ἐκκλησία

You have probably heard, somewhere along the way, that the Greek word for “church” means “called-out ones.” Pastors, Sunday school teachers, and popular Bible-study authors have repeated this etymological claim for generations. The word, they say, is ekklēsia — from ek (“out of”) and kaleō (“to call”) — and so the church is the assembly of those who have been “called out” of the world to follow Christ.

This is the etymological fallacy the opening of this book warned about. The claim is half-true in the way that many etymological claims about Greek words are half-true: the elements of the compound (ek and kaleō) are really present, but the active meaning of the word in actual first-century Greek usage had long since faded from those etymological roots. By the time the New Testament was written, ekklēsia did not mean “called-out ones” to a Greek speaker any more than “breakfast” means “breaking the fast” to an English speaker. It means the morning meal. The etymology is interesting; it is not the active meaning of the word.

What ekklēsia actually meant in first-century Greek was assembly — particularly the assembly of citizens gathered for public business. In classical Athens, the ekklēsia was the citizens’ assembly, the highest governing body of the Athenian democracy, summoned by the herald to deliberate on the affairs of the city. The word was political and civic before it was religious. When Greek-speaking Jews translated the Hebrew Old Testament into the Septuagint, they used ekklēsia for the Hebrew qahal — the assembly of Israel gathered for worship and covenant. This is the lineage the New Testament inherits: the ekklēsia is the gathered assembly of God’s people, summoned together by the herald of the gospel, called to the purposes God has appointed for them.

This is the chapter on ekklēsia. It opens Part VI on the church and its offices. The chapter’s main task is to recover what ekklēsia actually means in the New Testament — assembly, gathering, the people of God called together — and to lay out the Lutheran answer to the questions of where this assembly is found and what makes it the church.

The Word

ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia), pronounced ek-klay-SEE-ah. A feminine noun. Etymologically a compound of ek (ἐκ, “out of, from”) and kaleō (καλέω, “to call”), as discussed above — but with the etymological elements having long since faded from the active meaning of the word. The family is small. The verbal form ekkaleō (ἐκκαλέω, “to call out, summon”) is rare; the primary New Testament usage is the noun ekklēsia itself. The broader kal- family (kaleō, klēsis, klētos) was treated in Chapter 40 on klēsis, and the connections are real, but the noun ekklēsia has developed its own distinctive theological weight in the New Testament.

The classical Greek background is essential because it shapes what first-century hearers would have heard when the apostles used the word. In Athens, the ekklēsia was the citizens’ assembly — the governing body of the democracy. Free male citizens (perhaps 30,000 to 50,000 of the population, depending on the period) had the right to attend. The assembly met regularly on a hill called the Pnyx, summoned by the herald (kēryx) whose proclamation called the citizens together. The assembly voted on matters of war and peace, on the passing of laws, on the election of magistrates, on the ostracism of citizens who had become dangerous to the city. The ekklēsia was where the city’s public business was conducted; it was the place where the gathered citizens exercised their authority. The word was political before it was religious.

When the Athenian democracy declined and Greek became the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean under Alexander’s successors and then under Rome, the word ekklēsia persisted in use for various kinds of public assemblies. The political dimension softened over time; the word came to mean simply “assembly” in a more general sense, applied to any deliberative or convened gathering. Acts 19 preserves this usage in its classical political form, where the assembly of the city of Ephesus (the silversmith riot) is called an ekklēsia three times (Acts 19:32, 39, 41). The word was capable of either secular or religious application; the New Testament’s specifically religious development of the word does not erase its broader Greek background but builds on it.

The Septuagint background is decisive for the New Testament’s theological use. When the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek beginning in the third century BC, the translators consistently used ekklēsia for the Hebrew qahal (קָהָל, “assembly, congregation, gathering”). The qahal in the Old Testament is the gathered congregation of Israel, particularly for worship and covenant — the assembly at Sinai, the assembly that hears the reading of the law, the assembly that gathers at the Tabernacle and Temple. Deuteronomy uses qahal Yahweh — translated into Greek as ekklēsia kyriou, “the assembly of the LORD” — for the gathered covenant people (Deut 23:1–3, 8; 1 Chr 28:8). The word ekklēsia in the Septuagint was already a theologically loaded term for God’s gathered people before any New Testament writer ever picked up a pen.

This is the inheritance the apostles draw on. When Jesus tells Peter, “on this rock I will build my ekklēsia” (Matt 16:18), He is not coining a new term. He is invoking the entire Septuagint history of qahal Yahweh — the assembly of God’s people — and locating Himself at its center as the one who will build it. The ekklēsia He builds is in continuity with the qahal of Israel and in fulfillment of God’s purposes for a gathered covenant people.

Range of Meaning

In its New Testament usage, ekklēsia covers:

• A local Christian assembly — the gathered believers in a particular city or household. The dominant New Testament usage. “The church in Corinth,” “the church in Ephesus,” “the church that meets in their house.”
• The universal church — the whole gathered people of God in Christ, across all places and times. Particularly in Ephesians and Colossians: “Christ is the head of the ekklēsia.”
• The eschatological assembly — the gathered people of God in their final state. Hebrews 12:23 names “the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven.”
• A general assembly in the secular sense — the citizens’ or civic assembly. Acts 19 preserves this usage for the Ephesian crowd.

The dominant theological usages are the first two. The New Testament uses ekklēsia for both the local congregation and the universal church without distinction in vocabulary — the same word covers both because the same gathering principle is at work in both. The local ekklēsia in Corinth is the universal ekklēsia as it appears in that particular place. The universal ekklēsia is the gathering of all the local ekklēsiai across all times and places. The relationship is not abstract-to-concrete or whole-to-part in any rigid sense; the local assembly is the universal assembly in local manifestation, and the universal assembly is the local assemblies gathered together by the one Spirit into the one body of Christ.

Where You’ll Meet It

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18, ESV)

The first New Testament occurrence of ekklēsia on Jesus’s lips. The Greek is mou tēn ekklēsian — “my assembly.” The dispute over what “this rock” refers to (Peter as person, Peter as representative of the apostles, Peter’s confession of faith) is famous and not finally resolvable, though confessional Lutheran exegesis has generally followed the patristic-and-Reformation reading that the rock is Peter’s confession (“you are the Christ, the Son of the living God”) rather than Peter himself as person or office. What is not disputable: Christ promises that He Himself will build the ekklēsia, and that the ekklēsia He builds will outlast the gates of hell. The church is Christ’s church. The building is Christ’s doing. The endurance is Christ’s promise.

“If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.” (Matthew 18:17, ESV)

The second of Jesus’s two uses of ekklēsia. The context is church discipline — the procedure for addressing sin between believers when private reconciliation fails. The ekklēsia here is clearly the local assembly, which has authority to address such matters. This verse contributes to the Lutheran understanding of the church as the gathered community with real authority entrusted by Christ, not merely as a collection of individuals.

“To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours…” (1 Corinthians 1:2, ESV)

Paul’s opening to 1 Corinthians. The salutation is rich. The church is named “the ekklēsia of God” (tē ekklēsia tou theou) — God’s assembly, not the Corinthians’ own. The location is specified — “in Corinth” — but the salutation immediately extends to “all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The local assembly is greeted alongside the universal assembly; the two are not separated; both are addressed in the one letter. This is the New Testament’s characteristic pattern: the local ekklēsia is the universal ekklēsia as it exists in that place, and the universal ekklēsia is the sum of the local ekklēsiai gathered into one body in Christ.

“And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.” (Colossians 1:18, ESV)

Paul’s compressed Christological statement of what the church is and Whose it is. Christ is “the head of the body, the ekklēsia.” The church is His body — His own ongoing physical-spiritual extension in the world. He is the head. The head and the body are inseparable. The church derives its life from Christ; Christ exercises His ongoing ministry through the church; the believer participates in Christ by belonging to the body. This image — head and body — is one of the most powerful in the New Testament’s ecclesiology and runs through Paul’s letters in various forms.

“Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Ephesians 5:25–27, ESV)

The marriage analogy. The ekklēsia is Christ’s bride, and Christ’s love for her is sacrificial — He gave Himself up for her. The cleansing is “by the washing of water with the word” — a baptismal reference that connects the ekklēsia directly to the means of grace. The destination is eschatological: the bride presented “in splendor, without spot or wrinkle.” The church’s perfection is future and gift; her present existence is real but mixed, awaiting the eschatological purification Christ Himself will accomplish.

“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven…” (Hebrews 12:22–23, ESV)

The eschatological ekklēsia. The phrase “the assembly of the firstborn” is ekklēsia prōtotokōn — the assembly of those who are firstborn (a Christological title in Heb 1:6 and elsewhere, here applied to those who are conformed to the firstborn). The Hebrews author locates the church not on a particular earthly mountain but on the heavenly Mount Zion — already gathered with the angels, the saints made perfect, and Jesus the mediator of the new covenant. The church on earth participates in the heavenly assembly through the means of grace; the eschatological church is already real and present to faith.

“I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.” (Hebrews 2:12, ESV, quoting Psalm 22:22)

The author of Hebrews quotes Psalm 22 and applies it to Christ. The “congregation” — ekklēsia in the Greek — is the gathered people of God among whom the risen Christ Himself sings the praise of the Father. This verse names something striking: Christ Himself is present in the ekklēsia, singing praise with His people. The church’s worship is not a human attempt to reach God; it is participation in Christ’s own worship of the Father, in the gathered assembly where He Himself is present.