with that church that God designed you to have. The whole kingdom will be glad that you did.