Building up believers and the New Testament church

The Secret of His Purpose

Chapter 4: The Church - His Body

All that has been already explained is now summed up for us in the last two verses of chapter one. "He hath put all things in subjection under His feet," says Paul (v. 22) and rules as 'head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all' (v. 23). The consummation of all God's working is found in the church. All His dealings with us, His children, in redemption and sanctification, are that we might be able to take our place effectively in His body. A gospel which does not see beyond personal and individual salvation is only half a gospel. Paul's ministry of the gospel was but the prelude to his ministry of the body (Colossians 1:23-27). He saw clearly that unless an appreciation of the gospel led to an appreciation of the church, the whole witness of Christ would be stunted and insecure. It is for this reason that he expressed his great burden for the Colossians and Laodiceans, 'that their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and unto all richness of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden' (Colossians 2:2-3).

The condition of entering into this fullness, however, is subjection to Christ. "He hath put all things in subjection under His feet," says the apostle (1:22). If the church is to show forth His fullness, it must be composed of a people who know what it is to bow to His authority, to accept the disciplines which He imposes in His grace, wisdom and prudence, and to welcome the moulding and fashioning of His skilful hands. Says Paul to the Thessalonians, "The God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that calleth you who will also do it" (I Thessalonians 5:23-24). Here once more is the condition upon which we can know His fullness in the body, that God, by His Spirit, should dominate every aspect of our beings, spirit, soul and body, and that we readily allow them to remain under His control in that sanctifying and developing process which He accomplishes in the church. The spirit is our will dominated either by God or by self, the soul is the seat of our emotions which would ensnare us in the reputation-seeking vanity of the world, the body is that sum of fleshly desires and aptitudes which would bind us to things material. We can be ruled by any or all of them--self, the world, or the flesh--and be kept from ever entering into anything of the knowledge of the mystery. All must be willingly subject to Christ. He, not they, must rule. The only place for self, the world and flesh is the cross (cf. Galatians 2:20; 6:14; 5:24).

Scientists tell us that if a human body could be reduced to the various basic materials of which it is composed, it would be worth only a few rupees. From the material point of view, it is of very little value. Apart from the life which vitalises it, it is practically useless. A very obvious fact which seems, nevertheless, to need to be continually restated, is that the church of Jesus Christ is a living body, not a corpse. The imposition of a pattern has never yet made a church: not that pattern is unimportant as we shall see, but the church is inseparable from spiritual life; it is not pattern alone. Present-day Christianity is a vast spiritual graveyard. One of the few doubtful compliments that can be paid to modern ecumenicalism is that it is making this graveyard look a little more tidy (at least, from a distance). It is still a graveyard nevertheless. Bodies from which the Spirit has long departed are today called 'churches.' They are certainly not the church of the New Testament. It has already been emphasised that the basis of the church is life in Christ. The church as His body again brings this fact very strikingly before us.

What is the purpose of the body? The body's whole object is to give expression to the life it contains. The controlling member is the head, and every other member is organised to give exact expression to the thoughts of the mind. The simplest of actions originates in the mind. From the mind impulses make their way through the nervous system to the particular part of the body concerned and thus cause it to act in the predetermined way. If any thought is to be put into practical effect, the co-operation of the body is absolutely essential.

Suppose, for instance, an accomplished artist or engineer suffers from an illness which causes complete paralysis. He is unable to move. His vocal organs are also affected and he is unable to speak. Yet his mind is perfectly clear. The expression in his eyes shows that in no way is his mental faculty impaired. During his illness he may be inspired with the thought of a new musical composition, or with a plan for some remarkable new building. He is totally unable, however, to communicate his thoughts to others. He cannot speak them; he cannot write them down. He is capable neither of translating them into practice himself nor of instructing others that they might do so. His body is out of action, so all his wonderful thoughts remain useless, no more than a dream.

The body without the spirit is valueless, but, likewise, the spirit without the body is incomplete, lacking the one means whereby it can give adequate expression to itself. Body and spirit are both important. It is no accident that our bodies are designed the way they are. We are 'fearfully and wonderfully made' as the Psalmist says, and the Great Designer has designed us to fulfil a particular function for which no other design would be adequate. Within recent years the importance of good design has become increasingly recognised in many realms. In aircraft engineering, for example, there are certain principles of design which must not be violated if the products are to give maximum efficiency. We can never expect to see an aircraft made to look like a ship, as such a pattern would make it incapable of flight.

The same principle carries over into the spiritual realm. It is remarkable to find so many devoted Christians who tend to look down upon any mention of church pattern or order. Life, they say, is all-important; the pattern matters little. This attitude has largely succeeded in disembodying the church and thus curtailing the effectiveness of the Lord's testimony through His people. We have no more right to think that the pattern of the church is unimportant than we have to think that the pattern according to which we ourselves have been created does not matter. For an expression of the life of the Spirit, a spiritual body, the church, is an absolute necessity, and that life can only be fully expressed through the body designed by God to contain it. Of God's pattern for the church we shall see more in Ephesians chapter four.

The church as the body of Christ is more than a figure; it is reality. If God is to reveal His thoughts and purposes fully upon the earth, He requires a body through which to do it. It was for this reason that there was no complete expression of God's mind until He took upon Himself the form of man and Jesus came. All the types of the Old Testament, wonderful as they were, were incomplete. It required God's life clothed in a body not only to explain but to work out His purpose of redemption.

This fact was first publicly proclaimed at our Lord's baptism when the Spirit of God descended on Him as a dove and a voice from heaven said, "This is My Son; My beloved in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). There was no other way for God to manifest His glory upon the earth than through the incarnation, but that way was perfect. When people looked upon Christ they looked upon God.

This great subject is further developed for us in the epistle to the Hebrews, "Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith, sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body didst Thou prepare for Me; in whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hadst no pleasure: then said I, Lo, I am come (in the roll of the book it is written of Me) to do Thy will, O God" (Hebrews 10:5-7). Here again we see the will of God accomplished only and supremely in the body of Christ. God has revealed Himself fully in no other way, and the method of His manifesting Himself is still, of necessity, the same today.

In preparing His disciples for His departure our Lord assured them, "I will not leave you desolate: I will come unto you" (John 14:18). These words referred particularly to His coming through the Spirit at Pentecost, yet they referred also, and no less really, to His coming, to the return of His body to the earth--not the body that was put on the cross, but His spiritual body, the church. It was precisely this that was revealed at Pentecost when the church was established. The Lord Jesus Christ was the body of God. The church today, vitalised by the life of Christ, is the body of God. Christ's body is still with us to express the fullness of God even as He did when He trod the dusty roads of Judaea and Galilee. The key to the body's functioning is subjection to the Head. The writer to the Hebrews tells us, "We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ." His subjection to His Father's will has meant our salvation. The church is Christ's body, but Christ Himself is the Head, and it is in the same spirit of abandonment and submission to Him that He showed to the Father that the church will reveal His will and His glory. As the Lord offered His body, the church has to offer itself in like surrender. The alternative is spiritual sickness and confusion, just as physical illness ensues upon any member of our human body's refusing to be controlled by the mind.

The body of Christ also demonstrates very clearly the church's oneness as an actual and functioning unit. Apart from the members functioning according to their several capacities in the closely knit unity of the whole, any talk of the body is meaningless. There can be no body at all if all the members are severed one from the other. The church is not a theoretical company, but the local gathering of those who are born again of the Spirit, are subject to Christ the Head, and function together to the revelation of His will and glory.

The body is 'the fullness of Him' (v. 23). Dare we believe that the Scripture means just what it says, that there is no aspect of the character of God which should not be revealed in His church? The Lord Jesus Christ in His life on earth revealed not only God's holiness but also His authority. "They were astonished at His teaching," says Mark (Mark 1:22) "for He taught them as having authority." It was this quality in our Lord's life that both commanded the devotion and roused the ire of those who listened to His ministry. A voice without authority can be ignored or passed off with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulder; it is so much empty sound. An authoritative voice cannot; it demands a response, either of obedience or defiance.

A so-called 'church' without authority is a dead, pitiable thing. The world holds it in disdain, and laughs quietly at its desperate efforts to accommodate itself to the prevailing circumstances and to please. We need not look far in any country today to see this exemplified. Modern Christianity throughout the world is largely bereft of spiritual authority. It is bogged down in the empty wordiness of a polite diplomacy calculated to smooth out every offence and merge every conviction into a lifeless uniformity. How different from the early church and the church as it is still meant to be. The world may scoff at the authority of the church as it did in the times of the apostles, but behind the jeer will be a troubled heart and a pricked conscience.

The subject of the authority of the church is largely ignored. One of the reasons for this may be that this great truth has been so perverted by the Church of Rome which has reduced the spiritual authority of a holy and loving God to a human despotism which holds many of its followers in abject fear and subservience. This is the very antithesis of the authority of the Lord revealed in His church which produces not fear, but joy. There is a yoke to be borne, but, "My yoke is easy, and My burden is light," said Christ. The authority of the church is not a legal domination to which all must bow willingly or unwillingly, but a spiritual compulsion which commands a willing subservience.

The authority of Christ in His church is also the means whereby the assembly is kept pure, for in it the people of God are living a life where an active response to His will is a constant demand. There is no legal compulsion to obey, but disobedience and the continued fellowship of the church are impossible. It is when the church is reduced to a lifeless form or ritual demanding no subjection to its Lord and no response to His word that there is a free entrance for every imaginable type of error and evil. There is but one safeguard, the Lord's dwelling in His church in supremacy and authority. This fact brings us back again to the truth with which Paul commenced the epistle. The church is a company of people who are 'faithful in Christ Jesus,' related to Him and subject also to His will.

It is on this same note that chapter one ends. The church is 'His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all' (v. 23). We are His fullness, but it is He, Christ, who is the source of that fullness. The church can never be proud in the great position it occupies. Pride in any shape or form means death to the body of Christ. We, of ourselves, have exactly nothing which we can contribute to the glory of God. We owe our very existence and our sustenance alike to Him. "Our sufficiency is from God" (II Corinthians 3:5). "In Him ye are made full" (Colossians 2:10). The church is brought into being through submission to Christ. It must be sustained by submission to Christ. It is in that spirit of faithfulness to Him that His glory and authority are manifested.