When we speak of the ‘visible’ and the ‘invisible’ church, we must be careful not to think of two Christian churches. The ‘visible’ church consists of those who profess Christ as Head of the church, hold that He has a divine and human nature, and have their name on the roll as members of the church (together with their children). Within the visible church in this world there will be a mixture of true and false members. Our Lord warns that there will be tares among the wheat, and that the vine will have withering branches as well as true living branches. Like the ten virgins of the parable, going by outward appearance it may be difficult to tell which are the wise. There will be those that know the truth in their heads but not in their hearts. Though in the visible church, they are separated from Christ. The saving knowledge of God is treasured up in Christ. If we have been under the teaching and preaching of the Bible since we can remember, has it led us to put our hope in Christ alone for salvation? Has Christ become the most precious thing in our life? Has the Lord Jesus taken over our heart and life?

The Invisible Church⤒🔗

The Confession of Faith says, ‘The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error; and some have so degenerated as to become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan. Nevertheless, there shall be always a church on earth to worship God according to His will’. WCF 25:5

There will always be those who know the truth ‘as it is in Christ Jesus’. He is the way, the truth, and the life and no man comes to the Father but by Him (John 14:6).

Because the invisible church consists solely of regenerate persons it follows that, whatever condition the visible church is in, the invisible church will always have a glory though unseen by the world. Every single member of it has been delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. They have been born again by the Holy Spirit and are now united to Christ as living branches of the vine. What is true of the ‘invisible church’ is true of every true believer. United to Christ every true Christian has a glory not seen by the world. The King’s daughter is ‘all glorious within’ (Psalm 45:13). Though they are imperfect in this world they have a perfect righteousness, they are adopted into the family of God, the Holy Spirit leads them and their future is to be glorified.

The Unseen Glory of the True Church←⤒🔗

The church has always had to struggle in this world. The world is like a tyrant always seeking to destroy her and, since it cannot, it will try to lead her captive. Sometimes the world attacks with persecution, other times it seeks to infiltrate her to bring her down from the inside. In the history of the church there have been times that she appeared to have been burnt to ashes and destroyed, but she rose out of the ashes again holding up the banner of Christ.

They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations.Psalm 72:5

We live in a day when the church seems to be a house divided against itself, a tangled heap of wreckage after an explosion. In the hands of liberals and middle-of-the-roaders she has become weak, voiceless and afraid of the world.

However, the church of God on earth is not what she seems. No! She seems to be poor and weak, but she is not! She is a King’s bride, although she appears more like a beggar. It was so with our Lord while here on earth. He was not what men thought. He was to many ‘despised and rejected of men’, and ‘a root out of a dry ground’. But to His people He was ‘God manifest in the flesh’, the King of glory.

Great Future←⤒🔗

No one looking at the church in our day with the eyes of the flesh could guess what she is, or will be. The tree in winter is not what it appears – dead! It is alive and full of vigorous, though hidden, vitality in root, stem, and branch – a vitality which frosts and storms are but maturing, not quenching.

Although leafless, yet summer life is there and autumn fruitfulness. It wraps up within itself the germs of future verdure and fruit, and awaits the coming spring. So it is with the church of God in this age of wintry night; for it is both night and winter with her. Her present position ill accords with her prospects. No one, in looking at her, could guess what she is or what she is to be.

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.1 Corinthians 2:9

No one merely observing the outward appearance of the church, or the treatment she receives from the world, or the chastisements from God, could measure her present glory, or her future happiness. Even with the eye of faith, we find difficulty in realising her prospects. We can hardly at times credit the greatness of her heritage. It must seem strange to unfallen angels that saints should be found at all in such a world as this – a world without God, a world of atheists, idolaters, and infidels, a world that from the days of Cain has been the rejecter of God’s Son.

It is not the kind of place where we should expect to find children of God. Next to Hell, it is the unlikeliest place for a soul that loves God to dwell in. If a stranger, traversing the universe in search of God’s little flock, were to put to us the question, where are they to be found, would he not be astonished when told they were in the very world where Satan reigned as the Prince of the power of the air, a world that had rejected God? If we were looking for flowers, we would not go to the desert, or to the polar ice caps. Yet, consider where the church is to be found. It is strange to find a Joseph in Egypt, or a Rahab in Jericho, or an Obadiah in the house of Ahab! It is much more amazing to find saints in the world at all. Yet, they are in this world. In spite of everything uncongenial in soil and air, they are here. They never seem to become acclimatised, yet they do not die out, but are continually renewed. The enemy labours to uproot them, but they survive and bear fruit. It is a miracle, but yet so it is! Here, in this world the great Husbandman is rearing His plants from generation to generation. Here the great Master-builder hews and polishes the stones for His glorious temple.

A Spirit of Anticipation←⤒🔗

The true believer still dwells in the world, but his affections are towards the world to come, the better world where Christ is. Like the rest of the believing church he or she feels that this is not home. His kindred according to the flesh are here, but his heart and soul are set on the kingdom where Christ dwells.

This gives the believing church a spirit of anticipation. Believing the Word of God, and resting on the only Saviour and the blood He shed, she anticipates a full acquittal on the Day of Judgment. Also realising her oneness with the ascended Saviour, she anticipates the glory of heaven, when she shall see ‘The King in his beauty, and the land that is very far off’. In the midst of the darkness of this world Christ is to her as the ‘bright and morning Star’, and looking to Him she anticipates the morning light of heaven. Mocked and shunned in this world, she anticipates the joy and glory of His coming again to this world as the King of kings. All things are mine, she says,

Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours.1 Corinthians 3:22

What the Christian anticipates cheers him when passing through rough waters. They comfort him, or, at least they calm and soothe him.

The believer may say to himself, ‘I am not what I seem. I am not the beggared outcast the world takes me for. I am richer far than they. They have their riches now; but mine are coming when theirs are gone. They have their joys now, but mine are coming when theirs have ended in eternal weeping. I live in the future; my treasure is in heaven, and my heart is gone up to where my treasure is. I shall soon be seen to be what I now seem not. My sun is about to rise, and the joy of my promised morning will make me forget that I ever wept’. Faith has no horizons; it looks beyond life, beyond the earth, and beyond the ages, into eternity. Beyond the deathbed, and beyond the grave she sees heaven and the Lord Jesus Christ her Saviour. The poor world does not see the glorious heritage of the weakest believer. The poorest saint may say,

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.