The question is not whether the Church can take these directions, and use them by the Spirit, for her guidance. If they are addressed to others than the Church, then a condition is found to have existed to which the testimony of Christ applies, but which is not the Church. If it is solely and exclusively the Church, then there is no example (here at least) of disciples other than the Church; and we are to take the disciples as being, during the lifetime of Jesus, the Church; and the proper and peculiar blessedness of that body, in the unity of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, becomes a mere casual difference.
I say, then, that the disciples were not then the Church, though they afterwards became the first nucleus of it, and that the sermon on the mount is not addressed to the Church, nor could be; though the Church now has it for its guide in its walk. If I say to one who has never been at court, You cannot join the king’s court but in a court dress. It is clear that he will have to wear the court dress when there; for what I say means that that is the dress that suits the court; but the man, as yet, does not form part of the king’s court. But farther, the kingdom of heaven is not the Church; and while we enter into it in the way of being the Church, others may enter into it in another way, as the Jews and others during the millennium; and this dress prescribed in the sermon on the mount may be as needed for those who are to enter in in that way, as for those who, by this new form of the manifold wisdom of God, become the Church of God in earth. Thus, when it is said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” this may be true of those who shall inherit the earth in a millennial way, and I believe will be true, and more literally and immediately true than it is of the Church, and that to confine it to the Church as exclusively true of it, is only ignorance. This shows the bearing of the question. Then, as to the fact, I say that the disciples were not then the Church, and could not be addressed as the Church; Christ being not yet dead and risen again, and the Spirit not given. They were addressed in their then condition. And is there any great wonder in that ?
But farther. Could one in the Church, a Christian now, as it has been put by one opposed to my view, have sat on the mount with the disciples, and listened with the disciples to this sermon, as addressed to himself as well as to them? I answer at once, No. He would have said, How blessed to my soul are these instructions; what a guide to my feet in this dark world; how my soul delights in them, and in Him who gave them! But he would have felt that they were addressed to them, and not to him. He was in the kingdom, he had the secret of the Lord, and the Holy Ghost dwelling in him. And this one word, “Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven,” would at once make him feel, “This is for them, addressed exclusively to them.” It is impossible that such language as, “Ye shall in no case enter,” can be addressed to those who are already within, who are in and of the kingdom. It gives the immediate consciousness that the address is to others, though it may at the same time give the consciousness that the principles addressed belong to those that are within. That they got new instructions, belonging to the remnant, is most true such as would not have suited any others. That this remnant became the nucleus of the Church, and carried these instructions along with them into it, is equally true. But they were not then addressed as the Church, nor even as being in the kingdom; nor could they be, for neither were set up. And this sermon is in prospect of the setting up of the kingdom, and shows the qualities and persons suited to it before it was so set up, and in no case even alludes to the Church.
For my own part, though a practical direction in principle, I have no doubt that verse 25 applies to the then position of Christ with the nation, and that the nation is now suffering the consequences of not acting on the principle there stated. I add, that while all the teaching here remains eternally true for everyone, yet that, as it stands here, it could be addressed now neither to saint nor sinner. Not to a saint; for it is a question of entering into the kingdom of heaven. Not to sinners; for it is not an address of grace to them at all, nor is redemption once mentioned at all, but doing Christ’s sayings as the ground of entry. (See 7:21.) To say that it will be true as regards heaven for us, is avoiding the question. It is running an analogy, and a just one; but it is not what is said or treated in the sermon on the mount. I affirm, then, that the sermon on the mount was addressed to the disciples in their then state; and I should think it very natural that it should be so. But their then state was not that of the Church, but very far indeed from it.