ON THE ADMISSION OF BELIEVERS INTO THE CHURCH - RESPONSIBILITY - PRIMITIVE CHURCHES - RECEIVING INTO LOCAL CHURCHES - ON THE PASSAGE, ACTS 2:47
ON THE ADMISSION OF BELIEVERS INTO THE CHURCH — RESPONSIBILITY — PRIMITIVE CHURCHES — RECEIVING INTO LOCAL CHURCHES — ON THE PASSAGE, ACTS 2:47
Our brother says in his chapter on the unity of the church (page 27), “The privilege and duty of those who are manifested as members of the body of Christ is to join the church which the Lord has gathered for Himself in the locality they inhabit.” Our brother forgets that things went on quite differently in the primitive church. A man brought to the faith of Christ was baptised,+ and thus outwardly manifested; but he was not baptised as member of a church, but as member of the church; he was introduced into Christ’s assembly. It might so happen, that it was in an isolated place where there were no Christians, as was the case of the eunuch of the court of Candace; but that changed nothing as to his admission. The reception of a Christian was not a reception into a particular church. There was only one baptism for the body of Christ,++ sign of admission into the universal assembly on earth, but not necessarily into the assembly in heaven. Let us pay attention to this; baptism,
+I speak here without making any allusion to questions and discussions between baptists and paedobaptists.
++Note to translation. — Baptism is not admission to the body. That is by baptism by one Spirit. But the doctrine of the ruin, or the house, I was not distinctly brought out then. The general reasoning is perfectly just.
[p. 257] that outward act which did not answer universally or necessarily to the internal unity (witness, Simon Magus),+ was the sign of an outward unity (as of a society of persons), by which sign all were of one body here below, without its being, however, the body of Christ viewed as the assembly of the elect unto eternal life.
I do not speak now of the state of that outward body at that time, nor its safeguards for its purity which existed in the circumstances of Christianity, in the evident power of the Holy Spirit in the strength of love and discipline which acted therein. I only speak of the fact, that there was a society on earth, the members of which were admitted by a certain form, by means of which all were supposed to be, and were, in fact, members of that society, until, as it might happen, they were excluded from it for some violation of its rules. If I am told that this society has been corrupted and no longer answers to God’s intention in the establishment of it; that it is, on the contrary, the seat of all that wars against the truth and against integrity of heart, or that, having forgotten its primitive discipline, it has allowed those to enter its sanctuary who despised all that it considered sacred: be it so; I believe it; but what cannot be denied is the existence of such a society at the beginning of Christianity, the members of which were recognised by baptism. That society had gifts, and ordinances, and government, whether local or general; that society was then the church, since the elect were there manifested in unity.
The church had the one baptism, as the one Spirit, and yet it was not either a particular church, or the internal unity of Christian life, which was formed by such means. Either this society has ceased to exist (and what exists now does not deserve to be considered as such), or it exists still in its unity as such, under all the solemn responsibilities as to which it completely fails — ripening, as a society, for the most severe judgments of God. Both these things may be said; but they demonstrate the truth of the position I maintain. Morally, as the representative of the glory of God on earth, this body no longer exists; it is the seat of the power of the enemy more than of the power of God. As to its responsibility, this body still exists. The servant who, instead of accomplishing his service, beats his fellow-servants, and eats and drinks with the drunken, is judged as a servant. The responsibility does not
+See also 1 Corinthians 1:10.
[p. 258] depend on the accomplishment of the service, but on the position which demands that accomplishment.
Let those who, by the will of God, may read these pages, pay attention to the cause of the iniquity of this evil servant: he was saying in his heart, “My Lord delayeth his coming,” Matthew 24:48.
Finally, the church, as a society, nearly identical (and, as to the manifestation of the glory of God on earth, perfectly identical) with the church in its internal unity, did exist at the beginning. Where is it now? It is the intelligent answer to this question, which alone gives the solution of the difficulties presented by both Puseyism and nationalism, and the controversy on dissent.
Ministry and baptism, those two links between the exterior and interior of this society, are of necessity become the turning points of these questions, and the occasions of the corruption of the society; of exaggerated pretensions on the part of those who will have it that the exterior alone is the church, and of so many difficulties on the other hand, for those who will only own as the church the internal society — difficulties which they cannot escape, until they admit the ruin in which we are found, not for eternity (because in this respect the faithfulness of God interposes), but as to the manifestation of the church for the glory of God here below. These difficulties will only disappear for them when they admit this ruin; because, as the Holy Spirit does not act at present in that power which made the exterior to be the expression of the interior, the separation of those two things has left a gap which nothing can fill up as to this world, and which places us in a state of things where we are found guilty of having failed as to the manifestation of the glory of God on earth. This is a painful conviction, undoubtedly, and humbling for us, but in which we have, first, this consolation that God in His grace can never fail, and that we shall certainly have the heavenly glory; and, secondly, that God directs the hopes of those who are faithful, even in the midst of unfaithfulness, to that which in His counsels is the result of that ruin — to the glorious appearing of Christ, who will take us unto Himself, that we may appear with Him in glory, when He will appear to judge all this evil.
Finally, there is a consolation which is attached to faithfulness in the trial; and the result of obedience is always the enjoyment [p. 259] of more special communion with God, especially when that obedience is accomplished in the midst of departure from God and a general contempt of Him, in the midst of the moral rebellion of those who bear the name of God, who will bear it and arrogate to themselves alone (and perhaps more than ever) the privileges which belong to the Christian only. I say, more than ever; because it is a fact, that the greater the departure from God, the more those who hold to the outward order boast of their privileges, and do so as if they were the only persons favoured of God; that the glory and the importance of those privileges may be assigned to them. “The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord!” Such language comes not from the mouth of those who love the Lord who dwells in that temple. Elijah, while he bore witness in the midst of Israel to the glory of Him from whom Israel had departed, enjoyed an intimacy with God, rarely found even among the prophets. Moses, when he had pitched a tabernacle without the camp, communed with God, and God “spake unto him face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.”
Moreover, if the pretensions of those who cling to outward forms do prevail, as I doubt not they will, at least for a time, and even under the worst form, let us remember that that which is internal is eternal. Eternal righteousness, in the Person of Christ, bowed its head for a moment before the presumption which used the ordinances of righteousness, as separated from Him, so that they rose up against Him — that righteousness, I say, rose nevertheless more glorious than ever, more sanctioned than ever, in resurrection and “at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” The act which had trodden under foot that righteousness only brought judgment and ruin on that presumption, which, having clothed itself with the glorious name of the ordinances of that righteousness, had succeeded in deceiving the world by their outward appearance. The Spirit of prophecy had said with Isaiah, “Therefore thou has forsaken thy people” (Isaiah 2:6), before God had as yet executed any judgment.
I know that people will not have it that man is responsible for an evil which existed before he was born. It is true that as regards the final judgment of individuals, each one will bear his own burden; but such is not the course of God’s government in the world. As children of the first Adam we [p. 260] are all under the effects of his sin. The righteous blood shed upon earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias, who was slain between the temple and the altar, was required of that generation which filled up the measure of their fathers, Matthew 23:35. The blood of prophets and saints, and of all the slain upon the earth, was found in Babylon, Revelation 18:24. As far as love is concerned, and as the family of Christ, we are all necessarily identified with the woes of those who are Christ’s and with His glory which is cast down to the ground. I do not think that a Christian is in a position to reprove his brother, as he ought to do, and point out to him his sin, if he has not borne on his heart all the weight of that sin. I do not speak of atonement; that is evident. It is thus that Christ reproves. His love feels all the evil of which His brethren are guilty, as if it were His own, and this is what gives such energy to His intercession. It is in this sense that (according to the spirit of love) a Christian does not bear with the evil which is in his brother; and it is thus that I desire to speak of the sin of the church, for alas! the honour of Christ is lost, the beauty of that which He loves, and which was His glory, is passed away; the happiness of His own is weakened and almost destroyed.
It remains now for me to make a few remarks on details. When the church in any place was called the church of God, there is nothing more simple. As the word church means assembly, it is clear that the Christians of a certain place, being gathered together, were truly the assembly of that place, but it was not only the assembly that owned God, but that which God owned, and which enjoyed exclusively the privileges He could vouchsafe unto it, as being His assembly.
In like manner, at that time, the assembly of a city was that which was owned by the laws of the city, or the will of the emperor, and which alone enjoyed the privileges belonging to such an assembly. There could not be two. The Greek word ‘ecclesia,’ that is, ‘church,’ in its primitive sense, applied to the constitutional assembly of those who had the right of citizenship in a city. It is in this sense it is used in Acts 19, in the case of Demetrius. The question is to know if, for us, the right of citizenship comes from admission into the church of a city, as in municipal cases, or else from our admission into the universal church. As to this right of each Christian, the [p. 261] heavenly citizens of such or such a place cannot dispute it to their brethren, unless the latter, through evil conduct, have deserved to be deprived of it. If they dispute it, they dispute the foundation and basis of their own rights, for they have none others but those which they deny to be sufficient for their brethren. They are rebelling against the rights of Him, who, with the same authority, vouchsafed thus privilege to themselves and to those they reject; and they act like the Jews who raised difficulties to the admission of Gentiles, although they themselves held their rights from Him who had vouchsafed similar rights to the Gentiles. It appears that our brother, Mr. Rochat, does not now dispute this principle. As for me, my only desire is that the thing be fully established, that this principle be clearly brought to light, and that it be understood that every assembly which pretends to decide such a question denies the origin and source of all its own rights. If the right of heavenly citizenship, which God has granted to every Christian, is not sufficient in order to be received by the brethren of a certain locality, it is not sufficient for themselves; and if it be not sufficient for themselves, they can neither act as an assembly nor as Christians.
I desire to add a remark on what we read in Acts 2:47, “The Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.” Here the word church cannot be taken as meaning some particular church. First, if that is the true sense, it is clear that now there is no longer any church, for God no longer acts thus. If this passage is carefully examined, it will be seen that the word which has perplexed translators (who have given some, “saved,” some, “to be saved,” others “who were saving themselves,” etc.), is the word, I may say the technical word, used for the remnant of the Jews, who escaped the judgment of God. Thus it was that the disciples asked if “the saved,” those who were to be saved, were numerous. This is what is told us in this passage: the way that God employed in His mercy to save this remnant, which He had destined to escape the judgment of the nation which had rejected the Saviour, was to add them to the church. But it is no question here of a particular church, for at that moment there was only one known assembly of God, the church which met at Jerusalem, but which was the church in every possible sense. Thus speaks Paul of the church in general. See Galatians 1:13; Philippians 3:6.