What the Lord revealed in His second mentioning in Matthew 18:17 is the local church for the administration of the church in its locality. In a local church there is the need of administration. If we do not have the local churches, we do not have this administration.
In Matthew 18:18 the Lord says, “Truly I say to you, Whatever you bind on the earth shall be what has been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on the earth shall be what has been loosed in heaven.” This indicates that the church’s administration is exercised in binding and loosing with the authority of the heavens. This is not mainly to deal with man but to deal with the authority of darkness.
The church revealed in Matthew 16:18 is the universal church, the unique Body of Christ, whereas the church revealed in Matthew 18:17 is the local church, the expression of the unique Body of Christ in a certain locality. Matthew 16 concerns the universal building of the church, but Matthew 18 concerns the local practice of the church. Both chapters indicate that the church represents the kingdom of the heavens, having the authority to bind and to loose.
The local church is revealed also by the apostles in Acts and the Epistles. In Acts the church was practiced in the way of local churches. The practice of the local churches is also seen in the Epistles. Except for a few Epistles written to individuals, all the Epistles in the New Testament were written to local churches. Not one was written to the universal church.
Whereas the universal church has been formed by Christ once for all, the local churches are established locally in separate cities. Therefore, the believers live in churches that are in their localities respectively. Acts 8:1, for example, speaks of “the church in Jerusalem.” This was the first church established in a locality within the jurisdiction of a city, in this case the city of Jerusalem. It was a local church in its locality, as indicated by the Lord in Matthew 18:17. As such a local church, it was part of the universal church, which is the Body of Christ. The record of the New Testament consistently reveals the establishing of local churches in different cities.
The second mention of a particular local church in the New Testament is in Acts 13:1a. This verse says, “Now there were in Antioch, in the church that was there, prophets and teachers.” In Antioch there was another local church, another expression of the church. Hence, in Acts 8 and 13 we can see one church with two expressions: one at Jerusalem, the other at Antioch. All local churches (Acts 14:21, 23) are the expression of the one universal church.
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