THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH

THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH

The moral earthquake which has exposed all the earthliness of brethren has extended also to you. How truly we learn, however distant, that if we are on the same meridian line we suffer alike. To me it is very evident that brethren had declined from the church, the circle of Christ’s interest, and were confining their service exclusively to the gospel, or, I might say, to our own interest in God’s grace. The gospel, as is plain from Romans, sets a man up in peace with God on the earth, where he had been under His judgment. For the believer it is not now death, the wages of sin, but eternal life, the gift of God. Thus the gospel introduces you into a large field of blessing, so that you have here joy unspeakable and full of glory. But the moment you receive light as to the church (your relation to Christ) an entirely new world opens out to you. You find that you belong to Christ in heaven. It is not now merely all He had done for you on the earth, which is the known joy of your heart, but you are a member of the body of the blessed One, who in Himself wrought out your salvation. To be in any sense of this great union you must be in His life outside your ^[p. 99] senses, in an out-of-the-world condition of things. No one realises the gospel of God who is not on the other side of the Red Sea, and no one except over Jordan can enjoy union with Christ; and assuredly no one who does not know Him as Head (holding the Head) can enter into His mind and interests. I have no doubt that if brethren were occupied with their relation to Christ, as the members of the exalted Man in heaven, they would not have suffered as they have in the late sifting. The gospel without the church has been the aim of the enemy for many years. Moody and Sankey gave much impetus to it — the gospel without separation; while Pearsal Smith’s doctrine was holiness without separation.