(NOTE:
During the many years of this spoken and printed
ministry, very much has been said regarding the Church.
This has led to not a few enquiries for advice from many
who are in difficulty over this matter. Many of the
enquirers are in responsible positions in the Lord's
work. It is a sign of the times that there is such a very
considerable revival of concern in relation to the
Church. Many conferences on the subject are being held,
many 'church' movements are afoot, and a very
considerable literature is being published.
It is
not our intention to enter the field of discussion and
controversy in relation to this matter in general. The
questions which reach us are almost entirely to do with
the essential nature of a 'New Testament church': how
such a church is formed, what are the principles which
govern it, and similar questions.
There is
a good deal of dissatisfaction and unrest among many
sincere believers and servants of God, due largely to the
poor or even bad state existing in so many churches. In
not a few cases it is due to error in teaching, or
disorder and sin. Many complain of spiritual starvation,
and still many more are tired of mere formalism and
spiritual death. While the perfect church has never yet
existed on this earth, and while there always have been,
and always will be, faults and weaknesses, or worse,
there really is a need for a reconsideration, and a
recovery, of the essential nature and function of the
Church; and therefore, while making no claim to be expert
in this matter, we feel constrained to offer what we feel
we may have of light in this direction. This we propose
to do in one or two editorials.)
Question: What is the Church, and
what are the churches?
Have we
in the New Testament a clearly defined and completely
set-out plan of the Church, its order, constitution,
methods and work? Is there a concise and worked-out
system in the nature of a 'blue-print', which is ready
for copying and reproducing everywhere, and can be
recognised as true to type in every place? The answer is
decidedly No! But if we mean: Is there in the New
Testament a revelation of God's mind as to the Church, in
its nature, constitution, and vocation? it is no
contradiction of the above when we say: Yes, decidedly
Yes!
It is
possible to take parts of the New Testament, as to
doctrines, practices, work, methods, and order, to piece
them together, and to frame them into a system to be
adopted and applied. This is the mechanical or
'ecclesiastical' method, and it is capable of an almost
endless variety of presentations, resulting in a very
large variety of organized bodies, every one of which
claims the New Testament for its authority. This in turn
issues in rivalries, competitiveness, controversy, and,
eventually, in the presenting to the world of a
Christianity divided into a vast number of independent
and unrelated parts, far removed from 'all speaking the
same thing'. The external and objective approach to the
New Testament, with a view to studying it as a manual or
text-book of Christian life, teaching and work, is a
false one, a dangerous one, and - so far as any real
spiritual outcome is concerned - a dead one. If God had
meant successive generations of Christians to IMITATE
the first and proceed on the mass-production principle,
surely He would have seen to it that in some way a
precise and unmistakable prototype existed, with adequate
safeguards against all the confusion and misapprehension
which has actually eventuated.
When
men, Christian men, contemplate a project which is
intended to last for a considerable tenure, they set down
precisely their 'Principles and Practice', consisting of
their doctrines, their purpose, their practices, their
methods, and so on. God did not commission or allow His
first Apostles to act in this way, so that we might have
a Jerusalem or Antioch Blue Book or Manual for Christian
churches. In the Divine mind it is all definite, fixed,
precise, and permanent, but when we come to the New
Testament, and especially the formative period as covered
by the Book of the Acts, everything seems so fluid, so
open, and so subject to proving. There is the most
wonderful and sublime reason for this; but, before we
come to that, let us point out that the approach to which
we have referred above is the cause of more limitation,
stagnation, deadly legality, than can be measured. In
doctrine, it means that the doctrinal compass is boxed
and no new light is allowed as to God's Word. Of course,
this is the peril of orthodoxy. The intense desire to
safeguard the Scriptures can lead to a sealing off
against any new light from them as to meaning and
interpretation, and this makes for a static spiritual
position. Spiritual pride, bigotry, exclusiveness,
suspicion, are some of the unholy brood of this legalism.
If Satan cannot force to the one extreme of superiority
to the written Word, he will try the opposite of bondage
to the letter without the spirit.
The
merely objective approach of which we have written may or
may not be characterized by all of the above-mentioned
features, but it will most certainly be limited in its
spiritual power and results. It may very well result in
the responsibility being made to rest upon men, so that
all kinds of devices and expedients have to be resorted
to in order that the work and institution can be
maintained and furthered. Christianity has almost
entirely come to be such a thing now, and it is
practically impossible for the vast majority of
Christians - their leaders especially - to understand or
even believe that God can do His work without committees,
boards, machinery, advertisement, organizations, appeals,
reports, names, deputations, patronage, propaganda,
publicity, the press, etc. Unless these things are
present with a 'recognised' backing, the thing is not
trusted, even if it is believed to exist.
We are
aware that the foregoing is mainly negative, but it is
necessary in order to lead to the positive, to which we
now proceed.
We have
said that the New Testament has within it a revelation,
precise, definite, and full, as to God's mind for this
dispensation, and that in that revelation there is an
answer to all the questions of What? Who? and How? in all
matters of the Church's constitution and vocation. What
is that revelation? The answer is that it is not a
system, as such, but a Person. That which in the New
Testament is secondary, and a consequence, has now been
made primary. That is, the results have been made the
first and governing things, whilst that which comes
before them as the cause is overlooked. If we will look
again, we shall see that anything that came into being
under the Holy Spirit's first activity was the result of
a seeing of Christ. By that we mean what the Apostle
meant, when he recorded the substance of his prayer for
believers: "that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ...
may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in
the knowledge of him, the eyes of your heart being
enlightened, that ye may know...", etc. It is a
seeing of the immense significance of Jesus in the
eternal and universal order.
With the
Apostles that seeing was subsequent to the days of
physical association. During the forty days after His
resurrection it was like the dawning of a new day. First,
those intimations, as when the uncertain light just
passes over the heavens. Then more steady and certain
rays, leading to the Day of Pentecost, when the sun
appeared in full glory over the horizon dispelling the
last shadow of uncertainty. On that day they saw Him as
by an opened heaven. The mystery of the past was
dispelled. The Bible lay open like a new book. They saw
Him in the light of eternity. They began to see that,
while He was the glorified, personal, Son of God, He was
Himself the embodiment of a great, a vast heavenly and
spiritual order and system. This SEEING was
absolutely revolutionary. It was a crisis out of which a
new world and a new creation was born. True to this
fundamental principle, all that vast revelation, which
has come down the centuries from and through the Apostle
Paul took its rise from that crisis described by him as
"It pleased God... to reveal his Son in me"
(Gal. 1:16). 'I received it... by revelation of Jesus
Christ' (vs. 12). All the implicates were in the crisis;
the full content was a progressive and ever-growing
revelation.
While
there was some initial testimony the Apostles did not
formulate in conference an enterprise, a mission, with
all the related arrangements and organization. The new
life forced off the old leaves and dressed the new
organism with a new vesture FROM WITHIN. The
might, energy and urge of the Holy Spirit within produced
a Way and an order, un-thought-of, unintended by
them, and always to their own surprise. What was
happening was really that Christ was taking form within
them, individually and corporately, by new birth and
growth. The believers and the companies were becoming an
expression of Christ. Here, we come upon the essential
nature of the Christian life and the Church.
What, in
the thought of God do Christians exist for? What does the
Church exist for? What do local churches exist for? There
is only one answer. The existence and the function is to
be an expression of Christ. There is nothing less and
nothing more than that. Christ is the Alpha and the
Omega, the beginning and the end, and all between! Let
that be the starting-point; let that be the governing
rule and reality in ALL MATTERS of life and
work, and see at once the nature and vocation of the
Church. This vast, incomprehensible heavenly system, of
which Christ is the personal embodiment, touches every
detail of life, personally and collectively. But remember
only the Holy Spirit sees and knows how it is so; hence,
as at the beginning, there has to be an utter submission
to and direction by the Lordship of the Holy Spirit. What
the blood-stream is to the human body, the Divine life is
to and in 'the Church which is His body'. What the nerve
system is in the physical realm, the Holy Spirit is in
the spiritual. Understand all the workings of those two
systems in the natural, and you begin to see how God has
written His great heavenly principles, first in the
person of His Son, and then in His corporate Body. As an
individual believer is the result of a begetting, a
conception, a formation, a birth and a likeness, so, in,
the New Testament, is a true local church. It is a
reproduction of Christ by the Holy Spirit. Man cannot
make, form, produce or, 'establish' this. Neither can
anyone 'join' or 'enrol', or make himself or herself a
member of this organism. First it is an embryo, and then
a 'formation' after Christ.
So, all
talk about 'forming New Testament churches' is nonsense.
The beginning is in a seeing of Christ, and when two or
three in one place have seen Him by the Holy Spirit, and
have been "begotten again by the word of God",
there is the germ of a church.
That,
then, is the starting-point. But, how drastic that is, in
the matter of reconsideration and recovery (see
introductory 'NOTE'). If we did not know that, both in
New Testament times and in the world TODAY, such
churches existed, we should be right in viewing all this
as either mysticism or idealism; as unreal and
impossible; but it is only when there has not been that
vision of Christ, and when there is a weddedness to a
merely traditional system, that it can be so regarded.
We shall
have to stop looking at the Church and churches, and look
again, long and earnestly, at Christ; for to see Him by
the Spirit is to see the Church.
Let us
summarise what we have said.
1. This
consideration is in answer to requests for advice as to
the true nature of the Church, and especially of local
churches.
2. The
objective approach to the New Testament, with a view to
formulating therefrom a pattern to be imitated, copied,
and reproduced as 'New Testament churches', is wrong. It
only either leads to a variety of conclusions, and
therefore 'denominations' or results in something fixed,
static and legalistic. This in turn leads to rivalries,
suspicions, fears of 'sheep-stealing' and loss of
'members', etc.
3. The
origin of the Church, and of churches, was a Holy Spirit
revelation of Christ. As truly as Jesus said: "He
that hath seen me hath seen the Father", so truly,
although it does not put it into a similar precise
sentence, the New Testament teaches that he that has seen
Christ has seen the Church: for, although Christ retains
His personality, individuality and distinctive identity,
the Church is the corporate expression of Him.
So truly
as there was a "mystery" as to Christ, in the
days of His flesh, which could not be truly seen and
recognised apart from an intervention of God, as giving
sight to the blind, the Church as the Body of Christ
demands a similar eye-opening work of the Holy Spirit for
a potent and dynamic knowledge of its true nature and
vocation. (Eph. 1:17, etc.).
The
recognition of the Church is an event which is of such a
revolutionary character as to emancipate from all merely
traditional, historical and earthly systems: as see the
Apostles and especially Paul.
4. The
Church was not formed by any conference, convocation,
organization, council or plan.
The
Church, and likewise the churches, were BORN. A
living seed - the truth concerning Jesus, in the power of
the Holy Spirit - was deposited. The Word and the Spirit,
united with the quickened spirit of believers, formed an
embryo, and this produced an organism. The whole process
was biological as opposed to mechanical. "Not of
blood (bloods), nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the
will of man, but of God" (John 1:13). The Church,
and any true church, is as much a birth by the action of
the Holy Spirit as is any true child of God. "Two or
three" in Christ is a local-church nucleus.
5. The
function and vocation of the Church, and of the churches,
is to bring Christ into any location on this earth. The
test is ever and only that of whether, and how much,
Christ is found, met with, and ministered THERE. Anything
and everything that does not truly bring Christ in, or
minister to His increase, has no place in a true church.
IN
PURPOSE AND NATURE the Church IS Christ, and
so are the churches locally - no more, no less,
Having
said that, before we go on to the constructive aspect of
this matter, there are two important discriminations and
distinctions to be made.
Firstly
-
The Church is not co-extensive with
'Christianity'.
What is
called 'Christianity' is an enormous conglomeration and
mass of contradictions. The Church is no contradiction
within itself, and it will not allow its name to cover
any contradictions. Christ is neither divided nor
contradictory. The thing that now goes by the name of
'Christianity' embraces between its two poles almost
every conceivable complexion and inconsistency. At one
pole it has the complexion of a liberalism which
denies every fundamental truth - as to the person of
Christ, the authority and trustworthiness of the
Scriptures, the atoning work of the Cross, the bodily
resurrection of Christ, and so on. But all this is
included in the title 'Christianity'. At the other pole
we have hard, cruel, bigoted legalism, which can resort
to physical force and the use of lethal weapons for its
defence or propagation. We know of instances of actual
physical fights between leaders of what would be called
'evangelical' (or 'Fundamentalist') bodies. This also is
included within the term 'Christianity'. Between the two
extremes there are many things which bear a character
that is the most violent contradiction of Christ.
No, the
Church is not co-extensive with that confusion and Babel
of tongues. Anything that refers to the Church in the New
Testament shows it to be quite different from what - IN
GENERAL - is called Christianity.
"Christian", originally, just meant 'Christ
one'. It is a master stroke of the great maligner and
discrediter of Christ, on the one hand to have put that
title upon so much that really will not bear it, and on
the other hand to have confused the Church with it, so
that the word "Church" can apply to almost
anything; a building, an institution, a denomination,
etc. The Church is holy, sacred, undivided, heavenly, and
all of God. Not merely ceremonially sacred, but
intrinsically so.
The
second thing, by way of distinction, is that there is a -
Difference
between being in the Church and understanding what that
means.
It is
not an essential difference, but one that can result
either from an imperfect apprehension of Christ or from
an inadequate instruction. The bulk of the New Testament
is concerned with bridging this gap. That is, it is
occupied with making believers understand what they have
come into through faith in Jesus Christ. This knowledge
is shown to be of VERY GREAT and vital importance.
Whatever may be the cheap and frivolous teaching of many,
that the only necessity is to be 'saved' and everything
is all right - a teaching which accounts for no small
measure of the present deplorable condition in
Christianity - the Apostles most positively did NOT take
that view. They 'laboured night and day' that believers
should know what they had come into. All the eternal
counsels concerning Christ and God's eternal purpose as
to Him are bound up with the Church. There are very many
and very great values in a true Church life, that is, a
true Body relatedness, and there can only be very great
loss in not knowing or apprehending this.
That
which is called 'Christianity' is not impregnable; the
Church is! 'Christianity', so called, is not eternal; the
Church is! 'Christianity' is going to be shaken to its
collapse. The Church will not be prevailed against by the
very gates of Hades. Someone who speaks with knowledge
and authority has recently written: 'It takes no
particular prophetic gift with a fair degree of accuracy
to see what the outcome will be. From some direction
harsh reality will strike swift and hard and the millions
who have taken refuge under the glass roof of popular
Christianity will find themselves without a cover: then,
bitter and disillusioned, they will turn in fury against
the gospel, the Church and every form of religion.
Cynicism, materialism and unbelief will blanket the world
again as it did after World War I.' Those are hard words,
but they are only another way of saying what is
prophesied in Hebrews 12:26,27.
The
Apostle Paul had given much time to Asia, and had 'not
shrunk from declaring the whole counsel of God' there
(Acts 20:27). Nevertheless afterward he placed on record
the substance of his fervent prayer for those saints; and
that prayer concerned that into which they were called in
Christ, the context showing that the Church is the very
complement - "fullness" - of Christ, without
which He is by no means fulfilled. Although there have
been, and are, distinguished Bible teachers who hold that
not all born again believers are in the Body of Christ,
it is not necessary to hold that view to see that the New
Testament not only teaches, but thunders that it is
imperative that all born again believers should come to
"full knowledge", and THAT RELATES TO CHRIST
AND HIS CHURCH. There is nothing in all the realm of
Divine revelation that has suffered such furious and
many-sided antagonism from the forces of evil as the
knowledge of the true nature of the Church. This Paul has
clearly indicated at the end of that immense document on
this subject - 'The Letter to the Ephesians'. Nothing has
suffered so much confusion and misapprehension. This is
itself significant, and indicates how important it is,
and how necessary it is, to have a right and true
understanding. It would be well-nigh impossible to
describe what a tremendous impact would be made upon this
world and the kingdom of darkness by a true realisation
and expression of the Church. It would be no less an
impact than that of the very throne of Christ, as exalted
"far above all". There is also made clear that
to believers who have their life on a corporate basis
there are many and real values, as contrasted with the
weakness, poverty, and perils of mere individualism.
In New
Testament times all hell rose up to prevent the local
churches from coming into being. The significance of the
presence of the Apostles in any city was fully recognised
by the evil forces, and they - the Apostles - had either
to be driven out or killed. The very existence of a local
church was a testimony to, and an embodiment of, Christ's
victory and authority over the evil powers. When the
Church was born out of such travail, its spiritual life
must by any means be shortened. Like Moses at the hands
of Pharaoh, and Jesus at the hands of Herod, the babe
must be slain. Someone or some few will have to travail
initially (and maybe, as with Paul, "again")
for churches which are a true representation or
embodiment of Christ. The significance of Christ in any
place is too great to go unchallenged, and no form of
opposition will be left unused in order to prevent or to
discredit.
To be
able to go on 'happily' and tranquilly in worldly favour
is no testimony to spiritual significance. The
contemplation of 'New Testament churches' must take these
facts into account.