depth and perfection of our outward and inward achievement, are and remain dependent on the sin-forgiving grace of God, and are therefore without the possibility of pleading before God our Christian life as our own glory and merit or of basing our confidence on any kind of reference to our own achievement.
LECTURE XIV
(Art. 16–17, 25a)
THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH
1. The Christian life is the life of the church of Jesus Christ hidden in God and manifest to men. That is to say (cf. Lecture 6), it is the life of the people, which through Jesus Christ has been gathered to be one in Him, in spite of all the diversity of the individuals thus brought together, of their position in time and of the limitations of the age to which they belong, and which has been elected and called to holiness in Him in spite of all human sinfulness. This people consists of those who in faith in Jesus Christ are reconciled to God, and who, because thus reconciled, may proclaim the glory of God.
2. Jesus Christ is never without His people, but in the humiliation of His divine nature and the exaltation of His human nature is always the goal, the meaning and the content of its history, the ground of the promise to, and the object of the faith of this, His people. Because of this, there is no reconciliation of man, and therefore no Christian life outside the church. The faith, active in love, of the individual man is not his own private concern, but consists in his participation in the hidden and manifest life of the body whose head is Jesus Christ.
3. The mystery of the church and of our participation in her life is the divine hiddenness of the work of the Holy Spirit, through which individual men are called to faith, active in love and so to Christian life, and thus to life in the church.
4. Whether our participation in the life of the church as manifested to men means that we are also partakers in her life hidden in God, is something which must be decided again and again in the actualisation of faith. But there can be no participation in the life of the church hidden in God which would not also mean immediately and directly our participation in her life as manifested to men.
LECTURE XV
(Art. 18a)
THE FORM OF THE CHURCH
1. The one universal and holy church of Jesus Christ exists, as manifested to men, in the form of individual churches, which differ in time and place, but which in Jesus Christ as their head, and therefore in their faith and work, are uniformly determined.
2. The existence of the church as manifested to men as individual churches involves a distinction which has to be drawn over and over again in the history of these individual churches, the distinction, namely, between the true and the false church, that is, between the church founded, sustained and ordered by Jesus Christ and that set up, defended and made use of by men on their own authority.
3. The existence of the true church of Jesus Christ in an individual church (or the existence of an individual church as the true church of Jesus Christ) stands or falls with the work of the Holy Spirit taking place within this individual church. The question as to the true church can never be decided anywhere by means of the standards which we as human beings have at our disposal.
4. But the spiritual distinction between the true church and the false is carried into effect and made manifest in so far as the life of each individual church is reformed, that is, as in accordance with faith, active in love it is made subject to the Word of God as the Revelation of His Grace in Jesus Christ.
LECTURE XVI
(Art. 18b–20)
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH
1. The church cannot be governed either by the majority of its members or by a special ecclesiastical order—in no sense can she be governed by herself but only by the Word of God, by which she also has been founded and is sustained. But the Word of God is Holy Scripture, i.e. the testimony of the prophets and apostles to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Because it is by the voice of the Holy Spirit alone that the true church is both created and distinguished from the false church, she cannot listen to the voice of a stranger alongside His.
2. The church cannot therefore understand her course as a history of arbitrary human opinions and resolutions. She understands it rather as the exposition of Holy Scripture by itself, as the Word of God acting in her. Human opinions and resolutions can never precede but only follow the decisions of the Word of God and the church can never have the truth of the Word of God at her disposal but can only be its servant.
3. If the church on her side makes definite decisions, she does so because she must constantly justify her actions before the Word of God which governs her, and must constantly profess the truth in the face of error. The bonds she thus imposes can and will provide not a hindrance but rather free course to the Word of God. They are valid and effective in so far as the church in them owes allegiance not to herself but to Jesus Christ as her head and thus to Holy Scripture.
4. Provided that Holy Scripture alone governs the church, the valid constitution of government can in itself be built up equally well on the basis of an ecclesiastical order or on the basis of the congregation. But the freedom of the Word of God is better served and hence so also is the legitimate authority of the bonds necessarily imposed if the congregation is and remains in itself the bearer of the church’s responsibility towards the Word of God.
LECTURE XVII
(Art. 21)
THE CHURCH SERVICE AS DIVINE ACTION
1. The primary ground of the church service is neither devotional nor instructional. Nor is it the confession made by the human beings who take part in it, but the presence and action of Jesus Christ Himself and hence the work of the divine creation and sustaining of the church and of the Christian life of her members—a work which is the meaning and goal of all human history.
2. The primary content of the church service is therefore the work of the Holy Spirit both in the proclamation of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, determined and delimited by baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and in the faith which is established and nourished by this proclamation—a faith in which man, in spite of his natural lack of faith and disobedience, commits himself to the gracious and almighty lordship and care of God.
3. The primary form of the church service is given with that proclamation’s human means and signs which are instituted through the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. This, the form of the church service, cannot be confounded with its content and hence cannot be made absolute, as if Jesus Christ had rendered Himself superfluous through the human institution of the church. But this, the form of the church service, cannot be detached from its content, and cannot therefore be lightly esteemed and neglected as if Jesus Christ did not wish to glorify Himself expressly in the human institution of the church.
LECTURE XVIII
(Art. 22–23)
THE CHURCH SERVICE AS A HUMAN ACTION
1. The secondary ground of the church service is not the religious need or capacity of the human beings who take part in it but the necessity of obedience to the gracious will of Jesus Christ, present and active in their midst—a necessity which unites them into the church. This obedience is also the service which the church owes to the whole world.
2. The secondary content of the church service consists therefore in such action on the part of the congregation
