People of God in the context of "Covenant (biblical)"

Church visible is a term of Christian theology and ecclesiology referring to the visible community of Christian believers on Earth, as opposed to the Church invisible or Church triumphant, constituted by the fellowship of saints and the company of the elect.

In ecclesiology, the Church visible has many names, such as Kingdom of God, Disciples of Christ and People of God. St. Ignatius of Antioch was one of the first Christian authors to write about the subject, insisting that the Church visible was centered on the Bishop and the Eucharist or Last Supper.

Throughout history, various groups of people have seen themselves as the chosen people of a deity, for a particular purpose. The phenomenon of "chosen people" is well known among the Israelites and Jews, where the term (Hebrew: עם סגולה / העם הנבחר, romanized: am segulah / ha-am ha-nivhar) refers to the Israelites as being selected by Yahweh to worship only him and to fulfill the mission of proclaiming his truth throughout the world. Some claims of chosenness are based on parallel claims of Israelite ancestry, as is the case for the Christian Identity and Black Hebrew sects—both which regard themselves (and not Jews) as the "true Israel". Others see the concept as spiritual, whereby individuals who genuinely believe in God are considered to be the "true" chosen people, "the elect". This view is common among many Christian denominations which historically believed that the church replaced Israel as the people of God.

Anthropologists commonly regard claims of chosenness as a form of ethnocentrism.

Supersessionism, also called fulfillment theology by its proponents, and replacement theology by its detractors, is the Christian doctrine that the Christian Church has superseded the Jewish people, assuming their role as God's covenanted people, thus asserting that the New Covenant through Jesus Christ has superseded or replaced the Mosaic covenant. Supersessionists hold that the universal Church has become God's "New Israel" and thus Christians are the people of God.

Often claimed by later Christians to have originated with Paul the Apostle in the New Testament, supersessionism has formed a core tenet of many Eastern Orthodox churches, Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches for the majority of their history. Many early Church Fathers—including Justin Martyr and Augustine of Hippo—were supersessionist.