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INQUIRE OF THE FORMER AGE
by H. G. LANG
4
In Occasional
Lectures (7:19) William Kelly said:
"We must not
adhere to those systems of doctrine that never can bear an infringement of a
view that is held popularly. For instance, perhaps we have all been brought up
in the notion that all the children of God, in all ages, compose the church of God. Now it will be found on closer
research that this is not supported by the word of God."
Many who
adhere to the system of prophetic interpretation of Darby and Kelly would do
well to observe the first sentence here. Theirs is the view held popularly, but
they will allow no infringement of it, on any point. This has paralysed their
progress.
The second
sentence indicates the view of the church
of God held generally a
century and a half ago. It was expected that the gospel would extend its benign
influence until all mankind had turned to the Lord; then, these people, with
all the saved of all preceding ages, would form one universal church.
The third
sentence shows the direction and result of that closer research undertaken a
hundred and twenty years ago by certain learned godly students. They saw that
Scripture distinguishes between that limited portion of the saved called the
church of God and the rest of the saved, assigning to the church a distinct and
distinguished place in the counsels of God.
1) That the
church is a limited company of the saved, with special functions, offices, and
dignities, was to be learned from the figures of speech employed to describe
it.
a) It is to
Christ a body, through the members of which He carries out on earth His
purposes (1 Cor. 12; Eph. 4). Now the body of a man is not the whole of his
environment, or upon whom should he exert influence by it?
b) It is a
building: "I will build My church" (Matt. 16:18), a building is a temple for
God to inhabit (Eph. 2:19-22; 1 Cor. 3:16,17). The temple at Jerusalem was not the whole of the city and
land.
c) It is to be
a governing body (Luke 12:44, 19:17,19; Matt. 19:27,28; 1 Cor. 6:2,3; Rev.
2:26,27, 20:4). But the rulers in a kingdom are fewer than the mass of subjects
they rule.
d) It is to be
a capital city, the centre of administration of the empire; but the capital is
not the whole country, but the central place where the citizens resort and to
which they bring their wealth to the honour of the King (Rev. 21 and 22).
e) It is to be
a bride, "the wife of the Lamb" (Rev. 21:2,9). The Queen is not the whole of
the King's subjects.
2) The fact
that there is so evident and so important a distinction between the church and
the rest of the saved carries obvious implications. It was not an afterthought
but was part of the eternal plan of God that this company should be related to
His Son in these special intimacies just mentioned. Each member of the church
should be redeemed and justified by precisely the same means as the rest of the
saved ? the precious blood of Christ. But, being thus saved, their destiny and
dignity should differ according to the electing foreknowledge of God (Rom. 8:28-30;
1 Cor. 2:7, etc.). Those early searchers saw this clearly, but they did not see
that it is to this special dignity that the election and foreordination of God
apply. Being Calvinists they continued to regard the Divine election as
concerned with what persons should be saved, instead of accepting the clear
statements of the Word that salvation from perdition is the honest desire of
God for all and that the death of Christ made this possible for all, though
only those who repent and believe get the benefit of the redemption (1 Tim.
2:3-6; John 3:16; 1 John 2:2, etc.). Thus they left this aspect of the church
in some obscurity.
3) In those
early investigations the question was considered whether the promises to the
church are conditional or absolute. Here also Calvinistic thought prevailed
with most, and only a few saw clearly that these high privileges were a gift
indeed of Divine grace, since no son of Adam could claim them of right; yet
they are the reward that grace proposes for that suffering with Christ which
falls to those who take up His cause in this age when He is despised and
rejected by men in general (Luke 22:28-30; Rom. 8:16,17; 2 Tim. 2:8-13; 1 Pet.
4:12,13; Rev. 2:25-28,34; 5:11,12; 21, etc.). They did not see that being a "prize"
it could be forfeited.
4) But it was
seen clearly that the believer in this age is united by the Spirit to Christ as
the Man in heaven, not as connected with this earth. This gives colour and
character to his whole outlook and life. When in the next age the Lord returns
to the earth as its Sovereign, those who then repent of sin and accept Him will
become related to Him as subjects in His earthly kingdom. This will continue
eternally in the new earth (Rev. 21:24-27). But the church will have been
removed to that one of the many regions in the heavens which the Lord has gone
to prepare (John 14:2,3) and to which He will take the church by resurrection
or rapture as the first act on His return from heaven (1 Thess. 4:13-18). The
notions that all the saved "go to heaven," and that there is no alternative
between "heaven" and "hell", are countered by the fact that there is to be a
new eternal earth, with saved nations inhabiting it. I do not know that this
was seen by those early searchers, but it is mentioned here as something
evident and illuminating.
5) It is a
defect of our human nature that a discoverer is apt to overestimate his
discovery. Some of those searchers did so with the analogy of the body. In
their writings, this figure of the church is employed more than any of the
others, and some uses are made of it not warranted by Scripture. The unity of
the body was declared to be the ground of meeting of Christians. Now the Lord
Jesus had said that His name was that ground. He spoke of "two or three
gathered together in My name" (Matt. 18:20). It is relationship to Himself, not
to His body, which brings us together.
In those early
days of research some suggested that not all believers of this age will of
necessity share in the first resurrection and belong to the church glorified.
However, that would involve a mutilation of the body of Christ and allow Him
but an imperfect body. The fallacy here is that the figure of the body is
extended to a realm and time to which it is not applied in the Word of God. In
Scripture the analogy of the body is used with a present application, not to
teach about matters prophetic. It illustrates the present relationship between
the Head and the members and the present use He makes of them. As soon as the
next age comes in view, other analogies mentioned are employed, such as the
city or the bride. It is vital to employ figures of speech strictly within the
limit of use by the Holy Spirit. Confusion has resulted by applying the figure
of the body to matters ecclesiastical, such as reception or exclusion of
believers; or to matters prophetic.
Equally does
confusion and error follow if figures used in Scripture of the future are
brought forward into the present age. We are not now the bride of the Lamb, but
only a virgin fianc饠(2 Cor. 11:2,3). The church does not become the wife until
the marriage day, at the coming of the Lord (Rev. 19:6-9). Knowing this could
have prevented some of the evils of mysticism. Similarly, there is no ground
for the mechanical notion that the church must be composed of just such and
such a number of believers, neither one more nor less, because the human body
is formed of a precise, unvarying number of bones. It is an inference not
warranted in Scripture.
6) Along the
same line of objection it is asserted that every believer of this age is a
member of the body of Christ, because we are incorporated into that body is by
the indwelling of the Spirit of God; just as the many members of the body of
Christ made such by the indwelling of the one Spirit. Now many assert strongly,
as if it were beyond dispute the teaching of Scripture, that every regenerate
person, simply by the fact of his new birth by the Spirit, is automatically
sealed, anointed, and indwelled by the Spirit of God. I have not been able to
discover the source of this opinion but, as regards those early teachers, it is
fact that leaders among them repudiated this notion.
In "On the
Sealing with the Holy Spirit", Darby speaks expressly as follows: "That a
person may be born again, and not have received the Holy Ghost, is perfectly
certain according to the Scriptures." He refers to the fact that the first
disciples were born of God while Jesus was with them, for they believed on Him,
yet they did not receive the Spirit until the day of Pentecost. He cites also
Acts 8, the believers at Samaria, and the case of Paul, who was converted on
the way to Damascus, but was not filled with the Spirit until three days later
(Acts 9:9).
In Vol. 10 of "Things
New and Old" (1867), C. H. Macintosh wrote, "We consider that Acts 19:1-7 does
most clearly show that persons may be "disciples" and "believers," and yet not
be sealed with the Holy Ghost.
Arguing at
length to the same effect, in The New Testament Doctrine of the Holy Spirit
(1867), and contrasting the reception of the Holy Spirit with belief and
repentance, William Kelly wrote very strongly: "It is a subsequent operation;
it is an additional separate blessing; it is a privilege founded on faith
already actively working in the heart. So far is it from being true that a man
receives the gift of the Holy Ghost the moment that he believes, that it may be
well doubted whether there ever was such a case since the world began. I do not
mean to deny that the gift of the Holy Ghost may be practically on the same
occasion, but never in the same moment."
It is to be
noted that thus three of the very earliest students of these subjects in those
years saw so clearly the teaching of Scripture on this matter.
7) In those
earliest years the condition of the reception of a believer to fellowship was
not membership in the body of Christ, or attainment in knowledge or experience,
but simply whether Christ had received him. So Groves said in 1827: "We are evidently called
to know nothing among our fellow Christians but this one fact: Do they belong
to Christ? Has Christ received them? Then may we receive them, to the glory of
God." And so wrote Darby in 1839: "Whenever Christ has received a person, we
would receive him as our Table is the Lord's not ours, we receive all that the
Lord has received."
The fact of
the oneness of the body of Christ had precious applications. It was
acknowledged that each member of Christ is responsible to seek the building up
of every other member of Christ, not only of those separated from a sectarian
association. Consequently they were prepared to minister the word in churches,
chapels, halls, or private gatherings, wherever opportunity offered to build up
the body of Christ. To the end of his long life Darby maintained this liberty
and discharged this duty, even when faced by opposition by narrower-hearted
brethren.
On the same
ground a welcome was given to every believer to join in worship and partake of
the Lord's Supper. He might be in clerical garb, but that did not debar. And
being received, he was free to exercise for the good of all whatever gift the
Lord had entrusted to him.
In those early
days it was felt right to have fellowship with all that was of God, according
to the Word, in study of the word, in prayer. The line was drawn only against
what is not of God, being not sanctioned by the Word.
These and
other important matters of the same kind I have discussed fully in my life of
Anthony Norris Groves.
8) There is an
intrusive example of how the same mind may make at one time a just inference
and a false inference.
It is clear
that there can be no human body without a head. Christ did not become the Head
of His body, the church, until His ascension to the Father and the pouring
forth of His Spirit into His disciples. Therefore the body of Christ, the
church, did not exist before the day of Pentecost, but had then its beginning.
This was of much importance, for it at once revealed the distinction between
this new society and what companies had preceded it. The Jewish people and the
Gentile nations existed before Pentecost. Hence this new society was distinct
from them. Pentecost brought into being a third order of mankind, and from
there the human race showed a threefold division, the Jew, the Gentile, and the
church of God (1 Cor. 10:32,33). When Paul invaded Corinth with the gospel he found the heathen
temple and the Jewish synagogue already there. The effect of the gospel
concerning Christ was to draw some away from the temple and some from the
synagogue, and this new and third religious group formed the church of God
in Corinth. The
claims of Christ are so radical, so uncompromising that they who joined
themselves to Him lost their status as Gentiles or as Jews, and formed together
one new man in Christ (Eph. 2:11-22). Those who did not believe remained Greeks
or Jews, and thus the distinction between the three circles continued
unmistakable, as it does still.
But from the
same fact, that the church began at Pentecost, a false inference was drawn,
even that godly men who had died before Pentecost could not form part of the
church, but will have only a lower status in the coming kingdom of God.
That illustrates how an erroneous conclusion can result from unwarranted
extension of a figure of speech. The analogy of the body was applied to the
past and to the future, instead of being restricted to present application.
It should have
been remembered that this is not the primary or principal figure of the church.
The first figure is that of a building (Matt. 16:18), a palace-temple for God.
The tabernacle erected by Moses, and the temple built by Solomon, foreshadowed
this spiritual house. The tabernacle was not erected until the second new year
day after redeemed Israel
had left Egypt;
and when it was reared up it was formed of materials some of which had existed
long before the idea of a dwelling for God had been proposed. Much of it,
indeed, had been brought out of Egypt
when the Israelites took spoils from the Egyptians. It was so with Solomon's
temple. It was not until the fourth year of his reign that he began to build,
but then he incorporated into the structure the vast treasures that David had
long accumulated and dedicated. It is to be noted that this treasure was
acquired by David in his victorious campaigns (1 Chron. 18:6-11).
Analogy
suggests that the Son of God, in His age-long conflict with Satan and sin, had
acquired for Himself in the period before Pentecost many living stones that He
can build into His heavenly church. The New Testament supports this. To Abraham
was opened the prospect of the heavenly city, which he and later men of like
faith, embraced and pursued, living by consequence as pilgrims and strangers
(Heb.11:9-16). Not all godly men of ancient times are shown to have risen to
such faith, or to have foregone the earthly to attain to the heavenly. The
argument of the Galatian epistle is that all true believers today become
spiritual descendants of Abraham and share in his promised spiritual blessings,
we being free-born sons as was Isaac (Gal. 3 and 4). It seems incomprehensible
that Abraham and Isaac shall be denied a share in that promised heavenly
company and glory in hope of which they lived and suffered. This notion is a
mistaken inference from the figure of the body.
The baleful
effect of the misuse of a figure of speech, and in particular of that of the
Head and the Body, had a very solemn illustration as early as the fourth
century A.D. The church historian Neander, dealing with the attitude of
Augustine to the Donatist controversy, says: "Hence he (Augustine) could say
(De unitate ecclesiae - On the Unity of the Church): ‘No one attains to
salvation, and to eternal life, who has not Christ for his Head. But no one can
have Christ for a Head, who does not belong to His Body, which is the Church.' Hence
the error, growing out of this confounding and mixing together of distinct
notions, that the union of believers with Christ was brought about through the
union with this visible church. And hence, in following out this principle, he
asserts: ‘The entire Christ is the Head and the Body'. The Head is the only
begotten Son of God, and the Body is the Church. He who agrees not with
scripture in the doctrine concerning the Head, although he may stand in
external communion with the church notwithstanding belongs not to her. But,
moreover, he who holds fast to all that scripture teaches respecting the Head,
and yet cleaves not to the unity of the church, belongs not to her.'" (Neander's
General History of the Christian Religion and Church).
This involves
the false notions (a) that salvation and eternal life are secured only by
membership in the visible church; (b) that therefore to leave that fellowship,
whether voluntarily or by excommunication, involves the forfeiture of
salvation. (c) From this was derived the terrible and tyrannical power of the
clergy over souls by the weapon of excommunication. (d) As the only door into
the church was baptism, an inevitable and cruel logic compelled the cruel dogma
that the un-baptized are necessarily damned eternally, including infants.
These and
further fatal teachings resulted from the primary misuse of the figure of the
body, in its being applied to the matter of salvation; whereas the truth is
that only those who by faith in Christ, are already of the number of the saved
are ever baptized in the Spirit and incorporated into the body of Christ.
Yet in this
mixture of truth and error there was, however, the true element, that one who
forsakes the church, or is excommunicated scripturally, is not a member of the
body or a sharer in its privileges and prospects, not until he is reunited with
it. This ought to be acknowledged, though the extension of the forfeiture to
the loss of salvation is to be rejected. And the warning should be accepted of
the danger of misuse of this or any figure of speech.
The
rediscovery of these sublime truths as to the true character and prospects of
the church of God was of momentous importance and vast
influence. The minds of believers innumerable have been clarified and
illuminated. The purposes of God for Christ, His church, Israel, and the
Gentiles have been grasped. The heavenly calling of the church being perceived
has drawn disciples to walk like Abraham as pilgrims and strangers on earth,
doing all good to all men touched on life's journey, but with the heart ever
pressing on to the heavenly goal. That mistaken ideas and unwarranted
inferences have in measure lessened the benefits received does not alter the
general fact that these truths were a message from God suited to that day and still
carrying blessing to the lowly of heart.
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