We just examined a principle of Church leadership: God determines who the Church's leaders will be. Along those same lines, here’s another principle for the Church—the most important principle for identifying it: The Church is what God says it is. Just as God says who leads in the Church, he also says what the Church is.

That’s why we always insist that the Church is not a human organization. On the contrary, the Church is an organism, a body. What’s the difference? An organization is a creation of man, an organism is a creation of God. An organization is not alive. A body is. We call bodies organisms. You never say that a body (be it the body of a human or of an animal) is an organization. This is why God repeatedly calls the Church a Body in the Scriptures—because it’s the Bride of Christ, a living organism created by God, not by human beings.

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one Body… Now you are the Body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it (1 Corinthians 12:12, 27).

If you study the history of the Church, you’ll trace the story of a body, not the story of an organization. There are no human explanations for its birth, expansion, or life. The Church exists always through the power of God—that is, the True Church. There are many “wannabe” pretend churches which are churches only in name. The True Church passes through many life cycles, and God will determine everything about it, even its demise.

What human organization was in place when the Church was born? It was born in spite of human organization, not because of it. The organization called the Sanhedrin—established by men who were Pharisees and Sadducees—did all that was humanly possible to squelch and eradicate the Church. But, nonetheless, the Church was born on Pentecost 50 days after Jesus was resurrected from the Dead. There was no organization in place that Pentecost.

The God-ordained leadership of the Twelve Apostles, with Peter as the first spokesman, was no human choice. None of its leaders had passed through the system of indoctrination of the religious leaders. None of them were seminary graduates.

They had no bank account, buildings, or books. They had no name yet. Nobody had yet called them Christians, but God infused spiritual life into them, and they became a living organism.

At birth, a baby doesn’t need toys, clothes, a house, or even a name. It only needs breath, and it is alive. God infused his Breath into the Body of Christ, the Church, from its inception. God poured his Spirit upon that handful of men and women who were praying that day, and that was enough!

Head-down Order

Now, when we say that it was not a human organization, we’re not saying that the Church didn’t have order. They did have order, just like any human body has order. Disorder in a body results in sickness, disease, or defect.

The first Church had a Head. God designed the Church just as he designs other bodies—from the head down. The Church had leadership, starting with the God-ordained Messiah, Jesus. Other leaders of the Church were also chosen by God. Their names were revealed to Jesus in an all-night vigil, and he called them apostles.

God put the Church under the leadership of the Twelve Apostles. Those twelve men were not a product of human organization, nor did they develop a human organization. Nobody nominated them. Nobody elected them. They did not graduate from a religious institution, seminary, or college.

The apostles didn’t produce a human organization? That’s right. By the time they had a fold consisting of 5,000 adult men (Acts 4:4)—meaning a congregation that easily consisted of some 25,000 people—the apostles still had no building, no financial structure, no salaries, no means of transportation, no schedule of events, and no training programs in place.

They had no pamphlets or guides, no videos, or websites. Even their written works would be produced out of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, inspired by love of the Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians. Men like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tried to reveal more to the Church about the life of Christ, and they composed the four Gospels. Did they charge money for the distribution of those Gospels? Of course not. Service and love motivated them, not financial gain. They were members of the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, working for the Kingdom.