Whom is the Bible addressed to?

A few days ago I posited the question, "What exactly is a Christian?" and made the point that it's not well defined in scripture. Let me expand on that a bit, by speaking of something else: the "audience" of scripture.

Who is the Bible addressed to? Well, to start with, let's focus on the New Testament. Those individual letters were mostly addressed to whom? Well to churches... but that kind of begs the point, were they addressed to the church as a group? Or to individual hearers? Or... what? When Paul exhorts people, what are his major concerns? Individual sins? Social work? Or... what?

Let's take as an example 1 Corinthians. The first concern is about "divisions among you". The "you" here is clearly plural, he is speaking to a group, and concerned about the group not acting as a group. So then we look at Galatians, and we see him talking about "the gospel preached to you". Again, his concern is the group choosing a preacher who leads the whole group astray.

For a contrast, we look at Ephesians, where election is highlighted right away, and certainly only individuals are elected and saved. We see him praising "your faith... and your love," which is addressed to a group, but those are aggregate qualities of individuals. But then even here, what is the *point* of this election, what's the result? As soon as Paul says, "So then..." what does he say? That they are "fellow citizens with the saints... members of the household of God... a holy temple... a dwelling place for God." Their group-ness and fundamental unity is the result. And following on that, as soon as he says, "I urge you..." it is for "bearing with one another... maintaining unity... one body and one Spirit... over all and in all and through all." These individually-elected believers are identified by their inclusion in this "group"; but this is not an abstract group, some vague connection to ALL believers, but epitomized by their harmonious existence as they physically worship and fellowship with each other in their local congregation.

There's unity between different churches, to be sure, but even this language recognizes the existence of a "congregational body-ness" that underlies it. We don't usually phrase it, "there is unity between churchgoers of different cities/congregations." No, but rather, the visible unity of the local congregation is the MODEL of the greater unity that we can only see by faith. We know if there are divisions or hostilities between the people we see every week, but by faith and by the Holy Spirit, we trust that our separate churches are in fact unified into a single great Holy City, that Revelations describes as descending out of heaven for us all to see on the Last Day.

So when we read the New Testament, we should absolutely see it addressed to "us", spoken to those who worship together in the same place. We should ask ourselves about the unity we have (or don't have) with the people in the next pew over. We should understand "love" in the context of the indifference or even hostility we bear against fellow worshippers. May the Holy Spirit make us one!