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Scripture Reading: Matt. 16:16-19; Eph. 2:22; 1 Pet. 2:5; Eph. 4:11-12, 15-16; Col. 2:19
Prayer: Lord, we confess that we are foolish and dull in our sense. We pray that we would do an accurate work, have an accurate understanding, and have a proper building work. May You cause us to know how to let the authority of the kingdom be realized among us, how to cause the church to be built up, and how the church brings in the kingdom.
The New Testament clearly reveals that in the universe God has focused all His activities on a building project. He has undertaken many other tasks, but the work that is central to all His other work, and the work that is the ultimate to which all His other work is directed, is the structure of which the Lord spoke of in Matthew 16 — “I will build My church.” All the divine activity in the universe is directed toward this, the building of the church.
The church is a mystery, a great mystery. If we know the Bible and if we know something of fellowship with God, then we will know that the church was a secret long hidden in the heart of God. To state it briefly, this mystery is God Himself wrought into humanity, God Himself wrought into the lives of His creatures — and fallen creatures at that. But through redemption these creatures have become partakers of the divine nature and have thereby experienced two creations — creation “in Adam” and creation “in Christ” (2 Pet. 1:4). By the first creation they have received created life; by the second creation they have received uncreated life. By the first creation they have become possessors of a human nature; by the second creation they have become possessors of a divine nature. Not only has man become possessed of two dispositions, the human and the divine, but God Himself has taken up His abode in man. Man in his outer being remains unchanged. He is still man. He is truly man, but into his inner being has come the heavenly nature, for the God of heaven has come to dwell within him.
God is now working upon this humanity that men should not be separate units but be coordinated into one. He wants many men to become one organic whole, one Body. He wants the many to be built up into one structure, one house. He wants them to be brought into such harmony with Himself that they may become His dwelling place. He wants them to be brought into such correspondence with Christ that they become His Body. When the work of God is perfected, what we now see as Christ’s Body, and what we now see as God’s dwelling, we will then see as the bride of Christ and the city of God, which is His governmental center. Call this as you will — the Body of Christ or the house of God or the family of God or the kingdom of God — it is here that all of God’s fullness dwells. This is what God planned in eternity past before creation, and in time when God began His creative work, this was the goal that He had in view. Although there was satanic interference, God did not suspend His activity but brought in redemption so that the work might continue. When His Son came to earth, He plainly stated that His desire was this building (Matt. 16:16-19).
Brothers and sisters, I trust that you have caught a vision of the church. I trust that you see how sacred a thing the church is, how mysterious, how immense. God has laid hold of men and has imparted Himself into them. He is now working to make them one corporate whole so that in and through them He may manifest Himself in all His glory. This is the task to which God has been bending all His energies, and it is in the light of this that we must read again the words of the Lord Jesus: “I will build My church.”
Once, when I went to Hong Kong, a fellow worker drew my attention to the high buildings everywhere. But what are those buildings compared to the church? They are mere worthless structures. God is putting up a great building in the universe, and He is using Himself and man as building material. He is putting Himself into the building, He is putting heaven into the building, and He is also putting into it numbers and numbers of men who have been saved through the generations; He is building all that material together. He was referring to this when He said, “I will build My church.”
But how did He set about this task of building the church? It was by sending the Holy Spirit and by giving gifts to the church. “He Himself gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as shepherds and teachers...unto the building up of the Body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11-12). While much evangelistic work goes on, and much work for the edification of believers goes on, there is little evidence of church building, yet God has given evangelists, prophets, and teachers for the specific purpose of building up the church. I hope you realize that this is the one thing in the universe God is after, and all who are seeking to work for Him should have this goal before them.
But let us bring our consideration of this lofty theme down to everyday life and consider it in its practical aspect. What is the usual concept of building the church? Someone opens a place of worship, introduces people to Christianity, has them baptized, arranges a variety of meetings, gets things organized a bit — and there is the church. I do not wish to enlarge on this line, but I long that the Lord’s children might realize that what we have just described is not what the Bible means by building the church. The building of the church means first, the bringing of men under the authority of the Head of the church. Before men are saved, they are under the authority of Satan, and after they are saved, they are delivered out of the authority of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the Son of His love (Col. 1:13). To be saved is to be delivered out of Satan’s authority and to be placed under the authority of Christ. It is a great grief to me to hear people explaining salvation as a matter of being saved from hell to heaven. Of course, salvation brings us to heaven, but heaven is not the goal of our salvation. Salvation is not merely a matter of God in His compassion for men translating them from hell to heaven, but of delivering them “out of the authority of darkness” and transferring them “into the kingdom of the Son of His love.” The objective here is not heaven but the kingdom. God saves us so that we may come into subjection to the Son of His love. The building up of the church has its beginning here — the bringing of people under the sway of Christ who formerly had been under Satan’s sway.
Oh, that we would realize that as soon as the question of building the church arises, the question of the headship of Christ arises. When we meet that challenge, we can praise God because the building of the church begins in our life. If in any person, or in any company of believers, Christ is able to assert His authority, then He starts to build His church. That is why we have kept stressing the fact that there must be the sovereign rule of the kingdom if there is to be any building up of the church. Unless the kingdom is here, no church will be built up here.
If the mass of material that went into the building of a meeting hall were torn down until it all lay in a heap, what would be the good of it? It would be utterly useless. All the material serves a purpose because it has been built up into an ordered structure. Brothers and sisters, there is an urgent need for the building up of believers. The need is not for the establishing of Christian groups but for the building up of the church under the government of the Head of the church. If we are to have a part in that, we need to submit to the headship of Christ. When His authority becomes a settled issue in our life, an amazing thing will begin to take place — we will find ourselves most naturally being built together with others who are also in subjection to His authority. Such a company of believers will be a strong church, able to do battle for the kingdom of God. In the face of such a church Satan will be impotent. But if such a church is to come into being — a church against which the gates of Hades cannot prevail — then a building up must take place, and that cannot take place apart from a recognition of the Head of the church and subjection to His authority.
We may ask what this means in practical terms. Let me illustrate. Two strangers meet, both believers. With delight each recognizes the other as a brother. They praise the Lord and are thrilled that they have found one another. They decide to preach the gospel together, and soon a score of people are saved — twelve from the north and eight from the south. Those two brothers rejoice more heartily than ever. How they praise the Lord that together they were able to lead all those souls to Him. But this happy state of affairs does not last, for the northerners are rather strange characters, and the southerners too have their peculiar temperaments. At first praise is so easy, but soon it becomes harder to say, “Praise the Lord!” Before long, criticisms begin to take the place of Hallelujahs, and discord increases until one day the northerners and the southerners decide to part company and each group rents a separate meeting place.
Is the church built that way? Far from it. That is the way the church is destroyed. What is the source of the trouble? It is the absence of the throne. In the book of Judges we read, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (21:25). When there was no king in Israel, there was no authority, and the people just did as they pleased. At that time a certain family set up a place of worship in their own home, hired a Levite to be their household priest, and there they instituted a form of “divine worship” (ch. 17). That is exactly the state of things in the present day. We think that if we are just keen enough, we can gather some people together, and you can set up a church on this street, and I can set up a church on that street, and we can hire a preacher to preach for us. Brothers and sisters, what is the cause of all this confusion? The ultimate cause is that we have not subjected ourselves to the Head of the church.
But let us return to our illustration of the two brothers. If those two had both come into subjection to the Head of the church, their problems would have been solved, for authority quells all rebellion. Oh, what rebel stuff there is in our makeup! I confess that my own nature is utterly antagonistic to the Lord, but His authority over me has brought me to love my brethren so that I can truly serve Him together with them. Brothers and sisters, we talk about mutual love, but this love of ours for one another is very transient. There is only one place where love is permanent, and that is under the Head of the church. Nowhere else is there true harmony or permanent relatedness. When we are willing to be broken under His authority, something tremendous happens — a building process begins to take place. A constant acceptance of the discipline of His government makes way for the flow of His life, and so the building work goes on apace. Those brothers and sisters who have been our problems become our blessings, and it is not long before a company is built up in the life of Christ.
Brothers and sisters, this is what God desires today. It is not enough that we preach the gospel, bringing people to a knowledge of salvation and to a measure of spirituality. We must also bring them under the headship of Christ so that they may be built up. Under His headship we shall cease to reckon with difficulties, for we shall touch fullness of life. Then the specific spiritual function that belongs to each member of the Body will become apparent, and this local church will become a strong church in which, under the direction of the Head, every member, from the smallest to the greatest, will have a contribution to make to the whole.
