Not a Human Organization

What's the Church made of? The Church is made up of people but it’s no human organization. Lots of our critics are quick to say that the Church is a human organization. What they are suggesting is that the Church is sinful, but that’s not true—God’s Church is holy!

The Church is made up of believers, and believers are God’s saints, his holy ones. The New Testament uses the word saint or saints 67 times and it's always used to speak of believers in a general sense. The word saint does not refer to some elite group of super-holy Christians. Every Christian is a saint. He or she is set apart.

People who peg the Church as "a human organization" are trying to say that it is led by sinners—but they only say that to justify their own sinful behavior. They are looking for a reason to ignore the message of the Church. If they can disparage the messengers, they will have discredited the message, the Gospel. They want to nullify the Gospel and live in sin as they please.

Holy Men

Detractors will do all they can to discredit the Church: slandering, lying, giving false witness, and inventing stories. The World has tried again and again to prove that the Church is a hoax. They do all they can to make it look bad, but the True Church has been led by Spirit-filled men from the beginning.

Look at the criteria the first church had for their first deacons:

… the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘… Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility [feeding poor widows] over to them’ (Acts 6:2-3).

Did you notice the qualifications of the Church’s first deacons? They had to be full of the Holy Spirit. These were men whose role was merely to assist the apostles! The deacons’ task was to serve food to a group of widows. They were not preachers. But since the deacons would be closely associated with the apostles—and the apostles’ reputation would be bound to the reputation of the deacons—the deacons had to be holy men.

The Scriptures were written by men like those first deacons—men with a testimony, filled with wisdom and the Spirit of the Living God. They were holy men. They didn’t speak according to their personal opinions or their own interpretations. They were not led by their own desires. They were led by the Holy Spirit.

… no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21; NKJV).

Confirmed by God

The men who led the Church in its initial stages were part of a divine institution, not some petty human organization. Just like their Lord Jesus, they did God’s will and they spoke God’s Word. God honored that. He put his seal on their lives by giving them the power to perform great miracles.

This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord [Jesus], was confirmed to us by those who heard him [the apostles]. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will (Hebrews 2:3-4).

God does not keep it a secret when he chooses someone for leadership in his Church. Even today, you can count on God to put signs on the life of a person he has chosen to lead—and don’t doubt that God gives supernatural signs still! God’s leaders are easy to spot. He confirms them with ‘signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit.’