Dear Friends,
It was thought appropriate to give a little space in this edition to a few of the perils that have beset the Church over the past number of years, and which have helped to create much of this loss of identity and purpose with which we have become surrounded.
First and foremost, in some ways, perhaps we have come to witness an evangelicalism that has created an unhealthy and unbalanced personalized view of salvation.
This usually expresses itself in the sentiment that Christ is "Mine own and personal Saviour." It is a precious sentiment, of course; and without it no one will ever see the Lord. But, like many other precious sentiments – although culled from the Word of God, unless it is used and understood in the light of the totality of the Word of God, it becomes isolated from the Word of God and ends up at variance with the Word of God.
We witness the misuse of the sentiment, then, when a person uses it as a slogan for being a freelance Christian; not subject to any Church of the Lord's people, or committed to any Church of the Lord's people. The idea is usually undergirded with the notion that the person belongs to the Church of Christ in heaven above – the mystic Church, or the universal Church – and therefore, doesn't need to have any visible attachments, or visible links with any of the visible expressions of that church here below. Such people are members of the Church, and therefore, do not even have to consider being members of a church; Christ is their "own and personal" Saviour and therefore, the will live their own and personal lives for as long as they are left in this world.
What this mode of thinking drastically fails to take into account is the fact of the existence of the visible (local) Churches of Christ on the pages of the New Testament. Those Churches – at Ephesus, at Philippi, at Corinth, etc., - didn't just spring into being because a bunch of Christians – nor, indeed, a bunch of Apostles – thought it would be a good idea. Their existence and being are in accordance with the Divine Sovereign will of God who would have His people live and conduct themselves in a certain way while they are in this world, and, while they are in this world, to "show forth his praise" in the manner that He would designate and design for His own purposes.
Nor will it do for any Christian to satisfy his or herself with the idea that as long as they "attend" some church or other they are really doing all that the Word of God would require of them. This is not the case. When the apostle exhorts the Hebrew Christians not to "forsake the assembling" of themselves together, "as the manner of some is," he is not exhorting them to engage in some legalistic face-saver that will make their Christian profession appear alright; but he is exhorting them to their place in, and of, and with the Church of Christ there in their midst. "And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more as ye see the day approaching."
Those verses – like the whole of the Word of God – bristle with the concepts of mutual exhortation, mutual comforting, mutual stirring-up, mutual subjection. Any real reading of the New Testament scriptures will show that it is impossible to fully live the Christian life apart from participation with fellowship in, guidance by, and subjection to the local Church. To think any differently is to fly in the face of God's arrangement for our growth in grace. We may, indeed, rejoice in Paul's assurance that "Jesus loved me, and gave himself for me," but never to the detriment of the truth that "Jesus loved the Church and gave himself for it." For Paul knew that Jesus had loved him and given Himself for him, as part of the Church, and to be part of the Church. Christ is "The saviour of the Body"; and it is by virtue of that fact that He saved men and women to be "members" of that Body. It is not simply you, or I, that is going to be presented in heaven at last to the glory of the Saviour, but the Church; and there will not be one soul presented outwith the Church, or in isolation to the Church. It is a gross misreading, then, of the Word of God to imagine that we can live full Christian lives here below apart from taking our rightful place within the local, visible manifestations of that Church. With absolute ease, the New Testament scriptures of God move between speaking of the Church in heaven at last and the Church on earth here and now, There is no dichotomy; the Church in heaven and the churches on earth, Biblically founded, etc., are not two different things, but simply two manifestations, or developments of the one thing. With the utmost simplicity, those who "gladly received the word" – those who saw, by the grace of God in the gospel, that they had been made partakers of the inheritance with the saints in light – were "added to the Church," where they "continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine, and, fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and prayers." They showed themselves as members of the body, sheep of the flock, soldiers in the army, co-labourers together in the vineyard, fellow-workers in the cause of the gospel.
We realise the difficulties for some with regards to the issue of local Church membership, but we would exhort every soul to clearly examine their own conscience in the light of God's Word. If there is any hint of arrogant isolationism based on the pretext that Christ is "mine own and personal Saviour," and I need none, and will be subject to none, then, bear in mind that that is indulging in one of the attitudes that has helped to erode the testimony of the church for which Christ gave His life, and that the person who indulges in such behaviour is the ultimate loser.
A second factor in the general downgrading of the Church today is – A dispensationalism that has divested the Church of the awareness of its uniqueness and centrality.
Dispensationalism is that Form of Biblical interpretation fully introduced by men such as J. N. Darby and popularized through the agency of the Scofield Reference Bible. One of the central teachings of Dispensationalism is that God's main concern and plan lie with the earthly nation of Israel, and that the Church as such, is simply an "interim arrangement" brought about by the Jews' refusal of Christ during His days on this earth. The Jews as a nation refused the "Kingdom" that Christ came preaching, and so, the Lord brought in the age of the Church as an "interim arrangement" until such times as Christ will return again when He will, once again, present the Kingdom for the Jews, which they will, this time accept.
We need only deal with the one, basic, underlying idea of the system of dispensationalism for now. It should be perfectly clear to anyone how such an approach to the Bible and to the ultimate plans and purposes of God had within it, the seeds of erosion for the dignity and calling of the Church. We hasten to add that good men can produce strange notions at times; and if Peter himself could get dazzled with things Judaistic, as he did at a couple of points, small wonder that the same happens to lesser mortals. But, most assuredly, the idea of the Church of Christ as the "interim arrangement" in the great plans and purposes of God was to have its debilitating effect on the Church that has come about through her loss of identity as being the very centre of God's purposes, now and for ever.
How good it would be for Christians to read what God says about the Church; some of her titles and the implications of those titles; what she cost – the blood of Jesus Christ – and how God so willingly gave His Son for her, who, likewise, poured out His life on her behalf. It was the Church that Christ died for; it is the Church that is "the fulness" of Christ; it is for the Church that "all things" are put under the feet of Christ; it is in the Church the "glory" of God is – now, and then for ever and ever.
There is one very remarkable passage in the epistle to the Ephesians that, in a way, says it all. Paul is exhorting wives and husbands, in chapter five of the epistle, with regards to their mutual callings and duties, etc., and in verse 25 he exhorts the husband to love his wife "even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." In that passage, the apostle Paul follows his usual pattern under the Holy Spirit of God – that is, he delivers and exhortation with regards to some piece of ethical conduct in the Christian's life, and then, he backs home that exhortation by pointing the Christian to some great central fact of his soul's salvation. In this case, he exhorts the husband to love the wife, and he does so by reminding the husband that Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.
We should not miss the point: how did Christ love the Church? Did He love the Church as under the terms of some kind of an "Interim arrangement" that He was one day going to set aside to see to the affairs of another? The Nation of Israel? Or did He love her exclusively, fully, and with none other at all besides? Surely, the latter! For what kind of a basis would it be for a husband to love his wife as Christ loved the Church if Christ's love to His church is not unique and unparalleled in all the realms of time and eternity. And, on the other hand, what kind of attitude, and reaction, and behaviour might we expect from a wife who came to the idea and notion that she was only some kind of an "interim arrangement" of her husband? Might we not expect that wife to lose much of her sense of dignity, wifely vocation and calling, and sense of position? Indeed! And should we act surprised, then, that we are confronted with a Bride of Christ who has allowed her house and herself to go to pieces? After all, if she has been told for years now that she is not really the centre of a Sovereign God's plans and purposes small wonder if she has come to believe it and to act with awful logic in the light of what she has come to believe.
May God bring the Church in our day to an awareness of who she is and what she is. She is the one thing in all this world and out of all this world, that Christ died for, He died for no others, or none other. That one fact alone stamps the Church as unique, and absolutely unique, in all the ways of God.
A third factor is, what we might call – A traditionalism that has institutionalised and thereby helped to fossilize the spiritual nature of the Church.
Into this category fits the whole notion of State Church religion, and so forth. So much of it stems from the failure to see that no country today is anything like the Theocratic State (the "Church State") that Israel was in the days of the Old Testament. One of the great needs of our day is for the Churches today to become New Testament Churches. That is in no way to disregard the Old: but we must learn to be governed by the New and act accordingly. All the trappings that we have become accustomed to – sanctified buildings of a particular kind, clerical dress, ceremonial rites that have no Biblical foundation on which to rest – we need to have the courage and the ability to ask what such things have to do with the Churches of Christ – especially where such things have become the virtual sum-total of any professed Church of Christ.
It saddened our heart to read about a professed (historic) reformed Church who pronounced their public witness and testimony now to be at an end, because another denomination had taken away their Church building from them. Isn't it the case that the early Churches worshipped wherever they could? It is, surely, not the building that makes a Church of Christ! But institutionalised Christianity creates such thinking because it relies on such things for its very existence. There is more than an ounce of Rome in much of present-day Protestantism, even of the Reformed or Evangelical ilk; and where a denomination, or Church, begins to debate more over its subordinate standards, or subordinate accoutrements, it has well departed from the Word of God as rule, and it better get back there as soon as possible. Holding to the "traditional" view of the Church, within a person's tradition, need not necessarily mean that the person is holding to the Biblical view of the Church. Traditional reformation, and Biblical reformation, are two different things. They may blessedly converge at points, but where they don't, it is the way of the Word that must be taken and followed, regardless of cost.
It is no accident that the religion of the Old Testament and the New are so outwardly different. From the Temple, with all its ornamentation and so forth, you move to the house of Philemon, or the school of Tyrannus; from the peculiar garb of the priesthood, you move to the apostolic band and their followers, and Paul asking for the "old cloak" that he left at Troas; from the extended seasons and feast days, and observances, you move to the Church gathered on the first day of the week to break bread. The differences are not minor, they are radical; and, above all things, they are God-revealed on the pages of His Word. The essentiality of the outer things have gone, but, where the essentiality of the outer things are re-introduced, or have been re-introduced, there the Church is indulging in a traditional institutionalising of the Church and the results will sooner or later show.
How we all need to endeavour to bow to the Word of God. There is not one of us but who constantly needs the Scriptures before us. God give us grace in our day to build again the walls of God's true Sion.