Truth Unites - How To Find the One True Church™ (You Need Faith)

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Gavin Ortlund discusses the invisibility of the church, how Christians have understood the church throughout history, and what it looks like to see the church through the eyes of faith.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

First, let's just talk about the example he gives from Elijah, where the true prophet literally thinks, I'm the only one left. And God's response to him is, no, I have 7,000 others that you don't see. We don't see everyone whose heart belongs to the Lord. Note that a chapter earlier, Ahab had accused Elijah of being a troubler of Israel. Elijah's response is, I've not troubled Israel. You have. In other words, what they're going back and forth and they're saying, you're the troubler of Israel. No, no, no, I'm not. not the troubler of Israel, you're the troubler of Israel. What they're both saying in effect is what all these different sides are saying in the interdenominational apologetic scene, I'm a part of the true church and you're not. Have you ever heard people talk about the church invisible or the invisible

church? This is a frequently misunderstood concept, but it's profoundly relevant to conversations between Protestant Christians and other Christian traditions, people who are involved in these sort of interdenominational apologetics, where there's talk of ecclesial angst, and you're searching for the one true church. This is a big thing online. This topic is very relevant to those conversations, but often misunderstood. But I hope this video impresses upon your heart can be summed up in this quote from a church father. I won't name who it is yet, and I won't even read the whole thing, because we'll come back to this and work through it very carefully. But to paraphrase, he's saying, don't venerate the church in roofs and buildings, it's safer to locate the church in mountains and forests and lakes and prisons and whirlpools

because so often the true church is pushed under the thumb of persecution. We'll explain who said that and what he meant at the end of this video. I think you'll be surprised a little bit by that. Now you've probably heard of this language, if you're in these discussions at all, the invisible church. Sometimes this is misunderstood as though it was set over and against a visible church, as though we're saying the church is invisible rather than visible. Not at all. This is a distinction between two aspects of the church, both of which are being affirmed. They're simply being distinguished. It's kind of like when we speak of the church triumphant and the church militant. That's not saying it's only the church triumphant exists, and therefore the church militant isn't real or something like that. You're just distinguishing

between two different aspects of the church, so also with the church as visible and invisible. And this distinction is basically a way to say that there are baptized hypocrites. That is to say, people who belong to the church visibly, to humanize, it looks like they are Christians, you can see them getting out of the baptismal water, their names are written with ink on the membership roles of the church, they're in the pew every Sunday there, but invisibly in a way that only God sees, they're not actually mystically united to Christ by faith. They don't actually love Christ, follow Christ, obey Christ, from the heart in the way that God can see. So, in other words, very simply put, some people look like Christians to human eyes, but in God's eyes, they're not actually Christians.

And so the church today, to greater and lesser degrees, looks like the parable of the wheat and tears in Matthew 13, where you have both the wheat and the tears growing together, and then it's only on Judgment Day that they are separated. St. Augustine used as this passage when discussing the invisible church. Yes, that idea is present in Augustine's writings. There's a lot of academic discussion about that. But even more basically, understood accurately, this is a very biblical idea. We could use Paul's language in Romans 2. Rather than speaking of visible and invisible, he speaks of the inner and the outer. And he says, not everyone who is outwardly circumcised is inwardly circumcised, that is, has a circumcised heart, which is what God sees and gets praise from God. And there are times in the history of Israel where the visible church is way bigger than the

invisible because many, many people are physically outwardly circumcised but don't have a circumcised heart like Jeremiah 9, where God says basically all the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart. When Jesus comes, the Pharisees ask him when the kingdom of God will come, and his answer is the kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed. Nor will they say, look, here it is, or there, for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. This is a commonly cited passage. The old King James said, the kingdom of God is within you. Jesus seems to be saying, there's lots to debate about this passage, but minimally, Jesus is saying, the kingdom of God cannot be measured with an x-ray machine.

You can't take a regenerated heart and put it under a microscope or some scientific measurement or some visible measurement and say, ah, here's where regeneration is happening. The kingdom of God has advanced into this person's heart. God sees that. The scripture says the Lord knows who are his, but we don't have that divine vision. So there's a visible and invisible aspect to the church. course they hugely overlap. Ideally, fully overlap, but unfortunately because of sin and hypocrisy, they don't fully overlap. An example, simple example to make the point would be to ask,

was Judas Ascarriot a member of God's people? And I think we'd want to say that there's a sense in which the answer is yes. He's not a false apostle, fake apostle, half apostle, or junior apostle. He was a duly called apostle. But there's a sense in which he's not a member of God's people because he's not actually loving and following Christ. He's not actually united to Christ by faith. Judas is a hypocrite. And so he's a part of the visible church, but not the invisible. By the way, a quick pastoral aside on Judas. We have no reason to think that Judas was ever a true follower of Christ. He seems to have always been kind of a creep. John tells us that he was a thief. He used to take whatever he wanted out of the money bag and so forth. And I mention this because

I actually find some people are scared. They're going to become Judas the scary. and what it seems is that his betrayal of Christ isn't some sudden random arbitrary turn. Rather, this was consistent with his character beforehand. And I always want to encourage people, make a distinction in your mind between Judas and Peter who denies Christ or Thomas, who doubts Christ, and yet they're still apostles. Usually those who are worried, I'm going to become Judas, are more like that. The very fact you have that worry shows you don't have a super hard heart like surely Judas Ascariot must have had. That's a pastoral aside. So what we're trying to get at here is this basic,

what's at the core of this distinction between the visible church, the invisible church. Hopefully you can see how modest this idea is. It does not mean there are two churches. It does not mean there isn't a visible church at all. In distinguishing between the two, we're not denying either one. Here's how Francis Turriton puts it. The distinction of visible and invisible is not a division of genus into species, as if we formed two churches in species opposed to each other as our opponents slander us, but is only a limitation of the subject according to its various relations. The same church is rightly said to be visible as to external form and invisible as to internal. The adjectives external and internal there kind of hearken back to mind the Romans two categories

we just had. Also, to affirm an invisible church is not a denial of the institutional character of the church. This is another thing you hear so often is people will conflate institutionality and visibility, but those are conceptually distinct. Institutionality has to do with established laws and practices and customs. Visibility just means it can be seen. And we Protestants believe in an institutional character to the church. We believe particular offices have been given to serve the church. Particular sacraments exist for the church. particular practices like church discipline and church membership and so forth. None of that is where a Protestant ecclesiology or doctrine of the church differs. The real dividing issue between Protestants

and other Christians with respect to ecclesiology or the doctrine of the church is not visibility, but whether the church is restricted to one institution, and then secondly, whether the church is capable of infallibility after the period of divine public revelation. Now I think this distinction between visible and invisible is an area around which all Christians can find some level of agreement. It's true that some Protestants, and especially some Anabaptists, for example, have wielded this idea more ambitiously at points. And it's also true that some of their opponents reacted so strongly against it that they emphasized the church's external character much more. So, for example, at the time of the Reformation, the Roman Catholic theologian Robert Bellarmine could say the church is an assembly of men

so visible and palpable as is the assembly of the Roman people or the Kingdom of France or the Venetian Republic. But in more recent times, especially of Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church has emphasized the interior and spiritual character of the church more, and some of these differences are not matters of irreconcilable contradiction today. I think actually an interesting doctoral dissertation would be to compare and contrast, Catholic and Protestant perspectives on this point today. But the goal of this video is not to argue for or against one of the areas where we would have a clash. It's to make a more basic pastoral observation, especially to those involved in these conversations, from this idea, and not just from the invisibility of the church, but from a sister doctrine, which I'm going to give the name the splendor of the church. So, for example, in Turriton's treatment of the doctrine of the church, he talks about the invisibility of the church, and then the next section is on the indefectible.

of the church, meaning that the church will never die or fail. And he also affirms that. He believes in that. Most historic Protestants have. And then the next section is on the splendor of the church. And his position is that the church isn't marked or denoted by external splendor or impressiveness. She will not always have prominence and prosperity in her appearance to human eyes. Here's how he puts it. The church can never wholly fail on earth, as was seen before, that's indefectibility, but not that it is always conspicuous and prominent, but is often obscured and sunk, whether by persecutions or by errors. This is a theme that was developed earlier by John Calvin. So when he wrote his famous book, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, he wrote a

prefatory address to King Francis, and in that point, he says there are two differences, two differences between Protestants and their Roman Catholic opponents when it comes to ecclesiology and history. The hinges on which the controversy turns are these. First, in they're contending that the form of the church is always visible and apparent, and secondly, in they're placing this form in the sea of the Church of Rome and its hierarchy. So that second point there is what I mentioned earlier, the restriction of the church to one singular institution. And as I often point out, Calvin is so indignant that the Catholics said to the Eastern Orthodox, you're not a legitimate church. That is what is being referenced on screen as the Greeks and the passage you can see here, and he's saying, how can you say that it's you alone that are the church? If you are going to reduce the church to one hierarchical governance, the Eastern Orthodox have a better claim to that than you do, or the people he called the Greeks. By the way, that's the same position as Luther, and also they had the same position concerning the Oriental Orthodox. They affirmed that the Oriental Orthodox Church is a legitimate church. So they're saying, look,

the church coheres within these multiple institutions. So that's Calvin's second point there, where there's a, he's noting a difference. The first one, let's put it back on the screen in bold, and he says, the hinges on which the controversy turns are these first, and they're contending that the form of the church is always visible and apparent. So there you see the adjective visible. And what Calvin is getting at here is that the true church never dies, but she is not always obvious. You need faith to discern her and to distinguish a true church from a false church. and it's possible to have a worldly judgment about that. It's not always going to be obvious, outward, and impressive. Here's how he puts it, as he continues. We, on the contrary,

maintain both that the church may exist without any apparent form, and moreover that the form is not ascertained by that external splendor, which they foolishly admire, but by a very different mark, namely by the pure preaching of the Word of God and the due administration of the sacraments. Now, I can hear people possibly wanting to react to this by saying, God is not going to let his church die. God is not going to let the external form of the church completely fall apart. And Calvin would agree, Church would agree, I would agree, we'd all agree, the church is indefectible, the church shall never die. But it's one thing to be alive, and it's another thing to be obvious. The church can be obscured.

Sin and error can come into the picture. the wheat and tears can get intermingled so that you have to use judgment and faith and discernment to pick them apart. The words of Christ in Matthew 16, I think, are often overworked. What he says is, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against her. He doesn't say, I will build my church and no sins or errors will ever enter within her. And I have a whole video defining that phrase, gates of hell prevail, working through how the Old Testament uses that phrase and what it basically means. Basically means death. To use a metaphor, the promise is you're not going to get knocked down and

lose the boxing match. The promise is not that you're not going to take any punches or even maybe get knocked down and have to get back up to use a metaphor. It's a promise of indefectibility. The church shall never die. It's not a promise that there will be no sins and errors that come into the picture. And to prove this and to develop this idea that that, the church can languish, the church can become sunk, the church can become obscured, the wheat and the tears can grow together. Calvin says, look at history, both Old Testament history for the Jewish people and the New Covenant era of church history. Quote, they make an outcry whenever the church cannot be pointed to with the finger, but how oft was it the fate of the church among the Jews

to be so defaced that no comeliness appeared? What do we suppose to have been the spree? blended form when Elijah complained that he was left alone. How long after the advent of Christ did it lie hid without form? How often since has it been so oppressed by wars, seditions, and heresies that it was nowhere seen in splendor? Had they lived at that time, would they have believed there was any church? But Elijah learned that there remained 7,000 men who had not bowed the need to bail, nor ought we to doubt that Christ has always reigned on earth ever since he ascended to heaven. So note here that Calvin is appealing to both before and after the coming of Christ. We're going to come back to the church age after the coming of Christ in just a second with where Calvin is going to go with that. First,

let's just talk about the example he gives from Elijah. This is an amazing moment in redemptive history where the true prophet literally thinks, I'm the only one left, as you can see on screen there emboldened, and God's response to him is, no, I have 7,000 others that you don't see. We don't see everyone whose heart belongs to the Lord. The Lord knows who are his, but there's an invisible aspect of the church that we just, we can't tell. I don't know, I don't know, you know, by the way, a pastoral note from this is just to never assume we always have the top to bottom view of everything God is doing. God is at work in many ways we just are not aware of. And so God's sort of rebuking Elijah in this passage. This is one of my favorite passages to preach on. I think I have a

sermon on this on my YouTube channel on this passage. But it's an encouragement. God is saying, look, Elijah, these 6,99 individuals that you're off by may be invisible to you, but they're not invisible to me. God is at work in ways Elijah doesn't know about. It's a reminder of the need to discern the church spiritually, not in a carnal way that assumes human vision can see it all. And the question is, If we had been, this is what Calvin asks, if we had been alive in Elijah's day, would we have recognized the true church for what it was? And let's not be too proud to assume that we would have seen it perfectly. It's very easy to judge the church in a carnal, worldly way that appeals to human pride and human metrics, not faith. Note that a chapter earlier, Ahab had accused Elijah of being

a troubler of Israel. I love this. So he says, that you trouble of Israel. Elijah's response is, I've not troubled Israel. You have. In other words, what they're going back and forth in is they're saying, you're the troubler of Israel. No, no, no, I'm not the troubler of Israel. You're the troubler of Israel. What they're both saying in effect is what all these different sides are saying in the interdenominational apologetic scene, I'm a part of the true church and you're not. I'm on the good guys, you're on the bad guys team. This is what Stephen says in Acts 7 to his opponents. I'm a part of the true church and you're not. That's what they're both saying. So here you have these two claims, Ahab and Elijah, both accusing each other of being the troubler

of the church, which one is right? Which one has greater visible splendor? The fact is, Ahab can appeal to an immense sea of institutional privilege. Okay, impressiveness, a whole hierarchy of offices operating underneath him. He's got the temple on his side, the priests, the royal court. It's all. there, he could have made this appeal. God established these institutions. Do you think he's going to let his own institutions go corrupt? And yet, despite all that, in all his splendor, Ahab was wrong. He was the troubler of Israel. And the true prophet hiding up there in Zarifath, with this one Gentile widow and her son in the heart of bail worship, that's the true prophet. But God has 7,000 others, of course, as well.

point is this is not the only time in Old Testament history where you see the true church is not marked by visible splendor, but it can be sunken and obscured. Not the only time. Just a couple chapters later, you get Micaiah prophesying against all the false prophets, for example. It happens a lot. Now, so the question is, to be humble to say, would I have been able to discern the true church if I were alive at that time? Well, I hope so, but I would have needed faith and I would have needed to not make a judgment based upon human pride. As someone might say, well, that's the Old Testament. Of course, back then institutions could have sin enter into them, even if they did not completely destroy them. Of course, back then, the form of the church can be obscured, but that would never happen in the new covenant era in the church age. Really? Study church history.

It's a mess. Go back to the Aryan controversy, for example. This is what Calvin is going to appeal to next. There's a period of time where, actually, where, actually, you know, I'm going to see. Athanasius and those loyal to him and loyal to Nicene Orthodoxy really were hard-pressed. The Aryans really did take over for a while, not fully, but you've probably heard this phrase, Athanasius contra munda, meaning Athanasius against the world. That phrase came about for a reason. It's not literally true that the whole world went Aryan, but I'm going to give a quote from

Hillary in a second who's also sometimes called the Athanasius of the West. You do have other Nicene Christians, but nonetheless, there's periods like in the 350s and in the 360s when the Aryans and or semi-Aryans really do acquire imperial backing, and they've got the Nicene Christians on the run. Okay. During a lot of these periods, Athanasius is often exile and many bishops across the empire, either go Aryan or go silent. okay, it's pretty dark. The external form of the church is definitely shrunk and obscured, if you believe in Nicene Orthodoxy. After he appeals to Elijah, Calvin appears to this time in history and specifically to the quote I started off this video with from Hillary of Poitiers, the so-called

Athanasius of the West. And Calvin's quotes from a work of his defending Nicene Orthodoxy against the Aryan bishop of Milan, Axentius. He served for almost 20 years. He was the bishop, for Ambrose in Milan, he was Aryan, and for portions of time, he was able to make the same appeal as Ahab. He's able to say to the Nicene defenders, you guys are the troublers of Israel, and look at all this institutional backing we have. And in this work, Hillary makes the point that the true church is not manifested by any external impressive structure or form. Rather, the true church is marked by the gospel. It's that simple. Jesus Christ, in word and sacrament, that's where you find the church. And I want you to listen to his words. This is my own translation from the Latin. I love this passage so

much. One thing I warn, beware of Antichrist, for badly a love of walls has seized you. Badly, you venerate the church of God in roofs and buildings. Badly, under these, you pile up the name of peace. Is it doubtful that in these Antichrist will have his seat? To me, mountains and forests and lakes and prisons and whirlpools are safer, for in these the prophets, either dwelling or submerged, prophesied through the spirit of God. That's Hillary to the Aryan bishop who's got all the power like Ahab. What he's saying is sometimes the true church of God is under the thumb. Sometimes it's cast away to Zarifath like Elijah.

sometimes it's hiding behind a waterfall to escape persecution. If you study church history, you see these episodes. This is not the only time. And so you can't measure the church by external impressiveness. You can't look and say, well, we know this is where the church is. Because look, wow, you know, it's impressive. And this should be a reminder for all of us. By the way, this is not right now an argument against one alternative.

Sometimes people listen to my advocacy for various Protestant convictions. in a very self-referential way, and they're assuming that I'm arguing against, like, a Roman Catholic view at every single juncture along the way. Okay, I'm not, Catholics can agree with a lot of what I'm saying right now. This is a basic pastoral point about the need to discern the church by faith, not by carnal pride that is looking to say what makes, and so let's talk about this to finish off the video. What do I mean by that? The doctrine of the church or ecclesiology must be ascertained spiritually and by faith, no less than any other aspect of the gospel. It is possible to have a carnal, worldly, proud view of the church.

So, for example, when Jesus was born into this world, he was not visibly impressive. He was born in a manger. Very few people knew him. As the prophet Isaiah says, he was despised and rejected by men. He was not a king. He was not exceptionally handsome and tall. There was no fanfare and trumpets following him around. you needed faith to ascertain the true Messiah, not carnal intelligence, not looking at external

impressiveness. The Church of Christ is the same. The Church of Christ must be ascertained by faith, no less than Christ himself. Not by carnal means. Picture, if you will, in your mind's eye, 15 people meeting underground in China. Plain building, plain dress. They are not the most important members of society. None of these 15 people are wealthy. None of them have a lot of political clout. From the standpoint of the eyes of the world, this wouldn't necessarily be an important event. But in the heart of Jesus Christ, it is precious. It is the most important thing. It's the most important kind of thing that happens anywhere in the universe. A billion stars can vanish, and that's less of a consequence than these 15 precious people united to him by faith,

worship, taking the Lord's Supper, practicing their spiritual gifts, etc. Jesus, received. Jesus, their worship like he received the expensive perfume of Mary poured on his feet. Yet the world completely overlooks it to humanize, it's not visibly impressive. One thing I want to clarify, I am not trying to say that beautiful buildings are bad. This comes up a lot in these conversations, and I think that it's true that many Protestants have too low a view of these things. Again, we're not denying that the church has an institutional character and that these sort of blessings make a difference. I would say two things. Number one, beautiful buildings are not

strictly essential. I hope we could all agree on that. And number two, if we value beautiful buildings, it should be for spiritual reasons, not carnal reasons. How do we know the difference? If it produces contempt toward others, then it is carnal. If it produces love for Jesus and love for others, then it is spiritual. Our beautiful buildings, I think we should have beautiful buildings as much as we can. And that should convey the grandeur of God to others. But it shouldn't make us feel superior. What I am thinking is often afoot in these conversations is this sense of people letting ecclesiology make them Pharisees. We feel superior to others because I'm a part of the true church. You're all the troublers of Israel over there. I'm a part of the true church. And what we need here is the gospel itself.

The gospel is the good news that we can be restored to God through Jesus' death on the cross by simple faith. All you have to do is surrender, collapse in need before Christ, and receive and repent and relinquish surrender and follow Jesus. That act, faith in your heart makes you totally acceptable to God. You're God's child now. You're going to heaven. That is what we need in our ecclesiology. That's what makes us feel okay. You know, in other words, don't look to Christ for your eternal justification, but look to your ecclesiology to make you feel okay in the meantime emotionally about where you fall in the church. Who cares if your church isn't all that impressive? Who cares? That's not what the church is here for. That's not how you measure the church.

The church isn't here. The church advances, the true church advances in the same way the kingdom of God advances. It's not externally impressive. It's not the worldly pomp and prestige and so forth. So let us seek the true church of Christ, not by what appeals to human pride. let us seek it among the humble, the persecuted, the widows and the orphans, the destitute, the overlooked, the forgotten, the rejects, etc. These are the people in this world that the heart of Christ is drawn to. And so often, where institutional power accrues, we will face all kinds of temptations that don't exist in these other contexts, often Zarifath. God does some of his best work, often places like Zarifath. That's a reminder, that's a pastor, it isn't a

it is not a knock-down argument against one position versus another. Every one of us needs this. I'm actually most concerned about Protestants when I talk about this in this video. I think a lot of Protestants, they're not convinced because some of the claims of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, they see, they're not convinced by, they're not convinced by the Mariology and praying to the saints and icon veneration. They're like, yeah, that does look like more like an accretion. But they still feel the sense of, but I need to have some walls around me. And so there's still this temptation toward pride in our ecclesiology. And you can always tell pride when it's manifesting

and looking down on others. By the way, last thing I'll say, this can happen from the low church people in the opposite direction. We looked down the stream and say, I'm not like that church over there. With all their fancy robes and fancy liturgy and beautiful building, we're not so worldly as them.

So it can happen in any direction. Nonetheless, the point is we must ascertain the true church through humility, faith, and in a spiritual manner, just in the same way. we ascertain Christ. If you don't come to Christ through pride, you're not going to come to the church through pride either. And that's a dispositional issue that is sorely needed in these

conversations. So I hope this video will be helpful, and I hope it'll motivate people to study the invisibility of the church more. And then what Turriton refers to as the splendor of the church, you see it in Calvin there as well. All this is profoundly relevant. All right, I went longer than I thought. Let me know what you think. I'll read through the comments, filming this right toward the beginning of September. Probably put this out soon. I'll be curious what you think in the comments. Let me know. Thanks, everybody, for watching.