The Two Spirits

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     One who surveys the appalling wreckage of the Christian ekklesia, as wrought by the sectarian attitude, cannot help but be astounded and to wonder within his heart how such frightful disintegration could occur. Even among the heirs of the Restoration movement the fabric of brotherhood has been rent and torn with such violence that in many metropolitan areas there will be more than a dozen different splinter groups, each proclaiming that it is "the faithful church" and refusing to have any spiritual intercourse or relationship with others. Those who visit another faction are treated as pagans and unbelievers and are granted no recognition whatsoever.

     It is not enough to designate such behavior as childish and immature. True, the apostle says of those who were in such a state, "I had to deal with you on the merely natural plane, as infants in Christ" (1 Cor. 3:1). But there is a reason why grown men act like babies and until that cause is discovered and eliminated we will only perpetuate and intensify our present condition. The actions of infants result from instruction and imitation. When big people act little they but reflect the training and conditioning they have received. All of us are products of our past.

     Our outward demonstration of factionalism is but a manifestation of the spirit which motivates us. It is useless to try to change our practices until we change the tenant who dwells in our hearts. The actions we behold are only reflections of that occupant. Our divisions are fruits of the party spirit. Love and peace are fruits of the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:22). You cannot eliminate sectarianism as long as the sectarian spirit prevails. You cannot maintain division when the Holy Spirit triumphs. For that reason the apostle does not dismiss the schismatic attitude as a mere temper tantrum of spiritually retarded children. He says, "I could not speak to you as I should speak to people who have the Spirit. I had to deal with you on the merely natural plane, as infants in Christ."

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     "People who have the Spirit" just do not divide and sever themselves into parties. If this is not the implication of the passage I confess that I know nothing of true interpretative procedures. If this is correct, then we need to begin our reconstruction program by recapturing the importance of the indwelling Spirit. It is at this point we have failed. Our factions are but external symptoms of an internal disorder. We are victims of our own philosophy. That philosophy was not so much derived from the scriptures as it was contrived to meet what we regarded as abuses in the sectarian world. In our attempt to avoid and overthrow sectarianism we have been betrayed into becoming sectarian.

     Because some placed emphasis upon having a spiritual experience we ridiculed the idea of any personal encounter with God. Because some stressed the emotional aspect to the neglecting of the rational, we stressed the rational to the utter abolition of the emotional. We became a people of keen minds and cold hearts. While others abused the Spirit, we misused the Word and made the fearful mistake of substituting a legalistic formula, forgetting that the new covenant is a "covenant expressed not in a written document, but in a spiritual bond; for the written law condemns to death, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Cor. 3:6).

     Like all who trust in legalism we even searched through the scriptures, confusing gospel and doctrine, and marked out our own little distinctive trail. Every man in pursuit of salvation was forced to follow this track like a human bloodhound, sniffing his way from passage to passage, and passing over the intervening terrain without bark or backward glance. As a result we manufactured a sort of kitchen stepladder approach to God's grace. You can see this exhibited in a thousand sermon outlines and designated the "steps to salvation." This expression nowhere occurs within the word of God although it is a favorite one of those who profess to "speak where the Bible speaks." A person who searches the scriptures for himself and takes all of "the steps" but not in the same order does not land in "salvation" but in error and from this state he must be rescued by being immersed over again by a "Church of Christ preacher"--whatever that is! It is somewhat as if Paul had insisted that every person who came to Christ would have to go first toward Damascus.

     In our congregations are many who have been convinced of the propriety of "water baptism" who have never been committed to the Christ-life at all. They trust in a name over the door of the meetinghouse or in their conformity to a rite. We do not derogate either of these when we point out that the basis of our hope is our relationship to the Father through the Spirit. This is the reason why the congregations are filled with persons who partake of the Lord's Supper on the first day of the week and partake of worldliness the other six days. It accounts for the action of many who never forget to watch their favorite television program and never remember to study their Bibles. It helps to understand why men will rush from the meetinghouse with the final "Amen" to light up a cigarette and burn the lung-searing incense to the great god Nicotine, spending more for the tobacco they puff into the air than for the support of proclaiming the word to the lost.

     There is grave danger in placing our trust in a thing, a proposition, a precept or an institution even if these are divinely created. There is always the possibility of professing one thing and practicing another. When the apostle sought to encourage the Christians at Corinth to overcome the lust of the flesh he did not make his appeal to the fact that they were "members of The Church of Christ" in Corinth. Instead, he asked, "Do you not know that your body is a shrine of the indwelling Spirit, and the Spirit is God's gift to you?" (1 Cor. 6:19).

     In our attempts to line out the sectarians in our sermons we have become sectarian and entangled in our sermon outlines. So legalistic have many become that to them the written word is identified with the Spirit. One man, patting the

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copy of the testament in his coat pocket said, "I've got the Holy Spirit right here in my pocket." But the book in his pocket said the Spirit should be in the heart.

     Peter did not say, "Repent and be baptized, everyone of you in name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive a copy of the new testament." The Holy Spirit cannot be the word of God for it is distinctly affirmed of the penitent on Pentecost that those who gladly received the word were baptized. We receive the word in order to be immersed into Christ and the Holy Spirit because we were.

     Man's heart was not made to be a vacuum. There is actually no such thing as an empty heart although that which fills many hearts is of little value. Man cannot remain at a standstill and still stand as a man. He must be impelled from within. If he is not motivated by the Holy Spirit he will be a slave of the flesh and one of the works of the flesh is the party spirit. God designed that this should he "the age of the Spirit" but men have defied his will by following "the spirit of the age." They have become conformed to this world instead of being transformed through the Word. We are at home in the world. We are no longer pilgrims but patrons; not foreigners but homesteaders in reverse. The world has staked out its claim in us.

     Although we enlisted to fight the world, the flesh and the devil, we have long since ceased to fight either and have turned our weapons against each other. We have split ourselves into segments and fractured ourselves into fragments, and have bathed our weapons in the blood of our brethren. Like savages who dance with fiendish glee about the bodies of their victims before devouring them, we have become spiritual cannibals, biting and devouring one another while forgetting the predicted consequences for such procedure. We have hailed as heroes those who could fling their verbal tomahawks and cleave the skulls of brethren who dared to differ, we have justified dissension and glorified debate.

     The secret of unity is the temple image. If we can emphasize and enforce this in our thinking we will repair our present breaches and preclude all future breaks. If we are the temple of God then to destroy that temple is to do injury to ourselves and to invoke the wrath of God. One should no more be inclined to break up the dwelling-place of the Father than he would to chop down the house of his earthly parent. It is a tragedy that, while a man who burns down an earthly abode is arrested as an arsonist, one who inflames the house of God is decorated as a party hero. "Surely you know that you are God's temple, where the Spirit of God dwells. Anyone who destroys God's temple will himself be destroyed by God, because the temple of God is holy and that temple you are."

     The reason the temple concept is so important to unity is that it contemplates the structure not as a finished product at all, but as a constantly growing one. The stones that are added to it daily are living, and as all living things, are subject to change, alteration and amendment. The church of God is timeless and ageless. It is flexible enough to receive and incorporate within itself men of varied attainments, abilities, social standing and gifts. Its unity is not that of conformity but of diversity. It does not incorporate within itself liberals and conservatives as such any more than it does Jews or Gentiles. It receives men--all men who are born again--and welds them together by a bond which transcends all national patriotism or rational proclivities.

     The temple of God will alter in its external aspects from generation to generation as living stones are quarried from various cultures and civilizations. God does not demand that we forsake our abilities and forget our aptitudes. He only requires that we channel them into a higher and nobler realm of service than the worship of self-interest. The cement of love is elastic, not hardened. It holds us together by the power of the Spirit and not by the spirit of power. It is at

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the divine center where no change is ever made. The foundation does not grow. It is only those planted upon it who develop. The cornerstone is the same yesterday, today and forever. "In him the whole building is bonded together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you too are being built with all the rest into a spiritual dwelling for God." "In him...in the Lord" all growth and building takes place.

     Ponder the significance of the terms "bonded together in him" and "grows into a temple." Here are passages which need to be explored because in them may lie the hope of our future peace. If we can remain in him while growing together, if we can tolerate and respect each other while the growth process is taking place, tomorrow will be brighter than today. Our today is the result of our thinking yesterday. We have thought ourselves into division. Can we think our way into unity?

     And we must not overlook the expression "you are being built with all the rest." Who is included in "all the rest." You do not know and I do not. Only the divine architect can tell. "The Lord knoweth them that are His." But whoever they are they are a part of that spiritual building in which God dwells. And as "a shrine of the Holy Spirit" I am being built "with all the rest" into a "habitation of God through the Spirit." God be thanked!