Christ’s church was to be, and now is, nothing more nor less than the Old Testament covenant community itself, in a new and fulfilled form that God had planned for it from the start. It is Israel internationalized and globally extended in, through, and under the unifying dominion of Jesus, the divine Saviour who is its King. It is God the Father’s family, as appears from the fact that Jesus taught his followers to think and speak of his Heavenly Father as theirs too. It is the risen Christ’s body and bride, destined for the ultimate in intimacy with him and the sharing of his life. It is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, the unseen but potent divine facilitator who shows us that Jesus the Christ is real today, who sustains our trust in him and our love for him, who shapes and reconstructs our character in his likeness, and who supplies us with abilities for the mutual ministry that we sometimes call “body-life.” (“Fellowship of the Holy Spirit” in 2 Corintians 13:14 appears to mean both “partnership with the Spirit” and “partnership with others that is brought about by the Spirit.”)
Packer J I. A passion for Faithfulness. Pg xvi