(January, 1948)
Introduction
I am often concerned that Christians simply lose
sight of what the Church was, biblically, intended to be!
Too often - it seems to me - the 'church' is about social events,
or about politics, or about certain carefully laid out doctrines
which exclude other believers in the Christ. Too often, also, it
is about imposing the authority of 'leaders' who would fail any
75 question Bible knowledge quiz quite miserably, even though
they could name all the top Hollywood movies of the last few
years!
Here is an article written by the great T. Austin-Sparks which
reminds us that, ultimately, the Church is an organisation
established in the heavens a long time ago and if church
congregations on earth are just largely social gatherings which
often ignore the teachings of the Head of the Church, Jesus
Christ, then they no more constitute 'church' than a society of
stamp collectors who rarely collect stamps can justifiably be
called a 'stamp collecting society'.
Robin Brace
2003
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, unloving, 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!