Like any human organization, the church of the New Testament confronted problems and challenges, some from external pressures and some from within.
External Pressures
The major challenge from without was that of resistance to the gospel and even persecution by its opponents. In dealing with opposition, the church had to rely on the merciful intervention of its Lord, an intervention that resulted in some remarkable turns of events, such as Peter’s release from prison to the amazement of the fearful church (Acts 12:6–17) and the transformation of Saul, ardent persecutor of the Way, into an even more zealous apostle of the risen Christ (Acts 9:1–31). The church’s principal weapon against external hostility was the development of its unique worldview, which enabled it to see the powers coming against it as doomed to eventual defeat at the revelation of the judgments of God. The present culture and its values are passing away (1 Cor. 7:31; 1 John 2:17); at the day of the Lord, the old order of things will be replaced by “new heavens and a new earth,” figurative language for the just order of the new covenant (2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1). As events unfold, human secrets will be disclosed and brought to judgment (Rom. 2:16; 1 Cor. 4:5; cf. Luke 12:2). This sense of ongoing and impending judgment was rooted in Jesus’ own teaching; it is present, for example, in his parables of the workers in the vineyard (Matt. 21:33–43) and the marriage feast (Matt. 22:1–14) and his statements suggesting that the persecutors of the church (Matt. 23:34–35; 24:9) will themselves be overthrown within a generation (Matt. 16:28; 23:36; 24:34). From the perspective of the early church, the kingdom of God had already appeared in Jesus (Mark 1:14–15) and the judgment had already begun to occur in people’s response to him (John 3:17–21; Rom. 1:18); the Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit had made evident the arrival of the new order of the “last days” (Acts 2:16–21). Armed with these convictions, spokespersons for the Christian movement were able to withstand opposition and to maintain their witness in the face of a hostile environment.
Internal Problems
A challenge from within the church organization was false or incomplete teaching. A certain group in the Judean church had difficulty with the concept of Gentiles entering the covenant and taught the new congregations of Asia Minor that it was necessary for them to become circumcised converts to Judaism (Acts 15:1). To deal with this it was necessary to convene a council of church leaders; Paul also addressed the issue of “another gospel” in his letter to the Christians of Galatia. False teachers of various kinds are mentioned in several places in the New Testament (Acts 20:29–30; 2 Tim. 4:3–4; 2 Pet. 2:1–3; Jude 4; Rev. 2:14, 20). The nature of their doctrines is not always clear, but they are accused of advocating licentiousness (Jude 4), idolatry (Rev. 12:14), “Jewish myths and commandments of men” (Titus 1:14; cf. 2 Tim. 4:4), and ascetic self-abasement accompanied by the observance of holy days and dietary practices (Col. 2:16–23). John calls these teachers “antichrists” who deny that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2:18–22) and who negate the Incarnation (1 John 4:2–3; 2 John 7). Some see many of these teachings as evidence of an incipient Gnosticism, a philosophy that held that the material realm is evil and only the spirit is good therefore the word of God only appeared to be incarnate in Jesus Christ. Portions of John, 1 John, and Paul’s letter to the Colossians are thought to be responding to this notion, which became a more serious threat after the first century. In addition to aberrant doctrine, failure to understand the Christian faith and its ordinances in their true depth was a problem within the church’s constituency (2 Tim. 3:7; Heb. 5:12; 1 Cor. 11:18–34) and even among some of its leaders, such as Apollos (Acts 18:24–26).
Like every human organization, the institutional church of the New Testament had to deal with human weakness in many forms. Immorality was a problem that had to be repeatedly confronted, notably in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence. Economic inequalities within the membership created tensions (Acts 6:1; James 2:2–6), which the leadership sought to address through benevolence programs and the establishment of the serving ministry, or diaconate. The leadership itself was not always united; Paul had a personal confrontation with Peter over the Gentile issue (Gal. 2:11–14) and broke with Barnabas over John Mark’s role in the missionary team (Acts 15:36–39). Overbearing leaders sometimes gained control in local groups, refusing to cooperate with the eldership (3 John 9–10).
Far from idealizing the institutional church, the New Testament presents a true-to-life picture of a social group struggling with the strains and stresses that inevitably accompany a rapidly growing organization. Such honesty highlights the church’s dependence not on human authority but on that of Christ, to whom all authority has been given and who, by the Spirit, must supremely direct and enable the church’s witness (Matt. 28:18–20).