WHAT IS THE GROUND OR FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH?
The scriptures present the church in a two-fold aspect: 1. As the house or temple of God, “an habitation of God in the Spirit “; 2. As the body of Christ, its Head in glory.
Our question refers to its character as the house of God. We speak of the ground or foundation of a building, not of that of a body. (Of that we shall speak further on.) It is in this aspect then scripture deals with our question.
What then is the ground of the church, as the habitation of God in the Spirit?
Our Lord Himself tells us in the 11th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. He there gives to the “blind leaders of the blind”, tempting Him with vain questions, that solemnly significant answer, that no sign should be given to that “adulterous generation” but the sign of the prophet Jonas.
“ And He left them and departed.” Solemn words these!
Then after the Lord with His disciples had gone to the coast of Caesarea Philippi, He asks them: “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” They answered “Some say that Thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.”
“ One of the prophets!” That was the highest point the natural man could reach by dint of his religious reasonings and conclusions, be it “men” in general, or “a man of the Pharisees”, saying, “Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him.”
But those who “sat in Moses' seat”, to whom the Lord announced so solemn a judgment, saw or thought with their friend Simon, “This man, if he were a prophet” (Luke 7). Or if they could not deny nor explain away the mighty deeds of Jesus, as in the case of the raising of Lazarus, they said, “This man doeth many miracles”, and “from that day forth they took counsel together for to put Him to death.”
The Lord then (Matt. 16) turns to His disciples and asks them, “But whom say ye that I am?” A searching and decisive question, all-important in its bearing and results! His disciples had told Him of the opinions of “men” in general, and those opinions varied not a little, as is the case in these latter days. But now that testing and all-searching question—the touch-stone of genuine faith—was addressed to themselves! And that confession of true faith, the “gift of God”, how gloriously does it proceed from the lips of the Lord's chief apostle, whose natural weakness is recorded in holy writ more than that of his fellow-apostles, and in this very same chapter meets with the Lord's sharp rebuke!
But the weakness of the vessel makes all the more apparent that the ground upon which Christ was going to build His church could not be revealed by flesh and blood, i.e., not be the result of natural wisdom, nor even of the greatest religious knowledge. It must be the work of a direct revelation on the part of the “Father Who is in heaven “; of the quickening power and grace of God, Who is the source of life and light. God, Who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, had shined into the heart of Simon Bar-Jona—not yet, of course, in the sense of 2 Cor. 4:66For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6), to give the light of His glory in the face of His risen, ascended, and glorified Son Jesus Christ, as now in us. Of this there could be no question at the time. Besides, this litter revelation, most blessed as it is, could not be the ground upon which Christ would build the church. It was not the Son of man, ascended to heaven and glorified at the right hand of God, Whom Stephen saw there, but the revelation made by the Father, that the Son of man, Who had come into the world, and was rejected by men, was the Son of the living God. ‘And Simon Peter answered and said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Here (i.e. in the second part of Peter's confession) we have the ground of the church.
For Peter's confession, as we see, consists of two parts: 1. That Jesus was the Messias (or, Christ).
Clearly this part of Peter's confession could not be the ground on which the Lord was going to build His church, although this revelation also could only be the work of God. But the acknowledgment of Christ, in His relation to His earthly people as their Messias, cannot be the ground of the church of God, which is not of this world. The great apostle of the church, once the zealous Jew, says, “Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more.” The ground upon which the Lord would build His heavenly church could have no connection with this earth.
It was the second part of Peter's confession which alone could form that ground, “Thou art the Son of the living God.” The whole stress lies on this part, “Son of the living God.” This great foundation-truth of Christianity forms also the keynote of the marvelously grand Gospel, and of the Epistles of the Lord's bosom disciple.
Note, Simon Peter confessed the Lord to be not only the Son of God, but the Son of the living God. The Old Testament speaks of Christ as the Son of God (though, of course, not in a Christian sense), as for instance in Psa. 2, where the kings and judges of the earth are enjoined to “kiss the Son,” that is, to do homage to Him, “lest He be angry and they perish in the way,” when He will enter upon His millennial kingdom and appear as “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev. 19), to call them to account and deal with them in judgment.
But whom have we here? The Son of the living God! As high as heaven is above the earth, so does this glory of His surpass the splendor of a millennial kingdom with all its earthly blessings under the scepter of the Son of man, and as King of the Jews. That term, “Son of the living God,” lifts us entirely out of this world and takes us up there, where He is, Who is “that Eternal Life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us,” even “God manifest in the flesh,” —the Son of the living God Who can make children out of stones and quickeneth and raiseth the dead. These words,
Son of the living God,” take us straight up to the fountain-head of life, light, grace, and power, whence Simon Peter had received those revelations.
This honorable acknowledgment of the apostle on the part of his divine Master, and of His glorious testimony, consists of three parts: 1. A new name is given to Simon. 2. The keys of the kingdom of heaven (for Jews and Gentiles) are given to Peter. 3. The power of binding and loosing connected with it.
But it is not merely that wonderful and gracious divine acknowledgment of Peter's confession (the work of God's grace in his soul) that is to occupy us now, but the words of his and our Lord and Master: “Upon this rock will I build My church, and the gates of hell [or, hades] shall not prevail against it.”
Here we have the ground upon which Christ was about to build His church. What was that ground? It was the confession that Christ is the Son of the living God. The Person of the Son of the living God, and the confessing Him as such springing from living faith in Him, was and is still the only ground of the church of God. It was the ground work of the grace and power of the living God in Peter personally, as it is in every single believer, and it was to be the ground on which Christ would build the church, that wonderful building composed of living stones, when the time should have come for the accomplishment of that word: that Christ died not for that nation only, but that He might gather into one the children of God that were scattered abroad.
Thus we have here the groundwork of the living God, and necessarily connected with it the confession of Christ as His Son, in every single believer, and the Son of God building His church upon that same ground, which is as everlasting and unchanging as He is Himself.
Every soul to whom the Father has thus revealed His Son, is not only conscious of a blessed change having taken place within, but such an one is conscious that the new life in Christ, which is the life thus communicated to Him in the revelation of the Son of God, is the work of the living God, Who not only is able to make children out of stones, but ready to communicate even to His enemies His quickening power, the exceeding greatness of which He manifested in raising Christ from the dead; for “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
As another has truly observed, “Christ must first be found before and outside of the church. Christ must first and above all be known and discovered in the awakened soul of the sinner. Christ, and what He is, must be before and above all revealed to the heart by the Father. He may use for that purpose, as instruments, persons belonging to the church, or He may work directly by His own word. But whatever may be the means employed by Him, it is the Father Who reveals to a poor sinful man the divine glory of the Son. And this once having been done in the individual, Christ says: 'Upon this rock will I build My church.' Faith in Christ is essentially God's way and order, before the question of the church arises. The Holy Spirit works out that blessed revelation of the Son, made by the Father. The personal question [between God and the soul] once settled, the corporative privilege and responsibility of the church follows.”
“ It is, therefore, not enough to say, I have Christ ', however infinitely blessed this may be. If I know that He is the Son of God, I must also believe that He is now building the church. Do I know my place in His church? Am I walking in the life of Christ, a living stone in my proper place in the house He is building—as a member of His body, in regular and healthy activity? The building of the church is going on on this earth. Here it was that redemption was accomplished, and here it is that the church is being built upon the Rock of our salvation. The gates of Hades (the invisible place of the departed) shall not prevail against it. Death may come, but the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church.... He (the Rock, the Son of the living God) says: Behold, I have the keys of death and hades.' “
I have observed already that it was not the first part of Peter's confession (“Thou art the Christ”) that was to be the ground on which Christ was going to build His church. His disciples on another occasion confessed that He was “the Christ.” But the Lord simply forbade them to tell this to anybody. The Son of David as such could not be the ground of the church. Peter at Pentecost proclaims Jesus to be the glorified Lord and Christ. He proclaims Him to be the Messiah, Whom the Jews had rejected and killed, but Whom God has raised from the dead and exalted at His right hand. That was not the ground upon which Jesus intended to build His church. At Pentecost we have still semi-Jewish, not full church, ground. Even to Cornelius Peter did not preach Christ as Son of God, but Christ the Lord—Jesus of Nazareth, anointed with power and the Holy Ghost, going about, doing good, etc., God being with Him, Who raised Him from the dead and ordained Him to be the Judge of the living and of the dead. We have not a word there about the Son of the living God. Neither at Jerusalem nor at Caesarea do we find the ground of the church mentioned.
At Antioch, where the disciples for the first time were called “Christians”, the character of the church as such fully appeared. Paul, the great apostle of the church, who labored there with Barnabas and others, preached after his conversion, in the synagogues of Damascus, not only that Jesus is very Christ, but first of all that He is the Son of God. Here then we have again the only true ground upon which Christ has built His church.
This firm living faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God it is that gives us strength, victoriously to resist the world and its temptations or opposition. The mere belief that Jesus is the Christ does not suffice for that. Such a belief proves that he who owns Jesus to be the Christ is “born of God” (1 John 5:11Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. (1 John 5:1)). But “who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God” (ver. 5)?
Christian reader, it is in the “last days” when the coming of the Lord for the rapture of His church is evidently imminent, the spirit of anti-Christ being more busy than ever to deny or at least to obscure in every way the glory and Godhead of our blessed Savior, that more than ever we ought to keep, yea constantly, before our eyes the adorable Person of the Son of the living God in His divine glory. Satan ever repeats himself, however various his stratagems. In the days of the apostles, when the full free grace of God which “reigns through righteousness” on the divinely solid ground of an eternal redemption by Christ Jesus was being preached in contrast to the works of the law, Satan attacked the work of Christ. But later on, when these faithful witnesses were gone, and only the aged bosom disciple of the Lord remained, the adversary grew bolder, thinking, very likely, that the aged and infirm apostle of Christ would no longer be able to cope with him. By his emissaries lie now attacked the glorious Person of the Son of God Himself in the false doctrine of the so-called “Gnostics”, attempting to lower the adorable Person of the Son of God (as has been attempted of late) to a mere “essence” or influence emanating from God. But the Lord soon proved afresh that it is His Spirit in the fragile, feeble, aged vessel, and not man's spirit (even not in John) that testifies of Him and glorifies Him. He inspired by His Spirit His aged servant to write that blessed Gospel, truly called the “grand Gospel”, which from beginning to end speaks of and sets forth the divine glories of the Son of God, and reflects the beauties and perfections of His adorable Person, making the heart bow before Him in adoring wonder. None but God knows the number of precious souls who, through reading that portion of holy writ, have learned through divine grace to confess with Peter: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Satan once more had defeated himself.
But is it not the same in these last days Christian reader? When fifty years ago the gospel of God's full and free grace in Christ Jesus was proclaimed by some faithful witnesses, whom God had raised and delivered from the “camp” of a Judaized Christianity, the adversary of the truth again directed his attacks against the testimony of the complete work of Christ. But in our days, when, in spite of his opposition, the full gospel of grace and peace on the ground of the finished work of Christ is known and widely proclaimed, Satan again aims his attacks at the Person of the Son of God, of Whom the Holy Spirit, Who “glorifies Him", testifies that He “is over all, God blessed forever”. We need not mention here the names of all those God's-Son-denying sects who dare to call themselves “Christian.” May the Lord direct our hearts more constantly to His all-beauteous Person, and fix our eyes on His glory. (2 Cor. 3:1818But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Corinthians 3:18)).
I am afraid we have been enjoying in the writings of the great apostle of the church the truths concerning the body of Christ and its glorious Head as the glorified Son of man, but are in danger of neglecting that portion of divine truth (written by the same Spirit) concerning the Son of God, and of thus practically slipping from that which is in every individual believer, as for the church, the only true divine ground. If once we begin to lose sight of that ground, i.e., of the Person of the Son of the living God, we shall soon cease practically to hold the Head. “And as He Himself builds His church upon that ground, so let us, beloved, build up one another on the only true ground of “our most holy faith, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto life eternal.”