If we do not understand our position as saints with Christ in heaven now, we can never understand the Church as to its constitution down here, or the nature of our membership with it. I therefore proceed with the consideration of this interesting subject; premising to my readers that I take it for granted that they understand their position and calling with Christ in heaven, as I have endeavored to set it forth in the preceding numbers of this series.
The Church is peculiar to the New Testament. However the people of God may have been united under one government or viewed as a body politic; yet, as a "church," according to the force and meaning of that word, they never were. True, the word " church" is used by Stephen when speaking of the children of Israel in the wilderness; (Acts 7:3838This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us: (Acts 7:38);) but I suppose that no one will assert that the chosen or elected "assembly in the wilderness, with the angel who spake to him in Mount Sinai," bears any resemblance to that " assembly" which the Lord announces in Matt. 16:1818And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18), that He will build on Himself. " On this rock will I build my church." Before I comment on this remarkable passage, just let me say that an assembly, or a selected congregation, as the word ἐκκλησια expresses, is always characterized by the nature of the power or person used in congregating together the component parts. An ecclesia must always be formed by some leading principle-some influence acting on the parts and inducing them to form in company.
The subject to which I desire to confine my attention in this paper is the Church, as comprising the body of Christ. To the wider signification of the house of God, which is popularly called the professing church, I do not here allude. And if we keep simply before our minds the body of Christ, we must see that the " assembly" which forms it necessarily could not exist before He was manifested. He is said to be now Head to this " assembly" which is His body; and this plainly teaches that the assembly now formed and known as His body must be subsequent to His own manifestation in flesh; i. e., He must have appeared in a body before it could be said that He was Head of a mystical body, called also an assembly or church. And not only must He have been manifested in flesh, but He must have died and risen ere that body could be set in resurrection-life with Him. He, as risen to the right hand of God, is now Head of the assembly which is His body, and therefore this assembly must, I repeat, have been formed subsequent to His ascension, in order to occupy the relation of body to Him who is the ascended Head to it. If this be not admitted, we shall be involved in endless confusion about the Church, simply because we shall mistake the origin and relations of it. If I attempt to comprise all the saints, from the beginning downwards, in the Church, I shall in the attempt be driven to say, not only that Christ's body existed before His own manifestation, but that it was founded, and as an " assembly" gathered, on a principle and by an agency wholly different to what it is. For it must be admitted how different was the principle on which was gathered the assembly in the wilderness, and that which is composed of the saints since Christ's resurrection. And we have seen that every assembly is determined by the principle and agency through which it is formed. The saints before Christ's manifestation live by Him, and will forever rejoice in His presence, being raised by Him to enjoy heavenly glory; but to include them in the Church, His body, is impossible. For to be in any such relationship, He must have been in heaven as the ascended one first, and the Holy Ghost down here on earth attaching the members of His body to Him the Head in heaven, which beyond all controversy could not, and did not, occur until after our Lord's ascension. For then only, as we read in John 7:3939(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 7:39) was the Spirit given as consequent on His ascension and glorification. I may be told that many saints now, who are indisputably gathered as of this body, know nothing of it, and therefore that ignorance of any one's destined place is no argument that he could not be set in such a place. This is true. Ignorance does not debar me from what I am entitled to by the purpose of God, and therefore no amount of knowledge in any saint before the resurrection of Christ could alter his position as to the point we are discussing, or make that a fact which was not a fact until after the Lord's resurrection; nor could the Spirit of God put any soul into the relation of member to Christ before Christ had by His own act warranted it.
I have already referred to our Lord's words to His disciples when on earth, wherein He notified that the building of His Church was still future, and that it was to be built on Himself as the rock against which the gates of Hades should not prevail, thus distinctly implying, with reference to this new body about to be formed, that the judgment of death (as I understand the gates of hell,) should not prevail against it; and it is evident that this could not have been verified until after His resurrection. Now this is the first time in Scripture in which mention is made of the church of this dispensation, and when any idea is for the first time suggested to us in the word, it is important that we cease not to refer to it, but study it from thence, and import the elements of it into every other passage which anywhere may be found to relate to the same idea and subject. The fact is that we often apply the word " Church" and give it a meaning which we have gathered more from indistinct allusions or types than from the first direct record about it. Types there may be, and are, but I must not identify them with the fact which they typify. For instance, I may say that the family of Bethany typified the Church; but I have no warrant for calling it the Church, which I find, by the Lord's own words, that He could not build until after His resurrection. And hence, though it was from Bethany He parted at His ascension, I must follow the course of the Spirit, which descended when He ascended, or I shall not see how the Church was set up.
In a previous paper I have shown that the Church is heavenly; but before this was revealed, the people of God, the apostles even, looked for an earthly hope; for the latter said to our Lord, " Wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?"-plainly intimating that they did not expect a heavenly home with Christ: and if they had, where were all the promises to Israel? For it was necessary that every such promise should be first offered, before Israel and the land were finally abandoned. Consequently, we find that the apostles were told to await in Jerusalem the promise of the Father; and after the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, when they testified of " the latter rain," spoken of by Joel the prophet, it was of no heavenly position they spake, but of the fact that Christ, according to the prophecies of David, was to sit on David's throne. Surely in these discourses there was nothing to lead the saints beyond an earthly hope and a Messianic glory. And still more so in Acts 3, where Peter connects their full blessing with the " times of refreshing" from the actual presence of the Lord. Here, then, we have the Church begun without any heavenly position as yet revealed. But this was necessary:-for the first members of the Church being gathered at Jerusalem, it was necessary to defer disclosing to them the full purpose of God concerning them, until their nation had rejected the testimony of the Holy Ghost. All the thousands then gathered in Jerusalem were, no doubt, baptized by one Spirit into one body, and exhibited then more practical union than has ever been seen since; though, as yet, they were only instructed in the glory of the millennial day. And this we can easily conceive-even that the Holy Ghost should begin to form the Church on earth, with its Head in heaven, though as yet untaught as to the position it should occupy until the day of the Lord should come. Gathered out of rebellious Israel, they were for the moment in Jewish circumstances-in the temple, until the death of Stephen, when the nation having rejected the witness of the Holy Ghost, its doom was sealed.
Now on the death of Stephen, it will be remarked, a general break up at Jerusalem ensued. Not only was the gospel in consequence carried into Samaria, but Saul, one of the witnesses of the death of the first martyr Stephen, and who was thus legal evidence of what his nation had done, is called of God in a miraculous manner, to learn His mind and the fullness of His grace in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Saul of Tarsus, relentlessly persecuting the Church, is arrested by the light of the glory of God, and then hears from the risen Lord of His own identification with the people whom Saul was persecuting on earth; and he finds himself in the glory with Jesus, and hence is commissioned with a gospel distinct and peculiar from that already preached; for he was to be it a " minister and a witness both of those things which he had seen," (even those which I have now noticed,) and also of " those things in the which I will appear unto thee." Let us keep before our minds that the Church, the body of Christ, did not exist before the resurrection of Christ, that it dates its foundation from thence, that it was first formed by the Holy Ghost in Jewish circumstances, the materials being gathered out of Israel, and that when the nation had rejected the testimony of the Holy Ghost, heaven was opened-Jesus received Stephen to Himself, thus declaring that the glory of heaven would be given to them who were cast out on earth. But still more: the nation having sealed its own condemnation, and the house being left desolate, the Lord discloses through Saul of Tarsus the place where He is Himself in glory, announcing to him, nevertheless, that He is one with His people on earth, and therefore the glory was open to them through Him. The great interval between earth and heaven was spanned, and the chief of sinners was introduced to the Savior, the Lord of heaven and earth, in the scene of glory, and then commissioned to go and be a minister and a witness of the things he had seen,. With Saul's ministry, accordingly, a new era is begun for the Church. First, to Peter is unfolded in chap. 10. that God can put all kindreds of race together in a common position without their being " common or unclean;" and forthwith Peter preaches to the Gentiles; the Holy Ghost manifestly sealing the testimony, and declaring that they were one body with the Jews already called out. After this, Antioch supersedes Jerusalem. The enmity of " the citizens" rises to its height; Herod the king kills James and imprisons Peter; but as the enmity develops itself, so does the independence of the Church of all earthly position show itself. In a word, the rest of the acts of the apostles is but a history of God's marked forbearance towards Israel, through the intervention of Paul, to whom the heavenly position was revealed, but who is used to give the last testimony to his doomed nation; lingering over its ruins, if I may so say, according to the intense love of his own nature. But when he has learned from the ill-treatment he, in his own person, received from it and its judges, that all is ineffectual, and that the naturally-disparaged Gentile has more justice and mercy, (for he is forced to appeal to Cesar,) he is led as a prisoner from Jerusalem to Rome, and from his Gentile prison, is now a personally-fitted vessel to set forth in writing, as in the Epistle to the Ephesians, the full purpose of God respecting the Church formed on earth.
In the Epistle to the Ephesians we are told that Christ is now Head of His body the Church, and that each member is, by the same power which raised Him, quickened and raised up and made to sit together with Him, in relation to Him, the Head, and in relation to one another, as of one body; for there is one body and one Spirit, and we have been all baptized by one Spirit into one body, besides each drinking of the same Spirit.
Now if I know that by the Spirit I am placed in relation to the body (for " God has set each of us in the body as it hath pleased him") with Christ in heaven, I can find it easy to understand how I am kept by the Spirit in relation to the body down here.
The Holy Ghost, as we have seen, formed the assembly at the first, but the saints then did not know their peculiar relation to Christ in heaven, as members to a Head risen and seated. They were, so to speak, on the line for this fuller knowledge, but it bad not been revealed as yet. Now when it is revealed, the saints can understand how natural and consistent it is that they, who are set together with Christ in heaven, as a body in relation to a Head from whom each member derives its nourishment, are held in relation to one another down here; and thus the baptism by the Spirit into one body is spiritually apprehended. It is not merely the fact that we are all regenerated by the one Spirit, but that we are set in a peculiar associated, reciprocating relation to one another, as the body Of Christ our Head. When the Lord is pleased to set Himself forth as in any particular relation to us, it is our blessing to receive and understand what He communicates. Now He has never before declared Himself as Head of a body. He holds, blessed be His name, many relations; but now for the first time is it revealed that He is Head of His body, the Church, concerning which there are mysteries undeclared till now. There being but one Spirit and one body, it is by the same Spirit the saints are held together down here in positive membership. However scattered or carnally separated, they are kept in relation to the one body, as units of it, because the Spirit is one; and as He ministers with reference to Christ the Head, He must retain the members in the one body, though they, unless spiritually, can never know of this wonderful and universal bond. We cannot, with the natural mind comprehend how, if one member suffers, all suffer with it. But if I receive what the Lord reveals to me, as to the close and inseparable union and relation of Himself and His body, I can readily comprehend how all over the universe the Holy Ghost holds every saint in corporate membership, not visible or even known, save to the spiritual, walking by faith in the light of this truth. The Holy Ghost is now on earth, sent down to connect each gift of the Father to Christ with Christ in heaven. Out of the world which rejected the Son of God, He is gathering a distinct company of saints, called the body of Christ, because peculiarly related to Him as His Bride, which He will present to Himself by and by to share with Him His sovereignty over earth in the day when, as the last Adam, He shall renovate everything from the ruin entailed on it by the first Adam. If the first Adam settled in the old world with a bride formed for himself, so will the last Adam, in a supreme degree, establish Himself in the day of His reign with His Bride formed from Himself. The Holy Ghost is ever acting with reference to the heart of Christ, and He ever maintains in His ministries the oneness of the body, though we know that many saints do not enjoy or understand the blessing of this truth; still He nevertheless acts according to the mind of the Head, and with instinctive regard to the membership of the saints to one another. The natural mind cannot understand it, but it is revealed to faith, and we know in ourselves, in proportion to our spirituality, how truly this corresponds with our spiritual instincts. I must not only admit that I am presented in unity with the saints in heaven, but also that I am by the Holy Ghost held in relation and membership with every saint on earth, as being through Him of the body of Christ. The Lord as Head keeps His eye on His body as one; not in the fragments or piecemeal that man sees it, and the Holy Ghost retains each in his instinctive relation to the rest, and to the Lord in spite of all the carnality in them, which perverts their comprehending and responding to it. It is a fact for faith, and if not received, there can be no energy of soul to respond to it, and therefore the gain of it cannot be known.
Let us briefly consider what is the gain to our souls of the presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church on earth, baptizing the members into one body. First. If the saints are not now brought to God by the one Spirit they can have no communion with one another, for it is by one Spirit we both, Jew and Gentile, have access to the Father. Mere life, though the same in quality and power, could not give sensible, reciprocating communion; nor could I by mere life be affected by the changes and alternations in the closest family ties. As to the people of God aforetime, there was no intention or possibility that they should be in this spiritual bond; i.e., that the action of one should affect the whole. The sin of Achan, and such like, affected the congregation nationally, but there was no spiritual suffering on account of it. If the Spirit be not holding all the members in one body now, the idea of a spiritual communion between them must be unreal. For it is not enough that I should believe that as I am quickened by the Holy Ghost I can therefore have communion with all the converted. Conversion is an individual thing, and there could be no link between one converted man and another, save only that each had received like mercy from God. There must be a link, not only of a blessing common to all, but one corporately acting on all; and this only could be by the baptism of the Holy Ghost. I may not be able to comprehend how each converted one by the work of the Holy Ghost is kept by Him in bodily relation to the rest, and therefore as two or more are in the Spirit, they are proportionately sensible of communion, of which they could not be, nor could they be affected by it, if not baptized by one Spirit into one body. And let me add, that it is from ignorance of this subject, while retaining the name of it, that we know and cultivate the communion of saints so little. It is also clear, that if in this communion one with another, all the natural hindrances are gone, whether Jew or Gentile, so that nothing which might have reached me as a man can now touch me -all enmity having been removed by the cross of Christ, and I, through Him, by one Spirit, having access to the Father, in spite of any position in which I had been. How blessed and helpful this must be I
Secondly. If the saints were not molded together and fashioned by the Spirit there would be no habitation for God now. Buildings may be devoted to God's service, and we may invest them with reverential sanctity, and all the time we may overlook our ground Or authority, or the mode by which God would dwell among us. This feeling is so received in Christendom that believers often fall into the current idea without ever ascertaining whether it be really so, or how it could be so. Is there a habitation for God now? Yes, certainly-not a visible one as in the days of the tabernacle and temple, but not the less known by those who seek and wait for it. The stumbling-block to many is, that while everyone acknowledges the truth as a doctrine, few know or understand what it is in reality. In former times it depended on the building-the tabernacle or the temple; now it depends on the Spirit building together the members of Christ's body for a habitation of God. If the Spirit be not the ruling agent, and recognized as such, there can be no happy, worshipping perception of God's dwelling among us. And what would be the effect on our souls of realizing sensibly this wondrous fact of God dwelling with us, and making us an habitation for Himself? Would any manifestation to the external senses, such as there was in olden times, be equal in any degree to the deep, wondrous sense of the presence of God by the Holy Ghost to the soul now? Types and shadows having passed away, it is plain that it is only by the Spirit we can be His habitation now. We have used names and satisfied ourselves with them for realities; but we know what it was when the ignorant and unlearned, having the secrets of his heart made manifest under the ministry of God's servant, should fall down and own that God was in you of a truth.
It would be the same now in proportion to the faith of those who meet in Christ's name, for the Holy Ghost has never forsaken His work, though we have lost sight of His purpose and have had no faith in Him; so that the defectiveness of our knowledge and perception of the blessing of being God's habitation is traceable to our unbelief, and we must confess that God's word is true, and that the reason of our ignorance and loss of this wondrous blessing-even the sense of being God's habitation-arises from our meager apprehension of the Spirit's work towards the members of Christ's body down here. God does not dwell now on earth but in the building of the saints; and the saints cannot build themselves together. The fact of their being " lively stones" does not enable them to connect themselves with others. The Spirit is the cement, and He binds the already lively stones into a spiritual house for God.
If I see by faith the Spirit of God down here, and His special work in the saints, I am let into this knowledge of how God dwells with us, and I am also given by the Spirit to taste of this great and richest blessing. If I do not see the Spirit's place and work, whatever my desires, or pretensions, or assumption, I know nothing of what it is to be part of the habitation of God now. How important, then, that we should simply believe in the Spirit's place and work with reference to the whole company of saints on earth! And how the non-apprehension of this accounts for the state of many Christians For unless we see the unity of the Spirit and maintain it, we forego our vocation.
Lastly, if we do not see the Spirit in the body holding the members in relation to one another, we cannot understand the place and value of the ministerial gifts. The gifts of the Spirit are given for the whole company on earth, " for the perfecting of the saints." The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every one to profit withal. No gift is given to any member for his own separate use, or for the use of any separate congregation, but with the view of edifying the body of Christ. It is important to be clear on this point, because if I do not see the place and responsibility of the ministerial gifts, I must necessarily limit its usefulness, and in many ways divert it from its power and efficacy. If the Spirit be only individual, then the gift is individual; but if the Spirit builds together the saints on earth, then the gifts of the Spirit are for one just as much as for another; and all with a view for the work of the ministry and for the edifying of the body of Christ. Now, if a servant of God has a gift, and exercises it either independently of the edification of the body, or only for a section of the Church, then that servant is not honoring the Spirit, nor is he ever able to use his gift with true energy. He may be a devoted, zealous man, but He never can edify the body of Christ, for the simple reason that he is not in the mind and purpose of the Spirit. He may be used for conversions, and for many good works, but he will never be used for the perfecting of the saints," which is the main object of the Spirit in His service down here. If anyone has the gift of an evangelist, and does not see that he is in the circle of the members of the body, controlled by the Spirit of God in that circle, as well as blessed by Him, such an one may be used in conversions, but will the converts take or seek the ground of the Church of God? I believe they could not, though truly members of the body of Christ. I believe that the reason why so many converted ones ever remain unperfected and unbuilded together is, that their ministers have not ministered to them according to the mind of the Spirit. The Spirit's mind and purpose has been lost sight of, and therefore the fullness of blessing is denied them, until they, through grace, seek for a ministry which owns His work and purpose.
In a word, if I believe that the purpose of the Spirit of God is to edify the body of Christ by ministerial gifts, " until we all come in the unity of the faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ," I must admit that every gifted member belongs as much to one member of the body as to another. He may be set in this place or that, and be tied there by circumstances; and the place to which he is tied may, by God's ordering, be that which stands most in need of His particular gift; but if I see that the Spirit is treating of the whole body, then I must see that His gift is for the whole, and not for a part; for He does not act with reference to a locality, but for the edification of the body; and the gift which suits the saints in a locality belongs to the body, and has its value in any part of it.
0 for more grace! For the more grace is given to us, the more readily shall we believe and enter into the wondrous riches of God's mercy toward us; and instead of rejecting the mysteries of His grace, we shall pray the more earnestly that the eyes of our hearts may be enlightened, that we may know His ways with us.