Biblical knowledge without a commensurate experience becomes detrimental to our spiritual growth and maturity, and turns out to be counterproductive. In the old dispensation, God first showed a pattern and then commanded that all should be made accordingly. In this present dispensation, He began with mighty acts: the acts of the cross, resurrection and exaltation of Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit; but these were not wholly understood by most Christians and their meaning and reality had to be arrived at by way of progress and crises.

Similarly, the Lord has done and continues to do things in us and with us, and then gradually teaches us their meaning. We are still learning and there is always more room for "teachableness". The enemy, however, has never given up trying to frustrate God's plan and purpose for humanity. Sadly, Christianity as we know it today, has been turned into a set, established and accepted system, with all its institutionalism, traditionalism, etc. So much of that which goes on in the name of the Lord Jesus is separated from His Person. The "Gospel" has suffered this severance and separation: the Message has been separated from the Person. Salvation nowadays only means forgiveness, justification, peace, happiness, heaven, and escape from hell.

There is no doubt that these are truly the blessings of the Gospel, but at the beginning it was Christ who was preached; the Person who was kept in full view; the One through whom the Gospel came. It was "the Gospel of God concerning His Son" (Rom. 1:1-3). The emphasis was not on what men could have, but on God's rights and Christ's glory. The business of the church and its ministry is not to propagate a system of Christian truth, but to bring Christ Himself, in the power of the Holy Spirit, wherever it goes and is. The Gospel, as an objective truth, does not save anyone. Salvation is a vital, personal contact and union with Christ Himself. Thus, the church must be that living organism in which and by which Christ makes that contact and union.

Christianity has become something almost entirely apart from the person of Christ. It is a religion, a system, a philosophy of life, a set of ways, practices and ideas. It is something that people take up, choose and join. They come to Christ through the Christian system; but the Christ to whom they come is a denominational, sectarian, ritualistic or evangelical Christ. The Christ that they know and believe in is the Christ of this or that connection and interpretation.

Rightly, one of the saints of this century said, "Christ rarely now creates Christianity; it is Christianity that creates Christ." The so-called church is now an institution. It has become the church of historical and human production. It is a hierarchy of ecclesiastical, social, human and other arbitrarily selected governments. Many Biblical terminologies are being used and abused for creating a church of human production; terminologies such as "Christ the Head of the Church", or "One body, and one Spirit", or "The Church, the Body of Christ", are frequently used, but they are all objective rather than subjective. Moving from the objective to the subjective necessitates a church which is the embodiment of an altogether other order of creation, that which is of Christ. That is the church; and the reproduction of the church is not its duplication. It is a fatal mistake to try to form a "New Testament Church". The church was born from heaven, as all its members have to be, and it is just the same with the churches. Every single church must be born in the same way. God's way is once, and once only, to create the prototype and then to generate from that; not copy it by imitation, either mass-production or in any other way. Every one and every thing is to be conformed to Jesus Christ. Christ cannot be conformed to anything down here, national or denominational. The enemy has played havoc with the church to put truth, even the most important truth, in the place of the Person. Even the truth or doctrine of the Person can obscure the Person Himself.

In the final analysis, it should be Christ and not Christianity which is to be preached. It is to be Christ, in terms of life, light, love, power, liberty and glory. It is not this or that "church", but Christ expressed, as present in the corporate organism - His Body.

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