Church in the first century was different from church today

Something similar can be said about historical and sociological study. For example, Robert Banks wrote a book, Going to Church in the First Century, an excellent example of taking what can be discovered about first-century house churches and turning it into an imaginative narrative. This illustrates two things.

First, church in the first century was different from church today.

Second, there is a lot of information about his social circumstances that Paul never intended to communicate but that can be teased out of what he does say by those who know about the social and historical context of the ancient world. We note, on the one hand, that this information is very useful. The more we know about the context of Paul (or any other New Testament author) and his readers, with whose lifestyle and social situation Paul was undoubtedly in touch, the better we are able to understand the communication between them. Knowing that the churches were house churches, for example, explains why the “elect lady” (KJV) of 2 John (probably a church) is not to receive false teachers “into [her] house” (v. 10). This is not referring to allowing false teachers to enter someone’s home, but to receiving them into the gathering of the church where they could do damage.

On the other hand, this sociological and cultural information is not Scripture. We have not added to biblical authority by discovering this information, but we may have clarified what it was that the author was trying to communicate (and what his first readers probably understood instantly) and therefore what message the authority of the Bible stands behind.

This distinction becomes important in that at times there is a tendency to try to imitate the social and cultural situation of the early church. That the early church met in houses is information that we now know. But because we know this does not mean that the Bible teaches that churches should meet in houses. That the early church celebrated the Lord’s Supper as a full communal meal we also know (in fact, it was the mid-third century before the final shift to a symbolic meal was made), but because the Scripture makes no point of this means that there is no biblical command to return to this practice. Something similar might be said about baptismal practices. In other words, just because Scripture gives incidental evidence that the church did something in a certain way or that a person held a certain attitude does not mean that the author was making any attempt to communicate that information nor that we should imitate it. It would certainly be permissible to meet in houses and celebrate communion as a communal meal; it might even be advisable for any number of reasons; but the most we can claim biblical authority for is that the Scripture gives evidence that this or that was done in the early church, not that it teaches that this should be done.

~ NT Criticism and Interpretation, Edited by David Black and David Dockery, p.28-9