I hold, in common with many
scholars (a classification for which I hardly qualify), that
it was most unfortunate that the English word "church"
was selected by the translators to convey the thought
inherent in the Greek ecclesia. Much as I dislike
it, however, I entertain little hope of seeing anything of
much consequence done about it in my time. I think the
editor of this journal had it about right when he said that
we are "stuck" with the word "church." The best we can
hope for is to educate people to the point where this
word will produce in the minds of thinking men the same
mental image which ecclesia produced in the
minds of Greek-speaking people. Unless otherwise
indicated I intend church and ecclesia
to be exactly equal in what follows.
Most of those who read this will be
intellectually aware that ecclesia is best
rendered by such words as community, congregation, or
assembly. However, many have been emotionally
conditioned to think of the church as being, of necessity,
some type of corporate organized institution.
Ecclesia is not a word with special religious
connotation. If a writer intended to convey the thought of
any particular variety of assembly he had to do so in the
context of what he wrote. The word ecclesia was
flexible enough to cover any kind of assembly, whether
political, social or religious. No formal organization was
understood by the Greeks to be an essential part of the
ecclesia. Jesus used the word in reference to
those who would be called into assembly around the
bedrock fact of his divine Sonship.
"And I tell you, you are Peter, and
on this rock I will build my church (ecclesia)" --Matthew
16:18.
I would like to make it clear that
this does not imply the necessity of formal organization. I
do not wish to leave the impression that a church
(ecclesia) may not be formally organized, for I
sincerely believe that it may be. I am only trying to bring
into sharper focus the essential meaning of the church
--the ecclesia.
In Acts 19 we read a description of
a wild mob scene in which a mass of people assembled to
stage a mad unreasoning demonstration against what
they considered to be an attack upon their heathen deity,
Artemis. After a period of uncontrolled anger and
confusion the mob was finally brought to silence by the
town clerk who was able to persuade them to desist and
go about their business. Luke uses the identical word in
referring to this throng that Jesus used in reference to
those to be later assembled around the fact of his divine
Sonship. "And when he had said this he dismissed the
assembly (ecclesia) " --Acts 19:41.
I have reviewed this in order to
eliminate the horror some might be inclined to feel at the
frank and objective way I plan to deal with the word
"church." I want to dispel the erroneous notion that the
church is so sacrosanct as to be above objective
examination or critical study. It is my belief that no
theory could possibly be more fraught with danger and
that none has proven itself more capable of setting itself
against the divine objective. I believe that any unbiased
examination of the pages of religious history will reveal
the wreckage strewn trail of apostasy exactly parallels
that of church deification. The record of man's journey
through time has shown that he possesses a remarkable
propensity for turning the greatest of blessings into
curses of the most heinous nature. Even the divine
blessings have not been proof against man's Midas-touch
of distortion and destruction. Little documentation is
necessary to render this acceptable to the objective
mind.
Let it be borne in mind that Jesus' reference
to a church built around his Sonship to God refers only to
men-men saved not by their own merits, but through God's grace.
Let it not be forgotten that many of the letters in the new
covenant scriptures were written to criticize churches.
The church, whether one is thinking of it in the local
congregational or universal sense, is composed of men who are
prone to mistakes in judgment and subject to sin. This being
true, it follows as the night follows day, that the church is
just as fallible and vulnerable to human weakness and error as
the men of whom it is composed. No entity is possessed of greater
virtue than is possessed by the sum total of its parts. The
church is not, nor can it be, anything other than that which its
constituents make possible for it to be. Any arguments to the
contrary would be so palpably false as to render them an insult
to thinking people.
Some may seek to escape from the consequences
of this by reference to the many passages in inspired writing
which indicate just how precious God holds the church to be. That
it is precious to him I will agree without reservation. That he
loves it and holds out to it every blessing which a completely
unselfish love can devise, is not subject to question. Such
passages as Ephesians 5:25-27 leave no room for doubt.
"Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved
the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify
her, having cleansed her with the washing of water with the word,
that the church might be presented before him in splendor,
without wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and
without blemish."
Verse 25 defines a love, which taken in the
light of all it involves, almost defies human understanding.
Before we wrest it from its context, however, and begin a typical
process of self-exaltation (a process that is exactly equal to
church-exaltation and is a product of the same motivation), let
us get what Paul said in its proper perspective. Let us notice
where this great love first revealed itself.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his
only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
eternal life" (John 3:16).
"But God shows his love for us in that while
we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).
God's love for the church first became
obvious while those who compose it were still in the world. It is
unquestionably true that God loves the church, those assembled
around the divine Sonship of Jesus. Be it remembered, however,
that before he loved them in the church, he loved them in the
world. Before he loved them in relationship to his Son, he loved
them in sin--not because of their sin but in spite of it. His
love for the church is equal to, and completely indivisible from,
the individuals who compose it. What one means, the other means.
Love for the church is exactly parallel to love for his
children.
It is likely that some have seized upon verse
27 in Ephesians 5, in the hope of being able to establish some
justification for their claim to virtue on the part of the
church. Let us not lose sight of the fact that before the church
is, or can be, presented before him "holy and without blemish"
she must be subjected to the action specified in verse 26.
"That he might sanctify her having cleansed her by the washing
of water with the word."
The first thing we want to point out is that
this cleansing takes place on an individual level. There is no
such thing as mass or group cleansing. The church is sanctified
only as each individual constituent allows his mind to be brought
into captivity under the complete control of Christ.
With this understood, virtue falls into the
place where it properly belongs, not in the sons of men but in
the Son of God. Before the church--that community of individuals
congregated around the divine sonship of Jesus Christ--can be
presented before him in the virginal pristine purity of a bride,
she must be sanctified by him. The church's relationship
to God is not a result of her action but of her being acted upon.
This cannot be obviated by the
boastful claim that God loves us because we have kept his
commandments. John specifies that the keeping of his commandments
is a consequence of loving him (John 14:15). John further asserts
that our ability to love him stems from his having loved us first
(1 John 4:19). From this comes the inevitable conclusion that the
church's relationship to God is not basically the result of our
love for him, but of his love for us. Without his having loved us
first, we could not have loved him. Without it having been made
possible for us to love him, there would have been no motivation
for keeping his commands.
Through the centuries of the Christian Era no
other subject has been so widely discussed or so universally
misunderstood as "the nature of the ecclesia." Wherever
men have convened to seek a better understanding of God's will,
this subject has spread itself athwart the road leading to that
goal. This misunderstanding has rendered the church vulnerable to
all sorts of distortion and abuse. That which was intended as a
rallying ground for all lovers of God and his truth, has become
the bloody battleground on which ecclesiastical wars have raged
for nearly two thousand years.
In its present manifestation Christianity
embodies two serious tragedies which seem to grow worse with the
passing of the years. The first of these is that Christ's prayer
for oneness among believers has gone unanswered. This is the
major contributory factor involved in the lamentable fact that
better than half of the people in the world are still unaware
that Jesus Christ ever lived on this earth.
One misunderstanding with far-reaching
potential, and of which believers have proven unable to divest
themselves, is that which holds that the church must take the
form of a corporate organization with a personality somehow
distinguishable from those individuals of whom it is composed,
and that it must be visible as a separate and distinct entity. It
would appear to be wise at this point for us to endeavor to see
the church as Jesus envisioned it. Strangely, such an idea seems
to play but little part in our efforts to "restore" or
reconstitute the church according to the divine pattern.
May I digress long enough to call attention
to what I think of as being a serious weakness in the
"restoration" philosophy. To restore something means to bring it
back to an original state. The "restoration" concept held as
ideal the idea of making the church of the first century the
perfect pattern for the church of twenty centuries later. To my
mind, this reverses everything we know about God's procedural
pattern in every phase of his activity. It seems to be a
principle, without exception, that he has arranged for infancy to
grow toward maturity; for incompletion to grow into completion,
and for a beginning to precede completion. The "restoration"
concept reverses all this and has the infant church serving as
the pattern for the mature church. In all sincerity, I am
wondering if such a concept can possibly represent God's will.
But to get back to the church as Jesus envisioned it, let us seek
to find an expression of this in his own words.
"Being asked by the Pharisees when the
kingdom of God was coming, he answered them, 'The kingdom of God
is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, 'Lo,
here it is!,' or 'There!' for behold, the kingdom of God is in
the midst of you" (Luke 17:20, 21).
This passage seems to deal with the church
(God's kingdom on earth) in any essential corporate sense which
Jesus thought necessary to its existence. He explains that it
will not make its appearance with observable or visible signs,
aside or apart from the presence of the individual citizens among
men. This is clearer in the rendering given it by the New English
Translation.
"The Pharisees asked him, 'When will the
kingdom of God come?' He said, 'You cannot tell by observation
when the kingdom of God comes. There will be no saying, 'Look,
here it is!' or 'There it is!'; for in fact the kingdom of God is
among you."
To completely analyze this passage and deal
with all of its implications would
take far more space than we propose to devote to this entire
article. Certain obvious facts must be noted, however. 1. The
kingdom of God on earth (the church) cannot be identified by
observing it in a corporate or organizational form. 2. Its
essential characteristic nature is present wherever its
individual citizens are present among men. Not until these two
facts are fully recognized and taken into account, will we ever
see the mature church take shape on earth in harmony with God's
intended purpose.
It is not likely that preachers are going to
rush out and burn all of their sermon outlines on "The New
Testament Church Identified" on the basis of what I have said
thus far. I have no quarrel with this fact. Men that easily
swayed would not be worth much in any vital cause. Let us
continue to investigate.
Perhaps most of those who have followed us
this far are now prepared to show, by incontrovertible argument,
that the "early church" did have an organized corporate
existence. Such will not be necessary. I am completely willing to
concede that early Christians organized themselves into corporate
groups on the community level and that they did this with the
sanction of the Holy Spirit. I reserve the right to look into the
nature and purpose of such organization, and having done so, I am
not prepared to admit that such organization served any other
purpose, or that it bore the stamp of any design beyond that
necessary to enable the individual child of God to reach his
highest level of service to God possible in view of his own
individual limitations. To reduce it to the simplest terms
possible, man is by nature a gregarious creature. He functions,
at his highest level of efficiency and happiness, when working in
harmonious accord with his own kind. Out of this fact grew any
measure of corporate existence justifiable by anything God has
revealed us.
To get down to the bedrock facts inherent in
this study, church organization ("church government" if you
prefer), was designed for the sole purpose of serving the
individual child of God to the end that he might become
Christ-like in his nature, to the greatest degree possible. If we
admit this to be true, the church when we think of it as a
corporate organization, was a means to an end and not an end
within itself. The church was intended to serve man and not to be
served by man. It was simply an adaptation of certain principles,
not new, but long recognized, into God's plan to make men
Christians, with all that is inherent in that word. It was, in
any organizational sense, an original invention by God as the
object of man's devotion and service. It grew out of the needs of
those men who desired to conform their lives to the true pattern-
-Jesus!
A short time ago I asked an adult class to
express just what the word "body" meant to them, when applied to
the church. I was completely astonished to find that none of them
had any clear conception as to just why the inspired writers used
the word in reference to the church, or just what thought they
meant to convey by its use. They were representative of a group
of "restorationists" who would have applauded my efforts of a few
years back to perpetuate division over a claim that others were
creating "another body." Perhaps some of them are more than a
little disappointed that I am not still engaged in such activity.
It was shocking, to say the least, to discover that, even though
guilty of advocating division among the children of God over the
formation of "another body," they were able to express no clear
concept as to just what is implied by the "one body."
With this in mind, I feel justified in
delving into three phases of the subject. Please understand that
I am thinking of "the body" as being synonymous with the "church"
in this particular context. I admit they may not be completely
parallel in every respect. But the average person when pressed
for an expression of his concept of the church as a body will
almost invariably express the belief that both refer to the
religious organization instituted by God through Christ. For this
reason I feel called upon to discuss the
three phases to which I have referred. Much of what I say will be
a re-statement in more detail of principles already introduced.
This I do for the sake of emphasis. I am thinking of church
organization: its origin, nature and purpose.
As to the origin of church organization, I
have already expressed some skepticism concerning the theory that
Christ's statement ("Upon this rock I will build my church"),
concerned itself in any primary sense with the matter of church
organization. I am convinced that he was basically concerned with
calling lovers of truth into assembly around his divine Sonship.
Any relationship this may have had, or which may have later
developed, between the church of which Jesus speaks and formal
organization was only incidental. Here he is primarily concerned
with revealing himself to man, and attracting honest hearts to
God through himself (John 12:32).
Why do I hold this view? How did I arrive at
it? Very simple. I believe that Peter's pronouncement on the day
of Pentecost called the church into assembly and that the three
thousand thus called embodied every essential necessary to their
present existence in proper relationship to God. It is most
significant, so far as we are able to determine, that they
existed without formal organization. They constituted a church
which existed as an organism with Christ as its head, but without
corporate formal organization of any kind. Unless this can be
demonstrated beyond question to be a completely false premise, it
demonstrates that corporate organization is not necessary to the
existence of the church. I am prepared to show that organization
does serve a useful and necessary function, but it is not
essential to the church's existence, or to individual
relationship to God.
A considerable period of time passed before
the Holy Spirit, through the apostles, approved the institution
of a budding formal organization. Study Acts 6:1-6. This passage,
together with all known related facts, would seem to make it
abundantly clear that formal corporate organization came into
existence in response to a need. It was not the institution by
God of a pattern to which he desired men to conform, merely for
the sake of conformation, but it represented an obvious effort to
help man work in harmonious cooperation with his fellowmen.
It was not until a later date, not definitely
known, that a more or less uniform pattern of organization began
to emerge, the nature of which seemed to indicate clearly to be a
direct result of need. To the best of my understanding, after a
period of about three years study on the subject, the uniform
pattern of an organization did not contain a single original
principle. It was the adaptation of certain procedural principles
of order dictated by man's need--need which had been present and
obvious throughout his history.
As a clear indication that the principles
involved in church organization as it emerged, were not new, I
feel that one needs but to recall that elders with qualifications
and functions very similar to those approved by the Holy Spirit
for the church, were already present in the synagogue. We seem to
be on safe ground in concluding that the church, when spoken of
as an organization, was simply an adaptation of principles
already recognized to the accomplishment of God's purpose. Church
organization was and is the product of an obvious need.
Now let us look for a moment at the nature
church organization is justified in assuming. Since it seems
obvious that any such form is dictated by the need of man for aid
in meeting God's requirements, it would seem that, within the
limitation imposed by the known requirements of God, the nature
of the organization would have to be shaped by the nature of the
need. Since the need of each church would obviously be determined
by the nature of people constituting it, and by the circumstances
under which each church must function, would it not be clearly
indicated that to be effective in meeting the need, organization
must remain flexible enough to adapt itself to the particular
need or combination of needs, it is intended to fill?
Finally we come to a consideration of the
general purpose or overall need which corporate organization
among God's people was designed to fill. Repeated reference to
this has already been made. It seems to be indicated, however,
that we reduce what has already been said incidentally to a clear
purposeful statement. In this particular instance we are most
fortunate that the Holy Spirit, through the apostle Paul, has
spelled it out for us clearly. I suggest that the reader study
carefully that portion of Paul's letter to the Ephesians as
recorded in chapter 4, verses 11 through 16. To get a clear
picture of the apostle's thought, I would recommend that you read
it in one or more of the later versions.
Verse 11 specifies the special functionaries
who would be included on virtually every commentator's list of
leaders in the various functions of church organization -
apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastor-teachers. By many
these would be designated as "church officers." I will not
quarrel with that here provided it is understood they are not the
particular kind of officers one would expect to find in a
legalistic system. In any case, this list is the roll of those
special servants around whom the church, organizationally
speaking, is intended to function. Let it be understood that the
terms used here are descriptive of the functions each was
intended to perform and not official titles of honor required by
law.
Verse 12 states that their function was to
equip God's people for effective service in building up the body
of Christ. I believe that Paul is here thinking of the church as
an organism. This seems clear from the fact that he has just
referred to those in the leading roles of church organization,
and has stated that their purpose is to equip God's people for
work in his service to build up the body. It would seem
redundant, even foolish, to say that the purpose of the
organization is to build up the organization (church). On the
other hand, it makes sense from every point of view for him to
say that the purpose of organization among God's people is to
enable each individual to function at peak efficiency as a member
of the body, thinking of it as an organism. It is recommended
that the reader study the entire twelfth chapter of First
Corinthians in this connection. The serious student will not
hesitate to do this.
In Ephesians 4:13 the apostle states clearly
the ultimate purpose of church organization. With a clear
understanding of this there will emerge a clear picture of the
church in its organizational form, particularly as to the purpose
or ultimate end at which such organization is aimed. Listen to
the apostle. "So shall we all at last attain to the unity
inherent in our faith and our knowledge of the Son of God, to
mature manhood, measured by nothing less then the full stature of
Christ."
From this it seems that but one conclusion is
possible. The aim of the church, as an organized body, is to
enable the individual member to become Christlike. The importance
of this is readily discernible when one considers that a body is
distinctive because of the individual characteristics of the
members of which it is composed. The body of each man is
identical to that of every other man when considered as a unit.
Each has two arms, two legs, two eyes, a nose, a mouth, etc. It
is only when the members of each body are considered individually
that bodies become distinguishable from each other.
It is difficult, in this light, to calculate
the vast importance of making each member of the body exactly
like the pattern--Christ. Let this be remembered by those who
feel inclined toward the conclusion that I have relegated the
church to a place of minor importance. Exerting the greatest
possible influence on each individual member to the end that he
may become Christ-like in his nature is the immediate function,
and the ultimate goal, of church organization.
Let us remove the church (still thinking of
it in the organizational sense) from the purely honorary and
decorative pedestal to which we have relegated it, and let us
permit it to assume the practical and functional purpose for
which God
designed it. The organized church is not an object designed as
the recipient of glory. Paul says, "To him be glory in the
church." He does not say that the church is to be glorified as we
may have led people to believe. God is glorified when a
demonstration is made that his grace has had the effect of
enabling his children to assume the nature of his crucified Son.
He is glorified in the church, when the church performs
the function of serving his children to the point of enabling
them to assume a nature depicting his likeness.
Finally, let us draw upon the investigation
just completed to reach a somewhat revolutionary, but obviously
true, conclusion. God did not approve an organization in order
that his creatures might become servants of that organization. He
approved organization in order that such organization might
become a means of elevating those who, by reason of their
rebirth, have become children in his family; in other words, to
elevate them to the position from which they fell when sin
entered their lives. It may be claimed that my alarm over
organization for the people, as distinguished from people for the
organization, is more theoretical than practical. Will it also be
claimed that the same is true when one distinguishes between
government for the people and people for the government,
as in the matter of Marxism?
Let us not forget the significant fact that
God's love is directed toward men. In relationship to his
children, like every father, he wants them to be like him. The
church is organized to serve this purpose. Its organization
serves this purpose, or it serves no purpose of value. May the
Spirit of God move among us as we think upon these things.
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