Discerning the Body

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     There are two places in his letters where Paul seems to place extra stress upon the fact that there is one body. He mentions it in other connections but not with the emphasis he employs in Romans 12:4, 5 and in 1 Corinthians 12:12-27. In both cases the subject is introduced in a direct context of spiritual gifts, or charismata, a matter which we will examine later.

     We do not ordinarily employ what he wrote for the purpose which he had in mind. In post-apostolic times another condition has arisen which we deem to be more pressing than the one with which Paul dealt. I am not too certain our judgment upon this is unassailable, but that is the way it is. As a result we use the apostolic affirmations concerning the one body to bring under condemnation the fragmentation into various sects of those who claim faith in the testimony that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, and the Messiah of whom the prophets spoke.

     It is true that Paul was confronted by both schisms and heresies (or sects) in Corinth, but the problem was different than it is now. In his day, the parties, while exalting leaders around whom they crystallized, still came together in one place, although their factionalism made it impossible for them to eat the Lord's Supper in the true sense, seeing it was intended to be a public demonstration of fellowship. In spite of the rifts over leaders it was still possible to distinguish the body of believers from the pagan world.

     The historical development which complicates our own times has presented a wholly divergent problem. We are no longer an underground movement, at least in the western world. When the faith won the victory over political powers, and then sought to promote itself by political methods, great changes were wrought for the worse. The substitution of the miscalled "Holy Roman Empire" for the pagan Roman Empire was a tragedy. The substitution of that empire for the kingdom of heaven was a catastrophe.

     It was inevitable that revolt occur, and it is altogether probable that God, who watches over our affairs, raised up Martin Luther to effect the divine purpose and begin the process of renewal. It is no problem for me to regard the monk of Erfurt as an instrument in the hands of God. Revolutions not only upset the existing order but they establish a precedent and even lay the groundwork for succeeding protest movements. Political revolutions often result in the formation of new nations, states and governmental entities, and religious revolutions frequently produce new sects gathered around their peculiarities and distinctives.

     I think there is a difference between

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a cult and a sect. A sect is composed of those who tend to hold to foundational truths upon which the Christian faith is predicated. There may be a distorted sense of values in which undue emphasis is given to a fact, or an opinion relative to a fact, but sects, as we know them, and particularly as our fathers knew them, accept the basic and elemental truths as enunciated in God's revelation as normative and authoritative.

     This is not the case with the cults. Because of the nature of religious division, and also because they draw their constituency primarily from the sects, there is, of course, a tendency for cults to exhibit some of the characteristics of the sects. Likewise, a great many of the sects demonstrate some of the attitudes particularly attributive to cultists. Still I think there are real differences between Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Christian Scientists (for example), and Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians.

     For one thing, the cults all have a source of authority additional to the sacred scriptures. The Mormons hold that the Bible is full of errors, and have God saying in the quaint frontier language of Joseph Smith, "Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written" (2 Nephi 29:10). So the Mormons have come up with three more volumes of "sacred books" including The Book of Mormon, Doctrines and Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price. I have read them all and that is more than some Mormons can say.

     The Christian Scientists have Science and Health and Key to the Scriptures, about which someone has said, "It is like Grape Nuts, neither one nor the other." Influenced by Phineas P. Quimby, Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy, to give all of her husbands proper acknowledgment, came up with the volume which launched that highly authoritarian structure known as "The Christian Science Church."

     The Jehovah's Witnesses will deny to high heaven that they have any other source of authority than the Word of God, but anyone who has carefully read their New World Translation knows it is not an objective rendering of the sacred text into the English of our day. It is a prejudiced, warped and twisted production into which The Watchtower Society has intruded its peculiar ideas, to be palmed off on the unsuspecting and spiritually illiterate as the will of God.

     It will be objected by some of my readers that the creeds of the various sects constitute another source of authority additional to the revelation of God. Because Alexander Campbell and his contemporaries inveighed against the creeds of their day, and rightly so, we have reared up a generation of heirs who repeat the strictures without knowledge of what they oppose. Most of the written creeds and formal confessions of faith were never regarded as an extra source of authority at all. They affirmed the completeness and authority of the new covenant scriptures.

     The greater part of them echo the sentiment contained in the Discipline of the United Brethren in Christ, which says, "We believe that the Holy Bible, Old and New Testaments, is the word of God; that it contains the only way to our salvation; that every true Christian is bound to acknowledge and receive it with the influence of the spirit of God, as the only rule and guide."

     Our pioneer fathers opposed creeds because they were divisive in that they crystallized opinions and froze research, and created parties and factions which became inflexible. The Latin credo means simply, "I believe." Any man who believes anything has a creed. The sin lies not in writing out one's personal creed, but in ceasing such writing. One who continues to study and grow must change in his apprehension of divinely-revealed truth, and must not be chained to errors in his past opinions.

     When Alexander Campbell debated N. L. Rice on creeds, the proposition read, "Human creeds, as bonds of union and terms of communion, are necessarily heretical and schismatical." That is true.

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It is human creeds imposed as a basis of fellowship which creates parties and schisms. We are now living in a wholly different age than the one in which that debate was held. The various sects of our day seldom make a human creed either a bond of union or a term of communion. The problem which we face is not so much one of authoritative opinions, as of spiritual illiteracy. There are some signs that we are moving into a new era of Biblical study and examination, and this will herald the decay of rigid sectarianism.

     We need to make a distinction between the cults which create an additional source of authority, called by the German writer Hutten "a Bible in the left hand," and the sects whose members respect the Bible as the revelation of God, but who, because of culture and circumstances, are ignorant of its teaching. Our indiscriminate and intolerant accusations of and our actions toward our religious neighbors will not work the glory of God. I propose to go anywhere that God opens up a door of opportunity through the Spirit and share my feeble insights with any who love my precious Lord. And I shall go in love, not "breathing out threatenings and slaughter."

     As to Jesus, James Talmadge writes in Articles of Faith, "Among the spirit children of Elohim the firstborn was and is Jehovah or Jesus Christ to whom all others are junior." John Henry Evans in An American Prophet writes, "As for the Devil and his fellow spirits, they are brothers to men and also to Jesus and sons and daughters of God in the same sense that we are."

     Jehovah's Witnesses are no better! It is their position that Christ was the first creature produced by Jehovah and was his Chief Executive Officer. Previous to his coming to earth he was identified as Michael, and in Jude 9 the reference to Michael was related to Jesus in his pre-human state. Jehovah's Witnesses, as is well-known, deny the physical resurrection of the body of Jesus. Judge Rutherford speculated that God may have hidden the body away to exhibit to people in the millennial age. The Witnesses teach that Jesus has now again taken the name of Michael, and that he exists as a spirit creature.

     If that sounds a little far out, tie into Christian Science and see if you can make heads or tails out of it! Mrs. Eddy wrote that Christ was an idea. "The Virgin-mother conceived the idea of God, and gave to her ideal the name of Jesus." It is a little difficult for me to believe that the angel of God appeared to Joseph and told him to take Mary and her idea and flee into Egypt. But perhaps we should remember that Mrs. Eddy said, "The spiritual Christ was infallible; Jesus, as material manhood, was not Christ."

     I am opposed to both cults and sects, but I know the difference between those who deny the elemental truths of revelation and those who cling to them while allowing themselves to be fragmented and segmented into parties over the interpretation of some peripheral matter. I do not believe that any party or sect is the church of God, and I do not believe that the church of God is a sect.

     Sects were formed when men exalted opinions and deductions of and from the scriptures above the scriptures themselves. Brilliant and devout men who read the Word reached conclusions about implications or inferences and propounded these with such force and regularity that men began to plead allegiance to these things and exalted them to terms of communion or fellowship, and parties were formed to propagate, protect and

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preserve their views. Sects are not created by propounding the scriptures but by promoting distinctives and peculiarities. All sects are historical developments which have arisen in time as men gained prominence by emphasis of certain ideas.

     It is believers in Christ who are separated into sects and that there are Christians among the sects I have not the least doubt. One may be in a sect without being sectarian, and he can be sectarian without being in a sect. Sectarianism is a spirit or attitude toward truth and others, and a man is sectarian before he forms a sect. If he were not he would never form a sect. Sects divide those who ought to work together and labor as a unit for advancement of the rule of heaven over the domain of human hearts. They set those who should be an advancing army against one another and fracture into warring tribes those who should conduct themselves as brethren.

     Wherever my Father has a child I have a brother or sister, and I intend to recognize as my brothers and sisters all of God's children regardless of the theological corral in which they are caught up. I think there is a way in which we can all exhibit that oneness which is a divine gift to us in Christ, without giving up a single truth we have ever held. I would not unite with any person upon this earth if the terms of such union required the surrender of any truth, or of any principle which I sincerely regarded as truth. Conversely, I would not demand of any person that he relinquish anything he deemed to be truth in order to be one with me. Any person who would sacrifice one thing he held to be truth in order to be one with me, would prove thereby that he would prefer my favor to the blessing of God.

     I must be as eager in defending the liberty in Christ for others as I am in demanding it for myself. If I deny the right of another to approach the revelation of God for himself, I make my insistence upon that right for myself a farce. But if I urge another to study the word personally and then deny him the right to reach his own conclusions, I make liberty a laughing-stock and imagine my own interpretation to be infallible and binding upon everyone.

     As I view it, no historical movement in our time embraces all of the saved who are in Christ Jesus. Calling such a movement "Church of Christ," "Church of God," or "Christian Church," does not alter the fact. There are a number of parties designated "Church of God" and they do not even recognize one another. The same thing is true of those using the designation "Church of Christ." The segment of the historical reform movement which does not employ instruments of music in its public praise service is one of the most divided on the contemporary American scene. All of the warring factions are composed of good men and women, but their plea for unity in the religious world has no appeal except to those who are ignorant of their own frightful fragmentation.

     One cannot long be a Christian only if he subscribes to the exclusivist particularities of any sect or party. The very act of becoming a defender of such peculiarities as terms of union or communion, or as tests of fellowship, makes him a particular kind of Christian. In my own case, caught up in the beauty of the plea for all men to be merely Christians, and Christians only, and thinking at the time that the church had to be denominated or named, I cast my youthful lot with "The Church of Christ." I soon learned all the tricks such as spelling church with a small "c," but I also learned that I was expected to be a "Church of Christ Christian," which I now realize is as sectarian as claiming to be a Baptist

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Christian or a Mennonite Christian. Hyphenated Christians are the inevitable result of the party spirit, regardless of the matter around which the party coalesces.

     I thank God who has delivered me so that I can be what I always wanted to be, a Christian only, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. This presents some problems to those "Christians only" who think that only those who gather behind a certain signboard can qualify. But I praise God that I now trust in the Savior and not in one of the official "signs of the times." I have not changed my mind about the convictions I held. I still hold them. But I have changed my mind about the extent and constituency of the family of my Father. I have certainly changed my thinking about fellowship and brotherhood.

     We are fortunate to live in a day when creeds are losing their hold over men. Religious formulae no longer command implicit allegiance. Traditions exercise no real power to hold men confined in partisan structures. This is a propitious time to plead for renewal through recovery of the apostolic proclamation, purpose and power. One whose only creed is Christ has an open door to enter in and plead for unity based upon the apostolic testimony.

     I am firmly committed to going anywhere that the Spirit opens up an effectual door to share my faith, hope and knowledge. If a Roman Catholic convocation does not want to hear me, its officials had better not invite me. If the World Council of Churches does not want to hear my views, they should not issue an invitation. I will not only go and speak, but I will go and listen, for learning is never a one-way street. I will cut across sectarian barriers, climb over sectarian walls, and batter down sectarian obstructions.

     I am opposed to all sectarianism. I am opposed to our own party spirit as well as that of others. I want not only to be in Christ but I want to be identified with Him. I want to proclaim peace as He did. I want to proclaim it to those who are afar off and to those who are nigh. With me, Jesus is Lord. He is Lord of all. He has broken down the walls. He has removed the partitions by His blood.

     Let the religious parties cease to call themselves churches. They are not churches at all. There is only one church. There never was but one. There never will be another. The church is the community of the called out ones. Every person on this earth who has been called out of the dominion of sin is in the church. Every saved person on earth is in it. There is no such thing as the Baptist Church. There is no such thing as the Methodist Church. There is no such thing as the Presbyterian Church. There is no such thing as a Church of Christ, existing as a separate party and not containing all of the ransomed and redeemed. No exclusivist organization is the ekklesia of God. The body of Christ is not an earthly organization. It is a heavenly organism.

     In this strife-torn world of ours the children of God are scattered. There are Christians in the sects, divine offspring separated and severed from each other by dogmatism, tradition and teaching. I love them all. I deplore their division. I detest the Great Deceiver who has driven wedges to split us. But our condition is post-apostolic. The twelve did not face it, and while they expressed principles of unity they did not directly regulate our conduct and action in such a situation as we confront. We must prayerfully study and carefully apply the principles, always realizing there is no ideal solution which will immediately erase centuries of coldness and unconcern.

     Before I leave this phase of my discussion I want it known that I am resolved never to be a party to, or encourage another division among the saints. It is silly to think we can unite by dividing. It is absurd to argue that we can best serve God by acting contrary to His word. It is ridiculous to stand up and plead for one body while trying to create others composed of men and women who exist in haughty arrogance apart from God's other children. My approach will be that

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stated by Alexander Campbell in his "Debate on Human Creeds" with the eminent Presbyterian, N. L. Rice. I think it is one of the most significant statements I have ever read, and I make no apology for quoting it.

     "It is not the object of our efforts to make men think alike on a thousand themes. Let men think as they please on any matters of human opinion, and upon 'doctrines of religion,' provided only they hold the head Christ, and keep his commandments. I have learned, not only the theory, but the fact, that if you wish opinionism to cease or subside, you must not call up and debate every thing that men think or say. You may debate anything into consequence, or you may, by a dignified silence, waste it into oblivion. I have known innumerable instances of persons outliving their opinions, and erroneous reasonings, and even sometimes forgetting the modes of reasoning by which they had embraced or sustained them. This was the natural result of the philosopy of letting them alone. In this way, they came to be of one mind in all points in which unity of thought is desirable, in order to unity of worship and of action." I heartily concur with this statement.

     Paul was not contrasting "The Church of Christ" with other parties made up of believers in the same Christ. He was asserting that there is one body to encourage all who were in it to function in harmony and as a unit. Divergent gifts were not to be used without regard to other gifts. Each was to complement and supplement the other. Consider, for example, the well-known passage in Romans 12:4-8.

     "For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness."

     The use of the physical body to illustrate the nature of the spiritual body of Christ is a fortunate choice. Some of my readers will recall an article of mine a few years ago in which I took the position that nothing in the material realm can ever perfectly illustrate something on a higher plane. At the time I pointed out certain differences in the physical and spiritual bodies. But the Spirit selected an apt analogy for our edification in the area which Paul discusses.

     The body of man and the body of Christ are both divine creations. Both were intended to fulfill a divine purpose. Both have been abused by man and often diverted from the intent of the Maker. But there is no more apt illustration of an organism functioning as a unit than the human body. It is a grand demonstration of unity in diversity. It has many members but they are diverse from one another. It has many gifts and many functions, but the gifts and functions are divergent. If there were no diversity there could be no body. This is the argument of the apostle himself in 1 Corinthians 12:19, "If all were a single organ, where would the body be?"

     In one body we have many members. The word for member is melos. It occurs 34 times but is never once used in conjunction with an organization or institution in which one holds membership. I do not think the Greeks even had a

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word for such kind of membership. The word melos means a limb or organ. It is used to designate a functioning part of a living and vital organism. It is always employed in the scriptures in direct relationship to a body.

     We freely talk about "members of the church," but no apostle ever used such an expression. You will search your concordance in vain to find even a semblance of "church membership." As we use the expression, we generally think of the church as an organization in which one has secured and holds "membership." My arm did not become a member of my body by applying for membership. My eye is not a part of my body because it has been placed on a membership roll. It does not appear under "e" in a card file. You cannot call up a secretary and say, "Run through the roster and see if my left leg is a member in good standing."

     If you will pardon me, I would like to suggest that it is sort of inane to ask "Of what church are you a member?" Such a question reveals two things. It demonstrates that you think there is more than one church, and it also reveals your own sectarianism. Moreover, it illustrates that you use the word "member" as no holy apostle ever used it. It appears that Alexander Campbell was right when he included in his "Synopsis of Reform," the recapture of the vocabulary of the Holy Spirit.

     Every time the word member is used it refers to an organ in a body, and the body of Christ embraces every individual on this earth who is in Christ Jesus. There is not a saved person in the world who is not in the body, and any group, segment or splinter, which does not embrace every one of the ransomed and redeemed is too small and restricted to be the body. The moment you admit that there are saved persons outside the group with which you are affiliated you admit that such a group is a sect. You may argue to high heaven that you are not in a sect but your argument will not alter the fact. This does not mean that you have to be a sectarian, although it could very well mean that it will be more difficult to not be one.

     A sectarian is one who thinks the grace of God is limited to the party with which he is identified. He may think it was the grace of God which created the faction, and, what is even worse, he may think that the grace of God is now dependent upon and mediated by that party. If he designates the party "The Church of Christ," he will almost certainly feel that way. Trapped by his own semantics he will probably think that if you are not in a party which calls itself "Church of Christ," you are not in Christ.

     Members of such parties always resort to all kinds of tactics to help them ignore or forget their historical origin. Factions which had their birth a few years ago as the result of an unseemly public squabble will inscribe on the cornerstone of their earthly temples--Established 33 A.D. Sermon outlines cleverly ignore all that has happened for a couple of thousand years and go back and tie on to Pentecost and make a good case for the work of the apostles. The error is in the assumption that what we have evolved is identical with what the apostles planted. Many of the brethren have an idea that the one body was a train which disappeared in a tunnel in the days of Constantine and did not come out until 1809 when it again appeared chugging and puffing with good Presbyterians acting as engineer and fireman, shoveling in the coal to get up steam and keeping it on the rails until they could turn it over to us.

     Nothing would surprise the apostles more than to be brought back and forced to attend at "The Church of Christ" some Sunday morning. They would not recognize it as having any relationship to any previous experience. Paul would probably get a bang out of a sign reading "Church of Christ--Romans 16:16." At the time he wrote that "the Christian communities send greetings" there was no 16:16, and he never gave "book, chapter and verse." If Peter and John went up to one of "our temples" at "the hour of

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prayer," they might promise God that if he would forgive them for coming this time, they would never do it again.

     All of this does not upset me the least bit. I can "discern the Body," now that the scales have fallen from my eyes. I know that while it is the ekklesia of God it is not circumscribed in the last quarter of the twentieth century by that indigenous American institution "the Church of Christ" which grew out of the attempt by humble Presbyterians to "unite the Christians in all of the sects." Baptism is not a divine rite granted only as a term of admission to "The Church of Christ," and God has not given a special copyright on it to our movement. "By one Spirit we are all baptized into one body," but that body is not limited to a historic movement calling itself "The Church of Christ." Church of Christ baptism, Baptist baptism, and Church of God baptism are all in the same category as far as I am concerned. I am glad that God ignores them all and receives into one body every sincere immersed believer who validates his faith in Jesus by this action, regardless of the sectarian intention of the human administrator.

     All members have not the same function. But they all have some function. In the physical body there are no useless organs. God designed the body and He did not include any members which were parasites and just going along for the ride. I have lived long enough to see some pretty important changes in the thinking of anatomists and physiologists. When Darwin started "monkeying round" and wrote The Origin of Species in 1851, and The Descent of Man in 1871, he laid the groundwork for a lot of speculation. I hit town less than forty years after the last book and by the time I was in school a lot of people were trying to prove that Darwin was correct in reverse by making monkeys out of themselves. A lot of them were well qualified to start with.

     I heard a lot about vestigial organs which were once essential to lower forms of animals but which had been outgrown by man as he further developed. Country surgeons would remove such organs at the drop of a hat if they could enter you in a hospital. That wasn't easy because hospitals charged about four dollars per day. Things have changed. Modern medical science has determined that while we can exist without some parts of the body we cannot exist as well. And while a lot of anatomists are still evolutionists, and vice versa, Darwin has been laid on the top shelf in the closet and pushed back into a dark corner. A lot of things which used to be blamed on apes are now credited to sin.

     I don't think a lot of what Paul said about functioning members of the physical body has ever penetrated the consciousness of some of the members of the spiritual organism. If your arms and legs did not do any more than some of the Lord's arms and legs you couldn't even make it to the table. A lot of them do not. I am glad the members of my body don't whine, complain and take on about the others like a lot of members of the one body whom I know. If they did I would have to eat Bufferin like I now eat lima beans, one of nature's great gifts.

     As the old covenant penman wrote, "Once I was young, now I am old," but I have never known one of my arms to become offended at the other one, and drop off on the way to the post office because it just could not stand associating with its companion. What if your tongue had to go to your feet every couple of weeks and quote scripture to them and exhort them to get up and get moving? Suppose one of my hands got miffed at the other one because it received mention in the bulletin, when everyone knew that the miffed one actually did more than the unmiffed one? What if one of my ears "unhooked and took out" as a rural brother expressed it when one of the elders went over the hill?

     I recognize there is a difference. The members of my physical body function together as an organism because they are all directed by the same head. They do not pool their resources and hire the tongue to work out a program at which they can grumble, nor do they have to

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listen to that linguistic member lay down the law to them once a week in order to fulfill his contract. It could be that we have been so anxious to develop a system which will outshine that of the Baptists and Methodists down the street that we have organized ourselves for the sectarian rat race, and a lot of our rats just don't want to run. Maybe we should get out of the partisan rat race altogether and run with patience the race set before us, looking unto Jesus.

     Did you ever notice how Paul introduces the Roman passage dealing with the one body? He does it by urging all of us to think. He tells us how to think and how not to think. Unfortunately, a lot of us get the instructions scrambled and end up thinking as we ought not, and not thinking as we ought to. Since the instruction grew out of the apostolic grace we should get our eyes uncrossed and look at it again. "For by the grace given to me I bid everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him." With this, he plunges directly into the subject of body function, with the words, "For as in one body we have many members."

     The way to recapture the ideal of God is by thinking. It is not by having someone think for us, or for the body. Please note the two expressions "every one among you" and "each." It is good to have "rap sessions" and "sharing sessions," but if I want to supply what is lacking in my own life I am going to have to sit down and think through the situation for myself. I do this a great deal. Sometimes I do it while on a plane flight. Sometimes I do it while driving by myself. Many times I do it at night while lying in bed, or early in the morning before I arise. Thomas á Kempis wrote in The Imitation of Christ, "If thou may not continually gather thyself together, do it some time at least once a day, morning or evening." I like to gather myself together. It certainly beats "coming apart at the seams."

     It is very important that I do not value myself too highly. All of the members of the body are valuable. The way to avoid schism or discord in the body is not to give special attention to the more presentable parts who do not require it. "But God has so adjusted the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body" (1 Cor. 12:24, 25). I should not devalue myself, or undervalue myself, for that is no more correct thinking than to think of myself more highly than I ought to think. If I have a morbid air of disparagement I cannot work with others. If I have an exalted sense of personal importance they cannot work with me. An under-inflated balloon cannot ascend, an over-inflated balloon will burst. My role must not be to work people but to work with people!

     The term for "sober judgment" literally means "out of a desire to act wisely or with prudence." My thinking must have a goal as well as a motivation. A lot of people are like the statue of The Thinker. They sit with chin in hand as if carved out of rock but never get up and do anything. The purpose of thinking is to inspire proper action. It was the French writer, Paul Bourget, who said, "One must live the way one thinks, or end up thinking the way one has lived."

     Paul declares that each must think "according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him." We do not all have the same measure. The faith here referred to is not that which comes from hearing the word of Christ. It is not the faith which justifies or saves. Instead, it is the gift or assignment of God to enable one to use any gift which God has bestowed, whether we designate it a natural or supernatural gift. God does not make such a distinction.

     That is why each one of us must think. If God forced us into a pattern, or turned on the power and set our wheels in motion, we would be machines. But machines are both thinkless and thankless. That is why I am not too "hep" on folks who get in a big dither when everyone starts praying at once, and the confusion is punctuated by shouts, and they jump around and flutter their hands, and roll their eyeballs, and claim they can't help it. I've found out that a lot of them can be turned off when "the shouting and the tumult dies" about as easy as they can be turned on when the pump is primed and the chain is pulled, or somebody turns the crank. We need a lot of pretty sober thinking about our gifts and functions.

     My physical body would not be serving the purpose for which God created it if I went into an emotional frenzy and jumped up and down as if I had a hornet up my pant leg, and all my members were quaking and shaking as if they had the Saint Vitus' Dance. My eyes serve their function, not by rolling around in frenzy but by seeing needs and taking them to heart. My mouth serves its function not by yelling, shouting and screaming like a banshee, but by speaking unto men to edification, exhortation and comfort. If the members of the body of Christ are to think in sober judgment, it is my judgment they will serve the cause better by acting like the members of the physical body of Christ when He was among us on the earth.

     Although Jesus possessed the Spirit without measure, there is no indication that He shouted and screamed and frothed at the mouth, or lay down and kicked on the floor, or engaged in any kind of religious antics. Instead, "he went about doing good." I think the spiritual body of Jesus is to carry on the work He inaugurated while in the physical body. We are now His eyes, his hands and his feet on earth. We are to act in the spiritual body as he acted in a material body. His methods were so gentle and unobtrusive that they would not break a bruised reed or extinguish smouldering tow. It was distinctly said "He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets" (Matthew 12:9). That means He did not yell until people outside the building could hear him. He did not even take a brass band along "to get their attention," nor wear them out with "special music" until they were too tired to listen when He finally got up to speak. Maybe we ought to take to heart the admonition to "think with sober judgment" about some of the tactics that are used today.

     There is a beautiful expression occurring in Romans 12:5. Paul must have liked it because he used it again in Ephesians 4:25. In the first place he employed it to emphasize that we are a unit because we are "individually members one of another." In the second place he used it to encourage the saints to quit lying and to speak the truth "for we are members one of another." There was about as much difference between Rome and Ephesus as there is between Washington and Los Angeles. But the colony of heaven in each place was the same. It was composed of the fellowship of the called-out ones, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

     They were not only members of the body of Christ, but members one of another. They were not simply tied together but they were knit together, intertwined as members of a divine organism. No one belonged only to himself. No one could simply do his own thing. True, they were still individuals, but they were "individually members one of another." I am not sure that those of us who have cut our eyeteeth on "rugged individualism" can even understand or appreciate the force of the word "another" in the expression "one of another." We are so hooked on the "one"

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and so high on individualism that we cannot see the "another."

     There is an expression in 1 Samuel 25:29 which better dramatizes the relationship I sustain to others of God's redeemed than any other of which I know. It was used by Abigail who made an eloquent plea to David, "The soul of my lord will be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God." God has reached out into the field of the world and gathered in the waving grain. He has bound me in the bundle of life with every other person in the universe saved by grace. So closely am I bound with them the world cannot tell us apart.

     We are members of one body and members one of another. I am linked with the whole company of those who believe, regardless of where they are. This is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in my eyes. I expect to demonstrate the oneness of the Spirit openly and overtly. I am not "a secret disciple for fear of the Jews." I am for Jesus publicly and I intend to publicly receive and recognize every child of God. I am sick and tired of the whole sorry sectarian scheme of things and I intend to have no part in it, God being my helper!

     I am glad Paul wrote what we designate Romans 12:3-8. I am thrilled that he told us we need to think, and informed us how to do it. I am happy that he made it clear that we have divergent gifts and functions. We are not all the same. We are not assembly-line saints. We are not products of a divine cookie-cutter. We are not robots or automatons. The fact we cannot do what others do is no excuse to evade doing what we can do. We are not called to duplicate others but to imitate Jesus.

     "Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them." This is the admonition given in Romans 12:6. The word for gifts is charismata. It is the word from which we get the term charismatic which has been so much in vogue the past several years. The charismata, or gifts of grace, are enumerated. Paul mentions seven of the gifts--prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, contributing, giving aid, and rendering acts of mercy.

     It is for this reason that it seems a little silly to talk of any era as "a charismatic age." There is no such thing as a charismatic age for the simple reason that there is no such thing as a non-charismatic age. The body has always functioned through charismata, or gifts. I'm constantly running into someone who shows his ignorance by saying "I'm charismatic!" Aside from the questionable usage of the word, which I overlook for the moment, it is ridiculous to think because someone has a charism he is different from others in the body. Paul implies that "every one of you" has a gift.

     It is sort of tragic that people get betrayed into limiting the terminology of the Spirit to a specific experience and immediately conclude that others who have not had the same experience are still in the spiritual woods and lost in the sticks. Most of those who identify themselves as charismatic are thinking of what is called "speaking in tongues," although the saints in Rome would never have known from Paul's list to them that this was one of the charismata. Even if he had mentioned it to them they would never have guessed everyone was to have it, since Paul said, "Having charismata that differ."

     I wouldn't be surprised but what a congregation that busied itself using the charismata he did mention would be in fairly good shape. The seven items seem quite practical, and if the gifts were used in the framework of the rest of the chapter we could capture the community even if everyone spoke only English. I have no intention of denying, or even questioning, the experience of any of my brothers or sisters, but I want to go on record as saying that if it does not lead them to function in harmony with the other saints who prophesy, teach, exhort, contribute, extend aid and perform acts of mercy, they should take a second look at the experience.

     It seems to me that if there was an obligation of those who had the seven

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gifts in Rome to use them, there was an obligation on the part of the congregation in Rome to provide a framework and atmosphere in which they could be used. It would seem a little presumptuous upon the part of Paul to insist that "every one among you" exercise his gift and then condone setting up a system in which they could not be used.

     I hold that the purpose of the congregation of saints is to encourage the development of every member to his fullest or maximum potential. Any congregation which stifles or sublimates any gift God has bestowed upon any person is acting in opposition to God's purpose or design. To make any gift useless which God has given to use, is to frustrate the grace of God.

     The congregation is not created to erect temples of brick and stone, or to make a name for itself. It is not created to save the world. The church is not a savior. It has to be saved. "Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior" (Ephesians 5:23). The church is a fellowship, a family circle in which each person is to grow up to maturity in Christ.

     When congregational shepherds meet together to discuss needs they should plan to utilize every gift possessed by the saints. This is the reason the apostle writes about the one body. He was not providing a club for restoration movement debaters to use in clobbering Baptists, Pentecostalists, or Presbyterians. His thesis was that since there is but one body, and all are members of it, they should function together and in harmony.

     The Baptists are not "another body" as Paul used the term body. The Presbyterians are not "another body" as he used the term body. The Mennonites are not "another body" as he used the term body. They are not bodies and they are not churches. They are sects and it will not serve God's purpose to create another sect in the hope that we can make it bigger and better by arguing and debating everyone into it.

     What we must do is to provide an opportunity for every child of God on this earth to develop the gift with which God has blessed him. We are not in the business of encouraging Baptists, Pentecostals or Presbyterians, but members of the one body. If there are members of the one body in these sects, and I certainly think there are, we must strengthen their commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. But to do that we must be Christians only. I mean really and truly. There is a temptation to be Church of Christ Christians, but if the devil catches us on that hook we will be as sectarian and exclusive as any other sect.

     The one body in Saint Louis contains within it every member whom God has added to it. I do not know them all. It is not necessary that I do, much as it would thrill me if I could. But "the Lord knoweth them that are His." I do know that while the Lord added them to one body, a lot of them added themselves to something else. In our mixed-up and fragmented world it is difficult not to do that. There are always plenty of people around trying to "line you up" or get you into their partisan corner. The air is full of "Come with us," or "Take your stand." But I will not be moved by cries of "Lo, here" or "Lo, there!" I am not going to line up with any party or sect!

     If we would all stay just where God placed us and never allow anyone to enroll us in a crusade to propagandize for some peripheral matter, regardless of our opinion about it, we would be better off. But there are some pretty shrewd operators around, writing tracts, speaking on radio stations, and plugging for converts to their personal campaigns. It is hard to stay out of their clutches and go down the freedom road.

     We may be talked into thinking that the most important thing in the whole universe is to be right about "the thousand year reign." Or, we may be conned into thinking that we must take a stand on the method of financing a television program, or having a kitchen in the basement of the meetinghouse. And when we take a stand and conclude that our stand is God's will for us and every other per-

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son on this mundane footstool, we will conclude that those who do not see this earth-shaking question as we do are outside of God's will, and have crucified the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame.

     Our brainchildren are like our fleshly offspring. They are the most precious things on earth. Our fleshly children may appear spoiled brats to the neighbors across the street, and our brainchildren may seem like wild fanatical notions to other folk who prefer their own, but to us they are dearly beloved. I cherish my own thinking of course, but I would no more impose it upon others than I would dump my children on the neighbors.

     I expect to keep my children to myself and I will do the same with my opinions. I may occasionally get out the pictures of the children and show them to the neighbors but I do not expect them to get them enlarged and framed to hang in their family rooms. When I express my opinions, as I have some of them in this article, it never bothers me if my readers do not hail them as the greatest writing since the days of Alexander Campbell. It would bother me if they did, but it would bother Alexander Campbell a lot more if he knew it.

     I am going to be myself. I am going to belong to Jesus, and only to Him. I am not going to get uptight and lean out of the upstairs window and fire both barrels at some brother who looses a journalistic broadside at me. I am in the one body and that's enough for me. Our unity is in Christ. It never was anywhere else and never will be. I expect to live in that body while I live and die in it when I die. I am happy, contented, and overjoyed while I wait for the glory that shall be revealed. Why not come along?