Having
dealt with the four intersections on our diagram - the Cross and the Person of
Christ, the Holy Spirit, the So Great Salvation, and the
Coming Again - we proceed to note that these pass into
and through - in the first place - the circle marked the
Church which is His Body.
Both in
its teaching as to the eternal election of the Church and
its present vocation, and also in the actual expression
at the beginning of this dispensation, the Bible shows
that the FIRST sphere in which all the content and
meaning of those four magnitudes finds expression is the
Church. It is not our intention to deal with the analysis
of each given in the diagram, but a glance at that
analysis will do two things. It will show what each of
the four means and contains, and it will explain the
nature and vocation of the Church.
One
thing must be said here, although it should be obvious:
these four stand together, and unless they ARE kept
as a whole the Church is not the Church of God's
intention and purpose. We shall come on this again later.
It is IN
and by the Church that God has eternally chosen to
reveal the meaning of Christ - the Person of His Son. So
also is it there that all the meaning and value of the
Holy Spirit is to be embodied. The So Great Salvation is
that which constitutes the Church, defining both its
nature and its vocation. The coming again of Christ has
its primary meaning IN the Church. We repeat, to
separate these from their right relation to the Church,
to leave the Church out and to take the doctrines apart
from it, is to render the doctrines disembodied spirits,
with no actual and practical vehicle of demonstration or
expression - something in themselves. To have something
called the Church which does not EXPRESS these
four is to have a misnomer, a falsehood, a body without a
spirit or personality, a plastic body without nerves or
living expression.
The
first main thing to say then is that
The Church Is THE
Object Of Divine Concern
in
relation to Christ.
In the
eternal counsels of the Godhead, when it was determined
that the consummate issue of the intended created
universe should be the summing up of all things in
Christ, it was then decided that an elect Body - called
the Church, which is His Body - should be the vessel and
vehicle of His fullness, the complement of Him That
filleth all in all: nothing less and nothing other than
the Church. God has never stopped short at individuals,
many or few, as related to Himself. He could have made a
thousand Adams as easily as one, but He did not, because
one Adam is generic and indicates many in one, the
corporate life of many in one. This was the basic
principle in Abraham, Jacob, David, Christ. Ignore or
violate the corporate and organic principle embodied in
the Church, and substitute an institution, an
organization, a fraternity, and you make the continuation
beyond one generation a matter of the replacement of the
worn parts of a machine, and not the reproduction of
organic life. What is not the Church in its full Divine
concept will only get so far and then live on its past,
its tradition, its founder, and its publicity. There have
been, and are, many such things which, because of a
specific need (to which we refer later), have been
blessed of God and cared for by Him, and which have
become ministries in themselves within restricted limits.
Beyond a certain point of value they are not organically
reproductive; they are not sending forth in an ORGANIC
way their seed to fully and livingly express the
fullness of Christ. There have been so many of these
things which, while valuable and owned of the Lord as a
needed ministry for the hour, because of His love for
them have been presented by Him with His fuller thought.
This has represented a definite crisis. The issues have
been no less than, on the one hand, adjustment unto
enlargement and a new lease of life and value: or, on the
other hand, because of unwillingness to see that God
needed such changes, a quiet, steady, almost
imperceptible loss of the old character and vitality, and
either a closing down toward the end of the lifetime of
the first instruments, or the formation of a Trust to
carry on the work. So often it has become like the tent
in Shiloh without the Testimony in it.
The Lord
may bless, even raise up, instruments, ministries, to
serve a specific purpose, to emphasize or recover a lost
value, but there comes a time when He sees that the need
has now arisen for the related feature and character to
be recognized and accepted, and He sees to it that the
light concerning this is present or available. Everything
of future increase hangs in the balances of the reaction
of those concerned and responsible. God will never
ultimately stop short of His full thought - the Church.
Herein lies one of the aspects of the relatedness of the
Cross to the Church. Only as it is proved that the Cross
has produced a true adjustableness and enlargement to all
the thought of God can God go on with us INDEFINITELY.
It is fatal eventually to have a fixity of mind that
because a beginning was so definitely of God it is fixed
and will never have to be advanced upon and adjusted to
the further things of God. God is not necessarily
cancelling anything that has been owned of Him, but He
would put it into its larger place. The fact is that, if
God is going to have His full thought concerning the
Church - even in a comparatively small company - because
things are as they are now many adjustments will have to
be made. It is no less than a life or death issue, a gain
or loss question, and this is decided by the measure in
which the meaning of the Cross has really been
apprehended. All the tremendous significance of the
"ifs" of the New Testament relate to this, not
to salvation when the "if" is addressed to
Christians.
This
necessitates our saying something concerning which the
Word of God teaches as to
What The Church Is
Because
of its immense importance to the Lord's eternal
purpose concerning His Son, there are few directions in
which the great enemy has given himself more assiduously
than in this to bring confusion, misapprehension,
delusion, illusion, and disruption. The very fact that,
on the one hand, the Church bears such evident marks of
the Spoiler, and on the other hand, because of the
confusion and mess so many true servants of God have
turned to other than Church ministry in its full sense,
should impress us with the significance of this matter
from Satan's viewpoint. Nothing that implies the Church
principles of corporate life - oneness, fellowship, and
organic relatedness - fails to be the immediate object of
Satanic interest and concern, to divide, confuse, and
break up, and the devilish factor in it makes it more
than just a matter of human disagreement. It is something
much more subtle and difficult to deal with than that.
The real trouble is not finally cleared up with
apologies. In the light of this it is necessary to have
some understanding and apprehension as to the true nature
of the Church.
Of
course, one of the governing things in deciding what the
Church is is our standpoint. While the building with a
spire or tower is so often called a church - and no one
with any spiritual intelligence believes that it is - it
will serve as an illustration of a major point. Supposing
you saw such a building called a church standing on its
spire with its main building right up where the top of
the spire usually is, what would you say about it? You
would say two things. One: "It is upside down."
The other: "It is top heavy." Perhaps you would
say: "It is absurd!" But that would entirely
depend upon your standpoint. Supposing you were up 10,000
feet in an airplane and viewed it as though the
cloud-ceiling was your earth? There it would be right,
and IT WOULD BE UPSIDE DOWN IF IN ITS USUAL POSITION
HERE. It depends upon whether our standpoint is
earthly or heavenly. From the standpoint of the New
Testament - which is "in the heavenlies" - the
Church as it is now on the earth is upside down. Its main
bulk is earthly, and its smallest point is heavenly. I
have no doubt that whoever invented the church steeple
intended it to indicate that the Church points to heaven,
which, of course, is true. But there is this other way of
looking at it. Really from God's standpoint the Church
has no connection with this world IN THIS DISPENSATION
beyond testimony. It is NOT mainly pointing
upward, but, being a heavenly thing, is testifying
downward. To link the Church with this world at present
in any other way is to forfeit all that is really vital
to its impact UPON the world. The Church therefore
cannot be a national thing, nor can it be international.
There is no such thing with God as the Chinese Church,
the Indian Church, the American Church, or the English
Church. The Church belongs to no country. It can only be
the Church IN any country or countries. Nor is the
Church composed of all nations or nationalities -
Asiatics, Americans, Europeans, etc. There "cannot
be Greek and Jew" in the Church. To think and
speak and act as though there were is to have failed
lamentably to see God's thought as to the Church, and it DOES
matter VERY much whether we are right or wrong
in this.
In the
same way, and belonging to a true apprehension of the
Church, we must see that it can never be denominational,
interdenominational, nor undenominational as such. A
world federation of "churches" would altogether
miss the Divine idea, and as lamentably break down in its
spiritual value as did the League of Nations; it would be
just another spiritual fiasco.
The
Church MAY or MAY NOT be found somewhere
inside ALL of the above, but it is other than they
are.
It will
be seen that, so far, we are on a negative line, and this
has to be pursued a little further yet. There are sincere
people of God who need to be reminded that the Church is
not constituted upon some special line or measure of
Divine revelation. Light as to the Church or the Body of
Christ does not MAKE those who have it the Church.
The Church is not made by seeing a FULLER meaning
of the Cross or the Body. Important as this is in
relation to EXPRESSION it is not basic to the FACT.
There
are many other negative factors which affect this issue,
but they will be covered as we proceed to the positive
side. If we are actuated or influenced by the things as
above mentioned, it is because we have not yet, after
all, seen Christ.
The Church Is For The Expression Of
Christ
Christ -
the Son of God, the Son of Man - is not a Jew in His
resurrection person and humanity. Neither is He of any
other nationality. He is altogether other. What
nationality was the first Adam? He was racial. In Christ
God has gone back behind all these subsequent
distinctions and differences, which the Bible attributes
to Satan and rebellion, and He has gone beyond these to
the grand issue when oneness will be absolute in every
respect - Christ being all and in all actually and
universally, as He is NOW where God's mind is
concerned. For GOD'S Church there is no ground but
the ground of Christ. What is of ourselves by nature, and
what is of this present evil world, is not the Church,
for the Church is Christ corporately expressed. Spiritual
understanding in this matter will result in our ceasing
to talk about "the Church of..." or
"Such-and-such a Church." It will be absolutely
revolutionary in mentality and issue in adjusted
phraseology, but quite spontaneously, not pedantically or
affectedly.
To have
seen Christ as the Holy Spirit would show Him in the New
Testament is to see that the Church begins by
Christ Becoming Resident In Believers
Once Christ
is really within as a Resident a union has been
established which is organic - in life - and that is Body
union. The Lord's Table testifies to this and is for all
true believers. That the full light on the Church had not
been given in the first days of the Church as in
"Acts" is evident, but the fact was there, and
they continued "steadfastly in the breaking of
bread." (See 1 Corinthians 10:16-17).
But the
breaking and distributing of the loaf is never looked
upon as making so many more loaves or bodies. It is still
one loaf. Christ - though imparted to ten thousand hearts
- is not ten thousand Christs, but still one. In this way
the Church is Christ.
The
growth of the Church is on the same principle. It is the
increase of Christ, inwardly and extensively. The Church
makes increase as Christ gets more room, or as the
measure of Him increases in believers. Its outward growth
numerically is just Christ getting into more lives (see
Ephesians 4:15-16). The measure of Christ determines
whether the Church is strong or weak, great or small,
effective or ineffective. But we must not confuse things.
Firstly, we must not confuse Christ with systems which
have grown up or been formed around Christ or the Church.
Then we must not have a mental attitude that because
certain believers are in these systems they are not the
Church. This can be as divisive in effect as rabid
sectarianism. Then we must not confuse the FACT of
the Church and the EXPRESSION of it. This is where
many trip up, and it is largely a reaction to the
deplorable mixture and spiritual poverty of what is
called "the Church."
The FACT
of the Church and its EXPRESSION are two
things. The fact is that all who are in LIVING union
with Christ - Who is Head - are the Church. I know that
some teachers such as G. H. Pember do not agree with
this, and I know all the problems which arise because of
the position taken. How many problems would be solved and
difficulties got over if we had a sufficient basis for
believing that in this dispensation there are two things
- the Church AND the rest of believers! We should,
for instance, solve the problem of why so few respond to
the testimony concerning the Church. But this will not
do. The same problem lies behind why so many never make
any response at all to Christ.
The
expression of the Church, which is more than the fact,
demands a recognition of the absolute Headship of Christ
- that is, the doctrine lived out by the Holy Spirit. The
Epistles did not put believers into a basic relationship
with Christ; they revealed what that relationship was and
implied, and showed them where they were as to this. It
is possible to have a very crippled, emaciated, and
unhealthy body, so far as the outward frame is concerned,
but it cannot be said that it is not a body at all. This
is how it was in the EXPRESSION of the Body at
Corinth. Things could hardly have been worse, and if we
heard of such a state existing in a local church today we
should be sorely tempted to write it off as having no
vital relationship with Christ. Paul did not do this with
Corinth; but writing to them as to the Church IN Corinth
he just sought to show them Christ and the corporate
implications of Christ. It amounted to a question as to
the absolute Lordship of Christ.
While
all is completed in the Ascended Christ, all believers do
not know what that "all" is, and therefore may
be failing in the expression. The expression is of such
value as to involve nothing less than God's eternal
purpose and satisfaction; and, as we have said, the
utmost wrath of Satan is directed against any ministry
which leads to this, or any expression of the Church in
spiritual reality. It is no less an issue than Christ
coming fully into His place, and Satan having no more
room.
It is
therefore of utmost importance that there SHOULD be
light as to the Church - the Body. Strength or weakness,
we repeat, depends upon this. This is
Where The Cross Comes In
Christ
cannot come in until man goes out. This applies initially
and progressively. There is no place in Christ for the
fallen and Satan-produced judgments, thoughts, energies,
feelings, etc., of another man. The measure of Christ
depends upon the exit of what is not Christ. This has to
be faced as a basic and inclusive fact sooner or later,
once for all. Then it has to be recognized that
conformity to the image of Christ is a life-process, and
this life-process goes on on the basis of the Cross. It
is not new dyings of Christ, it is not a repetition of
the Cross, once, twice, or many times, but it is an
outworking of the once-for-all meaning and implications
of the Cross. The presence and effect in the Church of
what we are naturally is to limit Christ, and therefore
to deny the Church, and therefore to counter the
Sovereign Headship of Christ, and therefore to make for
spiritual weakness, and THEREFORE to put Satan in
the place of power. All this is met by the Cross of
Christ. Hence, the Altar stands at the threshold of the
House; it is the big Altar - a WHOLE burnt
offering. The Cross takes its greatness from the
immensity of that to which it relates, and makes
possible, in the eternal counsels of God.
If what
we have said above raises practical questions for any as
to relationship and connections, etc., we do not say that
you should do this or that - leave this, join that. All
that we say is - Look the Cross fully in the face once
more, ask the Lord to show you what it means in His
fullest thought, let the Lord Jesus be absolutely Head,
meet the challenge, and be obedient to what He shows you.