“So if the whole church comes together . . . and . . . some unbelievers come in . . . he will be convinced by all . . .” (parts of 1 Corinthians 14:23-25 NIV)
“The visible church is the whole number of those who use the Word of God and profess the Christian faith, but among whom, beside the true Christians, there are also unbelievers.” (Martin Luther, Luther’s Small Catechism, Question #177 p. 157)
The early church and the church of the 1500s understood that unbelievers would be part of their assemblies. There is no way around this if we take to heart what Paul wrote to the believers in Jesus from Corinth and what Luther wrote in his Small Catechism. A friend mentioned that Luther’s thought may have been that there would just happen to be unbelievers in the crowd and that the church does not need to pursue them. None-the-less, both passages show a sensitivity to the fact that unbelievers could be present, they are an essential part of the visible church, and the language we use within our assemblies needs to be in their common laguage so that they can hear the Word and be transformed by the renewing of their minds.
When we make minor habits of the church into non-negotiables in order to please believers and tickle their ears and souls with pleasantries, we go against God’s desire for our behavior and message to be one of reconciliation. If there are no unbelievers in the crowd then how can we even have a message of reconciliation? The visible church, the one we gather in weekly as believers, needs to be inclusive, attractive, linguistically trained in the language of the culture, and utterly reconciliatory.
