2. Growth
Having briefly touched upon the
first evidence of life, that is: freshness or newness, we proceed
to note the second, namely, growth. We have seen that the
essential difference between the animate and the inanimate, a
living thing or a rock - for instance - is that life produces an
organism. The characteristic of an organism - when it is as
it should be - is the capacity for growth. This growth is
spontaneous, not forced, artificial, or engineered. We have said:
'when it is as it should be', because an organism can be
a contradiction to its true nature, and fall short of its true
life. But, given that it is a normal organism, it will
spontaneously grow. For it to fail here means that somewhere and
for some reason, life is arrested, frustrated, or limited.
While we do not want to seem
too technical in dealing with spiritual matters, it must be kept
in mind that God has constituted His created universe upon
spiritual principles, and that, therefore, we can pass through
nature to grace; the natural is meant to be a parable of the
spiritual. So Jesus showed in His Parables; but it was only a
small example of a vast truth. So, we let nature indicate and
point to the greater and the Eternal. Perhaps the first law of
the growth of a living organism is
A Margin
of Capital Over Expenditure
When capital is overtaken by
output in any realm, growth, expansion, development is at once
threatened or arrested. That is particularly true in the physical
realm. In business and commerce expansion may continue for a time
on borrowed capital, 'overdrafts', but that is artificial,
and its days are numbered. In the physical we may artificially
boost and use stimulants, but true growth is not taking place.
In the spiritual a narrow
margin of capital means that the seeming growth is a deception, a
lie, the doom of which is in itself. No crisis will be survived
without capital to draw upon. This is why God has ordained the
ordinance of rest. This is the law of 'The Day of Rest', and this
is why we have holidays. To violate this law is to overdraw on
capital and shorten tenure and growth. So often in spiritual life
and in the Lord's work a crisis cannot be met and overcome
because there is lacking the spiritual reserves to carry through.
A tragic story of breakdown in Christian work is bound up with
this principle. It is essential to the growth of the Christian
and spiritual organism, whether it be the individual Christian,
the local company, or the Church universal, that it has life
to spare and to give: that it has more than it needs for
itself. When Jesus said: "I am come that they might have
life, and have it more abundantly" surely He did not mean
that they should just have exuberance, but abundance for others.
In other words, that there should be capital for expansion.
But, having said what is so
obvious, and yet so necessary (and ignore it at your peril), we
have to ask how reserves and capital are maintained.
The
Conserving of Capital
Here we do touch a matter of
such vital significance as to determine whether there is such
capital or whether it is only a false basis which will not stand
up to the test. If it were asked what is necessary to build up
strength, secure reserves of stamina, and assure growth, many
people would answer that the essential is good food and plenty of
it. To just say that may find you assenting and saying mentally:
'Quite right!' You may be a bit surprised if we say that your
'quite' needs qualifying, and that your answer could be wrong.
Think again. Are you quite sure that the availability of good
food in plenty will itself secure vitality and reserves of
energy? Is there not required something in the organism to
transform that food into energy? What about indigestion and its
kind? Does this always mean that the food is not good? Or does it
mean that the person cannot deal with it aright? No, food,
however good and necessary, is not the full answer. The terrible
and tragic fact is that with an abundant supply of good spiritual
food, teaching, ministry, many Christians to whose very door it
is brought do not grow thereby; they break down in crises; they
never go beyond themselves; and are more a liability than
responsible units in the body corporate. Again, nature can teach
us.
In the human body there are
certain functions which have solely to do with this question of
how the body grows by laying up capital reserves.
The inclusive function is the
capacity for taking hold of what is supplied and
subjecting it to the purpose for which it is given. Medical
people have a name for this, but we will omit technical terms.
The point is that it is a recognized thing, and forms the basis
of health. There just must be life in the organism
sufficient to 'take hold' of food and make it
yield its properties and values. Christians, the very best
ministry that you can have is no guarantee that you will
spiritually profit by it and grow unless you "have life in
yourselves". There just has to be a correspondence between
the life in the food and the life in yourself! There must be
life laying hold on life and turning it to account. Otherwise you
will be, as we have sadly found not a few Christians to be, where
there is abundance of good food, over a long period of years, and
you not "profit thereby", but be a passenger, an
attendant, and not "growing up into Him in all things",
whose "profiteering is known unto all". You may, after
all, be in a state of spiritual debility, dyspepsia, and a
non-accountable member.
Within this general law there
are two functions known to the physician, again with their own
names. They are not so difficult as it may sound when mentioned.
(a) There is the function of
breaking down the intake; the subjecting it to analysis,
investigation, and extraction. That is exactly what happens in a
healthy body. It is as though all the little cells lying in the
lymph stream take an enquiring look at what is passed down their
way, and they interrogate it: 'What sort of a thing are you? What
do you want here? What have you got in you that we need?
Let's have a look, let's break you down and find out how much
good there is in you. Then we will use the good and refuse the
useless.'
This examining, analysing,
directing process is the normal function, where disease and
injury do not obstruct or interfere. (Disease and injury in the
spiritual life belong to another department from that with which
we are occupied.)
In what way does this apply to
the spiritual life?
It depends so much upon whether
you are really spiritually alive; which means that, having been
truly born again, you have received the Holy Spirit within. If
this is so, and you are walking in the light with no controversy
between the Lord and yourself, the Divine life in you will
function as we have said above.
First, when spiritual food is
presented to you, you will exercise yourself regarding it. You
will look at it; investigate it; break it down into its
components, and then appropriate by faith its values and seek to
adjust to their demands. This is a bit different from hearing a
message and either leaving it at that, or passing some remark as
to whether it pleased you or not. It means that you will, at
very least, say: 'Lord, what do you want me to learn by that;
what do you mean for me by that word?'
(b) The second reaction is just
the following through of the enquiry and analysis. It is
appropriation, obedience, and acting according to the light. One
is breaking down; the other is building up.
Thus, we return to the
beginning. Life is the life of an organism. Life means that there
is an energy, a quality of heart and mind which makes a definite
response to what is presented; acts upon it; makes it yield its
inherent properties. Apart from this life-action and reaction,
the best provision will leave us anaemic, and incapable of
surviving any serious crisis.
Thus and only thus shall we
grow and have reserves of capital to meet not only our own
demands but those of others. Our own growth is seen in others.
Growth is horizoned by life. Growth is one of the criteria of
livingness.
3.
Organic Relatedness
The third mark of livingness
which we shall consider is that of organic or corporate
relatedness.
The inter-relatedness of the
organisms is fundamental to the full expression of life; it is a
fact which all living creation declares. The living creation is a
vast system of inter-linked lives or functions. It is only
through the fulfilment of corporate relations that life can
continue and progress; only in this way can the laws of life come
to their fullest expression. Life involves relations. Isolation
means death, where things are an end in themselves.
The very word 'Body' means a
community. It comes from a word 'bhadh', to bind, a banding or
binding together of mutually related parts. The parts can only
fulfil their special function in relatedness. They can only reach
their best in fellowship with other parts. Every organ of the
body was made for fellowship. It is a fellowship which life
itself creates and sustains. If we but knew it, the various
faculties and cells of the physical body reach out and seek for
fellowship, and there is a revolt in them against aloneness.
Indeed, the body so reaches out because it knows that its safety
depends upon co-operation and mutual aid. The individual function
exists for the whole body, and the whole body is affected by the
individual function. It is impossible to have dislocation without
discontent, and it is impossible to have discontent without
weakness and loss.
In a museum in London there is
one of the first efforts at making a flying machine, the
forerunner of the modern aeroplane. From a close study of birds
taking off, in flight and alighting, and of the mechanism of a
bird itself, a machine was made with wings made of feathers, a
body with the contour of a bird, and mechanical action imitating
wings, tail, 'under-carriage' and head. Although not resembling a
bird, it was intended to be - in its shape and actions - a
mechanical bird of sufficient size and strength to carry a man
through the air. The creator of this contrivance had gone to
nature, God's animate creation, for the laws and principles of
flight. Would it not be a good thing if, instead of human
organization, the Church - the people of God - looked carefully
into the principles of interrelatedness as so marvellously
functioning in that masterpiece of God, the human body? He has
written there all the laws and principles of that unity for which
there is such a vast amount of organized effort. As in all the
faculties and cells of the human body there is the outreach and
cry for fellowship, so in the Church universal, the true Body of
Christ.
But there is a difference.
Christian people are trying to bring it about from the outside.
The human body does it by the life within. If "the law of
the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" had the full and clear
way which an inward work of the Cross can secure, the problem of
fellowship would be solved. Just as the erstwhile rivals, Peter
and John (and other quarrelsome disciples), were - after the
Cross - found in a wonderful spiritual partnership, not by pact
but by the Spirit, so would it be if the same basis was inwardly
established. The Church was, and is, intended to be
universally - as an organism - what Christ's earthly human body
expressed locally of the government of the Father. As in His
case, so in the case of all who are controlled by Him, there is a
will of God which outruns the limits of the individual
personality, and is infinitely greater than the personal life.
That will of God takes up the individual and treats him, not as
an end in himself, but as a means to a large, Divine,
immeasurable end.
No single life, however rich
and many-sided, could provide an adequate field for the
manifestation of the Divine purpose. That purpose requires
myriads of personalities, with Divine qualities, in order that
the length and breadth of its infinite scope may come to
expression. The Apostle prayed that the saints might be
strengthened with might by the Holy Spirit to comprehend with
all saints the breadth, length, depth, and height. The
comprehension demands "all saints". In the human body,
if an organism gets out of the controlling relationship with the
other organisms, one of two things happens. It either becomes
subnormal, less than its real nature and purpose, and in that way
becomes unbalanced; or it becomes abnormal, and in so doing loses
its distinguishing character. Cancer is like that. Because of the
loss of the control of associated tissues it makes the organism
abnormal, and that organism in time cannot be recognized as to
what it normally is.
What a lot of history as to
Christian lives and Christian activity is illustrated by these so
well-known physical facts. What a warning they are! Fellowship,
relatedness, co-ordination, are determined by the measure of
spiritual life. When that spiritual life is at low ebb fellowship
is strained and divisions abound. People throw off restraint and
authority and act independently. When spiritual life is full and
high, there is a flowing, holding, and moving together. Just
after Pentecost, when life was at high tide, it says of the
believers: "They continued in fellowship". All this is
not only a statement of truth, it is a test of the spiritual
livingness.
Of the criteria of livingness,
therefore, organic relatedness in expression is a vital factor.
The true expression of the Body of Christ is horizoned by life.