The Secret of His Purpose

Chapter 7: God's Household and the House

Paul does not elaborate on the statement made in ch. 2 v. 19 that the church is 'the household of God.' The implications of this figure, however, are obvious, and reflect the two facts which were brought before us right at the beginning of the epistle: relationship and faithfulness. In Christ we are adopted as sons (1:5). God is our Father, the Head of the family and of the household.

The terms 'family' and 'household' may sometimes be synonymous, but not always. The family especially indicates relationship, and the relationship continues to exist whether the members are together or separate from one another. A household, on the other hand, implies a group of people living together, accepting a common rule, and with a sense of mutual responsibility. If any of the members leave, they cease to belong to the household although their family ties will still remain.

The church is a spiritual family living as one household. In this the local nature of the assembly is made very plain. Regeneration does not automatically bring a person into the privileges of the church, although related to Christ, the privileges of the church have become his right. In that sense he does belong to the church, because it is the place where he ought to be, but should he refuse to accept his responsibilities, he may live outside his privileges all his life. There are many people who belong to the family of God who yet do not belong to God's household, and to whom, therefore, the church is of little practical significance. While our relationship with Christ is, as we have seen, the basis of the church, yet it is by no means the only aspect of the assembly. That relationship is not itself the church, and it is this mistaken idea, current among so many of God's people today, which has reduced the church to a mere theory with but little practical expression.

"Am I my brother's keeper?" asked Cain (Genesis 4:9) when God questioned him regarding his brother Abel. The result of sin was that Cain felt he had no responsibility other than for himself. The reversal of this attitude through regeneration is what our position in the household of God gives us the opportunity of demonstrating. We are linked together in Christ, and we do have a responsibility for one another, in difficulties and temptations, in the need of instruction and encouragement, in sympathy and reproof. Loyalty is a mark of the happy household, and without a mutual loyalty and sense of responsibility no household can ultimately continue to function. These qualities are also a reflection of our attitude to the Head of the household, God. It is, as John so forcibly reminds us (I John 4:20) idle to protest our devotion to God when that devotion is conspicuously absent towards those who are as dear to God as we are ourselves. God's household must also be a place of order, and a place where we gladly recognise His discipline along with His commendation. It is the ordered household, not the disordered one, that is happy and content, and exactly the same applies in our spiritual life in the assembly.

Above all, it is in the church, the household of God, that we really get to know Him. We may come to know very well a person with whom we work day by day, but we can never know him as do those of his own family with whom he lives. It is in the assembly alone, in God's practical relationship with those for whom He feels a prime concern, that the different aspects of His character will be given full scope for expression, and can be stimulated by the response to His grace as His people return His love to Him and to one another.

But not only are we God's household, we are God's house. It is this great figure that occupies Paul for the last three verses of the second chapter.

'The house of God' is a phrase which is often used very loosely, and its exact equivalent is sometimes used in other languages merely to indicate a Christian meeting place. That this is very far from what the Scripture means is obvious from the writings both of Paul and Peter. As Paul explicitly explains to the Athenians, God 'dwelleth not in temples made with hands' (Acts 17:24). The house of God has nothing to do with bricks and mortar. There is no particular spot on earth which can in any sense be said to be God's dwelling place. There is no one building which, in God's eyes, is any more holy than any other, and to use the phrase 'house of God' for any material structure is always liable to be misleading and harmful.

In v. 20 Paul tells us that the church is 'built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.' Apostles and prophets, as we shall see, are two of the five gifts mentioned later on as given to the church by the glorified Christ. These we shall examine further in our consideration of chapter four. The two mentioned here, however, are described as having a particular place in the establishment of the assembly which is brought together on their 'foundation.'

What exactly does this mean? In the following chapter of the epistle, Paul shows how the apostles and prophets of his time were the recipients of what he calls 'the mystery.' This phrase has already claimed a little of our attention. It is used only by the apostle Paul, and that to describe the fullness of the purpose of God through Christ and in the church, with which He completed His revelation to mankind. Paul specifically states this in his epistle to the Colossians (Colossians 1:24-27). Here then is the foundation upon which the church is built, God's revelation to man, and the vehicle of its expression in the days of the apostles were the persons of the apostles and prophets themselves. Thus what they spoke and wrote was the final Word of God, and these words have come down to us today in the pages of the New Testament which is to us what the apostles and prophets were to the people of their own age, the vehicle of God's revelation. The spoken word today must all be judged according to the written standard, and it is from this written revelation that the assembly is established. Wherever God's Word is faithfully proclaimed in complete dependence upon the Spirit, there are the ministries of apostleship and prophecy manifested, and conversely, apostleship and prophecy do not exist today independent of the written Word of God.

Writing to the Corinthians of the establishing of the assembly in Corinth Paul says, "I laid a foundation" (I Corinthians 3:10). Yet Peter, also referring to the raising up of the church, quotes from the prophet Isaiah where God says, "I lay in Zion a chief corner stone" (I Peter 2:6; Isaiah 28:16). Both are true. God's means of operation upon the earth is through His people, yet behind and overshadowing the means must be the obvious working of God Himself. The church is God's; the plan likewise is His. We are but His workmen. The great lesson we have to learn is that man can never establish the church simply through the imposition of a pattern or technique. The first requisite for church building is total dependence upon the Lord. This we have seen at the very beginning of the work at Ephesus. Humility as well as authority was a salient feature of Paul's life, and it was through the humble yet powerful proclamation of the truth as it is in Christ that the Ephesian believers felt the compelling power of the Spirit drawing them together. Nowhere is there any suggestion that the assembly at Ephesus was organised into being by the apostle.

We are living in an age of perfected techniques. The world is arrayed with a growing army of 'experts' on every conceivable subject. The world-wide company of God's people too has its 'experts,' those whose job it is to probe into every spiritual failure and find an answer to every problem. Such probing is, of course, good. Most of us need to be much more concerned than we are at the spiritual impotence and lethargy that is around us. Too easily are we content with a few spiritual shibboleths, and a standard of spiritual conduct that is a shame to the name of Christ. Let us never criticise a spirit of enquiry. It is something most valuable. There is a tendency, however, to reduce the answer to every problem to the discovery of the correct technique. Man's spirit of enquiry has so often led him, not to a place of greater subjection to the Spirit of God, but to trust all the more in his own human ability to carry through God's purposes. But the truth is that God's pattern is basically a spiritual one, and He alone is the one who can put it into practice. The extent to which God can use us to the establishing of the church is the extent of our subjection to Him, and our freedom from the bonds of tradition and other human entanglements which would hinder His working. Then the church will not need to be cajoled into existence. The Spirit Himself will bring to birth the urge that brings an assembly into being.

Verse 21 shows us that not only the foundation, but the whole superstructure of the church is dependent upon Christ. It is in Him that 'each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy sanctuary in the Lord.' Peter, who develops this figure still further in his first epistle, emphasises this same point. The analogy of stones used in the erection of a building is incomplete. The church, as we have already seen, is something alive, and stones are dead things. Peter, therefore, vitalises them with life. We come unto Him, the Living Stone, and ourselves as lively stones are built up a spiritual house (I Peter 2:4-5). The material in each case is the same, hewn, as it were, out of the same quarry. Peter was, no doubt, thinking of his conversation with the Lord of which we read in Matthew 16. "Thou are Peter," ('petros' a little piece of rock) said our Lord, "and upon this rock ('petra' a great rock, referring to Himself) I will build my church." It is only as Christ is formed in men and women, making them of the same nature as Himself, that the temple of God is built up. This fitting together of the living stones is the house of God upon the earth. Wherever the Lord's people meet, be it in great building or humble, on a mountainside or in the shade of a tree, there He is in the midst of them, and there is His house.

Once again this figure brings clearly before us the practical nature of the unity of the Lord's people in the church. A scattered pile of bricks is not a house, although they may be united in appearance; one brick looks very much like another. Similarly, a scattered company of regenerated people all claiming that they are one in Christ is not a church. They must be 'fitly framed together,' each one contributing his particular place in the spiritual building, and conscious of the bond of life and mutual responsibility which binds all of them together. The purpose of this unity is to form 'a habitation of God through the Spirit.' The church is God's house upon the earth, and the place, therefore, in which and from which He supremely expresses His mind and purpose. Yet this figure too reminds us that the church grows in the capacity to express God. It 'groweth into a holy temple.' There is nothing automatic or mechanical about God's expressing Himself through the assembly. It is conditioned upon the assembly's spiritual development and growth in understanding of divine things.

In India, many people live in houses which are incomplete. They may have planned a very elaborate structure, but the plan may be many years in being carried out. Nevertheless, as soon as the walls have been erected and a roof put on they will settle in. In many ways it is an imperfect and incomplete dwelling place, neither does it give a very adequate idea of the intention of the owner in building it, but as the work of construction continues, the use and beauty of the place will become increasingly evident until one day, when the last finishing touch has been added, what was in the mind of the designer will be fully and clearly expressed. God sometimes has to live in a very imperfect dwelling place. The important thing is that we should frankly recognise its imperfections and go on, as labourers together with Him, to see the spiritual house completed.

The Lord, in preparing His disciples for His leaving them, speaks of His dwelling place. "I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also (John 14:2-3). This is a Scripture commonly quoted at funerals as a comforting assurance of the certain existence of a heavenly home, but its prime application is to a completely different question. The Lord is explaining to His disciples, not what is going to happen to them after they die, but what is going to take place after He has ascended to the Father. The Lord, by His Spirit, is going to come and will receive His people unto Himself. (It should be noted that the Lord in this chapter, John 14, uses the word 'I' in reference to the Spirit, cf. v. 18). The fulfilment of this Scripture, therefore, is found at Pentecost when the Spirit came and established the church. In that great event God took up residence in the midst of His people. The house of God is at one and the same time His dwelling place upon the earth, and the spiritual home of His people. This fact is reflected in the construction of the temple which contained the 'court of the priests' (II Chronicles 4:9) and Peter also says, "Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house for a holy priesthood" (I Peter 2:5 R.V. margin).

As pilgrims and strangers upon the earth, our home is a heavenly one, yet the Lord has not left us without a place of rest on our journey. The church is our home here on the earth, the place where the Lord and His people live together, and the source of our strength and guidance. It is, however, a 'spiritual' house. We do well to hold that fact in mind. The companies of the New Testament were held together by the Spirit. Where some of them met we do not know, nor does it seem to matter since the Scripture is silent on the point. The apostles certainly never mention in any of their letters anything which would indicate that the assemblies were occupied in buying lands or building buildings. They had to meet somewhere, of course, but their emphasis was in moving forward to enter into their spiritual inheritance, and since they looked upon the return of the Lord as imminent, anything that would lend an aspect of permanence to their sojourn on this earth was the least of all their concerns.

There is something strangely incongruous in the way Christianity has developed over the centuries with its huge and magnificent buildings. Some of them are exquisitely beautiful, no doubt, but it would be interesting to find out how many of them today are still centres of vital spiritual life and testimony. The great majority of them are but monuments to a glory that has long since departed, the tombstones surmounting the remains of something that has long since died.

When the Spirit of God gave His terrible warning to the Ephesian assembly in Revelation 2, He said, "I come to thee, and will move thy lampstand out of its place, except thou repent" (Revelation 2:5). He did not threaten simply to extinguish the light, but to remove from its place the very indication of the assembly's existence. Once the Spirit had gone from their midst nothing was to remain that might be a shame to the name that had once been exalted. This principle has certainly not continued in operation down through the centuries. Is it possible that God's people, in erecting 'lampstands' of bricks and mortar which have had to be kept up long after the light of the Spirit has gone out, have thwarted God's purpose?

God's house is a spiritual house, a company of people that owes its continued existence to one thing alone, the life of the Spirit who dwells in their midst. Anything that would serve to hold them together once the Spirit has departed can only be of the flesh. Let His presence in our midst be the one and only factor that unites, and should He leave, let the church which is no longer a church pass quietly away unmourned.

Next: Chapter 8: The Revelation of the Mystery