In
concluding this brief series of editorials, for the time
being, we are going to sum up this matter of the Church
and the churches by looking more seriously at the great
crisis or turning point which we have in the New
Testament.
From
what we can discern in the relevant literature, it would
seem that very few indeed - and some of these only
indistinctly - have recognised the tremendous nature of
the events centring around Stephen (Acts 6, 7). A more
careful consideration of Acts 7 in the light of the whole
context of the New Testament will lead to some very deep
and far-reaching conclusions.
In the
first place, through Stephen there is given retrospective
confirmation and explanation of some of the most
momentous and critical things said by the Lord Himself in
the days of His flesh. Too little account has been taken
of those intimations or declarations of His that with Him
and resultant from Him an entirely new economy and
different order was imminent.
In the
second place, with Stephen there was the forcefulness of
Heaven breaking in with two mighty meanings. One,
shock-treatment to the Church, which, with its first
leaders, was settling down to a semi-Judaistic
Christianity, with the Temple, synagogues, and Jerusalem
as an accepted system. The other, the Divine
foreknowledge and prediction that in the approximate
period of forty years (a significant period) the whole of
that centralized and crystallized order would be
shattered, and scattered like the fragments of a smashed
vessel over the earth, never again to be reconstituted in
the dispensation.
Stephen,
in his inspired pronouncement, did some devastating
things. He first traced the Divine movement from Abraham,
along a SPIRITUAL line (back of all temporal and
material instrumentalities), to Christ, showing that what
was in the Divine mind throughout was a spiritual and
heavenly system and order, culminating in Jesus, the
Christ. He next showed that historically the people
concerned had failed to recognise that spiritual meaning,
that heavenly concept, and had done two things. They had
made the earthly and temporal an end in itself, and given
fullness and finality to it. Then they had persecuted,
cast out, or killed those who, seeking to make the
spiritual and heavenly paramount, had rebuked
their shortsightedness and condemned their
unspirituality. According to Stephen this was a vicious
and evil force that was at work even when the symbols and
types of the heavenly were being FORMALLY and
ritualistically practised.
The
effect of Stephen's pronouncement, and the significance
of his anointing with the Holy Spirit - as will be seen
from some of his clauses - was to wipe out and set aside
the entire Old Testament order, as represented by and
centred in the Temple at Jerusalem. The significance of
the advent of Christ was the displacing of what was - and
is - of time, by that which is eternal; the displacing of
that which is of earth by that which is of Heaven; the
displacing of the temporal by the spiritual; and the
displacing of the MERELY local by the universal.
The cult of Israel was finished for the age.
One,
perhaps supreme, factor in the significance of Stephen
was what he saw at the end and said with almost his last
breath: "Behold, I see the heavens opened; and the
Son of man standing on the right hand of God"
(7:56). Here we have, the central and basic reality of
true New Testament Christianity, of the Church and the
churches - Jesus on the right hand of God. The
government, the authority, the headquarters, vested in
the ascended Lord, and centred IN HEAVEN; not in
Jerusalem, nor anywhere else on earth. Then, this is the
only occasion on which, after Jesus Himself had used the
title, He is spoken of as Son of Man. This is NOT the
Jewish title, it is the universal designation. In Daniel
we have the Son of Man as receiving from God
"dominion, and glory and a kingdom, that all the
peoples, nations, and languages should serve him" (Dan.
7:14). That is the meaning of Stephen's vision and
utterance.
The
Jewish rulers and Stephen's accusers were quick and
shrewd enough to recognise the implications, for they had
no less and no other import than that the 'Temple made
with hands' was finished; the dispensation of the Law was
ended. There was an implicit call to the Church of Jesus
to leave the Temple and all that went with it and to move
into the greater, the fuller, and the abiding reality.
What startling and impressive significance this gives to
two other things immediately related. As we see these, we
are forced to exclaim: 'Oh, wonderful!'
The
first is that Paul comes right into the picture at this
very point. Was Stephen God's vessel for this great
heavenly revelation? Was he the spearhead of the heavenly
movement? Was he the voice of Heaven, proclaiming, in a
crucial and dangerous hour in the Church's history, the
true and eternal nature of its constitution and vocation?
Did they do him to death, driven by the sinister
intelligence of the evil powers who know the incalculable
importance of a Church on HEAVENLY ground? Very
well then, Heaven answers, and in the hour of Hell's
vicious and destructive onrush, brings into immediate
view the man who will impart for all time the revelation
in fullness of those realities inherent in Stephen's
brief ministry. What an answer! What an example of the
Son of Man being at the Throne! The same forces of
destruction will pursue Paul for his life, but that
Throne will see the revelation given in fullness, and
destruction suspended until the work is done.
The
second impressive thing is that the very work of evil,
intended to curtail and end this essential development,
was made the very means of effecting it. The Church
universal, and its representation worldwide, took its
rise from that very hour and event. Peter and James may
remain in Jerusalem, and some die-hard legalists may
circle around the latter at least; but God is moving on,
and they will have either to fall in or be left in
limitation.
Now all
this, with its tremendously searching implications, has
much to say to Christianity today.
Because
of the close likeness, both of Stephen's position and of
his interpretation of the times, to the Letter to the
Hebrews, some have attributed that letter to him. There
is no value here in pursuing the matter into the realm of
authorship or textual criticism, but the identity of
position in both is impossible to mistake. Indeed,
'Hebrews' could very rightly be regarded as Stephen's
(or, for that matter, Paul's) full presentation of the
crisis and change of dispensations.
The
tragedy is that, with 'Hebrews' in their hands,
responsible leaders of the Church can still adhere to a
system and form which is but the extension or carry-over
of the Old Testament, with certain changes of
phraseology. The IMMENSITY of the change
and gap has certainly not been apprehended. Some of the
most terrible things in the whole Bible are contained in
that letter in relation to the crisis and the two ways
and realms. The issue is no less than that of life and
death.
All this
has much to say regarding the true nature of the Church
and the churches. He that hath eyes to see, let him see!