From Church to Assembly: Recovering the Meaning of Ekklesia
Why “Church” Doesn’t Say What the Bible Says
The English word church, as used in most Bibles and Christian traditions, does not capture what the biblical authors meant by ekklesia (Greek) or qahal Yisrael (Hebrew). The Greek word ἐκκλησία (ekklesia) simply means “assembly” or “congregation.” In the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Tanakh used by Yeshua and the apostles—ekklesia commonly translates the Hebrew קהל (qahal), the assembly of Israel.
So when New Testament writers used ekklesia, they weren’t inventing a new Gentile religious organization. They were describing the gathered people of God—the same covenant community Israel had always been—now with Gentiles graciously “grafted in” (Romans 11).
How Translation Shaped Imagination
When English translators, often working under ecclesiastical authority, rendered ekklesia as church, they imported a later, institutional meaning that didn’t exist in the first century. This is what scholars call an anachronism—when we project ideas, customs, or meanings from a later time back onto an earlier one. In this case, later church structures and hierarchies were read back into the New Testament period, reshaping how readers imagined the earliest community of believers. The result is subtle but profound: every time we read church, we instinctively picture a new, separate, non-Jewish entity—and the story of Scripture shifts with it.
This one translation choice has profoundly affected biblical theology. It makes readers think Israel was replaced by a new body, turns the apostles into founders of a new religion rather than messengers of Israel’s Messiah, and deepens the perceived divide between “Old” and “New” Testaments—as though God changed covenants, people, and mission.
Biblically, there is only one people of God—Israel—and Gentiles are welcomed into that covenant, not into a new institution. Paul’s metaphor of grafting only makes sense if Israel remains the root (Romans 11).
Reading Acts Without Anachronism
When English Bibles say, “the Lord added to the church daily” (Acts 2:47), the Greek text actually reads, “the Lord added to the assembly (ekklesia) those being saved.” And what did that assembly look like?
They were in Jerusalem—Jewish men and women—worshiping in the Temple, keeping the feasts, continuing in Torah, and proclaiming Israel’s Messiah (Acts 2–3). They gathered not only out of habit or heritage but out of hope. The same city that had crucified Yeshua was the place where they now awaited His return.
The Book of Acts situates them near the Temple, often by the Beautiful Gate—the very gate through which the prophets said the Messiah would one day return to establish His kingdom (cf. Ezek. 44:1–3). Their prayers, their generosity, their endurance, all pulsed with this conviction: the age to come was near, and the restoration of Israel was already beginning.
They lived and worshiped as a people caught between ages—experiencing the firstfruits of the Spirit while waiting for the full harvest of redemption. Their faith was profoundly apocalyptic: they expected Yeshua to return to Jerusalem to fulfill the promises made to the patriarchs and prophets.
They were not founding a “Christian Church.” They were living as the renewed Israel—anticipating “the restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21), when Messiah would reign from Zion and all nations would stream to the mountain of the Lord (cf. Isaiah 2:2–4; Micah 4:1–3; Zechariah 14:8–9).
The Spirit’s outpouring at Shavuot wasn’t the birth of a new religion—it was the down payment of the coming kingdom. The ekklesia in Acts gathered in the shadow of the Temple not to build an institution, but to bear witness that the long-awaited renewal of Israel had begun.
“Ekklesia” vs. “Church/Christian” (as an Identity)
Ekklesia anchors believers in Israel’s covenant story—the ongoing people of God now widened to include the nations. The later term Christian, as adopted by Gentile believers, often detached them from that story, encouraging a new, distinctly non-Jewish identity.
But the apostles never imagined such a separation. Paul’s writings—especially Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians—are saturated with the conviction that the God of Israel was fulfilling His covenant promises by bringing Gentiles into fellowship with His chosen people. This was not a merging that erased distinction, but a unity within diversity: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Messiah” (1 Cor 12:12).
Paul insists that Gentiles are grafted in to Israel’s cultivated olive tree (Rom 11:17–24). The root remains Israel; the wild branches are the nations who have turned from idols to serve the living God. Their inclusion fulfills the prophetic vision that Israel would be “a light to the nations” (Isa 49:6), that “the Gentiles shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising” (Isa 60:3).
This is why Paul opposed circumcision for Gentile converts—not because Torah was obsolete, but because Gentiles were never meant to become Jews in order to share in Israel’s blessings. The prophets foresaw the nations worshiping the God of Israel as nations, not as assimilated Israelites. In Messiah, they are reconciled to God and to one another, forming one redeemed humanity without erasing the covenantal roles of each.
Paul summarizes this balance with what he calls “my rule in all the churches” (1 Cor 7:17). That rule was consistent everywhere: Jews should remain Jews, keeping their covenantal identity and calling; Gentiles should remain Gentiles, honoring the God of Israel through faith and moral obedience. The goal was not sameness but harmony—a body with many parts, distinct yet unified under one Head (Eph 4:15–16).
Ephesians 2 captures this tension beautifully: Messiah “has made the two one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility” (v. 14). But the goal is not uniformity; it is peace—each part of the body serving its unique function under one Head (Eph 4:15–16).
This principle guarded the integrity of God’s promises to Israel while welcoming the nations into fellowship. It preserved covenantal diversity within covenantal unity—the very mystery Paul celebrates when he writes that “the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Messiah Yeshua through the gospel” (Eph 3:6).
The ekklesia of the New Testament, then, is not a homogenized “Christian Church,” but the renewed commonwealth of Israel, now open to the nations. Its unity arises from covenantal inclusion, not institutional invention.
That linguistic turn—from ekklesia to Christian Church—is one of the most consequential shifts in the history of interpretation. It reframed faith in Yeshua from Israel’s covenantal renewal into the birth of a new religion.
When Ekklesia Gets Politicized: From Athens to Antioch—and to America
In modern American discourse, ekklesia has sometimes been recast as a political mandate. The claim goes that Jesus chose a civic word for a civic project—so the “church” should act as a governing bloc, organizing, legislating, and “taking back” cultural institutions. Figures such as Charlie Kirk promote this view, linking ekklesia with the political assemblies of ancient Athens.
At first glance, this seems reasonable. The classical ekklesia of Athens was indeed a political assembly of citizens. But word-history is not word-meaning in every context. The New Testament world was not Periclean Athens—it was the world of Israel’s Scriptures. In the Septuagint, ekklesia most often translates qahal—the gathered people of Israel before their God. This was a covenantal community marked by worship, instruction, repentance, celebration, and faithfulness. It was not a civic legislature; it was a people before a King.
Two clarifications help bring this into focus:
Classical echoes are not controlling. The Greek word ekklesia may carry faint civic overtones, but the apostles used it in Israel’s story-world. The gravity of meaning points to Sinai and the prophets, not to the Athenian Pnyx. The ekklesia of the New Testament is the covenant assembly renewed in Messiah, not a political caucus with gavels.
Mission precedes management. The ekklesia bears witness to a kingdom not of this world’s kind. This is not withdrawal—it is a call to public holiness rather than domination. The first believers prayed, proclaimed, shared resources, welcomed the poor, and suffered for righteousness. Their power was cruciform, not coercive. When they influenced society, they did so through love, truth, and endurance—not through seizing authority.
When ekklesia is reinterpreted as a political project, its identity warps. Instead of belonging to Israel’s restored people, we imagine ourselves as rulers over the nations. Instead of a table, we picture a throne. Instead of the fruits of the Spirit, we count votes. The storyline bends—from covenant fidelity to the pursuit of leverage.
This mindset also carries theological consequences. It implies that the kingdom can be built on human initiative—through politics, programs, or national reform. In biblical terms, that is a form of realized eschatology, the belief that the kingdom has already come in its fullness and can be manifested through human power. History warns us where this leads: after Constantine, when Christianity became the Roman state religion, the Church Triumphant began to mirror the empire’s ambitions. The result was not the kingdom of God, but a baptized version of worldly dominion.
God’s kingdom will come—but in His time, not ours. The apostles taught believers to wait in hope, living in grace and mercy toward the world as God shows grace and mercy to us. We await the return of Yeshua—the day of the Lord, the day of judgment—when justice and peace will truly be established on earth. Our calling is not to bring that kingdom through political force but to witness to it through faithful obedience.
God’s covenantal call on Israel as a nation remains unique. It should not be adapted to the “Christian church,” and certainly not to America. While America has been shaped by Christian values, it is not Israel. It does not live under the Torah as the national constitution given by God at Sinai. Even the modern State of Israel, for all its prophetic significance, reflects modern Western culture more than the Torah-based society envisioned in Scripture.
The mission of the ekklesia is therefore not to recreate a theocratic nation-state, but to embody a covenant people awaiting the King’s return—living in holiness, justice, and mercy as a foretaste of the world to come. The concept of Christian Nationalism and interpreting ekklesia as a political mandate is discussed in this essay called Unpacking the Rise of Christian Nationalism.
Conclusion: A Simple Swap That Clears the Fog
If you find that church no longer sits comfortably once you’ve seen the biblical context, that tension isn’t rebellion or cynicism—it’s the Spirit stirring hunger for truth and restoration. The Bible tells a unified, covenantal story of God and Israel that welcomes the nations.
A practical step: when you see church in your Bible, try reading instead:
“assembly of Israel,”
“community of the faithful,” or
“congregation of God’s people.”
This simple substitution restores continuity and clarity. The New Testament then reads—not as the birth of a new religion—but as the next chapter in Israel’s covenant history, now extended to all nations through Yeshua.