Walking With Bannerman

#1, 10/2/18

Christianity is nonsensical without the church, from Bannerman’s Introduction - “The society of Christians is . . . not an accidental or voluntary union which has grown up of itself: it is a union designed beforehand, appointed from the beginning by God, and plainly contemplated and required in every page of the NT. There are precepts in the Bible addressed, not to believers separately, but to believers associated together into a corporate society; there are duties that are enjoined upon the body, and not upon the members of which it is composed; there are powers assigned to the community, to which the individuals of the community are strangers; there is a government, an order, a code of laws, a system of ordinances and officers described in Scripture, which can apply to none other than a collective association of Christians. Without the existence of a Church, or of a body of believers, as contradistinguished from believers individually, very much of what is contained in the Bible would be unintelligible, and without practical application.” - 2

A. The Church a Divine and Spiritual Institution - Vol. 1, Part 1, chapter 2

1. Divine Institution - by Christ’s appointment
   1. This is the foundation of much of what follows.
   2. Every believer is joined by faith to one another, by virtue of the faith itself - “In becoming one with Christ, he becomes at the same time, in a certain sense, one with all who are Christ’s.”
   3. Public profession is not one of choice, but of obligation and command from God - very entrance into life is through a public testimony
   4. “A solitary Christian is seen to be a contradiction in terms.”
   5. Contrary to seeing the Church merely as voluntary and humanly devised, there is a “positive institution of a society by Christ Himself”
2. Spiritual Institution - of the Holy Spirit
   1. Difference between agent of grace (Spirit) and means of grace (Word, Sacraments, Prayer, Community)
   2. Guards freedom of conscience and the civil liberty of the State
   3. The Spirit works upon the soul, through the outward uses of the word, water, Lord’s Supper, which are only “sensible signs themselves”, but the avenue the Spirit uses - there is no power in the outward signs themselves