The Church
THE CHURCH
Thronging or Touching?
Matthew 7:21; Mark 5:24-34
As Jesus was going along, the multitudes thronged him. A woman in deep need came timidly through the crowd and touched his garment. “Who touched me?” asked Jesus as he felt the power go forth. “The multitudes throng you, so why do you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” said his disciples. “But somebody touched me,” said Jesus (see Mark 5:24-32).
There is a difference between thronging Jesus and touching Jesus. Those who throng Jesus get little; those who touch Jesus get everything. . . .
Sunday after Sunday the multitudes go to church and listen. Their thoughts throng Jesus. But how many of the thronging multitudes really touch him—set up a connection with him, and live by him? How many touch him so that they go away not merely better, but well?
Victorious Living
(Week 6, Thursday)
The Corporate Fellowship
Psalm 133:1; Acts 2:43-47; Hebrews 10:45
The spiritual life cannot be lived in isolation. Life is intensely personal; it is also intensely corporate, and you cannot separate them. If you should wipe out the church today, you would have to put something like it in its place tomorrow. For there must be a corporate expression of the spiritual life as well as an individual expression.
The idea that it is your duty to support the church seems to be to be all wrong. The church is not founded upon a duty imposed on you from without. It is founded on the facts of life. Your very inner nature demands it. American evangelist, D. L. Moody, in answer to a man who said he did not need the church, quietly pulled a coal from the hearth and separated it, and together they watched it die. It was a legitimate answer. . . .
I know the stupidities and the inanities and the irrelevancies and the formalities of the church. Yes, I know them all. But nevertheless, the church is the mother of my spirit, and we love our mothers in spite of weakness and wrinkles. My word, then, to you is that, as you begin this new life you begin it as a member of the church family.
Victorious Living
(Week 10, Sunday)
The Cloud over Our Churches
Romans 12:2; Colossians 2:8, 20; 1 John 2:15-17
No one has to argue that there is a cloud over the church life of Christendom. Our vague uneasiness has grown into a fear that all is not well. Why? Again, divided loyalty, inner division.
The divided loyalty is this: In each nation, instead of keeping the gospel of Christ in a framework of universal reference, we have more and more identified it with national cultures. The conquest of the gospel of Christ by local national cultures is going on apace, and this process means the slow de-Christianization of our churches. On the “Antioch Chalice,” which is claimed by some to be the original Holy Grail, the figure of Christ is seen sitting above the Roman eagle. That was the position Christ occupied in those early centuries.—he was first and the nation was second.
Today the nation is using the national culture for its own ends, and because the church has become so domesticated, so identified with that national culture, it is using the church too for its nationalistic ends. . . .
We are divided between Christ and national culture. Which is supreme?
Victorious Living
(Week 31, Wednesday)
The Cloud over Our Churches
Romans 15:5-6; 1 Corinthians 1:9-13; 12:13; Ephesians 4:3
But the division within Christendom is not merely between allegiance to the national culture and the allegiance to Christ; there is division between the churches themselves. The household of Christ is divided against itself. And as a result of our church family divisions a cloud has come over us, and under that cloud we are fearful, and for good reason, for a divided church has little moral authority in a divided world. We must adjust our differences or abdicate our moral leadership. . . .
We have so exhausted our resources in putting up ecclesiastical walls between ourselves and others, and in keeping them in repair, that we have little left to use in helping redeem a world. If the time and intelligence and soul-force we have expended in proving that we were right as against our brothers and sisters had been expended in united action against the problems that now confront the world, they would not now be so far from solution. And we would be leading the procession of events instead of being led by them.
These divisions have brought a cloud over our religious life—dark, rainless clouds, clouds that presage storms of revolt, clouds that produce fear. God is today speaking out of that cloud, and God’s voice is as of old: “This is my Son; hear him.” And what does the Son say: “Lord, I will that they may be one” (see John 17:20-21). When we become one, the clouds will lift. But not until then.
Victorious Living
(Week 31, Thursday)
The Kingdom and the Church
Matthew 16:18; Ephesians 4:11-16; 5:25-27
The kingdom of the church must bend the knee to the kingdom of God. Just as we want our state, our race, our class to be dominant, so we want our church to be dominant. The church can be our religious self writ large; but it is still the self. It can be the group self asserting itself toward supremacy, albeit covered up with religious trappings. If the kingdom of God comes in, we, as a church, would like to bring it in, since the fact that we brought it in would leave us dominant. . . .
The kingdom of the church must surrender itself to the kingdom God. The church is not an end in itself; it is a means to the end:—the kingdom of God. If the church is an end in itself, it will lose itself. The church, like the individual, must lose itself in the kingdom of God to find itself again.
Abundant Living
(Week 32, Friday)
Why I Should Give My Allegiance to the Church
Acts 20:28; Ephesians 3:14-15; 5:23-32; Colossians 1:17-18
In order to give full inner consent to allegiance to the church, perhaps you can take these steps:
(1) There is no such thing as solitary religion. If it is solitary, it is not religion, for Jesus expressed religion as love to God and love to people. There can be no love to people unless life is lived out in relationships. “To be is to be in relationship.” The Christian’s life can be lived only in the give-and-take of corporate relationships.
(2) The Christian church is founded on a necessity in human nature. . . . Those who try to cultivate their spiritual lives alone, apart from the church, are attempting to live a vertical spiritual life, without the horizontal—they are attempting the impossible. Human nature is against it.
(3) The church, in a sense, is an extension of the life of the Incarnation. I say “in a sense,” for there was only once when “the Word became flesh”; but the church attempts, in varying degrees, to reincarnate that Word in corporate relationships. It is the only group in human society living, not for its own purposes, but for the purpose of manifesting in time an Eternal Purpose.
(4) With all its faults, the church is the best serving institution on earth. It has many critics but no rivals in the work of human redemption. It has filled the world with schools, hospitals, orphan and blind asylums, and churches. There isn’t a spot on earth where, if is free to do so, it hasn’t done so. Christians are people who care.
Abundant Living
(Week 45, Thursday)
The Church: The One Unbroken Fellowship
Acts 2:46-47; 7:37-38; 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19-20; Ephesians 1:17-23
(5) The church, with all its faults, contains the best human life in the world. Its character is higher and finer and more dependable. . . .
(6) The church is the one unbroken fellowship around the world. All other ties have snapped; the tie between Christians remains unbroken. . . . The church . . . is holding an unbroken fellowship. The Christians are therefore the bridge across all chasms.
(7) The church is the one institution that delivers you from the present century and gives you a sense of solidarity with all the centuries. When you are in the church, you are not a prisoner of your date—you have a sense of belonging to the ages.
(8) The church, at its truest, breaks down all class and race barriers, and makes humankind feel it is one.
Abundant Living
(Week 45, Friday)
The Church: The Mother of Movements
Acts 14:22-23; 1 Corinthians 1:2; Hebrews 2:11-12
(9) The church has been and is the mother of movements. It is a creative society. It gave birth to the arts, to education, to reform, to missionary movements, to democracy. It may be said that democracy is a child of the Christian faith. . . . If the root of democracy decays, the fruit will die.
(10) The denomination is not the church. The church is bigger than the denomination. . . . The denominations are parts of a continuous river—the church. The church is bigger than the denominations. To think that we have roped off the grace of God and confined it within our denominations is as absurd as to say that the areas roped off for swimmers on the ’beaches are the ocean.
(11) As the denomination is not the church, so the church is not the kingdom. The church contains the best life of the kingdom, but is not synonymous with the kingdom. It is a means to the ends of the kingdom, and not an end in itself. It must lose its life for kingdom ends and then it will find itself.
(12) The primary function of the church is the worship of God. Here we get in living contact with God, the Eternal, in order to meet Time, the fleeting.
Abundant Living
(Week 45, Saturday)
One Greater Than the Church
Ephesians 4:11-16
One greater than the church is here. The church is a fellowship of believers, a fellowship around Christ, not around themselves. He, and not they, is the center. When they become the center, the light has turned to darkness. And how great is that darkness!
John said to Jesus: “‘Master, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, but we stopped him because he is not a follower of ours.’” Jesus said to him, “‘Do not stop him; he who is not against you is for you’” (Luke 9:49-50 Moffatt). John tried to make “in your name” and “a follower of ours” synonymous. We still do that. We make our group the issue. Jesus showed the difference, saying, in essence, “He who is not against you is for you. For ‘you’ are not the issue; but as for me, I am the issue. He who is not with me is against me. Here you must take sides: if you are not for me, you are against me.” One greater than the church is here. The church behind Christ is the greatest serving institution on earth; in front of Christ it is an idol. If it becomes an end in itself, it loses itself. If it loses itself in Christ and his kingdom, it finds itself again.
The Way
(Week 8, Saturday)
Thy Kingdom Come
Matthew 6:25-33
Is it any wonder that the church has had nothing but problems through the ages? When it drew up its creeds—the Apostles’, the Athanasian, the Nicene—it mentioned the kingdom of God once in all three of them, and then only marginally, beyond the borders of this life, a heavenly kingdom. No wonder the church has stumbled from problem to problem when its supreme value was lost or only marginally held. The church will never get straightened out until it puts the kingdom where Jesus put it in [The Lord’s Prayer]—the first consideration and the first allegiance.
The Way
(Week 29, Thursday)
What Produced the New Testament Church?
1 Corinthians 15:35-49
The New Testament Church . . . arose immediately after the death and resurrection of Jesus. It didn’t emerge after long years, giving time for myths to grow up, upon which the movement could live precariously. It arose at once. At one moment the disciples were timid believers “behind closed doors because they were afraid” (John 20:19 CEB), clinging pathetically to a blasted hope, a hope that had been blasted by Christ’s death. The next moment they were irresistible apostles, out from behind closed doors facing the Sanhedrin and crowds from all over that ancient world, and proclaiming with joy—an amazing, irrepressible joy—that Jesus had arisen and that he was Lord and Savior. They did it with such power and assurance that the multitudes who had witnessed his death saw in these men his resurrection. [This fact makes me believe in the resurrection!]
What could have produced that church? A dead Christ? It would have been an effect all out of harmony with the cause. . . . The news was signaled from a hill called Calvary, “Jesus defeated . . . ,” and the mists came over for three days—the saddest days of human history. Then on Easter morning, the mists cleared, and the world got the full message, “Jesus defeated death.” And the world has never been the same since. Nor has death been the same since. “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Cor 15:55 KJV). Earth’s blackest day and earth’s brightest day are only three days apart. But those three days divide the ages. On one side, doubt and despair; on the other, hope and happiness.
The Way
(Week 43, Friday)
The Making of a Christian Church
Acts 4:32-37; 1 Thessalonians 3:3-4
The roots of our Western Christianity are in Antioch, not Jerusalem, for it was out of Antioch that Paul went to spread the gospel to Europe, and hence to us.
Three things went into the making of this church:
(1) People who suffered for their faith founded it. “Those who had been scattered by the trouble which arose over Stephen, made their way as far as . . . Antioch” (Acts 11:19 Moffatt). The marks of the cross were upon the founding of the church. The cross was in it; hence the lift of the resurrection was in and through it. If our faith costs nothing, it contributes nothing.
(2) An international mind went into the making of the church. The Jews preached the gospel only to Jews; but the Cypriotes and Cyrenians, bringing to the gospel a wider outlook, an international mind, preached to the Greeks as well. “The strong hand of the Lord was with them” (Acts 11:21 Moffatt), as it is always with those who think and love in large terms. This bringing of an international mind to the situation was important, for God guides within the framework of our thinking, and it was from the framework of that thinking that Paul was sent to Europe and to us.
(3) The third element going into the making of the church was Barnabas, the most Christianized of the group at Jerusalem. He was the kind of man who could rejoice in the work of another; when he “saw the grace of God he rejoiced” (Acts 11:23 Moffatt). The test and sign of a real Christian is to rejoice in someone else’s work. He was interested in the kingdom, not in his part in that kingdom.
The Way
(Week 45, Monday)
A Corporate Sense
Romans 12:3-10
We must now look at the marks of a Christian church.
(1) There was a strong corporate sense. Paul and Barnabas were “guests of the church” for a whole year, guests of the church, not of individuals. As the people “were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Come! Set me apart Barnabas and Saul for the work’” (Acts 13:2 Moffatt). They were so one that the Holy Spirit could speak to the whole church and guide it. They were not a group of worshiping individuals but a corporate body,—“an organism of the Holy Spirit.” The thing that won that ancient world to Christ was not only the message but this new society, an undecaying society in the midst of a decaying society, a society that loved and loved widely and without barriers in the midst of a society that knew only how to hate or love in grooves. The society had faith, hope, and courage in the midst of a society that had lost its nerve and its hope church. . . .
The church of today must regain that sense of corporateness, of being a society that has meaning for all life, that when men belong to it they belong to something that has present and ultimate meanings.
The Way
(Week 45, Tuesday)
The Worth of a Person as a Person
Philippians 2:1-11
(2) There was the sense of the worth of a person as a person—class was abolished. In the naming of those who constituted the prophets and teachers of Antioch, Barnabas was named first and Saul last; they were not headlined at the top. In the midst of the list is “Manaen, a foster brother of Herod” (Acts 13:1 Moffatt). To catch the brother of a king was big. We would have displayed it. They tucked Manaen in the center with a man from North Africa and a Cyrenian above him. Evidently all class distinction was wiped out, and a person was a person,—“someone for whom Christ died” (Rom 14:15 CEB). It was a vast leveling process. A new worth and dignity came into every human being as a child of God and therefore equal to everyone else. A classless society emerged.
Had this spirit been maintained, it would have captured the earth. . . .
The early church would have choked on [notions of class]. The later church swallowed it, and became class-filled and Christ-empty. Something universal died, and the ugly spirit of class was born. The Christian faith began to be a class faith. Unless we regain the original spirit of a classless society, [something else will replace the church]. This is no idle threat. . . . If the church does not stand for people, the people will not stand for the church. The church must have a passion for souls, but must also have a passion for people—soul, mind, and body. For it is possible to love people’s souls and be unconcerned about what happens to their bodies, their minds, their dwellings, their environment.
The Way
(Week 45, Wednesday)
All Race and Class Barriers Removed
2 Corinthians 8:13-15; Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11
(3) The church had wiped out race and color lines. In the account of the prophets and teachers at Antioch there is mention of “Symeon (called Niger)” (Acts 13:1 Moffatt), literally “the Black.” That was the place of the black person in the early church. They were not just tolerated, on the edge, or patronized. They were at the center, having an honored place among “prophets and teachers,” and Symeon’s hands were laid on Paul and Barnabas as they went forth to preach the gospel to white Europeans. Ordained by a black man! When we depart from that, we depart from the original gospel. No amount of orthodoxy can atone for a lack of this orthopraxy. To treat a person on the basis of color is to introduce into the Christian body a foreign substance, a foreign substance that will fester and poison the whole body. This foreign substance is now festering, and no amount of plasters of rationalization can cure this festering sore. It can be cured by an attitude of equality of opportunity for all, apart from race and birth and color.
(4) The church had a sense of economic solidarity. The account says that when a famine befell the church at Jerusalem, the disciples of Antioch “put aside money, as each of them was able to afford it, for a contribution to be sent to the brothers in Judaea” (Acts 11:29 Moffatt). The Christians drew no line between the spiritual and the economic. Life was one.
The Way
(Week 45, Thursday)
Holding Together Conservative and Radical
Romans 12:9-16
(5) The church held together in a living fellowship the conservative and the radical. “In the local church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers” (Acts 13:1 Moffatt). The teacher is usually the conservative, conserving the values of the past. On the one hand, the conservative has a real function in human society. The good of the past must be brought into the structure of the present; we live by yesterday, as well as by today and tomorrow. A present cut off from yesterday becomes a cut-flower civilization, without roots. The conservative conserves.
On the other hand, the prophet is the one who believes that the values of the past should be applied to the present and the future in ever-widening areas of application, the radical. Strangely enough, the word “radical” comes from a word meaning “the root.” A real radical has the root of the past within, but demands that the root bear fruit now in the total life. Radicals demand that implications become applications.
The church held radical and conservative together in unbroken fellowship, each cross-fertilizing the other. They were both held together in a living tension. That tension produced a growing point. The church that does not hold both conservative and radical in a living tension will have no growing point; it will become sterile. “An arid liberalism and an acrid conservatism” are both alike sterile. Together they could be fruitful.
The church must not allow these two groups to split and sink a cleavage down through the life of the church. We need a radical conservatism and a conservative radicalism. Jesus was both: “I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matt 5:17 KJV)—that is conservatism. “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time . . . but I say unto you” (v. 27)—that is radicalism. The past married to the future brings forth the living present. But conservatism married to nothing but itself, or radicalism married to nothing but itself, brings forth nothing, nothing but controversy or conjecture. Married, they bring forth progress. The conservative has something, the fundamentals of the gospel; the radical has something, the demand that those fundamentals be applied now.
The Way
(Week 45, Friday)
Holding Together Strong People
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
(6) The church held together in an unbroken fellowship strong people who differed. Paul and Barnabas parted “in irritation” (Acts 15:39 Moffatt) over the question of taking John Mark because he had deserted them at Pamphylia. Here was a good chance for two denominations. One would be the Barnabasites, those who believed the church should be redemptive; Mark should be redeemed and given another chance. The other would be the Paulites, those who believed the church should be kept clean; Mark should be cleansed away. Both very good ideas for a new denomination! . . . But the church at Antioch held them in unbroken fellowship. As they parted, they were “commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord” (Acts 15:40 Moffatt). I am sure they commended them to the grace of the Lord with a twinkle in their eyes: “Brothers, you both need it!” They parted, but they both came back to Antioch, their spiritual home, held together in spite of difference.
(7) The church was redemptive. As the church received Mark and Barnabas into their fellowship in spite of Mark’s lapse, they made him over again by the loyalty of Barnabas and the healing fellowship of the church. Paul sat down in later years and dictated to his amanuensis: “Pick up Mark and bring him along with you, for he is useful in helping me” (2 Tim 4:11 Moffatt). I can see the amanuensis glance up with a quizzical smile; Paul thinks for a moment and says, “Yes, I mean just that. Barnabas was right. He was a better Christian than I was. He was always taking people no one else would take; he took me when nobody believed in me. Grand Christian, Barnabas.” And a tear trickles down his cheek. The church was redemptive.
(8) The church was creative. As they fasted and prayed, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2 RSV). The whole history of Western civilization was in that hour, for out of that hour went two men who gave the gospel to Europe, and to us. When the church listens to the Holy Spirit, it becomes creative. New movements are born.
The Way
(Week 45, Saturday)
They Can Take It
Matthew 12:46-50
We turn this week to see the power of the corporate life to loose us and to let us go. The fellowship of a group is one of the most freeing things known, provided it is the right kind of fellowship.
The church is designed to provide that fellowship. It is the corporate expression of the Christian life. No corporate life; no Christian life. The idea that you can be a solitary Christian without corporate relation with the church has been proved false by the facts. I have watched it across the years. Those who try this soon have Christianity fade out of them, and then they fade out of the picture. Strong, outgoing, contagious character is nourished within the church, even with all its faults.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 48, Sunday)
The Only Redeeming Agency
Ephesians 5:25-27
We now come to the last portion of the definition: “Conversion is the penitent, receptive response to the saving divine initiative in Christ, resulting in a change, gradual or sudden, by which one passes from the kingdom of self to the kingdom of God and becomes a part of a living fellowship, the church.” Note the last portion: “And becomes part of a living fellowship, the church.”
Suppose one tries to take the conversion without the fellowship, of church. Will it work? Across the years I have found that where the fellowship of the church fades out, conversion and its fruits fade out. . . .
A. J. Muste, after leaving the church for Marxian communism, came back to it. “I return to the church,” he said, “because these years have taught me that the church of the redeemed is the only redeeming agency” (quoted in Federal Council Bulletin, 1937).
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 8, Friday)
The Society of the Forgiven and the Forgiving
Ephesians 2:19
The church has many critics but no rivals in the work of human redemption. There isn’t a spot on earth—from the frozen north to tropical islands of the seas—where they have allowed us to go that we haven’t gone with schools, hospitals, orphan asylums, leper asylums, the gospel—everything to lift the soul, the mind, the body of the people. No other institution has done anything like it. . . .
I said to myself, “I’ve been hard on the church, but with all its faults, it holds the best of humanity within itself. So I’m for it.” . . .
The church is made up of Christians-in-the-making. The church should be the society of the forgiven and forgiving.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 8, Saturday)
A Group that Cares, Shares, and Dares
Matthew 22:15-16
A good description of a church . . . is that a church is a group that cares, shares, and dares. But first it cares. Friedrich von Hügel’s definition of “a Christian is one who cares” [no published source found] is a profound one. And the more Christianized, the wider and deeper the caring. The real Christian cares for everybody, even for enemies.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 44, Thursday)
From Preparation, to Promise, to Performance
Ephesians 5:24-27
In the opening chapters of Acts the church is not mentioned either by Jesus or by the disciples, for it was not yet born. Even by the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost the church was not born.
So when we say that Pentecost was the birthday of the church, this is only partly true. Forces were loosed that produced the church through producing the Fellowship, the koinonia. The koinonia became the soul of the church. Out of it the church grew. It was the organism out of which grew the organization. And where there is no fellowship, no koinonia, there is no church.
Mastery
(Week 3, Sunday)
Intellectually Mature, Emotionally Immature
1 Corinthians 2:10-12
The church today is in large measure halfway between Easter and Pentecost and is behind closed doors in fear. The grandest good news that ever broke upon human ears had broken freshly upon them: Jesus was alive, yet that didn’t free them; they were still locked behind closed doors.
Mastery
(Week 4, Saturday)
2 Corinthians 3:16-18
We have seen that the difference between modern church life and [that presented in] the Acts is in the place the Holy Spirit occupies. In Acts, the Spirit was in control of life, and in modern church life the attempt is made to control the Holy Spirit in the interests of success. The Spirit is called in only to help out. We are at the center, and the Spirit is to help us. So he silently stays away—on those terms. We frustrate the grace of God and remain frustrated. Then we question whether Christianity will work. The truth is we are not working it.
The position of the church in regard to the Holy Spirit is like that of a man who courts a girl, admires her, enjoys her fellowship, but stops there and doesn’t invite her to be his wife, to come into his home and take charge of it, to live out life with him. All else is preliminary to this; if it doesn’t happen, there is a halfwayness, a frustration. The church has companionship with the Holy Spirit, seeks the Spirit’s counsel, adores the Spirit—does everything but ask God’s Spirit in to take over the within, including the subconscious.
Mastery
(Week 13, Saturday)
The Koinonia
Ephesians 4:1-6
Many think it was the church that was born at Pentecost. There is no evidence from the Scriptures that this was so. The writer of the Acts seems to be at a loss to say just what it was the converts were coming into, “The Lord added daily to thecommunity those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47 CEB). “Many who heard the word became believers, and their number grew to about five thousand” (4:4 CEB). . . . The word church is not used in the Acts until the eighth chapter: “And on that day a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem” (v. 1). This koinonia, or fellowship, was antecedent to the church and formed the soul of the church. The description of the fellowship is found in Acts 2:42: “The believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the community [koinonia], to their shared meals, and to their prayers.”
Mastery
(Week 18, Friday)
The Relation of the Koinonia to the Church
Ephesians 5:25-27
The fellowship, or koinonia, was antecedent to and formed the soul of the church. Out of it the church grew. . . .
This brings an important truth to light: Where there is the fellowship, the koinonia, there is the church. But where the fellowship is absent, there we have an organization but no organism. We have a body but no soul—we have a corpse.
Where the Holy Spirit is, there is the fellowship—the fellowship of the Spirit—and where there is the fellowship, there is the church. In other words, where the Holy Spirit is, there is the church; and conversely, where the Holy Spirit is not, there is not the church.
Mastery
(Week 18, Saturday)
The Relationship of the Kingdom and the Church
Ephesians 2:17-22
Out of this koinonia, the fellowship, came the ecclesia, the church.
But there was something beyond and above both the fellowship and the church, and that was the kingdom. The kingdom was best seen in the church as it, in turn, embodied the fellowship, but it was not to be identified with the kingdom. The kingdom is the absolute; the fellowship and the church are relatives. They are related to something higher than themselves—the kingdom. The kingdom is not related to something higher; it is the absolute order confronting all relatives with an offer of grace and demanding complete surrender and obedience. “Seek [first God’s] kingdom, and these things shall be yours as well” (Luke 12:31 RSV). The kingdom is first; all else, including the fellowship and the church, is to be related to it. If they become first, they become idolatry; for where a relative order becomes an absolute order, there is idolatry. The fellowship and the church are not ends but means to the ends of the kingdom.
You cannot go out and say, “Repent, for the church is at hand.” It would sound absurd. But it doesn’t sound absurd when you say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For we feel that here we are confronted with the Absolute to which all life must be related or perish. The church contains the best life of the kingdom but cannot be identified with the kingdom. “Christ is the head of the church, that is the savior of the body” (Eph 5:23 CEB). Christ saves the church but not the kingdom. The kingdom is salvation; it offers salvation to all, including the church. The church must lose its life in the kingdom and then it finds itself again. But if it saves its life—makes itself the end—then it loses itself. The fellowship within it dies; and when that dies, the church is dead. The kingdom is universal, for all worlds; the church is particular, for this world.
Mastery
(Week 19, Monday)
Our Spiritual Roots Are in Antioch
Acts 13:1-3
The roots of our spiritual lives are in Antioch, not in Jerusalem. The missionary journeys Paul and Barnabas took were begun in and continued to be centered in Antioch. Those journeys took them into Europe and laid the foundation of the Christian faith there, and from there we got it. Antioch is the mother of our spirits. We can well be proud of our spiritual heritage, for the marks of Christ were truly on this church. We must see ourselves in the light of it. As someone has said, “It is the depravity of institutions and movements that, given in the beginning to express life, they often end in throttling that very life, so they need recurrent criticism, constant readjustment, and a perpetual bringing back to original purposes and spirit.” This is particularly true of the Christian movement and more particularly of the Christian church. We must see what the pattern of the New Testament church really is before we can make our churches into its image.
Mastery
(Week 19, Wednesday)
The Center of Gravity in the Pew
Acts 6:8-10
We come now to look at the church at Antioch as having within it the marks of the New Testament church.
We must note first of all what went into the makings of that church. It was founded by the lay group that was scattered through the persecution that arose over the martyrdom of Stephen. . . . The founding of the church by a lay group is important. It put Christianity just where it ought to be—not in the profession but in the person. . . . No movement is strong unless it is a lay movement. If the church is organized around the minister, it is a weak church. The center of gravity must be not in the pulpit but in the pew. The minister must be the guide, the stimulator, the spiritualizer, of an essentially lay movement. Every Christian must be the bearer of the good news.
The Antioch church was a lay church.
Mastery
(Week 19, Thursday)
The Mark of the Cross upon the Church
1 Corinthians 2:1-2
The second thing that went into the founding of that church was the fact that it was founded by people who suffered for their faith. . . . The church at Antioch had the marks of the cross upon it—people who suffered for their faith founded it. If our faith is costing us nothing, it will be worth nothing. “As soon as we cease to bleed, we cease to bless” (John Henry Jowett, A Passion for Souls [New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1905], 30). . . . The blood of the martyrs became the seed of the church.
The third thing that went into founding this church was an international mind. . . . Jews who came down from Jerusalem spoke the gospel to the Jews only, but the group from Cyprus and Cyrene spoke also to the Greeks. . . .
This bringing of the international mind into the making of the church at Antioch was important; for when God wanted to get the church to send out Paul and Barnabas on their missions to the Gentiles, God found an international mind ready to be guided.
Mastery
(Week 19, Friday)
Barnabas, a Great Man Because a Good Man
Acts 4:36-37
We note the fourth thing that went into the founding of the church at Antioch. It was Barnabas. “When the church in Jerusalem heard about this, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw evidence of God’s grace, he was overjoyed and encouraged everyone to remain fully committed to the Lord. Barnabas responded in this way because he was a good man, whom the Holy Spirit had endowed with exceptional faith” (Acts 11:22-24 CEB).
The church at Jerusalem did here what they did in Samaria, they sent down representatives to regularize what they could not produce. The lay group produced the spiritual movements, and the apostles attempted to regularize them. They were trying to keep up. Be that as it may, they could not have sent a better man than Barnabas, a man who was always taking hold of people whom no one else would take and making them over again. He took Paul when the disciples at Jerusalem were afraid of him, and introduced him. He took John Mark when Paul refused to have anything to do with him, and made him over again so that Paul was later glad to have him back.
When Barnabas “saw evidence of God’s grace”—saw it incarnate in a group—he rejoiced. He was big enough to rejoice in the work of another. Some of us are not. And when he saw the type of Christianity produced here, he conceived the idea of exposing the young man Saul to this type of Christianity. “Barnabas went to Tarsus in search of Saul. When he found him, he brought him to Antioch” (Acts 11:25-26 CEB). This simple statement was one of the most important things in history. For exposing Paul to the type of Christianity in Antioch determined the type of Christianity we would get in the West through his missionary work in funding the faith among us. . . . This Christianity was the closest approximation to the Christianity of Christ that had emerged. It was a stroke of spiritual genius on the part of Barnabas to expose Paul to Antioch. We must remain forever grateful to him.
Mastery
(Week 19, Saturday)
The Strong Corporate Sense of the Church
Romans 12:4-8
We have seen the things that went into the making of the church at Antioch. We must now turn to the authentic marks of Christ as seen in that church.
First, the church had a strong corporate sense. They were not a group of individuals coming together periodically to worship, then returning home. They were an organism, not merely an organization. The koinonia, the fellowship, was at the basis of this church. How do we know? Two things let us see into its heart. The account says of Paul and Barnabas, “For a whole year they [were guests of] the church” (Acts 11:26 RSV). They were not the guests of a rich individual in the church, but the guests of the whole church.
The next thing that lets us understand the corporate sense of the church was the fact that when they fasted and prayed, the Holy Spirit could speak to the whole church and say, “Appoint Barnabas and Saul to the work I have called them to undertake” (Acts 13:2 CEB). They listened and obeyed as a corporate entity. They were so attuned to one another and to God that they heard corporately and acted corporately. . . .
The faith spread partly by its message and partly by the fact that the ancient society was decaying; a feeling of spiritual insecurity was pervading it. This new society in the church was an un-decaying society in the midst of a decaying society. So people pressed into it for spiritual security. Here they found love across all race and class lines; here they found a people who cared—for everybody. . . . When they joined this society, they inwardly felt: This is it. I’ve found ultimate reality in human relations.
Mastery
(Week 20, Sunday)
The Material an Expression of the Spiritual
1 Corinthians 15:46-49
We come now to the second mark: this strong corporate sense was not confined to the spiritual; it included the material. . . . .
The apostles at Jerusalem separated the spiritual from the material, said they would give themselves to the spiritual and turn over the material to others. . . . The material is part of life; and if you put it out the door, it will come back by the window. . . . The “spiritual” apostles were dependent on the “material” laity. So the church at Antioch was in line with Jesus, who taught, healed, and fed people as a part of the coming of the kingdom. This was Jesus succession instead of apostolic succession. . . .
And they sent “everyone. . . according to each person’s abundance.” Note “according to each person’s abundance”; a sound basis for giving, the only basis for real giving. And note “everyone”; they were all in with all they had. They really went to church!
The test of the reality of the spiritual is whether it functions in material terms. If it doesn’t, it is unreal.
Mastery
(Week 20, Monday)
A New Race Made Up of All Races
Colossians 3:10-11
We have been noting the characteristic marks of the New Testament church as seen in the church at Antioch. We now come to the next mark: the church was without race and class—a raceless and classless society. . . .
This church was a church beyond race. A new race was emerging, made up of all races. We can see how far we’ve come from that original church when I remind you that in Jaffna, Ceylon, in the early days, there was a mission church with two pulpits: a higher pulpit from which the white man preached and a lower pulpit from which the Ceylonese preached, and there was no interchange. . . . A burgher (mixed blood) wanted to enter the ministry; but since he was not “white,” he would have had to speak from the lower pulpit. He refused to accept this position, gave up the idea of the ministry, and became attorney general for all Ceylon.
Now there is one pulpit in that church, from which I have spoken. But the picture of the two pulpits is a symbol of the divided gospel we have been preaching on race. In the early church there was no division on the line of race—a person was a person, one for whom Christ died. They had the kingdom of God, and we have had the kingdom of Race.
A religion that is identified with the superiority or the supremacy of one race is a backward eddy in the stream of history where people of all races and all colors flow toward oneness in community.
Mastery
(Week 20, Tuesday)
Blending the Conservative and the Radical
Matthew 5:17-20
Another mark—the church held together in a living blend the radical and the conservative. The account says, “The church at Antioch included prophets [radicals] and teachers [conservatives]” (Acts 13:1 CEB).
[Both prophets and teachers] have a function in human society. All progress is made between the tension of the two. . . . But between the pull back of the conservative and the pull ahead of the radical we make progress in a middle direction.
The church should hold within its ample bosom and cherish and appreciate both. . . . Life is bigger than conservatism and bigger than radicalism, but it includes both and goes beyond each.
The tragedy in American church life is that we have allowed a split to run straight through the denominations on this issue. We are fast dividing up into two camps: the conservative and the liberal. We are becoming two camps instead of one fellowship of the Spirit. Each needs the other. Each must spiritually cross-fertilize the other. For each is weak without the other. The strong person is the conservative-radical and the radical-conservative.
Mastery
(Week 20, Thursday)
Holding Together Strong Men Who Differ
1 Corinthians 3:3-9
We continue to look at the incarnation of the kingdom of God as seen in the church at Antioch. The next thing we note about that church is it held together strong people who differed on principles and persons—Paul and Barnabas.
An issue arose over taking Mark with them on the second missionary journey. He had turned back from Pamphylia. Why? Was he weak-kneed, homesick—the usual explanations? There is another: “John [Mark] was with them as their assistant” (Acts 13:5 CEB). Or as the King James Version puts it: “to their minister,” to minister to or serve them. Mark might have been, not an equal partner but a glorified servant—at best an assistant instead of associate minister. They put him in a subordinate place; then Paul complains he left them. The relationship was basically wrong in the new society, a remnant of the old. John Mark pulled out and came back the equal associate of Barnabas.
We often complain of people being unhappy and unadjusted in situations we have made for them, unjust situations. The fault is not in the persons but in the basic injustice of the situation we have created.
Paul argued they should keep the movement clean; they had to purge John [Mark], who turned back. Barnabas argued they should keep the movement redemptive; they didn’t break a man because he made one blunder. Both ideas were good: one that the movement must be pure, the other that the movement must be redemptive. They parted over these principles—“in irritation,” says Moffatt (15:39)—Paul taking Silas and Barnabas taking John Mark. But in the midst of that unhappy situation is this bright spot, “being commended by the brethren to the grace of the Lord” (Acts 15:40). The punctuation would imply both groups were commended to the grace of the Lord, as if to say, “You both need the grace of the Lord!” The church held both groups within its loving bosom. When they returned, they both returned to Antioch—the home of their souls. The church held together in its love and interest strong men who differed widely; it was the reconciling place of the strong. The church should do that today!
Mastery
(Week 20, Friday)
A Fellowship of the Spiritually Contagious
2 Timothy 4:1, 5
We now come to another mark of Christ upon the church at Antioch—it was redemptive. A spiritual contagion was inherent in early Christianity. “The Lord’s power was with them, and a large number came to believe and turned to the Lord. . . . A considerable number of people were added to the Lord . . . teaching large numbers of people” (Acts 11:21, 24, 26 CEB). Evangelism was something, not imposed on the church, but exposed out of the very heart of the situation. It was endemic.
The evangelism was so potent that it evangelized the evangelists, including Paul. . . . If the Christian fellowship of Antioch had not burned up [his] Hebrew bonds, [Paul] would probably never have been the missionary and evangelist to all races. He may have been born a Jew but was reborn a brother of all.
I love to feel, though it is not said, that Antioch had a living part in the remaking of Mark. It did indirectly through Barnabas, who was influenced by the Antioch church. Certainly Mark emerged a new man, so much so that Paul, after years apart, wrote, “Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry” (2 Tim 4:11 KJV). I like to think this version is correct; he was profitable “for the ministry.” He started out ministering to Paul and Barnabas—they used him—but here he is profitable for the ministry of Christ. The angle and the attitude had changed, and Mark gladly came to Paul.
The church at Antioch redeemed everything it touched. For at its heart was the Spirit of Jesus, and he is redemption. The church today must be just that: a society of the being redeemed and a society of the redeeming. It should be the fulfillment of the question of the Korean woman, who knocked on the church door and asked, “Is this the place where they mend broken hearts?” It should mend broken hearts, broken homes, and broken people.
Mastery
(Week 20, Saturday)
Romans 8:1-2
Secondhand religion is always overpowered by firsthand evil. The comparative impotence of the church is caused by the secondhand nature of its religion. Its religion is in creeds, in rituals, in books, in services, in prayers; but it is not a fountain of firsthand living experience of Jesus.
Mastery
(Week 34, Thursday)
There Is No Dilemma
Acts 18:14-17
We come now to a modern answer to the dilemma “What shall we do?” The modern answer says, “Go to church.” This answer is good; but if it stops there, it is not good enough. It may result in a spiritual stalemate, a secondhandedness in religion, with the feeling that there is something missing. It leaves one walking in a fog of dimness and uncertainty. . . .
In the Acts, going to church was not the means of salvation; it was the result of salvation. They just couldn’t stay away, for Christ was there! To stay away was to miss him.
Mastery
(Week 39, Wednesday)
They Might Be with Him
Mark 3:13-15
Being “with him” (Mark 3:14) while he was here on earth deepened into the koinonia after Jesus left the disciples. This koinonia—literally, “fellowship”—emerged from Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit. The church was not born at Pentecost; the church came later. . . . The koinonia was the organism out of which the church became the organization. What the soul is to the body, so the koinonia is to the church. Without the koinonia the church is soulless. But a body without a soul is a corpse. Without this inner fellowship, the koinonia, the church is a mere body of doctrine and worship; it is dead. The church is mature as an institution to the degree it can and does produce the koinonia!
Christian Maturity
(Monday, Week 11)
Three Cardinal Urges
Acts 2:46-47
If churches or individual Christians lose their power to convert, they have lost the right to be called Christian. If we cease to be evangelistic, we will soon cease to be evangelical, for it is a law of the mind that that which is not expressed dies. . . .
If we fail to win others to Christ and to the church, there will be no Church in the future. When we of the church today die, the church dies with us, unless the church of tomorrow has been won in the meantime. If you, as a member of the church, fail to win someone else, you have a part in the death of the church. If others fail with you there will be no Christian church one hundred years from now. Every year your church loses many from its membership through unconcern, change of address, or death. If you do not win at least that many new Christians, your church is dying. . . .
If you think you can live as a Christian in a private world of your own, you are an idiot. For that is what the word idiot literally means, one who lives in a private world. There are no private worlds in Christianity.
Christian Maturity
(Week 45, Monday)
One Body in Christ
Everybody who belongs to Christ belongs to everybody who belongs to Christ. One may betray that relationship, but you cannot deny it, for it is inherent. The inspired record puts it: “so we . . . are one body in Christ” (Rom 12:5). Not “ought to be,” or “are called to be,” or “must recognize ourselves as such,” but “are one body in Christ.” You are in that body, and you can’t get out of that body without getting out of Christ. As long as you stay in Christ you are in one body.
That doesn’t mean that we are all to be in one church—my church or your church—to be in the “one body.” The text says: “so we, though many, are one body in Christ” (Rom 12:5). It provides for the “many” and the “one.” The New Testament knows of many churches, but knows of one church. The many churches were branches of the one church. They were the local expression of the one universal church. The modern idea of many churches—separate, sovereign, independent—is unknown in the New Testament. It is utterly foreign to the New Testament. Paul cried out when separate denominationalism put up its head: “Is Christ divided” (1 Cor 1:13)? If you are in Christ, you are in one body.
In Christ
(Week 11, Tuesday)
The Marks of a Christian Church
Romans 12:6-8
We have many modern discussions on the nature of the church. . . . We see [the church first] at Antioch: “And in Antioch the disciples were for the first time called Christians” (Acts 11:26).
In those days they gave names according to characteristics. . . . So at Antioch a name was given that fitted the group. The characteristics of Christ were in this group, so they are called “Christ-ians.” The group formed a Christian church; the words “Christian church” become flesh. We must examine its marks.
First, it was essentially a lay church. It was founded by laypersons, and laypersons constituted and carried on the church. That made it true to the essential nature of Christianity as a lay movement. . . . This church was founded by a lay group, scattered under the persecution which arose over Stephen, a layman. That fixed the New Testament church as a lay church. Jesus and the disciples were laymen, no hands having been laid on them in ordination, and the Seven, the lay group, became the center of spiritual contagion. Paul, a layman, became the spearhead of this lay movement. The Christian movement continued a lay movement until the third century when it was changed into a clerical movement and the laymen were pushed to the margin.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 35, Sunday)
Next Great Spiritual Awakening Will Come through the Laity
Acts 17:24-27
The word laos in Greek, from which the word laity comes, means literally, “the chosen people of God”; the laity were “the chosen people of God,” not only by language derivation but by divine appointment and intention. And this conception and practice held there until the Council of Nicea, when the church authorities made it into a church of bishops and clergy, and laypeople were relegated to the margin. . . . This was perhaps the greatest tragedy that ever struck the church. Revival will come only when the New Testament emphasis on the laity is rediscovered. The next great spiritual awakening will come through the laity. The clergy will be the guides and spiritualizers of an essentially lay movement.
Second, the New Testament church had the marks of the cross upon it. It was established by a lay group that had suffered for its faith. . . . Their faith had cost them something, so it was worth something. If the lay group is to be the center again of the Christian movement, it will again cost them something to be Christian. Then and then only will it be worth something.
Third, the church at Antioch was founded by people who made it interracial. The Jewish laymen from Jerusalem preached only to the Jews, but laymen from Cyrene and Cyprus, with larger racial contacts and sympathies, preached the Word among the Greeks. So the church was made up of Jews and Greeks. And blacks. “Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger”—literally “the black.” Simeon was not on the margins, just tolerated; he was a “prophet” or “teacher” and laid his hands on Barnabas and Paul. So Barnabas and Paul were commissioned or ordained by a black man to preach the gospel to white Europe (Acts 13:1).
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 35, Monday)
The Marks of Barnabas and Paul Were upon This New Testament Church
Acts 9:19-22; 26-28
Fourth, this New Testament church had the marks of Barnabas upon it. Those in church at Jerusalem were wise in sending a layman like Barnabas. Had one of the apostles been sent, it would have interrupted the lay character of the Antioch church. This choice fitted in. For Barnabas was one of the most beautiful characters in the New Testament. He was a man, a Levite, from Cyprus, who sold a field and laid the proceeds at the apostles’ feet. . . .
He encouraged everybody. He took Paul when the authorities at Jerusalem were afraid of him and presented him as real. And he took John Mark when Paul refused to take him. He was big-souled. “When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad” (Acts 11:23); he could rejoice in the work of others. . . . The spirit of Barnabas went into the making of this New Testament church.
Fifth, the spirit of Paul went into the church and the spirit of this church went into Paul. When Barnabas saw this type of Christianity, he said to himself, “This is the kind of Christianity that young man Saul needs. I must expose him to it.” So he went off to Tarsus, sought out Saul, and brought him to Antioch. One of the best things Barnabas ever did. The church and Paul cross-fertilized each other and both were enriched.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 35, Tuesday)
A Church That Cared
Acts 15:7-11
Sixth, the church at Antioch was a church that cared. Friedrich von Hügel has defined a Christian as “one who cares” [no published source found]. Well, the Antioch church was Christian, for it cared, cared that the believers in Judea were in need of economic help. “And the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brethren who lived in Judea” (Acts 11:29). That caring was a pattern for the church of the ages. . . .
Seventh, their spirituality functioned in material terms and also in social terms. In the church at Antioch there was Simeon, a black man, and also “Manean, a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch” (Acts 13:1). Not only were racial distinctions transcended but social distinctions. Manean was from high society, and Simeon was probably from a much lower class. But here race and class distinctions were canceled; a person was a person for whom Christ died. The Christian faith is class-blind and race-blind.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 35, Wednesday)
The Conservative and the Radical
Luke 5:35-39
Eighth, the church at Antioch held within itself the conservative and the radical. The account says: “Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers” (Acts 13:1). The “teachers” are usually the conservative element in society, passing on the lessons and values of the past to the next generation. The “prophets” are usually the radicals, wanting to apply those lessons and values to wider and wider areas of life. There is usually a tension in every group and society between these two, the conservatives pulling back and the radicals pulling ahead.
But these two are necessary for any progressive society; we need to conserve values, and we need to apply values to larger and larger areas of life. . . .
Jesus was a living blend of conservative and radical. He said: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt 5:17). And then he presented the kingdom of God, which demanded total change. He was conservative and radical. The church must be the same.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 35, Thursday)
Collective Guidance
Luke 3:1-3
Ninth, the church was sufficiently united so the group as a group could receive collective guidance. “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’” (Acts 13:2). Here was a group so attuned to God and so attuned to each other that the Holy Spirit could give them a united guidance. We would have thrown it open to debate, then have taken a vote, and the majority would have ruled. This would have left a disgruntled minority. But their method of guidance was different, they desired to come a common mind—and did—under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28); that was the classic phrase that characterized the early church. . . .
The [Antiochian] church, unlike the modern church, did not insist on their label being put on the sending [of missionaries]. They did not say, “Missionaries, sent out by the Antioch Church, through the Holy Spirit.” We would have had our denominational labels, prominently displayed. There is no limit to the good you can do provided you do not seek credit for it. That church asked for no credit and forgot themselves into immortality.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 35, Friday)
Held Together in Spite of Difference
1 Corinthians 12:12-26
Tenth, this church held together good people who honestly differed, held them in spite of difference. Paul and Barnabas had a contention—a contention over taking John Mark on another journey when he deserted them on the first journey. . . .
The account says: “And there arose a sharp contention, so that they separated from each other; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and departed, being commended by the brethren to the grace of the Lord” (Acts 15:39-40). That “being commended by the brethren by the grace of the Lord” is a part of one sentence and could refer to both Barnabas and Mark and Paul and Silas. In other words they held together brethren in difference. They commended both to the grace of the Lord—and they both needed it!
These ten marks of a Christian church showed that the church at Antioch was the Word become flesh in a group. No wonder they were first called Christians at Antioch. This group was an organism of the Holy Spirit. Without these ten marks the church is an organization of humans—the Word become word. Hence powerless.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 35, Saturday)
2 Corinthians 9:9-12
In the early church there were two breakings of bread: one, the bread of the Communion, and the other, the bread of the love feast. The first symbolized our sharing his broken body; the second symbolized the sharing of our bread with our brothers and sisters, Communion with God and communion with people. The last dropped out of church practice, the first remained. It was easier to accept what God did than to accept what we must do.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 44, Tuesday)
The Kingdom and the Church
Ephesians 5:25-27
[While at an altar of a church, I found Jesus Christ,] but you are not saved by the church. If the church is the subject of redemption, how then can it dispense it? “Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior” (Eph 5:23). If the church needs saving, how can it give salvation? If the church takes you by the hand and takes you beyond itself to the feet of the Savior, it is wonderful. But if it stops you at itself and makes itself the issue, it is not wonderful, it is idolatry. The kingdom is the absolute, the church is the relative. The kingdom commands, the church obeys. The church loses its life in the life of the kingdom and finds itself again.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 46, Sunday)
“O Jesus, If It Weren’t for You I’d Not Be a Christian Five Minutes”
Colossians 1:11-14
A very sensitive and dedicated Christian, after a deep disappointment in some of her trusted colleagues, threw herself on her bed and cried, “O Jesus, if it weren’t for you I’d not be a Christian five minutes.” He held her steady through that letdown. I believe in the church because I believe in Jesus. He is redeeming it, and redeeming it the hard way. And that church will stand before him without spot or wrinkle.
But to talk about the church now as though it were the body of Christ is unrealistic. Today it is the crucified body of Christ, crucified on the cross of its own unfaithfulness. And we must suffer, as Paul did, to help make up a share of Christ’s sufferings for this crucified body. We must feel faithless in its faithlessness, feel a sense of shame in its shameless betrayal, be crucified in its self-imposed crucifixion, and be humiliated in its pride.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 46, Friday)