Our Place in God's Plan

Much of the conflict and wasted effort throughout church history has resulted from failing to understand the difference between God's overarching plan for history and our place in that plan.

Definition

What is God's plan?  There are various ways of putting it, but a simple definition could be: To glorify Himself by setting apart a people for Himself and conquering His enemies to reign finally and eternally over all His creation.

Categories
 
What was Israel's place in God's plan?  God set apart Israel as a family (of Jacob), then a theocracy (Judges 2:16 - mediated through the judges), then as a theocratic kingdom (2 Samuel 7:26 - mediated through Saul and later David's family line).  Israel's primary obligation was to follow the Law given to Moses, and to serve as the one ethnicity through whom God's influence in the world would be mediated.  Israel failed, both in following the Law and in serving as a light to the Gentiles.

What is the church's place in God's plan today?  God set apart the church from the day of Pentecost as a real yet intangible grouping of those called out by regeneration and faith in the Gospel (2 Thessalonians 2:13-17), from among every nation (Revelation 5:9), composed into local assemblies (Romans 1:7; 2 Corinthians 1:2, etc) .  Her mission is to fulfill the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20, by making disciples who make disciples, instructing them in the teachings of God, then establishing more local churches which follow the corporate commands given in the New Testament (e.g. Hebrews 10:24-25).

What is the individual Christian's place in God's plan today?  Essentially, after believing in the gospel (Romans 10:8-10), his place is to obey the commands of God that were given generally to humanity (e.g. Genesis 1:28-30) or to New Testament believers individually (e.g. 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7).

There are other categories which precede the above (Adam; the patriarchs) or come after (the Millennial Kingdom, the eternal state), but I want to focus on the three highlighted above.

Issues

The church is not an extension of or a replacement to the nation of Israel.  Confusing the two usually results in misapplying promises or assuming things that are similar are identical.

For example, Israel received promises of physical health and material wealth.  If applied to the church, these promises can easily be twisted into a "health and wealth" gospel.  Or, circumcision has some similarities to baptism, but assuming they are the same thing results in the error of infant baptism, despite no Scriptural evidence for the practice.

God has given some responsibilities to the local church as a gathered assembly; others were given to individual members in the local church, as participants in humanity as a whole.  Confusing the two results in the church becoming distracted from her primary mandate of establishing and grounding churches.

For example, the local church is instructed to observe the Lord's Supper as a memorial to his atoning death (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).  An individual church member cannot legitimately observe that ordinance apart from the assembly.  Other commands of a similar nature include the "one another" passages, focused primarily on ministry in the church gathered (Hebrews 10:24-25).  On the other hand, the individual church member is commanded to submit to government (Romans 13:1-7).  Though local churches should also be law-abiding, that command is not intended primarily for the church as a whole but individuals in the church.

Summary

Regarding Israel and the church, we must avoid the error of supersessionism.  The church is not a continuation of Israel nor a replacement for Israel.

Regarding the local church and the individual member of the church, we must avoid confusing corporate and individual responsibilities.  There are "two kingdoms"¹; though they overlap, in that the individual Christian participates in both, they are not identical.  We must be careful to obey God's commands both for the church as a whole and for individual members in day to day life.


¹ For more information, please consult Dr. Mark Snoeberger's excellent session notes from the 2010 Mid-America 
Conference on Preaching, which was themed Church, Kingdom, Mission.  His notes may be found here.