True Spirituality

  In words and practice the Church must also, as a corporate body, show that it takes holiness and love, and love and com­munication seriously. And how can it do this unless it con­sciously practices holiness and love, and love and com­munication, both toward those inside the church group and those Christians outside their group?

  In short, if the Church or other Christian group as a cor­porate body does not consciously seek freedom from the bonds of sin, and freedom from the results of the bonds of sin, on the basis of the finished work of Christ in the power of the Spirit by faith, how can it teach these things with integrity in words, and how can it teach these things at all by exhibition? And if the church, group, mission, or whatever it is, does not care enough to function in this way as a corporate body in its in­ternal relations, as brothers and sisters in Christ; and then in its external human relationships to those outside the group, how can we expect individual Christians to take these things seriously in their personal lives—in the husband-wife, parent-child, employer-employee, and other relationships?

  Thus the Church's or Christian group's methods are as im­portant as its message. It is to deal consciously with the reality of the supernatural. Anything that exhibits unfaith is a mis­take, or may even be corporate sin. The liberal theologians get rid of the supernatural in their teaching, but the unfaith of the evangelical can in practice get rid of the supernatural. May I put it like this? If I woke up tomorrow morning and found that all that the Bible teaches concerning prayer and the Holy Spirit were removed (not as a liberal would remove it, by misin­terpretation, but really removed) what difference would it make in practice from the way we are functioning today? The simple tragic fact is that in much of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ—the evangelical Church—there would be no dif­ference whatsoever. We function as though the supernatural were not there.

  If the Church does not show forth the supernatural in our generation, what will? The Lord's work done in the Lord's way does not relate only to the message, it relates also to the method. There must be something the world cannot explain away by the world's methods, or by applied psychology. And I am not at all speaking here of external, special manifestations of the Holy Spirit, I am thinking of the normal and universal promise to the Church concerning the work of the Spirit.

  Here are three things which are universal promises to the Church regarding the Holy Spirit. First: "But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and then you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all

  Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the world" (Acts 1:8). The word then is not there in the Greek, but surely the thrust of it is there. The Church is not supposed to be a witness in its own power, but the universal promise to the Church is that with the coming of the Holy Spirit there will be power.

  Second: there is a universal promise of the fruit of the Spirit: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit" (Galatians 5:22-25). If we have accepted Christ as Savior, we live in the Spirit, but let us walk in the Spirit. And these fruits of the Spirit are not some special thing; they are a universal promise, given to the Church.

  And the third thing that is universally promised concerning the Holy Spirit is that the raised and glorified Christ will be with the Church through the agency of the Holy Spirit: "And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, nei­ther knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you orphans: I will come to you" (John 14:16-18).

  Notice the words "I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you." The promise of Christ—crucified, risen, ascended, glorified—is that he will be with his Church, between the as­cension and his second coming, through the agency of the in-dwelling Holy Spirit. These are universal promises, made to the Church for our entire era.

  These are the things that the world should see when they look upon the Church—something that they cannot possibly explain away. The Church should be committed to the practical reality of these things, not merely assenting to them. There is a distinction between men, even converted men, building Christ's Church, and Christ building his Church through con­verted and consecrated men.

  Organizational and financial matters should not be allowed to get in the way of the personal and group leading of the Holy Spirit. There is no use talking of these things abstractly, without bringing them down to the real place where the battles are fought. Organizational and financial arrangements of the Church should not rule out faith or contradict the supernatural. They should not rule out the exhibition of the reality of the ex­istence of God. Throughout Church history, one is aware that the danger always comes at a time of emergency. An emer­gency arises which causes us to cut off the exhibition of faith, and discount the possibility of God guiding through financial matters. There always seems to be a legitimate reason for reaching out and steadying the ark. As Uzzah reached out to steady the ark, he thought he had a good reason for disobeying the word of God (2 Samuel 16:6, 7). At this point, he no longer trusted God to steady the ark. Might it not fall? Might not something of God's work and the glory of God be shaken? This danger often comes in organizational and financial emer­gencies, when it would seem for a moment that the glory of God is jeopardized.

  There is to be a moment-by-moment supernatural reality, for the group as well as for the individual. This is the really im­portant thing. In comparison to this, everything else is secon­dary. We tend to think of Christ building his invisible Church, and our building the visible Church. We tend to think in this kind of a dichotomy. So our building of the visible Church becomes much like any natural business function, using natu­ral means and natural motives. How many times do we find that in doing the business of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is a rapid opening prayer, a rapid closing prayer after half the peo­ple have left, but in between there is no difference between doing the Lord's business and the business of some well-or­ganized business enterprise?

  Instead of that we should always look to him, and always wait and pray for his leading, moment by moment. This is a different world. We will not do it very well—we will always be poor in this fallen world, until Jesus comes back. But the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ should be functioning moment by moment on a supernatural plane. This is the Church living by faith, and not in unfaith. This is the Church living prac­tically under Christ's leadership, rather than thinking of Christ being far off and building the invisible Church, while we build that which is at hand with our own wisdom and power. This places the Church in the supernatural battle, extending into the heavenlies, and not just in a natural battle. This raises the battle from being merely the battling of other organizations, other men, to a real battle of the Church in the total war, including the unseen war in the unseen portion of reality. This makes the Church the Church, and short of this, the Church is less than the Church. With the objective standard of the Word of God, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, in these areas we are to be yielded to Christ.

  Prayer now becomes something more than merely an ab­stract religious, devotional act. It is a place where the Church is the Church, and where Christ is in the midst in a special, defi­nite, and real way. Organization is not wrong; let us say this with force. Organization is clearly commanded in the Word of God, and it is needed in a fallen world. But it becomes wrong if it stands in the way of the conscious relationship of the Church to Christ. Simplicity of organization is therefore to be preferred, though at the same time it is all too easy to get one's eyes fixed on simplicity of organization and forget the reason for simplicity, which is that Christ may truly be the Head of the Church.

  In a fallen world there is
need of organization, and there is also need of Christian leadership. But the leaders, as office-bearers, stand in relationship to the Church of Jesus Christ, to the people of God, as brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as leaders. The Church as a whole, and the officers, are to func­tion consciously on the basis of each one being equal as created in the image of God, and as equal in the sense of being equally sinners redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. In this way, be­lieving in the priesthood of all true believers, believing in the supernaturally restored relationship among those who are brothers in Christ, believing in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in each individual Christian—organization and Chris­tian leadership do not stand in antithesis to true spirituality.

  With such a mentality in the Church we can also say some-thing about the attitude of loyalty. Loyalty in the Church of Christ should be in an increasing scale. To reverse the scale is to destroy the Church. The primary loyalty must be to God as God, on a personal level. This is personal loyalty to the person of the living God, and it is essential and first, above all other loyalties. So strongly do I feel this that I would put the second loyalty in a decreasing scale; loyalty to the principles of re­vealed Christianity. It is not that I would separate these prin­ciples of revealed Christianity from the personal God, but rather that it is because they are from him that they have any authority.

  Third in importance is loyalty to organizations, not because they have been called Church organizations and have had his­torical continuity for a certain number of years, centuries, or millennia, but only as far as they are biblically faithful. Below this, in fourth place, must be that which is often put first, and that is loyalty to human leadership. It must be kept in its proper order. To reverse the order is to be totally destructive. If loyalty to human leadership becomes central, we tend to show loyalty not even to our own organization (which would be hor­ribly limited in itself) but to our own little party within the or­ganization. But if, on the other hand, we keep our eyes on loy­alty to the personal God, as our "first love," we will tend to love, on a practical level, all those who are Christ's.

  Once more let us stress that the end to be attained in work­ing for the purity of the visible Church is loving relationship, first to God and then to our brothers. We must not forget that the final end is not what we are against, but what we are for.

  Let's bring all this down to our own level. Loving the whole Church is not just loving the whole Church facelessly, like the humanist man loving Man but caring little about the individu­al. As finite we cannot know the whole Church which is on the earth now, let alone the whole Church across all space and time. So what does it mean to "love the Church of Jesus Christ" in practice? It is very clearly laid out in the New Tes­tament that the Christians should meet in local congregations and groups. In these churches and groups the universal Church is cut down, as it were, to our own size. We can know each other on a person-to-person level and have person-to-person love and communication.

  God commands that we should assemble ourselves together, until Jesus comes (Hebrews 10:25). We are com­manded not only to meet together, but to help each other (verse 24). Christianity is an individual thing, but it is not only an individual thing. There is to be true community, offering true spiritual and material help to each other. In the New Tes­tament Church the love and community extended to their re­sponsibility under the leadership of the Holy Spirit to all the needs of life, including the material ones. In the local church, the Christians of that particular congregation are called upon to be in close contact personally. This is what stands under proper scrutiny—not only of men, but of God and the angels and demons in the unseen world. Many a Christian's child has been lost because they have seen nothing of real love and com­munication in that body where it may be scrutinized, in the Church "brought down to our size."

  This is important for modern man, who has lost his hu­manity. Modern man's problem is not getting to the stars; it is this loss of humanity. So here is something for modern man to look at: the interplay of true human beings in a group small enough for it to be practically possible. Of course there is an el­ement of danger in drawing our own family out of their sterilized little social circle. There is a danger that our own little stratified rightness of thought-forms and social circle will be challenged. But what else is the community of the saints to mean? It is not just a group of strangers sitting under a roof nor a set way of provincial thinking, but whatever has real val­ue being shaken down until eventually the real values become the values of the group and those in it. It is in this way that the upper-middle class aspect of the Church in all of our countries, which churchmen everywhere are disturbed about, can be real­ly changed: with the doors thrown open to the intellectuals, the working men, and the new pagans. There is a danger to our set ways, but within the structure of Scripture and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit there is a possibility of glory, too.

  The local church or Christian group should be right, but it should also be beautiful. The local group should be the example of the supernatural, of the substantially healed relationship in this present life between men and men.

  The early churches showed this on a local level. For ex-ample in Acts 2:42-46 we have something that sets the tone. "And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all, as any man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their food with gladness and singleness of heart."

  The appointing of the deacons in the early Church exhibited this, too. These men were waiting on tables, in a local situation, not just as an idea or a principle, but serving in­dividual people at a point in space and time (Acts 6:1-5). The problem was that Greek-speaking Christian widows were being neglected in the area of material help because of a lan­guage problem; it was a real situation. It was not just an idea but real men waiting on real tables. How many orthodox local churches are dead at this point, with so little sign of love and communication: orthodoxy, but dead and ugly! If there is no reality on the local level, we deny what we say we believe, right up to the apex, because what we really deny is that God is a personal God. There must be the mentality, in the local situa­tion, of an interest in people as people, and not just as church members, attenders, or givers. These are people, and this is related to our statement that we believe in a personal universe because it all begins with a personal God.

  In the local church the possibility of the diversity of love and communication, rather than merely a reciprocal situation (as in a husband-wife relationship), expands wonderfully. In the Old Testament the whole of life and culture was based upon the relationship of the people of God first to God and then to each other. It was not just a religious life, but the whole culture. It was a total cultural relationship, and though the New Testament no longer sees the people of God as a state, nevertheless there is still an emphasis upon the fact that the whole culture and way of life is involved in this vital diversity of love and communication. There is to be no platonic dicho­tomy between the "spiritual" and other things of life. Indeed, we read in Acts 4:31, 32: "And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spake the Word of God with boldness. And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common."

  The Bible makes plain here that this is not a communism of law or external pressure. In fact, Peter, speaking to Ananias about his property, stressed: "While it remaineth was it not your own and after it was sold, was it not in thy power?" (Acts 5:4). This sharing is not law, but true love and true com­munication of the whole man to whole man, across the whole spectrum
of what humanity is. The same thing happened fur­ther abroad. Gentile Christians gave money to Paul to carry to Christian Jews. Why? So that there would be a sharing of ma­terial possessions. This is ten thousand times removed from the dead, cold giving of most Christians. This is not a cold, imper­sonal act as a bare duty, but a sharing of the whole man with the whole man. True Christian giving is in love and com­munication across the whole framework of the interplay be­tween whole men.

  You will remember that we have previously seen that true spirituality has meaning in all the practical relationships of life: husband-wife, parent-child, employer-employee. These things must be taught in the church as an aspect of the con­scious side of sanctification, to be understood and then acted upon by choice. The environment of the local church or other Christian group must be conducive for these things to grow. Such growth will never be once for all, but, like all things in our life, a moment-by-moment process. There must be moment-by-moment teaching, there must be moment-by-­moment example, of the present meaning of the work of Christ, and a conscious choice of the individual and the group to lay hold of these things. There must be faith, moment by moment, in God's promises, to lay hold of these things—first in instruc­tion, and then in example.

  The Church needs to function consciously on the basis of the finished work of Christ and not on the proud basis of any inherent value in itself or any supposed or assumed inherent superiority. It must be consciously working on the basis of the supernaturally restored relationship and the exhibition of that restored relationship, and not upon merely natural gifts and talents. And if these things are forgotten or minimized on the basis of past, present, or legal relationships, the whole group can grieve the Holy Spirit just as surely as can the individual Christian. The Holy Spirit is the one by whom the body of Christ is joined together and if the body does not care about being fitly joined together, it is he who is grieved.