Salvation Makes You Part of a Family: The Corporate Component of Conversion

Abstract: Jonathan Leeman highlights the corporate component of conversion, pointing out that God not only reconciles us to himself through Christ but also to one another. While our (vertical) reconciliation to God is foundational and primary, our (horizontal) reconciliation to others is necessarily bound up with our salvation. Conversion makes us part of God’s people, and this corporate aspect of our salvation should compel us to join a local church.

Editor’s Note: This article is taken from Church Matters, the 9Marks journal for pastors, in the issue titled Conversion.

If your doctrine of conversion is missing the corporate element, it’s missing something essential. Jesus died for a people (see Mark 10:45). He saves us as individuals, and he saves us into a people. Salvation includes a family.

If you’re not convinced, jump straight to these parallel statements from Peter:

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Pet. 2:10)

If someone asks you how you became a Christian, you probably emphasize the second line in your testimony. You say something like, “I was living in sin apart from God. A friend shared the gospel with me. I recognized who God is and what Christ did in dying and rising again. Therefore, I repented and believed. Praise God, he forgave me and I received his mercy!”

What a wonderful testimony. Don’t stop saying that!

Widen Your Perspective 

But notice that Peter widens the aperture of the camera and tells us a little more about what happened in that same moment. In addition to moving from not mercy to mercy, we simultaneously moved from not a people to a people.

That means our testimonies could include a little bit more. Like this: “I was living in sin apart from God, and I wanted nothing to do with God’s family, the church. A friend shared the gospel with me. I recognized who God is and what Christ did in dying and rising again. Therefore, I repented and believed. Praise God, he forgave me and I received his mercy! I also realized that—wow!—I was part of a family now, the church.”

Do you see what I mean by the “corporate” component of conversion? We’re saved into the universal church.

That’s not to say we should put the corporate element out front.^{11 .}One might think of N. T. Wright’s well-known line about justification being “not so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church.” N.T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said (Eerdmans, 2014), 119. This is a clear example, in Douglas Moo’s almost-as-well-known line, of backgrounding what the New Testament foregrounds, and foregrounding what the New Testament backgrounds (as cited in D. A. Carson, “Faith and Faithfulness,” Ligonier, February 1, 2010, https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/faith-and-faithfulness). There can be no true reconciliation between humans until individual sinners are first reconciled to God. The horizontal necessarily follows the vertical. Ecclesiology necessarily follows soteriology. Which is to say, the corporate element must not come first, lest we lose salvation altogether.

Vertical and Horizontal 

But it must come. Indeed, the corporate component must remain within the structure of the doctrine of conversion itself. Our corporate unity in Christ is not just an implication of conversion; it’s part of the very thing. Being reconciled to God’s people is distinct from but inseparable from being reconciled to God.

These two elements of conversion are wonderfully put on display in Ephesians 2 with two instances of the word “but.” The first comes as Paul narrates man’s rescue from sin and death (vv. 1–10), which hinges on the words “But God, being rich in mercy . . .” (v. 4). Those words introduce God’s saving love and the fact that he has “raised us up with [Christ] and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (v. 6). There is your vertical reconciliation. We’ve been raised up.

Yet there’s another “But” that occurs in the second half of this chapter (vv. 11–22), as Paul explains that, prior to conversion, we were “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel” (v. 12). He says, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (v. 13). There is your horizontal reconciliation. Both Jews and Gentiles have been brought near. And then: “For [Christ] himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (v. 14).

Notice also that the activity of verse 14 is in the past tense. Christ has already made Jew and Gentile “one.” There is no imperative here. Paul is not commanding his readers to pursue unity. Instead, he’s speaking in the indicative. They are united because God has done it, and God did it at precisely the same place that he accomplished their vertical reconciliation—at the cross of Christ.

We receive mercy (vertical reconciliation) at the same time that we become a people (horizontal reconciliation). That is, God has mercy on us by forgiving us our sins, and a necessary consequence of this mercy is inclusion in his people.

Sometimes this dual reality—our vertical and horizontal reconciliation—gets lost in our emphasis on the mechanics of conversion, as when we don’t move beyond the relationship of divine sovereignty and human responsibility or the necessity of repentance and faith (all of which is crucial). However, a full-orbed understanding of conversion should also include an account of what we’re moving from and what we’re moving to. To be converted involves moving from death to life (Rom. 6:23), from the domain of darkness to the domain of light (Eph. 5:8). And it involves moving from peoplelessness to belonging to a people (Rom. 9:25–26), from being a stray sheep to belonging to the flock (John 10:16), from being something that’s dismembered to being a member of the body (1 Cor. 12:13).

This corporate element of our conversion can also be seen by looking at the covenantal structure of the Bible.^{22 .}All the Old Testament covenants find their fulfillment in the seed (singular) of Abraham. Jesus is the new Israel. Yet it’s also true that everyone united to Christ through the new covenant also becomes the Israel of God and the seed (plural) of Abraham (Gal. 3:29; 6:16). A covenantal head by definition brings with him a covenantal people, for all people belong to either Adam or Christ (see Rom. 5:12–21). To belong to Christ and the new covenant, then, is to belong to his new covenant people.^{33 .}Not surprisingly, the Old Testament promises of a new covenant are therefore promised to a people: “And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:34). Our new identity necessarily contains an ecclesial element. Christ has made us part of his church, members of his family.

A Simple Application 

Here’s an easy way to see it. When a father and a mother go down to the orphanage to adopt a son, they bring him home. He walks through the front door, and what does he see? A new set of brothers and sisters. Of course, being a son is not the same thing as being a brother. Sonship comes first. But brotherhood and sisterhood follow necessarily.

Conversion signs you up for a family photo.

So what’s the application for our lives? Simple: join a church!

You’ve been made righteous, so be righteous. You’ve been made a member of Christ’s body, so join a local body. You’ve been made one, so be one with an actual group of Christians.