‘When two or three are gathered…’ does not mean what you think it means

Sometimes verses get so caught up in our quirky Christian landscape that we just accept common usage without question.

Matthew 18:20 is one such verse. It says, ‘For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.’

The way we frequently interpret this is when two of three gather in Jesus name what they are doing is fundamentally ‘church’. We use this as a definition of church verse. It’s often the first thing we say when someone asks us what a church is.

Is this true, and (as this idea comes up nowhere else in the Bible) is it what the passage actually means?

For instance, are two Christians are driving along the road listening to worship music a church? Are youth groups or Sunday School meetings churches? Is my family saying grace together at breakfast a church? If my mate and I get together in a coffee shop to badmouth local churches, putting them all to rights, is what we’re doing there, church?

So, is Matt. 18:20 a definition of church? Does anywhere Christians gather in some kind of Christian way necessarily then become church? That’s the question!

I’d suggest the answer is no. Those things above might all be part of the church landscape. They might be pieces of the church jigsaw puzzle, but none of them – in isolation – meet all the Bible’s requirements to be – in and of themselves – church.

That is, unless I’m wrong about Matt. 18:20. If it is a definition verse, so if church simply is the gathering of two or three believers in Jesus’ name, then all of those things above could themselves be called church. Let’s have a look at the passage.

That isn’t what the passage says

A text without a context is a con right? ‘You shall go out with joy’ (Is. 55:12) doesn’t mean find a nice girl called Joy and settle down, and ‘go to Bethal and sin’ (Am. 4:4) isn’t biblical warrant for a wild weekend in Blackpool. You can’t just pluck a verse out of the Bible and interpret it in isolation from its original setting.

In Matt. 18:20 Jesus wasn’t talking about prayer, or worship, or mission, or teaching, or fellowship, or really any of the attributes that we usually associate with church. He was talking super specifically about rebuke and correction. That’s really quite different to a definition of church.

So, the context for Matt. 18:20 is a process of correcting a fellow believer who is in the wrong. It says if someone is in sin, first go and talk to them privately (v.15). If unsuccessful bring a couple of witnesses and try again (v.16), then go to the gathering, and finally treat them as an unbeliever (v.17).

And, as the original Jewish readers of Matthew would have known, Jesus was refereeing to an Old Testament law which spoke about ‘two or three witnesses’ required in court to condemn somebody (Deut. 17:6; 19:15). Jesus reminds us that He is in the midst of messy conflict with justice, love and mercy in a way that the OT law couldn’t be.

The theme of the whole chapter is forgiveness and restoration. It’s no coincidence that the passage before is the lost sheep, and the one afterwards is the unmerciful servant. There is nothing in this passage to suggest that Jesus was saying ‘when two or three gather in my name, it’s church.’

This might sound like a random cracking of the whip (maybe it is; I hope not), but I really feel that it’s really important in times like this to get this right, because Christians are so incredibly pants at disagreeing with each other with love and kindness. We really need to highlight and celebrate these amazing passages where Jesus teaches us how to do it well.

My worry is by making it about some broadly obscure definition of church itself we might lose the original meaning and even overrule the other places where the New Testament does teach really clearly on what a church is.

It overrules other passages about church

The word for church is ἐκκλησία (ekklesia) which literally means a gathering or assembly, and usually refers to the whole body of believers. There is never any use of it applying to just two or three people.

There are many important New Testament passages about what church is. Its purpose (1 Cor. 12; 1 Tim. 3:14-15), activities (Acts 2:42-47; Heb. 10:24-25), leadership (Acts 14:23; Tit. 1:5-9), structure (1 Cor. 14:26; Eph. 2:19-22), sacraments (1 Cor. 11:18-23; Col. 2:12), teaching (2 Tim. 4:2-3; Jm. 3:1-2), mission (Matt. 9:37-38; Acts 1:8), worship (Col. 3:16; Eph. 5:18-21), and prayer (Rom. 8:26; Phil. 4:6; Jm. 5:14) to just name a few.

This is also built upon thousands of years of Israel’s history and practices as a gathered people before the coming of Jesus. So, the Law, Prophets, Tabernacle, Temple etc., all play at least some role in our understanding for how God’s people should gather today.

The Bible is really not silent when it comes to church – and it’s really not all that simple either.

Understanding the complicated nature of God’s body on earth is a rich tapestry of material – and rightly so. Just like a family it needs to be mediated on, wrested with, talked about, and lived within. It can’t just be swept away with a single brash, misplaced and misunderstood verse.

It diminishes what church is

The Bible gives us a really clear lead on what Church is and plucking a verse out of its context and oversimplifying it to simply mean ‘whenever two or three Christians gather’ is, forgive me, using the Bible clumsily at best and really quite disrespectfully at worst.

I’d even dare to go a little further and say reducing the church to simply mean a gathering of believers has done us a huge disservice and might be one of the reasons churches are so polarised today. Simply gathering doesn’t speak to the shape or the content of that gathering. It doesn’t require love, sacrifice, worship, prayer – or any of the other hard yet beautiful parts of what a church truly is.

We need to take church more seriously, not less, and see it as something truly special and unique, not just easy and accessible. We should fully embrace the safety, sanctity, and powerful spiritual presence and edification that we experience when we carefully and obediently come together in the ways the Bible teaches.

God designed us an amazing present, let’s not run off excitedly with the box leaving the gift behind!

It messes with God’s omnipresence

‘When two or three are gathered… I am with them.’ The understanding here is that the only thing you need for church is believers and God’s presence. The problem with this is a logical one: God is always present.

God is present with me right now, alone, without another person or two gathered with me. There is no space nor time where God is not present. God’s presence alone with a couple of believers, therefore, cannot be the only requirement for church. He is in all places at all times, and not all places or times are church.

The presence spoken about in this passage is the presence of a witness, bringing justice, grace, peace, security and mercy to these disciplinary proceedings. There is a special awareness and function of God’s presence. It’s not a unique time or place where Jesus happens to be present.

Being unclear on this can lead to all kinds of difficulties, especially when new believers are trying to work out what God always being with them means. In one breath we say to them, ‘God will never leave nor forsake you,’ (Heb. 13:5) but in the next we seem to be saying something like, ‘You need to grab another person before God is actually with you.’

I know it’s unlikely that any of us would say it exactly that way, but that doesn’t mean a new believer wouldn’t hear it exactly that way. We may have squared away the illogic of it through years of making peace with misunderstanding the verse, but new believers are sharp and they often see these things a little more objectively than we do. They are also vulnerable, and it’s important that take care of them in their new growth by being clear on exactly these things.

It adds quirks to prayer

Another awkward way we read the presence language in this verse is ‘if two or three agree in prayer, God’s presence makes their prayer ‘work’ in their favour.’ The issue, however, is – similar to the second point above – there is a whole plethora of material in the Bible about prayer that this idea would jus steamroll over or at very least significantly re-steer in a direction that, ultimately, would put us in the position of power over God. I think that’s unhealthy.

As much as I believe in the authority of prayer and the power of God’s presence within it, reading this passage as a ‘two or three to agree the prayer’ mechanism again ignores the context of the passage (which never even mentions prayer), and – perhaps more importantly – creates a formulaic rather than faith-driven relationship with prayer.

So, in a nutshell

The Bible is a wonderful book, rich in detail about our lives with God and how we are to meet with Him and each other in church and prayer. Let’s not skip all of that for a theologically clumsy soundbite.

Matt. 18:20 is not a definition of church. There is, however, plenty in the Bible about church for us to learn from. Church is incredible and should to be enjoyed in its fullness rather than increasingly simplified. Prayer is relational not formulaic, and God’s omnipresence is not something to mess around with.

The other side of the coin

On the other side of the coin, just having a building and a weekly service with some Christian language and ritual (and quiche) thrown in doesn’t make you church either! Look out for a post soon on what I think a church needs to be and do to truly be the Body of Christ on earth.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash