It pleased God... to reveal
His Son in me, that I might preach Him. (Galatians 1:15,16)
Since Paul’s day so very much
of Christian activity has been the furthering of a movement, the propagating of
a teaching, and the furthering of the interests of an institution. It is not a
movement, nor to establish a movement in the Earth and to get followers,
adherents, members, support. It is not an institution, even though we might
call that institution the church. The church has no existence in the thought of
God apart from the revelation of Jesus Christ, and it is judged according to the
measure in which Christ the Son of God’s love is in evidence by its existence.
It is not a testimony, if by that you mean a specific form of teaching, a
systematized doctrine. No, it is not a testimony. Let us be careful what we
mean when we speak about "the testimony." We may have in our minds some
arrangement of truth, and that truth couched in certain phraseology, form of
words, and thus speak about "the testimony"; it is not the testimony in that
sense. It is not a denomination, and it is not a "non-denomination," and it is
not an "inter-denomination." It is not Christianity. It is not "the work" –
oh, we are always talking about "the work": "How is the work getting on?" – we
are giving ourselves to the work, we are interested in the work, we are out in
the work. It is not a mission. It is Christ! "...That I might preach Him."
If that had remained central
and preeminent all these horrible disintegrating jealousies would never have had
a chance. All the wretched mess that exists in the organization of Christianity
today would never have come about. It is because something specific in itself,
a movement, a mission, a teaching, a testimony, a fellowship, has taken the
place of Christ. People have gone out to further that, to project that, to
establish that. It would not be confessed; nevertheless it is true, that today
it is not so much Christ that is our work. Now beloved, an inward revelation is
the cure of all that. Am I saying too hard a thing, too sweeping a thing? The
existence of all that represents the absence of an adequate inward revelation of
Christ.