Week 45 Sunday
Week 45 Sunday
The Marks of a Christian Church
Ephesians 5:25-27; 1 Timothy 3:14-15
We studied last week the marks of a Christian. We must now go a step further and look at the marks of a Christian church. For the Way is not the solitary way; it is the social way. “To be is to be in relationship.” And church relations are the best of our planet. If you wipe out the church today, you will have to put something in its place tomorrow, for it is rooted in the necessities of human living. 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 earth with schools, hospitals, orphanages, churches—everything to lift the soul of the human race to higher levels. While divorces are now one out of four as a general average, there is only one out of fifty among church people.*
So the Way is a way of association, of corporate living under the spirit of Jesus. When the spirit of Jesus is brought to bear upon corporate living, what kind of a society emerges? To see a society that has been Christianized, let us turn to Antioch. In Antioch, the Christian spirit first came to its own in corporate living. It was no mere chance that “it was at Antioch . . . that the disciples were first called ‘Christians’ ” (Acts 11:26 Moffatt). The name was not just a label stuck on them, for names were given in those days according to characteristics, and if the characteristics changed, the name changed. Barnabas was called Joseph, literally “One More” (see Acts 4:36). He probably belonged to a large family, and when they came down to him, they ran out of names and called him Joseph, “One More.” But when he fully surrendered to God, he was not merely “one more”; he was a whole multiplication table; he was a plus; so they called him Barnabas, “Son of Encouragement.” It was his dominant characteristic. James and John, before being changed, were called Boanerges, “Sons of Thunder.” They were tempestuous, their characteristic. So when the people saw the disciples at Antioch, they could think of but one characteristic: they were Christians. The characteristics of Christ were dominant and determinative. In Antioch, the Christian way came into its own. It did not come into its own in Jerusalem.
O Christ, I thank you that your characteristics live in people. Let them live in me, in us as a society. For your way is the Way for the corporate life as well as the individual. Let your Spirit possess and rule us. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “In him you are yourselves built into this to form a habitation for God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:22 Moffatt).
*These rates were current in 1946. Today, the rate of divorce among both Christians and non-Christians is closer to 50 percent.
Week 45 Monday
The Making of a Christian Church
Acts 4:32-37; 1 Thessalonians 3:3-4
We saw yesterday that the Christian way did not come to its own in Jerusalem. Why? Well, Jerusalem never quite got over being Jewish. Everything in Jerusalem was limited by that fact. Peter was a product of Jerusalem, and when he went to Gentiles, he went with reservations. He ate with them, but drew back if anyone from Jerusalem was looking. Paul was a product not of Jerusalem but of Antioch, so when he went to Gentiles, he went with no inhibitions. The Gentiles accepted him as “the apostle to the Gentiles.” Peter never became a world evangelist; he was caught in a particular culture and never quite got free. The roots of 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 all of the West.
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.
O Christ, give me largeness of heart and the disposition to rejoice in what others do for the kingdom. For it is the kingdom that matters. Then take from my spirit all pettiness. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today I shall not be, as some Africans say, “A small-date man.” I shall be large in spirit and outlook.
Week 45 Tuesday
A Strong Corporate Sense
Romans 12:3-10
We noted yesterday that Barnabas brought his own great spirit to this church at Antioch. He also brought to it Paul. When he saw this kind of a Christian church, he said to himself, “This is the place to bring up that young man Saul. So he “went off to Tarsus to look for Saul” (Acts 11:26 Moffatt). To bring Saul to Antioch was a great stroke of Christian genius, for it determined the nature of the Christianity that spread from it in the person of Paul. Paul’s nature was changed by Antioch, so after Antioch his name was changed to Paul. The stamp of Antioch was upon Paul.
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.
Sydney Cave says, “The early preachers of Christianity could not get used to the wonder of the gospel, nor to the wonder of the church.”* Men and women crowded into this undecaying society for the sake of salvation. Yes, and also for the sake of security—mental and spiritual and social security. People want to feel they “belong.” Without that belonging, there is a sense of orphanage, of spiritual loneliness. The church of today must regain that sense of corporateness, of being a society that has meaning for all life, that when people belong to it they belong to something that has present and ultimate meanings.
O Holy Spirit, indwell us by your power and life, so that we may have a sense of togetherness—a sense that when one is hurt, all are hurt, and that when one rejoices, all rejoice. Give us the sense of a body. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Help us this day as a group not merely to talk about the kingdom of God but to be the kingdom of God—in miniature.
*Sydney Cave, born in 1883, was an English Congregational minister, theologian, and author. No published source was found for this quotation.
Week 45 Wednesday
The Worth of a Person as a Person
Philippians 2:1-11
We come to the next mark of a Christian church: (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.” 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 (Acts 13:1 Moffatt). 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. But the church later could sing:
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.*
The early church would have choked on that. 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, the Communists will beat us to it. Communism’s astonishing spread leads Harold Laski, the brains of the Labour party in Britain, to say that it is going to replace Christianity, for it has a passion for people, the common people. 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, and their environment. Is there class in a real home? How can there be? For love is equal and equalizing. The early church was a home; hence, there was no class. Where Christ is, class is not.
O Christ of the all-embracing love, give us again the love that loves all and loves equally. Your love is so utterly class-blind. Give us your love. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Since I have “a faith of equal privilege” (2 Pet. 1:1 Moffatt), I shall give equal privilege to all.
*Cecil Frances Alexander, Hymns for Little Children (London: Masters, 1887), 27. This is an additional verse of the hymn we know as “All Things Bright and Beautiful.”
Week 45 Thursday
All Race and Class Barriers Removed
2 Corinthians 8:13-15; Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11
We come to the next mark of a Christian church: (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. People were not just tolerated, on the edge, 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 based on 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. They didn’t do what an African poem depicts:
The full-bellied child
Says to the empty-bellied child,
“Be of good cheer.”
They shared the total life, including the economic. They did it out of Christian impulse. We must now harness these impulses into constructive planning, a planning that will make a cooperative order, a society of each for all and all for each. The outer wars are the outer expression of an inner war constantly taking place in society, at the basis of life, the economic. That place must be Christianized. If not, then we will be marginally Christianized and centrally paganized. A civilization saves or damns its soul by the way it wins its bread.
O Christ, who turned the hearts of your early followers to this way of organized love, turn our hearts too, that we may put love at the center of our living. Then we shall be truly Christian. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Let the church be organized love—from all to all.
Week 45 Friday
Holding Together Conservative and Radical
Romans 12:9-16
The next mark of a Christian church is: (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.
O you, who are gathering up the ages, gather us up and make us one, one in spite of difference, perhaps because of difference. For in you all things cohere. Hold us together in a coherent whole. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall be a conservative in my faith and a radical in its application.
Week 45 Saturday
Holding Together Strong People
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
We come to the next mark of a Christian church: (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 a split into 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! Better than some that now produce a new one! But the church at Antioch held them in an 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). 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 us. When the church listens to the Holy Spirit, it becomes creative. New movements are born.
O God, we surrender to you and listen to you. Make us creative. Help us to bring new souls and new movements into being. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today there is a power working in me—“a power which operates with the strength of the might which he exerted in raising Christ” (Eph. 1:19 Moffatt).