The Reconciling Community
W. Carl Ketcherside
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In our generation, so filled with complexities, the commission of our Lord might best be translated, "Go into all of the worlds." We are surrounded by many worlds which need to be penetrated with the message. There is the world of science, of art, and of higher education; the world of affluent suburbia and of the poverty stricken ghetto. There is also the world of religion, for here too the Call has not always come through, and the milling flocks have never heard the voice of the Shepherd. There have been other voices, many of them, and the welter of discordant sounds has confused the sheep and stifled the voice of the One who could lead them out.
Our approach has always been meager and nebulous because we have proposed to fulfill a mission without realizing who we are, and, what is even worse, without knowing what we are! In this dilemma, we tend to add to the confusion rather than to give direction. And while our present task in this article lies along a different route than the establishment of our own identity, we must point out, in passing, that we are a community of the reconciled, and a reconciling community. That expresses both who we are and what we are. We move into the world as Christ moved into the world (for we are the body of Christ), saying, "Be ye reconciled to God."
If this seems an over-simplification, it must be remembered that it strikes at the very heart of the whole inflamed and festering human conflict, both within and without. Because the finite was meant to vibrate in harmony with the infinite, until proper adjustment has been made and we are again attuned, only discord can result. Sin has short-circuited our lives, and we see the effect in the three areas of personal and inter-personal relationships--with God, others, and self. Our own inner serenity, as well as our peaceful existence with our fellows, is dependent upon a restoration of peace with God. This can be achieved only in and through Jesus Christ.
Ours is a ministry of healing through reconciliation. We move into our contemporary worlds to share what we have received, or to allow Him to share through us what only He can bestow. The problems of our troubled society can never be settled except as they melt under the influence of His reconciling grace. They may be curbed by law and restrained by threat of punishment, but laws are external and can never change hearts. The purpose in this little article is to discuss with you some of the adjustments and changes which we must make if we are to speak meaningfully to the intellectual world in which our lot has been cast.
1. We must cease to identify with, or allow ourselves to be regarded as representative of any sect, splinter or fragment, in a divided Christendom. The body of
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The sectarian spirit has little appeal for modern man. He is tired of useless fighting over dogma, imposed by authoritarian methods, whether proceeding from. the pope or local elders. The hoary weight of traditional interpretations and metaphysical speculation will be discounted and discarded at once by a world in revolt against this very thing. Only the claim of a personal Jesus who is both the power of God and the wisdom of God, can appeal to those who are caught up in the power struggle and the scholastic relationship founded upon faith. It leads one to a person rather than to a position.
2. The community of the saints must be projected as large enough and flexible enough to embrace all who have been received by Christ, Just as the world of creation must find a place for all humanity to dwell without need of conflict, so the sphere of the new creation must find a place for every individual in the new humanity. The right to dwell in the United States is not conditioned upon one's political opinion but upon citizenship, and one's right to the blessings of the kingdom of heaven must not be made contingent upon a theological opinion, but upon adoption as a son of God.
To devise humanly-conceived structural rigidity based upon the acceptance of some philosophy or exclusive doctrinal emphasis is to attempt to confine grace, and results in the mistaken notion that the community is the dispenser of grace rather than the recipient of it. The community results from grace freely bestowed, and not the reverse. Thus, the umbrella of fellowship must be of sufficient spread to cover all who by grace are saved through faith.
Practical commonsense dictates that men will have temperamental, scholastic, sociological, and other preferences as to where (and even how) they express their praise to God within the framework of revelation, but we must never confuse the intimate group association which results from such preference with fellowship in the Lord Jesus Christ. To do so is to become victims of religious snobbery and sectarian pride. There is only one body and it must be majestic enough to include all of God's children, whether of liberal or conservative tendency, for these are terms of human definition, and not conditions of divine acceptance. All who are caught up by grace are caught up together when they properly respond to its demands upon them.
No theory or view about the nature of Deity, the work of the Holy Spirit, the second coming of Christ, or the manner of the resurrection to come (to cite only a few examples), can ever be made a test of union or communion among those who have set to their seal that God is true, and have committed themselves to an unreserved trust in Jesus as the author and finisher of their faith. To exalt such things to tests of loyalty is to become guilty of sectarianism in its narrowest (and, therefore, its worst) form. In the sight of God there is no premillennial body, and no amillennial body. There is one body, although there are members of it whose finite minds searching for an understanding of the infinite disclosure, have allied themselves with one interpretative approach or another.
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The message of reconciliation which has been committed to us, and must be transmitted to men by the reconciling community is that "for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Those who are in him are the righteousness of God regardless of their divergent views about such things as the millennium, because these things are not determinant factors in our relationship. To divide men into antagonistic parties over such matters is to walk after the flesh, and to do despite unto the Spirit. It is also to remove ourselves from effective impact upon those who need to be drawn unto Christ.
3. We must make it clear that the ordinances of God are not partisan administrations. The blessings of God are designed to be enjoyed in conjunction with these ordinances. It is not necessary that we know why this is so; it is enough that we recognize the principle as established by revelation, and to realize that the ordinances are not interchangeable. One cannot be substituted for the other.
Baptism is not a factional or sectarian rite when a penitent believer submits to it. Even though the administrator may be quite sectarian, and may regard baptism as introducing the believer into his exclusive party, the Holy Spirit defeats such bigotry, and initiates the obedient believer into the one body which encompasses every saved person in the universe. "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and all were made to drink of one Spirit." A sectarian is powerless to baptize a genuine believer in the Lord Jesus Christ into anything except the one body.
When a man hears the Good News of the death of Jesus for our sins, of his burial and his resurrection the third day according to the scriptures, and believes this message with all of his heart, reforms his life in accordance with it, and is baptized upon the basis of that faith, regardless of his ignorance about other things, or the ignorance and mistaken views of the one who does the baptizing, that man is inducted into the family of God. Once this is realized, many brilliant men who have refused to be baptized will cease their opposition. Their rejection of it has not been a predilection against the divine ordinance but against the implication that it was a door into a specific and narrow sect. Baptism into a state of glorious liberty as the sons of God has a wide appeal, but thinking men rebel against entering a door to the narrow confines of a dogmatic faction. It is one thing to surrender to Jesus and be set free, a wholly different thing to be captured by a religious clique or clan.
We have a real appeal to the thoughtful men of our generation if we uphold the Way as a personal relationship with the Divine Absolute when we "have come to the fulness of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority." Then the Good News becomes the divine dynamic to all who believe, regardless of racial origin; and baptism is the response to His claim of lordship over our individual lives, "in which you are also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead," However, when baptism is presented as an exclusive and copyrighted ritual to introduce one only into a historical religious party of separatist tendencies, it tends to repel those who are mature reasoners, while attracting only those who seek inner security through dogmatism and thought-control.
Baptism is an ordinance which introduces one into the fellowship of all of
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But the demonstration of the family relationship is a constant and regular thing, and the ordinance by which it is proclaimed is of such a nature as to demand repetition. The Lord's Supper is a proclamation of the Lord's death, until He comes, as the basis of oneness in Him. The cup is the fellowship, or communion, of the blood of Christ. The bread is the fellowship, or communion, of the body of Christ. We are one body, and one bread, because we are all partakers of that one bread.
In spite of unfortunate schisms which have occurred, and lines of separation which have been drawn, at the table ordained by Christ, we may manifest the real unity which is a creation of the Spirit. If we seek to make the Lord's Supper a mere demonstration of factional alliance, we turn the table into a snare and stumblingblock for ourselves, for we eat and drink judgment upon ourselves, by not discerning the body--the whole Body! We believe that men can see the beauty of an ordinance designed to express openly the majestic fellowship of the whole body of saints on earth, but that many will refuse their alliance to what they consider an egotistic party, which equates itself with the universal body, and arrogates to itself those ordinances which are bestowed upon the whole.
4. We must communicate to the world of our day the Message in a manner that is understandable and relevant. We must be certain that the Message is God's, for there is no power to heal or make whole, in any other. But we must also be sure that the Way is made clear by placing it in the vernacular of those whom we would reach. If the Word of God was intended for all nations, languages and tongues, we should translate it into all languages, and we should not ourselves become fixated to language forms in our own tongue which have become obsolete and are no longer employed for daily communication.
Again, we face the task of rescuing the Way from the specialized theological jargon which has been developed and adopted by the institutional church, and which reduces it simply to a modern mystery cult, as seen by the average person. Of course we must ever retain the sense of dignity and appropriateness which befits a sacred declaration but we must never thrust back into the clouds that which was sent down to earth. In our own land we should not be badgered into denying the validity of translations into modern English simply because they do not sustain some of our traditional verbiage. Indeed, we should look askance at any doctrinal deduction which is solely dependent upon one version for its strength and defence.
The world is still open for a non-sectarian plea, but it is not receptive to such a plea made by sectarians. It is wary of any party which talks of non-denominational Christianity with its own denominational bias or slant. A party or movement which equates itself with the one body and projects the idea that to be in Christ Jesus, one must unquestioningly support the party program and organizations, has nothing to offer the thinking men in an ecumenical world.
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