John 4:23
It is no exaggeration to say
that the briefest phrase from the lips of Jesus Christ contains a
depth, wealth and cruciality of significance that is
inexhaustible. The above clause is an example of this. In the
first place it - with its context - was used to mark the change
in a long and powerful tradition. A system and tradition so
strong and deep-rooted as, in any questioning of it, to rouse the
most vehement and deadly wrath and antagonism of a whole nation,
dispersed throughout the whole world. The book of the Bible in
which this phrase occurs is just full of this so terrible
antagonism. The words not only indicate the transition from one
long dispensation to another, altogether different but they go
right to the very heart of the situation which is stirring and
troubling Christendom today as it has never before done.
Christendom, which means everything bearing the name of
Christianity, is moved in our time in every one of its many and
varied circles by an enforced necessity - to save its very life -
to find a way of unity.
Never before in the Christian era has the
word 'Church' been so much, so often, and so seriously upon the
lips of those included in the word 'Christianity'. From the
biggest to the smallest communities within its compass this word
'Church' and its unity is the subject of convocations,
conferences, councils, committees and conclaves. All this betrays
a deep and serious concern, and when that is true of anything it
implies that things are not right. What is called 'Christianity',
and what has come to be called 'the Church', has become a
tradition, an institution, and a system quite as fixed, rooted
and established as ever Judaism was, and it will be no less
costly to fundamentally change it than was the case with
Judaism. Superficial adjustments may be made, and are being
made, but a very heavy price is attached to the change which is
necessary to really solve the great problem. It may very well be,
as in the time of the Lord, that the essential light will not be
given to very many because God knows that they would never pay
the price. It may only be a "Remnant" - as of old - who
will be led into God's answer because they will meet the demands
at all costs. Therefore we cannot be too hopeful in regard to all
that is going on in this connection. It may be that this so
widespread stirring is in the sovereignty of God intended for
"the sifting of the hearts of men".
The sifting may very well be in
the direction of a winnowing of the variety of conceptions of
what the Church is.
Somehow, in the course of time,
the word 'Church' has become associated with a kind of building
or architecture, for that is now the common word for such places.
Or again, it is used of congregations and assemblies of people,
physical bodies. Sometimes it is employed to define a worldwide
body of people comprehensively called 'Christians'. Within that
widest circle there are all the many denominational 'churches',
too numerous to tabulate. The sifting may mean that we have to
recognize that the true Church is not the aggregate of human
physical bodies. It is not a society tied together by either a
title or a creed, i.e. a set of beliefs. It is not constituted by
a certain procedure called 'New Testament Order' or practice. All
these externalities, physical, temporal, material, etc., will go,
as they have done in numerous places in history, and are doing
under the stresses of persecution in wide areas of the world.
But with the passing of the
material, the places, the physical, the true Church is
unaffected and it is one; not divided and not many. It is
here that, in the words of John 4:23 (and context), Jesus has
made more than a statement, He has defined the Church for this
whole dispensation. He has peremptorily dismissed Jerusalem and
its Temple and Gerizim in Samaria, and with them everything of
the same type and order, and has enunciated the principle which
defines and designates the alone true Church. If we are to take
Jesus seriously, as we hear Him in this Gospel by John, then
buildings however ornate and magnificent, and congregations of
religious people however great, and ancient traditions and
systems however they may have been sovereignly used by
God, are not the true Church! There are many things
within this compass which are thought to go to make up and belong
to the Church, but really do not do so. It is significant how,
when a man or people walk with God, the road leads from the
outward to the inward, and how so much of that which was before
thought to be so important, just falls off, and spiritual reality
dispenses with so much ecclesiastical paraphernalia and trapping.
What, then, was that essential and ultimate to which Christ
reduced and sifted everything on the basis and essence of the
Church? In finding that we shall find the answer to all
divisions, and the secret of true and eternal unity.
When Jesus reduced everything -
as in John 4:23 - to "In spirit and in truth" (and note
- it was the whole matter of "worship", related to
places and ancient systems, that was being dealt with), what
really did He mean? If we use a term which sounds difficult, what
follows will explain it, we trust, quite amply. The Church is the
unity of spiritual personalities.
This, purely, is just what
Jesus had been saying with such emphasis and imperativeness to
Nicodemus. "Verily, verily" - "Most truly" -
"I say." Remembering who Nicodemus was, and what he
represented, Jesus emphatically told him that not only was he
outside of the Kingdom of Heaven, but that, as he was, with all
his religion, tradition, and sincerity, there was a positive
embargo upon his entering; the door was fast closed to his kind.
The demand and requirement, Jesus categorically stated, was that
something should happen which would be a starting of life all
over again, and that as a born member of a new and altogether
different race, sphere, and nation. In elucidating Nicodemus's
perplexity, Jesus made it clear that this is not a physical-body
matter, for, as stated elsewhere, "Flesh and blood cannot
inherit the Kingdom of Heaven." So, basically, the Kingdom
or the Church is not so many religious physical bodies. What,
then, is this "you" that has to be "born from
above", "born of the Spirit", in contrast to
"that which is born of the flesh"? What is it that - in
God's and Heaven's realm - has no existence or place until it is
reborn? What is it that, as to union with God, has no life until
life is given as by a new birth? The answer of Jesus, and of the
New Testament as a whole (which only is Christianity), is that
the spirit of man, the "inner man of the heart",
"our inward man" as an entity, has to
have this rebirth. When the spirit of man is referred to, it is
not just what is meant when we say of a person: 'He - or she -
has a nice, a pleasant spirit', or 'is nice-spirited'. That is
abstract. The spirit in man is the essential personality of that
order which belongs to the Kingdom of Heaven: it is a different
order from all others. It is, as Jesus said, the alone and direct
result of the action of the Spirit of God, and it is essentially
different from every other religious order.
The Church, we repeat, is the
organic unity of such spiritual personalities, and such alone.
The Church will never be anything or anywhere more in existence,
greater or smaller, than the spiritual personalities and
spiritual measure of such as have come into being - with God
- by this definite operation of the Holy Spirit; not by means of
sacraments, or any other outward means, but by a Divine
fiat, an act of God. Sacraments are not spiritual, they
are temporal and symbolic. The context of our governing words is:
"God is Spirit". That is nature, not firstly
disposition. It is a kind of being, the essential order of being.
Then Jesus went on to emphasize that relationship, intercourse,
oneness with God, is only possible when man becomes - by Divine
act - basically and essentially a spiritually reborn creation;
what Paul termed: "He that is spiritual". The Church
will never be - locally or universally - more perfect than are
the spiritual personalities which comprise it. The buildings and
the old human bodies will go. The "spirits of just men made
perfect" will be clothed upon with a body "not made
with hands", but, like the newborn spirit, "a body
which is from above". (See Hebrews 12:24 and 1 Corinthians
15.)
Hence, the focus of God's
training and "chastening" is as by "the Father of our
spirits" (Hebrews 12:9).
The Church begins with
spiritual birth. It grows by (a) the multiplication of
spiritual births, and (b) the growth of the spiritual
personalities.
The only seen Church is
the character of Christ in persons. Bodies are an essential
media. We are not thinking of unembodied or disembodied spirits.
We are not in the realm of mysticism. Spiritual life is
essentially practical because we are spiritually developed by all
the practical experiences of bodily life. While our bodies are
but the 'vessels' of ourselves, they are the vessels, and
'in these we do groan'. We do not accept the 'Christian Science'
tenet that "matter is an illusion, and at most evil".
We must take time to be
very clear on this side of this great matter, because it will be
so easy for us to be misunderstood; and it would be so likely
that it would be said that we are just spiritualizing away the
Church. The human, physical bodies of Christians are as essential
to the Church as they are to man himself as the vehicle of
self-expression and presence in this world for practical
purposes. This should not need saying, for it would be so absurd
to think of the Church as so many spirits without bodies. The
same is true of locations. The Church is not an omnipresent
spirit, even if governed by the Holy Spirit who is omnipresent.
What we are saying - as we believe the New Testament teaches - is
that within and behind the needed physical and bodily
'temples' the Church is constituted by the regenerated spirits of
men and women, in whose spirits the Divine gift of eternal life
in Christ Jesus dwells by new birth. This is the eternal Church.
Physical bodies may pass away and give place to the bodies
"like unto his glorious body". Localizations may cease,
as they have done from New Testament times onwards. Temporal
housings of the Church may - and will - go, sooner or later; but
that true Church of "the spirits of just men" is
eternal. To see and understand this true nature of the Church is
to have several vital effects. It will show the fallacy of much
of the common and prevailing phraseology in relation to the
Church - such as 'joining the Church" whether by invitation,
constraint, attractions, or any other outward means. The fallacy
in our Church mentality and talk is largely responsible for the
fallacy that the historic 'church' is in the eyes and minds of so
many people today. It is something very misleading. The Church is
not a composite thing which can be 'joined', any more than is
a true family. It is a spiritual entity into which we have
to be born by a begetting of the Father God and born by
the Holy Spirit.
Another effect of knowing what
the Church truly is will be to solve the whole problem of unity.
Unity, according to the New Testament, is not firstly and
basically intellectual; neither is it emotional. It is unity of
spirit - "One Spirit". The mind may not grasp all the
truth as stated, but the spirit can know with assurance that it
is the truth. The mind may not be capable of defining error, but
the spirit - indwelt by the Holy Spirit - can register that there
is something false in the statement. This is how the true Church
is safeguarded and preserved.
Then, in what we are pointing
to, there is the explanation of an otherwise very puzzling thing.
Both Peter, John and Paul lived to see a great decline setting in
where the churches were concerned. All in Asia turned from Paul.
Peter saw much that made him write strong and faithful words.
John saw all those elements of declension about which he wrote in
the Revelation. All of these men also knew that their death at
the hands of the enemies of Christ was imminent. The outlook was
grim and deeply disappointing from every natural standpoint.
Apparently the Church was being devastated, and their life work
was being desolated. Apparently, we say. Yet all of these men
were in spiritual triumph and ascendancy to the end. Why? Just
because they knew that the Church and the work, and the deepest
truth about believers, was not the outward, but the spiritual and
inward, and therefore indestructible. What is truly definable as
"Spirit and truth" cannot be prevailed against by the
gates (councils) of hades. Deeper than nationalities,
temperaments, traditions, 'birth', training, intellect, is God's
work in the renewed and indwelt spirit of man, and the bond of
spiritual unity can stand heavy strains and stresses.
May the Spirit of Truth use
what has been written here to open our eyes to the so much more
that the New Testament has to say as to spirit and truth. Call it
'mystical' if you like; or describe it as 'spiritualizing', if
you choose; but still the truth is that Christianity has become a
religion, a concept, a form, a system, a name. What the one and
only authority for the name "Christian" solidly lays
down and teaches is that it is a Person; a Person in abiding
individual reality, but expanded and reproduced by His own Spirit
through new birth to an "elect according to the
foreknowledge of God the Father". The Church and unity are
no more and no less or other than the spiritual presence and
measure of Christ. One of the very onerous and exacting
obligations thrust upon us by the developments of 'Christianity'
is to look through its accretions and adoptions, such as
adornments, vestments, clericalisms, forms, etc., or the absence
of these, and seek for Christ. It may be hard work; it may
require the very strong handling of our own likes or dislikes;
but it has got to be done, for the Church and unity are not any
one of these complexions, neither can we make the
perfect church by composing a complexion. It is that that the
Apostle Paul meant when he wrote what is in 2 Corinthians 5,
particularly: "...if one died for all, then all died (in
Him)... I therefore, from henceforth, view no man
carnally..." (Conybeare). Although not here in actual words,
but in other places, the Apostle contrasts 'carnal' with
'spiritual', and we should take it that that is what he meant
here. He says that he no longer views or knows Christ carnally,
i.e. after the flesh, and implies that Christ has now to be known
spiritually, so also with Christian men. God help us to keep our
carnal selves hidden behind Christ! Also, God help us to - at
least - seek to find Christ in others, however little. You will
agree that the very effort demanded for this makes the spiritual
life intensely practical.
This, then, is the Church, and
this alone true unity. No wonder that it is a case of
"giving diligence (striving to maintain) the unity
of the Spirit". It demands "striving". If we
project ourselves, our natural selves, or carnal selves, in front
of Christ we - at least - injure the unity and the Body of
Christ.
Here we must stop for the
present. But surely we have begun to verify and prove our
statement at the beginning: 'Any brief phrase from the lips of
the Lord Jesus contains an inexhaustible fullness.' So it is with
"In spirit and in truth".
First published in "A Witness and A
Testimony" magazine, Mar-Apr 1967, Vol 45-2