Did Christ Die for a Building?

Scott Price

"Husbands loves your wives, even as Christ also the church and gave Himself for it" Ephesians 5:25

The vast majority of people today, religious or not, call a church building "the church". The word church in the Bible refers to a God-called group of assembled believers. God Almighty calls His people by the power of His Spirit and through the means of the gospel message, which brings them to conversion and into the family of God. These are the people that the Lord Jesus Christ died for to give eternal life by the merit of His blood and righteousness, which He established by His life and death.

The word of God does not talk about church buildings. The early church met in homes/houses. A few hundred years later there was a focus on building church buildings, especially when Constantine ran the first pagan, state-church. The focus went back to the physical adornment of the building to try and make it holy like the Old Testament form of worship that the book of Hebrews warns people to leave. Today, those that do not own or rent a "church building" are considered odd to the mainstream. The Bible does not focus on the temporary, physical forms of worship but the eternal, spiritual aspect of worship. The church is God's people not a building.

Do not forget the suffering Christ went through to obtain eternal redemption by a successful, victorious, substitutionary atonement made for a specific group of ungodly sinners that make up His church. Christ did not die for a building. Did He establish righteousness for a building? A building has nothing to do with it. Buildings will burn in the end. God's people are chosen and precious to Him. He gave His Son for them who in turn gave Himself for them by enduring the death of the cross. Let us give words the definitions that God gives them in His word. Next thing you know people will try to put an altar back in the church. Oops, I guess they already have.

An Altar?

"We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle." Hebrews 13:10

There is much talk in Protestant and Baptist churches today concerning an altar. Towards the end of their meeting they will have what is called an invitation with an "altar call". They claim that this altar is down front by the preacher. Somehow the mind-set is that everything that is holy is down front; the "Reverend" who stands behind the pulpit (some call a holy desk but when they are not preaching they sit in their special throne chairs behind the pulpit), the table that the Lord's Supper is served on (using very shiny dishes to serve the elements with a fancy white cloth covering them), and this so called altar where people come to "get saved". I hope you can spot the sarcasm in my tone. These things are a bunch religious foolishness.

The Bible speaks of an altar as an Old Testament item used in worship in relation to bloody sacrifices. Much of the New Testament, especially the book of Hebrews, warns us the altar and all other similar physical items are to be done away with (special furniture, shiny vessels, incense, candles, crosses, stained glass, robes, or any other thing that would make people feel religious and distract us from focusing on Christ). The Bible teaches that the way of Old Testament ceremonialism and formalism is to be done away with.

Christ sacrificed His whole self to the Father and became the altar that defines the grace of the New Covenant . This is how He satisfied the demands of God's Law established righteousness for the people He represented as High Priest. The sacrifice Christ made was final, never to be done again because of the success and the completeness of it. It is finished! The altar of false religion is still in use and is just one of many devices that Satan uses to keep people blind in their own self righteous deeds. Christ is the altar! He is the sacrifice! He is the ONLY priest! He is the Sabbath! He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life! Look to Him and turns from the idols of religious relic worship. God's people worship Him in Spirit and truth.