CHAPTER ONE
THE CHURCH, THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SAVED ONES
UNDERSTANDING WHAT THE WORD “CHURCH” MEANS
The risk of conflict increases when people are discussing something they have a different meaning or opinion about. One party may speak from one point of view, while the other party may understand it differently. To avoid such happenings during our discussion, I will briefly narrate the history of how the English word “CHURCH” came into being.
The etymology of the word church indicates that the English word church came from the Greek word kuriakon. The root word KURIOS is translated LORD.
The possessive Greek word for KURIOS is KURIAKON which means pertaining to the Lord or belonging to the Lord or the Lord’s. In other words, KURIOS means lord and KURIAKON means the lord’s.
In time past, the world realised that Christians believed in the supreme Lord; that is, the supreme KURIOS. For this reason, the world called Christians or the believers KURIAKON; that is to say when translated into English: “The Lord’s people” or “The people who belong to the Lord”. In the process of time, KURIAKON became a German word “KIRCHE”, an Old English word “CIRICE”, a middle English word “CHIRCHE”, and then a modern English word “CHURCH”.
It must be noted that the word church is used to translate a different Greek word which is EKKLESIA (or ecclesia). This Greek word, “EKKLESIA” is commonly defined as “the call-out congregation” or “the assembly of the call-out ones.” Based on some reasons I cannot account for, Bible translators usually translate the Greek word EKKLESIA into English as ‘Church’ although ecclesia is found in most English dictionaries.
“The word ‘Church’ is really not a translation of any word that was used by either Christ or His Apostles, but is the Anglican form of a different word which Roman Catholicism substituted in place of the word used by Christ and His Apostles… It is in our English Scriptures by order of King James, who instructed his translators of 1611 not to translate the word “Ecclesia” by either ‘Congregation’ or ‘Assembly’ but to use the word ‘Church’ instead of a translation.” (Gospel Advocate, 1915, Pg. 589).
On further analysis, I want to state that since ‘Church’ means the people who belong to the Lord and ‘Ecclesia’ means the assembly of the call-out ones, there is not much difference in the meaning of these two words. Those who are called out from the world will definitely belong to the Lord, and those who belong to the Lord are called by the Lord. We cannot belong to the Lord and not be called by Him; similarly, we cannot be called by the Lord and will not belong to Him. For this reason, I prefer to use the called out ones throughout our discussion for the meaning of ‘Church’ instead.