We
have laid great emphasis upon the fact that, in the
beginnings, everything was under the government of the
Holy Spirit who had taken over the whole purpose of God
and was its custodian. As in the case of the tabernacle
of old, the complete pattern was conceived in heaven to
the last detail, and shown. Then Bezaleel and Aholiab
were filled with the Spirit of God for all workmanship.
Nothing whatever was left to the conception of man, and
because eternal, spiritual, divine conceptions lay behind
every fragment, God was meticulously particular.
So it
was in the first phase of things in the beginning of the
new Israel. Man has a great propensity for putting his
hand on things, and nothing is too sacred to escape it.
The great precaution taken by God when Adam began this
kind of thing was: “Lest he put forth his
hand...” When that was done, as in instances like
Nadab and Abihu, Uzzah, Uzziah, Ananias and Sapphira,
etc., the Lord showed His disapproval by swift judgment.
Man’s hand is always a possessive, a controlling, an
arranging hand. His way is to bring things within the
compass of his own mind and judgment. There is no
compromise between the hands of the Holy Spirit and the
hands of man, and any attempt on man’s part to
compromise will result in disastrous consequences sooner
or later.
There
is a clamant need for a deep revision of our mentality
regarding what we call New Testament procedure. The
starting-point will have to be at the parting of the ways
between causes and effects, that is, how and why things
began, and the things themselves. We begin at the wrong
end, at the place where things are in existence, and we
take the things as a pattern, a blueprint, a textbook,
and proceed to imitate, to copy, to reproduce. Thus we
resolve the New Testament into a handbook of
organization. In so doing we overlook the fundamental,
elemental, and vital fact that what we have in the New
Testament never came that way. Whatever there is in the
New Testament which is called an “order” was
the normal, natural, spontaneous issue of a kind of life
which had been miraculously imparted by the direct act of
the same Spirit as brought about the conception of Jesus
in the womb of Mary: “Begotten, not created”.
It was the growth and formation of an organism: “Not
of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will
of man, but of God” (John 1:13). This was as
true of the whole as it was of the individual parts.
Let us
take:
The Case of the Churches
The
most general idea is that the apostles, Paul in
particular, believed that they were to go and form
churches all over the world, that when they entered a
province, or a city, their thought was to form a local
church there. We shall look in vain for any command of
the Lord or intimation from the apostles that this was to
be their object. What they did know to be their business
was to bring Christ wherever they went. If Christ was
rejected there was no church. If Christ was accepted
those who accepted Him became a vessel of Christ in that
place. The one conception of a church in any place is not
a representation of the Christian religion, but an
embodiment of Christ. Wheresoever it may be, though it be
but two or three present in the content of His name, He
is there. It is the presence of Christ which constitutes
a church, and it is the increase of and conformity to
Christ which is the growth or development of a church. In
the book of the Revelation the Lord does not hesitate to
threaten the removal of a candlestick if its essential
function ceases, however much of Christian form and
activity may be present. The essential function and the
final criterion is the presence of Christ. The presence
of the Lord has ALWAYS been the determining factor
in eternal values. It is the Holy Spirit’s supreme
function to bring Christ into all things and all things
into Christ.
Churches,
as such, are only a means, and as earthly THINGS they
will pass with time. What is of Christ in and through the
means will be gathered in a spiritual way into the great
church universal which Christ will present to Himself
— “a glorious church”. We are not here
dealing with the full organism which comes out of the
life-seed — the sowing of Christ — but just
with “as it was in the beginning”. Of course, a
challenge is involved: How did this and that come into
being?
The
principle which was to be extended worldwide was inherent
in the choosing and sending forth by Christ of the
“Seventy”. They were sent to every place
“where he himself would come”. A local church,
then, is not IN THE FIRST PLACE something
constituted or formed according to a pattern of
procedure, but by the presence of Christ in the several
or more in that place. These “baptized in one Spirit
into one body” are, in effect, Christ in that area,
holding that ground as a testimony to His rights, and
sending forth “the sweet savour of Christ in every
place”. Failing this, with regard to its true
function the organism is dead.
Carry
on the form if you will, but a “church”, as
such, is no more sacred in the eyes of the Lord than was
the tabernacle in Shiloh, or the temple in Jerusalem,
once the glory had departed, that is the presence of the
Lord.
The Workers
The
principle to which we have pointed above is the same in
relation to all who have any place of responsibility in
the work of the Lord. It is a far cry from modern methods
to the beginning. The selection by popular vote, the
choosing of “likely” people to hold office, the
influence of title, degree, business acumen, success in
the world, money, “interest in Christian work”,
the choice of “novices”, and giving or allowing
public recognition ON SUCH GROUNDS, is a
system which has no place at the beginning. It is usually
fraught with trouble sooner or later, and is a dangerous
thing for those concerned.
A
simple, practical issue arose early at the beginning. It
was just a matter of seeing that certain widows were not
overlooked as to their daily temporal needs and the
righteous ministry of money available. It might be
thought that any good man or men with a little business
ability could attend to that, but not so at the
beginning. The prescription was: “...men of good
report, full of the Spirit and of wisdom”. “And
they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy
Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and
Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch:
whom they set before the apostles and when they had
prayed, they laid their hands on them” (Acts 6).
The
matter was carried through with scrupulous care, and the
fundamental essential was “full of the Holy
Spirit”, so that all might see it. In this most
elementary phase of procedure the imperative was SPIRITUAL
men, recognized by all as such. The
“office” did nothing to make them that. They
were that before they were entrusted with the most
elementary things. Evidently they had proved themselves
in the church and were approved by the church before ever
they were “appointed”. If this was so in the
case of the first elementary responsibility, how much
more so would it apply to the greater responsibility of
elders or overseers.
Before
the apostles had finished their course, things began to
change in church order. Signs of incipient
ecclesiasticism as we know it today, were showing
themselves. It is overlooked that when Paul wrote his
last letters — to Timothy — and said that he
wrote that “men might know how they ought to behave
themselves in the house of God”, he was writing
correctively of misbehaviour. That misbehaviour related
in the main to those in responsibility, the elders.
Paul’s corrective was the recognition that elders
are not just officials, but they are essentially SPIRITUAL
men; men of SPIRITUAL measure and no novices.
They ARE elders in character, SPIRITUAL qualifications
and gift before they have the title of Elder. The title
never makes a man an Elder. If he is not that already, no
title will ever make him that! As in the churches, so in
their responsible men, it is the presence and measure of
Christ which determines everything.
We
have done no more than point to a vital principle. Vital
in that it will determine the life, course and destiny of
anything bearing the name of the Lord.