JESUS has been glorified, the Holy Ghost has been given. The body of Christ is a fact on the earth. Every believer in Jesus is a member of that body, and shares in its corresponding privileges and responsibilities. All this is absolute as the purpose of God. Nothing can prevail against God. The gates of Hades shall not prevail against the Church which Christ is building, though Satan is sure to prevail against all that is not of the Spirit of God.
Let the Christian be clear in his mind as to the dispensational character of the Church.
How that it began at Pentecost. How that, as a spiritual body on the earth, composed of all believers in Christ, it began to exist then, and that it is here in the world today, and will be here until it be caught up in its entirety―whether from the grave or those changed at Christ’s coming―to meet the Lord in the air. Further, it is the privilege of every Christian to assemble with the saints of God, according to the scriptural principles which underlie this great truth, and the fact of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our midst.
The affections of Christ can flow forth in this way as in none other. Fellowship of the Spirit, comfort of love, tender mercies and compassions abound when hearts are truly “knit together in love unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding” of these heavenly things. It may be doubted whether a Christian who does not enter into these things has a clear conception of what Christianity really is. Many who believe in Christ, who are assured of the forgiveness of sins and of the presence of the Holy Ghost with them in an individual way, do not act as if there were any body of Christ on the earth.
They exhibit no sense of corporate privilege and responsibility. Yet they are none the less members of Christ, and therefore equally with all Christians members one of another. It is not for us to judge their motives. Most likely such have not yet seen how the Christian Scriptures bear upon the Christian’s position, walk, and ways. Perchance if they did see they might be more in earnest about the matter than those who do. But no Christian is able really to go beyond what he sees for himself in God’s Word, and patience towards each other is ever needed.
For the truths of the Church, of the presence of the Holy Ghost baptizing all believers into one body, and of the corporate relations which exist in consequence, do not conflict with the Christian’s individuality. Though a member of the body of Christ, he is an individual still. God still deals with souls as individuals. There are peculiar dangers which begin or increase in proportion as what is called the truth of the Church is seen and enforced. Is it as easy to deal with what is wrong in those with whom we are in the tenderest associations as it is to resist it in strangers? There are friendship, position, and unity to defend in the one case which do not exist in the other. We are to be diligent in keeping the unity of the Spirit, but as individuals we are also to exercise ourselves to have a conscience void of offense towards God and towards man. Individual liberty of conscience must ever be fully maintained.
The apostle Paul, who is used of God to reveal the truth of God as to His Church, is also used more than any other to instruct us as to the importance of the individual conscience. There is not a stronger personality to be found amongst the sons of men than that of Paul. Yet he was ever ready to respect conscience in others.
It was he who wrote: “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind” (Rom. 14:5).
Apostle as he was, he would not have dominion over another’s faith, but only desired to be a helper of his joy.
We are bound to yield to the judgment of others, when we know in ourselves that they are right and ourselves wrong. Resisting their judgment, if they are clearly right, will give us a bad conscience. Happy is the man who esteems a right judgment of greater value than his own reputation. But it is a sin to force conscience in others. Conscience is man’s moral judgment of right and wrong. If we rob him of this, what have we left him? Have those who felt called upon to contend earnestly for the faith always remembered this? There have been in the past ecclesiastics who compelled their fellow-men in the professing Church to ignore their own consciences rather than not fall in with some dominant will. It is very far better to resist even unto blood than to allow our souls to pass into slavery so shameful, which, indeed, might prove eternal. Very much of the light and liberty enjoyed today is owing to the exercise of individual conscience in past centuries, and these blessings can only be maintained by a similar exercise.
Every man is directly responsible to God alone, and “every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:12). If, by becoming a member of the body of Christ, the believer became less of an individual than he was before, he might well desire the position of an Old Testament saint. This allowance for individual conscience may be one of the reasons why the servant of the Lord is told that he “must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves” (2 Tim. 2:24, 25). We are not hindered from helping others when they are misguided by remembering that they may have a conscience no less than ourselves.
The gospel is preached to individuals. We can only be saved as individuals. We are not saved because we belong to a Christian family or because we become separated from the world in an outward way by being born of Christian parents, however true and devoted. On the contrary, these privileges increase our responsibility to accept Christ for our own souls, and if any one thus favored reject or neglect Him, he thus increases his own condemnation. Faith is strictly individual. The apostle Paul writes sometimes almost as if he were the only person to be saved. For instance, he says, “He loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). The absence of faith in any one, no matter how he may have been favored outwardly, marks that person as an unbeliever, and, remaining such, his final portion will be with the lost.
God’s dealings with His children are chiefly individual. “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall be all taught of God.’” This might seem to indicate collective instruction for the mass, but the Lord Jesus individualizes from the passage as follows:
“Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto Me” (John 6:45).
The Father teaches individuals. He speaks to us one by one through His Word. One by one we mourn apart on account of our sins. In solitude we fight our greatest battles, and in being left alone, as Jacob was, we wrestle to the breaking of the day (Gen. 32:24). It is meet that this should be so, and that God should thus deal with the secrets of men. All souls are His, in ways that they could not belong to anyone else. We would not have it otherwise, and we may be thankful that God only (not even Satan) knows the hearts of the children of men (2 Chron. 6:30).
“The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy” (Prov. 14:10).
Thus Christians in the closest intimacy with one another are often strangers to many of each other’s deepest joys and sorrows. Yet in all this God knows us better than we know ourselves.
In all these things are we taught of God and led to feel our need of Christ, and learning of God we come, one by one, each for himself to Christ, remembering that He hath said:
“Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).
For another to come in between the soul and God is a rude assault on God’s divine prerogative.
The individual aspect of things is fully before us in John 14:21:
“He that hath My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me; and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.”
Here is individual knowledge of God’s mind, individual obedience, individual love to the Saviour. The love of the Father is personal to the one who obeys, and so is the love and manifestation of Christ. Corporate relations rightly understood will not conflict with all this. They ought to contribute to its strength. That which is collective and that which is personal are always meant to be in harmony. They are so presented in Scripture; but that which is individual must always be maintained. For while some secret sin will deprive one Christian of communion with the Lord, this does not prevent another going steadily on with Christ. One may for the time being become involved in the government of God, and another meanwhile goes on rejoicing in the God of grace. Such an one will desire to share the burdens of his brethren. It is not the man that trembles at God’s Word, and who is individually in communion with Him, that is likely to be a real hindrance to his brethren in any way. But, let it be observed, it is especially in connection with the Spirit at Pentecost that the promise of individual blessing comes in.
“He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hash said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake He of the Spirit which they that believe on Him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:38, 39).
According to this scripture it is from the individual believer that rivers of living water are to flow, as a result of receiving the Holy Ghost. For the one who believes in Christ thus shall it be. For the one who believes in Christ’s blood, for the one who believes in Christ’s glory, “rivers of living water” shall flow out of his inmost being to others. Thus does God make us “channels of blessing.”
What a contrast all this is to that which proceeds from the natural man!
“For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these things come from within, and defile the man” (Mark 7:22, 23).
These things are not by any means “rivers of living water,” and where faith in Christ and the Holy Ghost are not, they still, as of old, proceed from within out of the heart of man. Unbelief; murmurings, complaining’s of one’s lot in life, hardheartedness, distrust of the future, an unforgiving spirit, strife with our brethren, and such like things—can these things be called “rivers of living water”? Nay, but they grieve the Spirit of God in us and may quench Him in others.
This wonderful promise of Christ is not limited to one that has some special gift. There may be a tendency to limit the outflow of blessing to certain specified servants of Christ, such as evangelists, pastors, and teachers; but Jesus said, “He that believeth on me... out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” This must be taken to include every believer, whether brother or sister, whether young or old.
In the sevenfold presentation of the professing Church, as seen in the second and third chapters of Revelation, there is much for the individual ear. “He that hath an ear, let him hear.”
Throughout the history of the Church overcoming is seen to be an individual thing. The promises are to the individual. It is the individual who is given to eat of the tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God. The individual overcomer eats of the hidden manna, and receives the white stone which no one knoweth but himself. The same is to be said of the one who receives power to rule over the nations and of the believer who sits down with Christ on His throne.
Our present joy and fruitfulness and our future reward and blessedness are not to be interfered with by the divided state of the professing Church, nor by anything else, but by our own personal sin and folly. Let us learn to watch, and pray, and trust, and may God give us all grace to hold fast that which we have that no man take our crown.
T. H.