Someone inquired, “Is the church building sacred?” Church buildings or meetinghouses are not mentioned in the New Testament, and commonly it is agreed that historically there were no churched-owned buildings for the first 200 years after the establishment of the church of the New Testament. Hence, church buildings are not sacred or holy.
The New Testament church, instead, was and is a spiritual entity, also sometimes referred to as the kingdom (John 18:36; Colossians 1:2, 13, 18). The word in the Greek means an assembly or those who have been called out. Though the term in a different context refers to any group of individuals called out for a specific purpose, religiously, the word church refers to those who have been called out of the world by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who repent of their past sins and are baptized (immersed, Colossians 2:12) for the remission of their sins (Acts 2:38) are added to the church by Jesus Christ Himself (Acts 2:47).
Biblically speaking, the word “church” is used in three senses in the New Testament, none of which occasions refers to a building. First, the word “church” refers to the spiritual body of Christ that our Lord promised to build (Matthew 16:18) and over which He is the Head (Colossians 1:18). This is the church in its universal sense, spanning all places and from generation to generation. Secondly, the word “church” refers to a particular congregation of Christians in some place (1 Corinthians 1:2). Therefore, customarily “the churches of Christ” (Romans 16:16) distinguish themselves relative to local geography, such as the “Main Street Church of Christ.” In the third place, the word “church” is used in the Bible to refer to the worship assembly of a particular congregation (1 Corinthians 14:19, 23, 34).
The body of Christ or the Lord’s church may assemble any place conducive to worshipping God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). The early church met in homes (Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15; Philemon 2) or in public places (Acts 5:12; 20:20). Today, it is common practice for the church to rent or purchase facilities to ensure that they can fulfill the requirement of providing for the worship assembly (Hebrews 10:25). Nevertheless, the New Testament does not teach that the places in which the Lord’s church assembles is sacred or holy; that concept is exclusively a divinely unauthorized, human concoction.
