There is a painful
slowness amongst Christians to apprehend the great
purpose and intent of their salvation, to know and to
understand the nature of their high calling; and it is in
this connection that there is a great divide between the
people of God. Christianity at its best has very largely
become a general thing a matter of being saved and of
going on in a general way as Christians, but not
recognizing that in God' s mind we are saved with a
mighty purpose, not just to be saved and then to be
occupied with getting others saved, and stopping there.
Both of those things are good; they are fundamental and
essential, but they are only the beginning.
From that point
something quite different begins, what Paul refers to
here when he says, ''I....beseech you to walk worthily of
the calling wherewith ye were called''; and around that
phrase, the calling wherewith ye were called, he
gathers all these immense things about the Church; these
immense things which, as to the backward aspect, reach
far back over the ages; as to the upward aspect, ''in the
heavenlies", with a vocation which is now heavenly;
and then the onward aspect, ''the ages to come".
These are phrases which indicate the calling wherewith we
are called, but how few of us have really apprehended it!
We could say very much
about the tragedy of the loss of that vision, the loss of
that Divine revelation, and of the building up of
something which has made it well nigh impossible for
multitudes now to move into that calling, bound hand and
foot as they are by a tradition and by a system of things
which leaves responsible people not free, too much
involved, too much involved for their very livelihood, to
move into God's full thought.
The Church, as the Body
of Christ, is the vessel chosen of God, appointed and
revealed by God, to be the embodiment of the glory and
greatness of Christ, the vessel, the vehicle, by which
all that Christ is will be made known through the ages of
the ages. The greatness of the work of Christ in His
Cross indicates how great the Church must be. If Christ
loved the Church and gave Himself for it, if the work of
the Cross of the Lord Jesus is so great, is not that a
further indication of how great the Church must be? It
has by His own parable been called a ''pearl of great
price'' (Matt. 13:46), and to secure it He, the Divine
Merchant, let go all that He had, and He had an 'all'
which no merchant in the history of this world has ever
possessed, a wealth and a fullness, a glory which He had
with God before the world was, something indestructible,
great, and wonderful. Seeking goodly pearls, when He had
found one of great price He sold all to get it. We cannot
understand that; it is beyond us; but there it is, it is
Divine revelation. And the Cross was the price of the
Church. For some unspeakable reason, the Church stands
related to God in value like that. Christ loved the
Church, the Church of God which He purchased with His own
blood. It is evidently a very great and wonderful thing.
Now we must look at some
of those features of Christ which are taken up in the
Church, in order that we may know what this Church is
that we are talking about. What is it? Well, if it takes
up the things which are true of Christ, then what is true
of Him is, in the mind of God, to be true of the Church;
and it is true of the Church which is in God's
eye.
And the first feature of
Christ is His eternal being, the eternal conception. He
was before the world was; He was before the order of time
was instituted in the establishment of those heavenly
bodies by the government of which time exists, years and
months, day and night, summer and winter. These are all
governed by heavenly bodies, and these are time factors.
Before they were, He was, for He created all things. That
is true of Christ.
But the letter to the
Ephesians says that that is true of the Church: ''He
chose us in Him before the foundation of the
world....having foreordained us unto adoption as sons
through Jesus Christ unto Himself'' (Eph. 1:4-5). This
letter to the Ephesians is not set in time, it will have
its effect upon time matters, the practical matters of
everyday life, of our walk and conduct here on this
earth, but it is set in the timeless realm. It goes back,
and it goes on; it bridges all time in the Divine
conception. That is where this letter is set, and until
we recognize the implications of that, we have no real
apprehension of the Church; and when we do recognize
that, what nonsense all this 'churchianity' becomes, how
small and petty, and how we feel that from God's
standpoint we are just playing at some game of churches
when we make so much of what has traditionally come to be
called 'the Church.' One real Divine glimpse of the
Church and all that other becomes paltry, petty, foolish;
and a mighty emancipation takes place inside of us, but
it requires revelation.
Christ as the
foundation, as the rock, as the basis of everything, is
founded, planted, and rooted in eternity, and nothing
that time can bring can affect that. He is outside of it
all. He is over it all. He is beyond it all. Nothing that
can come in, even with Adam's fall and all its
consequences through history, can interfere with that.
The Church takes that feature of the absolute stability
of Christ. It is something outside of time, before the
world was, chosen in Him. The stability of the true
Church according to God's mind is the stability of Christ
Himself. This thing, on God's basis, in God's realm is an
immovable and indestructible thing. The Church embodies
the eternity and indestructibility of His very life.
Christ passed through
this world unrecognized, unloved, making the positive
affirmation that ''no one knoweth the Son save the
Father'' (Matt. 11:27). There is a mystery here. He is
manifested as God in Christ, but in such a hidden way
that it demands an act of God in specific revelation to
see Jesus Christ. You cannot see Who Jesus Christ is
truly unless God acts sovereignly and opens the eyes of
your heart. That has been demonstrated by His whole life
here on this earth. When one apostle was able in a moment
of revelation to say, ''Thou art the Christ, the Son of
the living God,'' the rejoinder was: ''Blessed art thou,
Simon BarJonah; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it
unto thee, but My Father'' (Matt. 16:17).
And what is true of
Christ is true of the Church. It is heavenly; it is
unrecognized, unknown, unless God reveals it. I want you
really to grasp this. I know in what a realm of
helplessness it places us on the one side, and rightly
so, it is as well that it is so; and therefore what it
makes necessary on the other side: God must have a Church
which exists on the basis of His own sovereign act of
revelation. The purity of it demands that. If everybody
could see and understand and comprehend, and the Church
could be brought right down to the limited compass of
human apprehension, what sort of Church would it be? The
Church, in its heavenly character taken from Christ, is
something that can only be entered by revelation, because
it can only be known by revelation. ''No one
knoweth.....'' We can only state these facts. No teaching
can accomplish it; we are powerless in the matter. All
that is given to us is to state Divine facts; it is for
God to reveal. But, thanks be unto God, He has revealed
and He does reveal; and some of us can say He has shined
into our hearts in this matter, and the revelation of
Christ and of the Church has made an immense difference
in every way.
God cannot be really
known by the things which He says, however many they may
be. There is such a difference between mental,
intellectual apprehension and conception of God, and
living, heart-transforming apprehension. God must come to
us Himself in a living, personal way if we are to know
Him livingly, actually. You may read a biography or an
autobiography, and you may afterward say that you thereby
know the person concerned; but how often it is true that
when you actually meet that person, there is something
that was not there in the book, and which makes all the
difference. You were not really changed and transformed
by reading the book. You had impressions, but they did
not make any difference to you actually in your very life
and nature; but you meet the person, and the impact of
the person makes a deep impression and has a great
effect. That is so often the case, but that is a poor
illustration.
Now the greatness of the
Church is here, that God has ordained and appointed that
the Church now, in this dispensation, should be as the
living Person of the Lord: where He can be found, where
He can be met, where He can be touched, where He makes
self-manifestation. Rome has the 'truth' regarding this,
but has dragged it down on to a temporal, worldly level;
but nevertheless the fact remains, He is found there, in
the Church, and only in the Church. ''Where two or three
are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst
of them'' (Matt. 18:20). God can be met, found, touched
there; there is the vehicle of His manifestation. So the
Church is called to be here in this dispensation, and in
the ages to come, the very Body through which God in
Christ manifests Himself, makes Himself known. Is that
the Church that we know, that is commonly called the
Church? (Oh, no! But that is God's thought, and how
different!)
I have been reading a
book by Adolph Keller, a man who traveled all over the
world to visit all churches, to see what could be done
along the line of church union. I came on something like
this in his book: ''I must admit," he says, ''that
oftentimes when I sat in magnificent church buildings,
with their stained-glass windows and carved organs, I was
less conscious of being in the Church of Christ than
when, for instance, I was in one of those Ukrainian
peasant-rooms crowded with men and women who had come
barefoot from afar to hear the Word of God. These poor
little congregations and churches widely scattered in the
hills of Yugoslavia, in the lonely villages of Wolhynia,
in the coal-mining districts of Belgium, in the taverns
and barns of Czechoslovakia, these churches truly humble
us, because they show us again and again the true poverty
and the true riches of Christ; and that in a way
impossible in the securely established, self-sufficient
church that we know today.'' Then he makes this
statement: ''The entire Church no longer represents its
nature as originally intended, neither is it able to do
so.''
How different from the
Church of God's thought! The true Church is nothing less,
in the intention of God, than Christ Himself present and
going on with His work, now without those earthly
limitations of His life before His death and
resurrection. The Christ risen, ascended and exalted in
all the fullness which God has put in, is now in the true
Church, and that Church exists. I say, you cannot
identify it; you can only see where two or three are
gathered. You cannot say of this or that or some other
thing called 'the Church' that that is the Church. No,
the true Church is still this mysterious thing. It is
Christ in active expression. How great is the Church if
it is Christ! I say, we can only state the facts. There
they are. What we have to do next is to pray to the Lord:
O Lord, reveal the true Church and save me from the
caricature!
There is one last word.
It concerns that always present and always governing
factor about Christ which is not taken sufficient account
of, I think, in its meaning. You notice that when Christ
was here His aspect was always the forward one. He was
always thinking and talking of a time to come. That is a
governing factor and feature of Christ. ''In that
day....'' (Matt. 7:22). He is looking on, talking about a
coming day. All the time His eyes are upon the distant
horizon and He speaks of what will then be then you shall
know, then you shall see, then all will be manifested,
then all that has been so hidden and mysterious will be
perfectly clear.
When you pass into the
Epistles you find the same thing dominant in the case of
the Church. Mighty things now, big possibilities now, big
issues and responsibilities now; the Church is now, even
now, unto principalities and powers an instrument of the
revelation of the manifold wisdom of God (Eph. 3:10). But
the onward look is prominent, governing everything:
"...that we should be unto the praise of His glory''
(Eph. 1:12); ''that in the ages to come He might show the
exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in
Christ Jesus'' (Eph 2:7); ''......unto Him be the glory
in the Church and in Christ Jesus unto all the
generations of the age of the ages'' (Eph. 3:21). I am
only bringing that in here at this moment with this
object: to remind you of the tremendous end to which the
Church is called. How great the Church is in the light of
the vocation which it is to fulfill! What a great
vocation!
We might spend much time
considering what the calling of the Church is, or is
going to be, in the coming ages; but we must be satisfied
for the present with making this one observation. It is
one thing to be a citizen, and a blessed citizen, of a
noble country and of a noble king. There may be many
blessings in that for which to be grateful, but it is an
infinitely greater thing to be a member of the king's
household and family, a member of the reigning house. And
that is the calling of the Church: not only to be
inhabitants of the land, but to be members of the
reigning family. We are called with that calling, to be
in that inner circle.
The Church is this
specific company, elect from all eternity to all
eternity, not just to be something in itself, to know
satisfaction and gratification, but to be instrumental in
the hands of God in serving Him in His universe
throughout all the coming ages, in close relationship
with His Throne.
How great the Church is!
Extract from "Four Greatnesses of Divine Revelation" Chapter 8 - Part 3. First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jan-Feb 1948, Vol 26-1