Why do Protestants say Catholic Church?

1. 0:00Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 21.
2. 0:12What do you believe concerning the Holy Catholic Church?
3. 0:15I believe that the Son of God, through His Spirit and Word, out of the entire What do you understand by the communion of saints?
4. 0:40believers one and all, as members of Christ the Lord, have communion with Him and share in all His treasures and gifts. Second, that each member should consider it a duty to use
5. 0:50these gifts, readily and joyfully, for the service and enrichment of the other members.
6. 0:55What do you believe concerning the forgiveness of sins? I believe that God, because of Christ satisfaction will no longer remember any of my sins or my sinful nature which I
7. 1:05need to struggle against all my life. Rather by His grace God grants me the righteousness of Christ that I may never come into judgment. Have you ever heard
8. 1:15someone say I'm spiritual but not religious or I love Jesus but not the church. On the one hand, it's understandable when people say this because the church is
9. 1:24not perfectly pure. She has taught wrong things and she has also done wrong things. And that division and corruption has led some people to experience what's called church trauma.
10. 1:35But I want you to notice that pronoun that I just used to describe the church, she. The The church, scripture says, is the bride of Christ.
11. 1:42And the passage that speaks most powerfully to this is Ephesians 5.
12. 1:46There we read that Christ loved the church so much that he gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church,
13. 1:59or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
14. 2:03Because Jesus loves the church, we should love the church.
15. 2:06Question answer 54 reminds us, first of all, that the church belongs to Jesus.
16. 2:11We're made to be gathered into the life of the Son, to be drawn out of ourselves and into him and his life.
17. 2:18How has Jesus been?
18. 2:19How does he do this church work?
19. 2:21The Spirit of God works upon our hearts to draw us out of this world as it is apart from Christ and into the Word of Christ.
20. 2:29And it is in this sense that we as the church are holy. That is, we are set apart.
21. 2:34And the Son of God does this from the beginning of the world to the end.
22. 2:39human race and so this is what we mean by the word Catholic. And notice here the primacy of the gospel message in all of this. It's not that first of all there's
23. 2:48this, there's the church and there's this thing then called the gospel which is preached. But the gospel creates the community that is the church. And so here's where we sing, "She is his new creation."
24. 2:59by water and the word.
25. 3:02When we say that the church belongs to Jesus, we're recognizing that Jesus is invested in the church.
26. 3:07And so he gathers the church.
27. 3:09He defends and preserves the church as well.
28. 3:13And so we can also sing, "The church shall never perish.
29. 3:15Her dear Lord to defend, to guide, sustain, and cherish is what with her to the end.
30. 3:22Or as Lord’s Day 21 puts it, I am and always will be a living member.
31. 3:27Now we're all attracted to unity and we live in a world that lacks unity.
32. 3:32It's as polarized as it's ever been.
33. 3:34Well, the church has true unity.
34. 3:37Not the kind of unity that we have in this world the unity of ethnicity, unity of socioeconomic status, the unity of our interests or our preferences, unities which can be shaken.
35. 3:50But the unity of true faith in Jesus Christ is something that can withstand every obstacle.
36. 3:56So we have these wonderful blessings of security and unity we're also called to humility.
37. 4:01We're called to humility since the church belongs to Christ.
38. 4:04It's not about you.
39. 4:06And that makes the church different than any other community.
40. 4:09It's not a group of friends that you pick, for example, but it's a family that God chooses for you.
41. 4:14And so then when in his providence he places you in a particular local church, that's something that we're not not to take lightly.
42. 4:21That's not a membership that we can easily move in and out of.
43. 4:24It's not that we can't leave the church.
44. 4:26Of course, when a person first becomes a Christian, they need to choose a church.
45. 4:29When we move, we may need to choose another church.
46. 4:33But we don't leave a church lightly because we believe that in God's providence, He has brought us together as a body, local expression of the universal body of Christ.
47. 4:43And so we are members of one another.
48. 4:45And that leads to the second thing we're called to, and we see this particularly in question and answer 55.
49. 4:52We're in this together as believers.
50. 4:55Answer 55 reminds us that as members of Christ the Lord, We have communion with him.
51. 5:01And so we're committed to each other, to share our gifts with one another, to serve one another in love.
52. 5:07So for example, when our brother is rejoicing, we share in that joy.
53. 5:13When our sister is sorrowful, we share in her sorrow.
54. 5:17And their areas of need become opportune for us to supply them help.
55. 5:21So the supposed Christ follower who is not part of a church, they put themselves at a tremendous disadvantage.
56. 5:28It'd be like an athlete trying to play a team sport without teammates.
57. 5:32But in contrast, Ephesians 4 says that from him, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows builds itself up in love as each part does its work.
58. 5:44We're going to experience joy as a church, but answer 56 reminds us that we're also going to see sin, that sin is something we need to struggle against all our lives.
59. 5:54And so if we must offer God worship, Satan wants that worship to be as weak and flawed as possible.
60. 5:59And if we must gather together in community, then he wants that community to be as fractured and joyless as possible.
61. 6:07Satan wants to snatch us from God's hands, but he can't because God is greater.
62. 6:14Jesus says in John 10, "The Father is greater than all.
63. 6:16No one is able to snatch my sheep out of the Father's hands.
64. 6:19And because I and the Father are one, no one can snatch my sheep out of my hand either.
65. 6:27See the church belongs to King Jesus and so victory over the devil belongs to the church.
66. 6:32We're not perfect, but we're forgiven.
67. 6:35Jesus loves us as church, warts and all, and he is working so that those warts, will be removed forever.
68. 6:42Since Jesus loves the church, so can we.
69. 6:59Thank you.

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