The history of Christianity
from the latter days of the Apostles is the history of prisons.
Not literal, material prisons, though there have been not a few
of these, but prisons which are the result of man's inveterate
habit of taking hold and bringing into bondage. How many times
has the Spirit broken loose and moved in a new and free way, only
to have that way brought under the control of man and
crystallized into another 'Form', Creed, Organization,
Denomination, Sect, 'Order', Community, etc.! The invariable
result has been that the free movement and life of the Spirit has
been cramped, or even killed, by the prison of the framework into
which it has been drawn or forced. Every time we seek to express
something Divine in word or form we at once limit it, and when
that expression or form becomes the established and recognised
formula we have in effect put fetters on the Spirit. God gives a
vision, and every God-given vision has illimitable potentialities;
but all too soon the vision is laid hold of by men who never had
it in or of the Spirit, and the grapes of Eshcol turn to raisins
in their hands. So very many of the living fruits of the heavenly
country have suffered in this way, and have become dried,
shrunken, unctionless shadows of their early glory.
Upon a living movement of the
Spirit born with fire in the heart of some Prophet, successors,
sponsors, or adherents build an earthly organization, and
imprison the vision in a tradition. So a Message becomes a
Creed; a "Heavenly Vision" becomes an earthly
institution; a movement of the Spirit becomes a 'Work', which
must be kept going by the steam of human energy, and maintained
by man's resourcefulness.
Sooner or later any real or
seeming departure or diversion from the 'recognised' and
traditional order of Creed or practice will be heresy, to be
violently suspect, repressed, and outcast. Too often what, at its
beginning, was a spiritual energy producing a living organism
expressing something that God really wanted and to which He gave birth
has become something which the next generation has to sustain
and work hard to keep going. The thing has developed a
self-interest and it will go hard with anyone or anything
interfering with it, or seeming so to do. The Spirit has become
the prisoner of the institution or system, and the people become
limited spiritually as the result.
Why is all this so true,
resulting, as it does, in strain, divisions, jealousies,
rivalries, and often deception? And, if there is any remedy, what
is it?
The answer is to be found in an
honest - if costly - facing of the fundamental question. Why am I
where I am? Did I enter into something objectively? Was it
something already formed which was presented to me, with an
appeal, an argument, a 'need'? Was it a something at all?
Or did the Spirit open the eyes of my heart, and give me a heavenly
vision, which on one side made me cry "Woe is me"
and on the other "Here am I"? Was it a life crisis? Did
I take up a 'teaching', a complexion of truth, a 'work', an
enterprise? Was I right at the very source of life? Was it a
definite and overpowering 'apprehending' from Heaven? Is my
position that of relationship to something from which I can
resign? In a word, is my imprisonment that of a system or order
of an outward kind, or am I the 'bondslave' of the Spirit? The
Apostle Paul, in particular, shows that the former bondage or
imprisonment can even be to what is in the Bible, in the form of
what he calls "the letter", and the Bible - in this
sense - can be 'death' ("the letter killeth" - 2 Cor.
3:6). Not that we can have the Spirit and the life without the
Word, but it can most certainly be the other way round.
It is so seriously important
that we, and everything, shall be kept continuously in touch with
the original source of life. Succession and continuation is not
ecclesiastical, traditional, or of human choice and decision;
it is certainly not policy, expediency, or fear. It is anointing
- the anointed eye, ear, hand, and foot. It is a fire in the
bones, not the obligations of a profession, association or idea.
The Spirit must have initiated
our course and position. The Spirit must be referred to and
deferred to all along the way. The Spirit will be a rebel in
anything in which He may have His liberties limited; and if He is
in us, He will make us such rebels. This does not for a moment
mean that all rebellion and bid for what is called 'liberty' is
of the Spirit. It just means that we are broken people in the
realm of nature, and robbed of a power to fight for our own
conceptions.
So it becomes just the issue of
imprisonment to the Spirit, or something other or extra. It must
be, at the greatest cost, and because the Spirit has done a
deep and drastic thing in us -
"Here am I, I can do no
other. So help me God."
First published as an editorial in "A Witness and A
Testimony" magazine, Mar-Apr 1961, Vol 39-2 with the following additional comment from the editor:
(The above Editorial is
largely suggested by the reading of an article (mostly political)
by an English Member of Parliament, and published in 'The
Spectator' in 1947. - Ed.)