Back in the 1970s, I was teaching undergraduates in London University reading for the BSc Soc. I specialised in the Sociology of Religion and Urban Sociology. The two exam questions that all students found most difficult were deceptively simple. The first was “Who rules Britain?” And the second was “What is a Community?” I am not going to attempt an answer to ‘Who rules Britain’, but I do want to offer some thoughts about ‘community’ because it is vital for our understanding of teaching in the New Testament.

The Oxford Dictionary definition of ‘community’ is “a group of people living together in one place,” or “the people of an area as a social group, society”. Or “a group of people with a common religion, race, or profession” or “the holding of certain attitudes and interests in common.” It is small wonder that students have difficulty in defining a community! Now let us attempt to form a sociological definition of the New Testament community of believers.

The Cornerstone of the new community

There is a statement made by Peter which shows that he was a good Sociologist – long before the days of Max Weber and Malinowski, the fathers of modern Sociology. Peter wrote about community with an insight that he could never have learned as a humble fisherman – it had to have been received by divine revelation. He wrote about the foundations of our Christian faith in 1 Peter 2. Peter saw the risen Jesus as the capstone of the new temple that was the whole community of believers in Jesus. He saw Jesus as the linchpin holding together the whole structure of what was beginning to emerge as a movement that was linking together little groups of those who believed in Him in widely separated areas right across the Roman Empire. This was long before the days of institutionalisation when the church became a multinational organisation.

Peter wrote about community with an insight that he could never have learned as a humble fisherman – it had to have been received by divine revelation.

Peter obviously knew the Hebrew Scriptures, especially the writings of the prophets. He quoted Isaiah 28:16, “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation.” Peter added his own interpretation of Isaiah’s prophecy which he applied to Jesus, “And the one who trusts in Him will never be put to shame.” Peter then quoted from Psalm 118:22, “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone”. This was followed by another prophecy from Isaiah 8:14 “A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” In writing this, Peter was trying to account for the unbelief among the leaders of Jerusalem and the problems with the Judaizers who were opposing the apostles and evangelists in every town where the gospel had been planted.

It is very possible that Peter also had in mind an end-time prophecy from Zechariah 12:2 given some 400 years after the ministry of Isaiah. “I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves.”

The early days of the new community

To understand a little of this community, we need to look at the early days of the Church. Peter was undoubtedly the leader of the believers in Jesus from the day of Pentecost. It was his forthright declaration that Jesus was risen from the dead, pleading with the crowds to repent of their sins and accept forgiveness through faith in Jesus, that brought the large number who were baptised on that day. Peter was publicly seen with John attending prayer in the temple, which assured people that he was not leading a breakaway movement from Judaism.

It was on a visit to the temple when Peter and John were accosted by a disabled beggar whom they healed in the name of Jesus. This incident became known to everyone throughout Jerusalem and convinced many doubters that Jesus was indeed risen from the dead. His ministry of healing was continuing through His disciples. It was this and other similar incidents that caused the number of believers to increase rapidly – soon reaching 5,000, including a number of priests. Those priests would no doubt have been Pharisees, as the Sadducees (which included the family of the chief priests) did not believe in resurrection. It was the outstanding theologian Gamaliel, also a Pharisee, who intervened on behalf of the little group of disciples, now known as ‘the Nazarenes’: he said that if they were not of God they would fail but they were of God no one would be able to stop them.

The Nazarenes, although still living as observant Jews, began meeting daily in one another’s homes and eating together.

The Nazarenes, although still living as observant Jews, began meeting daily in one another’s homes and eating together. Whenever they took bread and wine together they remembered Jesus. If one of the apostles was present, he would recount incidents in the life and ministry of Jesus. “Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ” (Acts 5:42). In Luke’s account of the activities of the Nazarenes, they practised a form of ‘voluntary communism’ whereby they shared their resources, caring for one another, and especially for the widows and the poor.

Divisions and persecution

Clearly, very soon after Pentecost, the Nazarenes were an identifiable community of believers but the unity that Luke so carefully emphasises was broken by a group of Greek-speaking Hellenists who got into dispute with other Hellenists from the ‘Synagogue of Freedmen’. The Hellenists were proud of their Greek culture and philosophy whereas the freedmen were more likely to be Roman citizens which reflects a clash of cultures here.

Stephen’s defence before the Sanhedrin is the longest speech recounted in the New Testament, but his declaration that both the law and the temple would be replaced by faith in Jesus was sufficient to ensure his execution by stoning.

It was the Hellenists who were driven out of Jerusalem and who became the evangelists carrying the gospel throughout the dispersion.

Stephen’s death led to persecution, yet this did not include the apostles and the Nazarene community of Hebrews that they led. It was the Hellenists who were driven out of Jerusalem and who became the evangelists carrying the gospel throughout the dispersion. There is plenty of evidence that the Nazarenes remained in Jerusalem and thrived, although they were always materially poor. It was in bringing a gift to the poverty-stricken Nazarenes that Paul risked his life. He met with James and the elders of the community who reported, “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed and all of them are zealous for the law” (Acts 21:20).

This is powerful evidence that the Hebrew community of believers was not seen as a threat to Judaism. They were fully observant Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. Already, there was a clear distinction between the Nazarenes as a sect within Judaism and the Gentile-dominated Hellenist communities of believers scattered around the Roman Empire. This report to Paul referred to ‘elders’, which shows that the Nazarenes were already a community with a measure of organisation, such as that referred to in Acts 6 where men were appointed to supervise the distribution of food to the needy.

A messianic community of faith

If we return to Peter’s statement in 1 Peter 2, which has to be earlier than A.D. 64 when we know that Peter was killed in Rome, we can see the level of community development that had taken place among the Jews of the dispersion outside Jerusalem. Peter refers to the believers ‘living among pagans’ where they were “aliens and strangers in the world” (1 Peter 2:11-12). He says, in verse 5, that they are “living stones” who were being built together into “a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood”.

This is a statement with considerable sociological significance that culminates in the statement: “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God” (1 Peter 2:10). This is an amazing sociological insight! Peter is basing this upon the promise given to the people of Israel through Moses whereby God said, “Now if you obey Me fully and keep My covenant, then out of all nations you will be My treasured possession. Although the whole earth is Mine, you will be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:5). Peter was seeing the emerging community of believers as being the messianic community of faith whom God would use to fulfil His purpose of revealing Himself to the nations of the world through them. This is a reflection of the ‘kerygma’ (the teaching or preaching of the apostles) as seen in Paul’s statement that the spiritual leaders of the nation in Jerusalem were in slavery because they had rejected the truth (Gal 4:24-26).

A community with a common purpose

They were not simply a crowd of people, but a company of people with a common purpose.

The community of believers was a ‘community with a purpose’ which was the meaning of the Greek word ‘ecclesia’. They were not simply a crowd of people, but a company of people with a common purpose – which gives us a true sociological meaning of the word ‘community’ – a group of people with a shared set of values and a common purpose.

So, we can conclude that before the end of the apostolic era, the ‘ecclesia’, which in English is translated ‘church’, was already a functioning organisation with elders, in addition to its founding apostles. It was an organisation linking together a multitude of groups scattered around the Roman Empire, each of which was composed of men and women of different social rank, gender, racial origins, national, economic and language differences, – all held together by a common faith in Jesus, His headship and a common purpose to reveal His truth to the world. As Paul rightly proclaims they were a community of believers where “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).

This article is part of a series which was written towards the end of last year, before Clifford's beloved wife Monica died. To view the rest of the series so far, please click here.