# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1930_S12
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12 Proceedings of the thirty-second convention

the description of the Church that Scripture gives us. In the Epistle to the Ephesians we find, for one thing, the picture of the head with its body and its members. Chap. 1:22, 23: "And [God] hath put all things under his [Christ's] feet, and gave him [Christ] to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." Chap. 5:23-27: "For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." The same picture is found in Col. 1:18: "And he [Christ] is the head of the body, the church." According to these passages, then, Christ is the head of the congregation or Church, and this is his body. The members of the body, however, are most intimately joined with the head; complete unity must prevail among them, so that "the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love," Eph. 4:16; cf. Col. 2:19.

The same conclusion results also when we attend to another picture that the Holy Spirit uses repeatedly in the New Testament, namely that of a temple. Eph. 2:19-22: "Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." 1 Cor. 3:16, 17: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." That in a great building, a temple, unity or oneness is an essential attribute hardly needs proof. As soon as even a single stone in the spiritual temple of Christ's Church left the unity, it would simply no longer be part of the building. And the same lies in other pictures that Scripture paints before our eyes in order to give us some idea of the nature of the Church, as in the picture of the vine and its branches, of the children of God who form a harmonious family, and others besides.

Let us not forget, throughout the whole presentation, that it is here a question of the ideal of the Church in the proper sense, of the invisible Church. This is the Church of which we confess in the Third Article: "I believe one holy Christian Church, the communion of saints." Membership in this Church is known infallibly only to God, the LORD of the Church. Luke 17:20, 21: "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation (μετὰ παρατηρήσεως): Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you" (ἐντὸς ὑμῶν). The context clearly compels us here to depart from the classical use of the preposition and to accept Luther's translation, as he himself also finely explains: "Da der