Now, my subject tonight follows, naturally, logically, from the subject dealt with last night, which was what is a Christian.
The two subjects are intimately related.
That is why Mr. Carson found it very difficult not to trespass on my territory,
and that is why I shall find it very difficult not to repeat some of the things that he said last night.
You can't separate these two things. They belong and must inevitably go together.
The one big difference between his task and mine, I think I can say, is this.
That mine is the more difficult of the two, and that for this reason.
There is very little disagreement amongst evangelical people as to what is a Christian.
But unfortunately, you cannot say the same thing about the views of evangelical people
with regard to the question of what is the Church.
Unfortunately, there is disagreement here, as I'm going to try to show you,
and that is why my task is somewhat more difficult than his was.
Well, now, why should we consider these questions?
As I say, any consideration of the Reformation makes this inevitable, but let me put it to you in this form.
Why is it our duty to consider this?
There are many answers to that question. I'm going to deal with them as briefly as I can.
The first is the very fact and existence of what is called the ecumenical movement,
the rapidity with which things are happening.
Whether we like them or not is not the question.
The fact is that movements are afoot to unite churches and eventually to unite all the churches,
and to have one great territorial church in this country and one great worldwide church.
The thing is happening rapidly.
And while we are dallying and considering and talking, events are taking place.
And unless we act and act quickly, we shall find ourselves in a position in which we have very little that we can really do.
That's one reason.
But another, the more important one, is this.
I want to suggest to you that it is this trouble with regard to the true understanding of the nature of the Church.
That is, one of the greatest hindrances to evangelism.
Now what we are constantly being told is this, that we should work together and evangelize together in particular,
and not be bothered about these discussions about the nature of the Church and our different views.
But this is a very false argument, it seems to me.
How can you evangelize truly unless you are agreed about the evangel?
It seems to me to be a sure impossibility.
If the trumpet yields an uncertain sound, who shall prepare him for the battle?
What is the Gospel?
I've often said that I'm not surprised that the majority of people in this country today are outside the Christian Church.
As they listen to the talks on the television and on the wireless and read in the newspapers,
these contradictory statements that are made in the name of the Christian Church with regard to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, how can they listen?
The confusion in which they are to be found is a confusion that is caused by the Church herself and her discordant and contradictory voices.
So I suggest that, fairly to be clear about the doctrine of the Church, is one of the greatest hindrances to true evangelism at this present time.
It is likewise the cause of some of the methods that have been used in evangelism during this present century.
Some things that are being done with the best intentions in the world, it seems to me, could never have been done
had men and women realized the true nature of the Christian Church.
In the same way, the trouble about this doctrine is surely the greatest hindrance to revival.
Can the Holy Spirit honor anything save the truth?
Can we expect the Spirit to come in power upon a people that know not the truth and sometimes even deny it and are antagonistic to it?
The thing is patently impossible.
So if we want revival, we must start by considering this doctrine of the nature of the Christian Church.
Another reason for considering it is this, that it is, our less, the greatest cause of division amongst evangelicals in this country at the present time.
Now we're not concerned with one another's motives.
We know that we're all equally honest and equally sincere. It's not a question of persons.
It's a question of attitudes and a point of view.
But there is no doubt that this is the major cause of division amongst evangelical people in this country today.
Another reason for considering it is this, that it has been the sheer failure to consider the doctrine of the Church
that has led during the past 90 years in particular to the terrible confusion that is to be found amongst us at the present time.
Movements come into being, men set themselves up and form their own organization,
men enter pulpits without any church ever considering whether they've been called or not.
The state of our churches is one of confusion.
And it is ultimately due to the fact that we've not troubled to consider the New Testament doctrine concerning the nature of the Church.
But in our zeal and anxiety to do good and to evangelize, we have rushed into action without considering how these things should be truly done.
But of course the ultimate greatest reason for considering this doctrine is the fact that it has given such great prominence in the New Testament teaching.
Have you ever realized this?
Practically every single New Testament epistle rarely deals with this doctrine of the question of the nature of the Christian church.
It's quite astonishing when you study them carefully to see that that is the central theme in every single New Testament epistle.
Now this of course is something that is rarely quite inevitable.
For when we are saved, we are not merely saved as individuals, we are not meant to be isolated units.
Immediately we are added to the church.
You get it in the Book of Acts. You get it everywhere.
No man is an island. If that is true in general, it is particularly true of the Christian.
Immediately he becomes part of the body. This is God's own ordained plan and method.
So the New Testament obviously deals with this and deals with it very exhaustively.
Not only that, I think I could demonstrate to you very simply that the trouble that arose in various ways even in the early church in the first century,
the trouble was nearly always due to a defective understanding of the doctrine of the nature of the church.
Let me give you one illustration. Take that great first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians.
It's a long epistle of some sixteen chapters and he wrote it because he had to in a sense a number of problems had arisen in the church at Corinth.
And in every single case the apostle points out to them that these troubles had arisen simply because they were not clear in their minds as to the nature of the doctrine of the Christian church.
Look at that division intersects. I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, I am of Christ.
And he's amazed at them and he says, is Christ divided?
You only get sects like this arising in a church over persons when the people are not clear with regard to the doctrine of the whole nature of the church.
Then he goes on to deal in chapter five, you remember, having dealt with that first question in the first four chapters with the case of that incestuous person in that church.
He deals with it in exactly the same way. He doesn't merely deal with the problem of incest as we tend to do at the present time and talk about the details of the particular thing.
He immediately puts it into the context of the church. He says, no ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.
He said, if you understood the character of the church you'd never tolerate this.
In the sixth chapter when he deals with the question of their going to law in public courts with one another over their disputes, he deals with it in exactly the same way.
He says, isn't there somebody in the church? Why don't you appoint the most insignificant person in the church and set him up as judge?
Don't you know that you're going to judge the world? That you're going to judge angels?
Their trouble was due to the fact they hadn't understood this doctrine of the church. In the same way he deals with marriage and the question of children.
In the same way he deals with the question of the weaker brother.
There were men in the church who were troubled about eating meats that had been offered to idols and so on.
And this was causing great confusion in the church. The stronger, more enlightened members and the weaker members in the matter of understanding.
And they were dividing the church.
He deals with that in exactly the same terms. And on he goes. I needn't keep you.
You remember how he deals with the very question of eating the communion, coming to the communion table, eating the bread and drinking the wine?
One loaf. That's the church.
And then, of course, when you come to the great next question of the spiritual gifts, chapters 12, 13 and 14 are given exclusively to the doctrine of the church.
They'd never have been quarrelling about tongues and prophecies and miracles and all these various other matters and dividing over these things if they'd only understood the doctrine of the nature of the church.
You see, if you're not clear about this, you'll certainly get into trouble in theory and in practice.
So I say the way to deal with these matters and indeed the way to avoid getting troubles and problems and difficulties is to start by being clear with regard to the doctrine of the nature of the church.
Now then, those are the reasons why we must do this. And there are many others.
Obviously, in one address, no man can deal with a subject like this fully and exhaustively.
I've got to say this to protect myself because the detectives are undoubtedly present and will be very careful to find out what I haven't said.
Well, I'm telling you now that there are some things I'm not going to say, and I defy any one man in one address to deal with this question.
Learned terms, many volumes have been written on this subject.
I'm simply going to pick out what I regard as being most important and particularly what is most relevant to our position at this present moment.
I'm not going to deal with the question of the visible and the invisible church.
I'm not going to deal with questions of church government and polity and many other aspects of this whole problem of the doctrine of the nature of the church.
I'm simply going to try to give you a picture, for it is my view that the trouble with all of us, not only people who are not evangelical,
not only Roman Catholics, but even those of us who are evangelical,
I suggest our main trouble is that we are not clear on this whole question of the nature of the church.
What is the essence of this thing?
Now, let me try to summarize, as I see it at Inuit, the teaching of the New Testament concerning this question.
How do we deal with it?
Well, we mustn't deal with it by just starting from where we are.
That, I believe, is the greatest fallacy of all.
The danger is to start with it as it is.
Now, this is a very good procedure when you're examining many problems.
The medical man obviously has got to examine the patient in front of him, and it's right in many other matters.
But when you come to this question of the church, I believe this is a real danger, and this is what is generally being done.
You start with the church as she is, and then you begin to consider how you can modify at this point and that point,
where you can introduce an improvement and so on.
And if you do that, the danger is that you're leaving the basic question entirely unconsidered.
So we must not just start from where we are and then try to find some magical formula to bring us together or to smooth over difficulties.
That is the road, it seems to me, to disaster.
That is the fallacy, surely, with the ecumenical movement.
So we don't start where we are.
I suggest also that it's not always wise to start even with history, for even history can be misleading.
Our fathers were great and glorious men.
We are hardly worthy to mention the names of the great ones.
But even they were not infallible, and they were creatures of their age,
and they were often influenced as we are by the circumstances and conditions of the moment.
So I think that we must avoid even that, because if we don't, we shall probably end by defending a particular tradition in which we happen to believe
and in which perhaps we have been brought up.
I suggest that the thing to do, the only honest thing to do ultimately, is to go back to the New Testament itself.
Now this is particularly important today, for we are in an age when everything is being examined anew and afresh.
You get all the major denominations saying they're prepared to throw everything into the melting pot.
Very well, let us do so.
Let's go back and try to discover from the New Testament itself what exactly is the nature of the Church.
Let's go back to the book of the Acts of the Apostles.
Let's go back to the Epistles.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not dismissing history. All I'm saying is don't start with it.
Go back to the origins.
Then, if you like, take your history and check your understanding of the teaching of Acts and the Epistles
by what men in history and in their concrete situations have thought and how they've interpreted the Scripture and what they have done.
We can learn from history, but we mustn't become slaves to history.
The Scriptures plus the advantage of being able to use the thoughts of those who have gone before us. Very well.
Now then, what do we find? What is the Church? What is a Church?
The first answer to that question is this. It is patently a gathering of people.
That's what you get, isn't it, in the book of the Acts of the Apostles? A gathering of people.
A hundred and twenty people in an upper room. Three thousand people added to them.
Another two thousand added to those, and on and on and on it goes.
So you're looking at a gathering of people such as this here tonight.
A number of people have come together. This is basic in our definition as to what a Church is.
It is essentially, first and foremost, a gathering of people.
Well, somebody may say, why are you putting all that emphasis upon what is so obvious?
Oh, I can answer that quite simply. I'm doing this because I'm compelled to do it.
For there is a very prominent and well-known teaching at the present time,
which seems to regard a Church not as a gathering or collection of people,
but as a confession of faith or something written on paper.
Now, this is a very common argument amongst certain evangelical people
who would not agree with many of us who are here tonight.
Their argument for staying in their denominations is,
as long as they don't change the confession of faith, we are staying in.
Of course, they say, if they were to change the confession of faith, we would go out at once.
Now, I say that what is implicit in that is that a Church ultimately is a confession of faith.
It's a document. It is something that is written on paper.
Now, this, I do indeed believe, is the most important metaphor for our consideration,
because it's just here that this terrible confusion has come in.
This has always been an important matter, but it is, as I'm saying,
especially important at the present time.
Why is this so important?
Why must we avoid this danger of forgetting that it is people,
living people that constitute a Church and not a number of propositions on paper?
Well, there are many answers to this again.
We must avoid that because that has always been the greatest cause of denominationalism.
You're familiar with denominationalism, aren't you?
You know the sort of person who doesn't come and say to you,
I'm a Christian, but says I'm a Methodist or I'm a Congregationist.
I used to get a great deal of this when I was Minister at Westminster Chapel,
and I used to form my estimate of the people speaking to me by what they said.
It's a good thing to listen, to let people speak.
And a man would come in and say to me, I'm a Methodist.
I knew all about him at once.
Another would say, I'm a Congregationist.
All right, I knew exactly.
Now, what causes this?
Well, you see, this is the result always of being ignorant of the real origin of the denomination,
but just fighting for it because they'd been brought up in it,
or because it was their denomination.
This artificial thing was the thing that was gripping them,
and they were fighting merely for a tradition.
That's one danger, but there's a much more serious one.
This tendency to regard a confession of faith, whatever it be,
with the 39 articles of the Westminster Confession, it doesn't matter at all,
all this can rarely be a lie.
And I suggest that it is a lie speaking generally at the present time, and for this reason.
The people who are living in these various churches at the present moment
generally do not believe the confession of faith of the denomination to which they belong.
I could illustrate that in all the denominations.
But they remain in it, and it is a living lie.
You have churches today in which the people at the present time, preachers in pulpits and people in pills,
not only do not believe the confessions of the founders of these bodies,
but are active and bitter opponents of them, and yet the name goes on.
And this is where to regard a church as a matter of confession on paper really does become a lie.
I would make bold to say this.
What matters is not what fathers may have said in the 16th or the 17th century.
What matters is what do the people in that denomination believe today?
That's the relevant and the vital question.
And so this is utter confusion.
And another reason is that that, of course, has always been the high road to dead orthodoxy.
Even when men believe the confession of faith, it is no guarantee that they are Christians.
You can get people who are perfectly orthodox and yet completely dead.
You can get a dead orthodoxy.
So if you put this confession first, this paper declaration first,
and tend to judge your church and to regard what you call a church in terms of that,
you may be covering a dead orthodoxy where people may have the right belief but deny it in their liars,
or have no experience of it and find it to be of no value to them in their hour of need.
Therefore, I say that I must emphasize this.
Whatever else the church is, she's a collection of people.
You're looking at a body of people.
You see, that was what attracted the crowd on the day of Pentecost.
There were a number of people gathered together, this phenomenon, people.
Not paper declarations, but people.
So we've got to start with this.
And, of course, this is unusually important in our day,
because the ultimate answer to these friends who say that they're going to stay in their denominations
until the confessions of faith are changed is simply this,
that the modern strategy is one which has already said,
we are not going to change these.
We'll accept them all, and as Mr. Greer put it yesterday afternoon,
we'll put them into the museum.
This is the new strategy.
They're not going to change the 39 articles.
What are they going to do?
They say, yes, we accept them all, but this is what we believe now.
And one of the ecclesiastical authorities in defending this attitude said,
we've got to do this in order that we can get on with the business.
So if you're going to wait until they change the confession,
you'll find you'll be there until you're dead.
They're not going to change them.
The modern, subtle argument is, let's take in everything.
Let's include everything.
Let's pay lip service to everything and then preach what we rarely believe.
So there's nothing which is more dangerous than to forget
that a church is a collection of living people, persons,
and not merely ancient declarations.
Very well.
What then are these people?
You're looking at a church.
You're looking at a gathering, a collection of people.
What are these people?
There are many societies in the world.
There are many gatherings and groupings.
You have them here in Liverpool.
We have them everywhere.
What is it that differentiates the church as a gathering,
a collection of people from every other kind of gathering?
Well, the answer is that there is a uniqueness about the church.
There is something about the church that you never find anywhere else.
What is it that constitutes the uniqueness that we mention some of these things?
The first is that it is a collection of people who've been separated from the world.
They were living in the world like everybody else.
They're human beings like everybody else.
Well, what is it that makes them special and unique now?
Oh, it's this.
They've been separated from that.
To use the glorious language of Paul in Colossians 1.13,
they have been translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son.
Or as Peter puts it equally gloriously,
ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people,
that ye may show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light,
who were not a people, but are now the people of God,
who have not received mercy, but now have received mercy.
This is it. It's this but now.
You were, you are.
What is this? Well, he tells us.
Dearly beloved Jesus, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims.
This is the peculiar thing about these people.
They are in the world, but they no longer belong to it.
They are strangers and pilgrims.
This is the thing that has happened to them.
They've been separated.
Now the New Testament, as you know, is full of these expressions.
You are no longer, says Paul, children of the night.
You are children of the day.
What a separation.
Darkness and light, night and day.
The world and God and heaven.
Our citizenship is in heaven.
That's where we belong.
We're still citizens in Liverpool.
We're still citizens of Great Britain.
But this isn't our real citizenship.
I belong to heaven. I'm a stranger here.
Strangers and pilgrims.
Now they've been separated.
And this is the first thing that is emphasized everywhere in the New Testament.
And I want to elaborate this just for a moment.
You see, these people have been separated even from the state.
They belong to it still in an external sense.
And yet their true citizenship is not there.
It's elsewhere. It is in heaven.
So that the whole notion of a state church
is a complete contradiction of the basic statement of the New Testament about the nature of the church.
It has nothing to do with the state.
I'll go further.
It is even a separation from nationality.
And that's not an easy thing for some of us to say.
But you see, this conference, if it has done nothing else,
has been a living illustration of the point I'm making.
Those of you who've been here have been observing it.
If you'd only been here yesterday, you would have thought that the Christian church was exclusively Irish.
And if you'd only been here today, you might well have come to the conclusion it was exclusively Welsh.
But I was grateful for the extra session pushed in this afternoon when some Englishmen spoke.
Well now, this is just, you see, this is just to illustrate this point.
That though we still belong to the nations in which we were born, and we are not meant to crucify that,
nevertheless, we are separated from it.
Whatever I may feel as a Welshman, I put a Christian brother before a fellow Welshman.
There is no longer Jew nor Gentile, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free, black nor white, pink nor yellow.
All these distinctions are superseded.
We've been separated from all that.
Though we remain in the flesh and we don't belittle these things, these are no longer the controlling matters in our thought.
Henceforth, says Paul in 2 Corinthians 5, henceforth, know I know men after the flesh.
And he'd been a very nationalistic Jew.
Henceforth, know I know men after the flesh.
We are even separated from that.
And we are separated also from all the orders of society.
Now the man of the world recognizes certain orders of society.
He at one time did it more than he does now.
The squire, the lord, the great men in the district, and the various gradations down until you came to the underling.
But you know there's no room for that in the New Testament.
A man isn't called to read the scriptures in the New Testament because he's the lord of the manna.
That's done away with.
James tells you, don't you give a front seat to a man simply because he's got a gold ring on.
These distinctions don't apply here.
These are all put on one side.
We've been separated from all this.
We are thinking in a new way.
This is a new society.
And you have to put all such considerations once and forever out of your mind.
There is no monarchical principle here.
There is no aristocratic principle here.
All are one in Christ Jesus, and all are saved by the same faith, and all are equally the children of God.
So you're separated from all these things.
But my dear friends, I've got to go even further than that.
These people who constitute the church may even have to be separated from their families and their nearest and dearest.
Think not that I have come to send peace on earth, says our lord.
I came not to send peace, but a sword.
Listen to what he says.
How we tend to forget these words.
I am come to send a man at variance against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
Our lord says the same thing again, you remember, in Luke 14.
He says if a man comes after him and doesn't hate, these are his words, they're not mine.
If he doesn't hate, he says, his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
You see, this is a very unique gathering of people, this.
All the old associations have been broken.
All the old thinking has been put on one side.
Here is a new body, here is a new gathering, and it's unique in that we are separated from all this.
And this is the thing that passes my comprehension at the present time.
That whereas the New Testament tells us that in order to belong to the church,
we may even have to be separated from father or mother or husband or wife or even brothers or sisters,
that there are evangelicals who still prefer to be in communion with and in fellowship with infidels and deniers of the Gospel,
rather than separate and align themselves exclusively with brother evangelicals.
We are even to separate from father and mother in this matter.
And yet, that is the attitude at this present hour.
Brethren, isn't it time we began to consider the New Testament teaching about the doctrine of the church?
It's a separation. It's new. It's unique.
There's nothing like it in the universe and never has been.
Well, let me hurry to the second characteristic, which is unity.
Now I put this again very prominently. I put it in the second position.
I put it before doctrine, you notice. I put unity next.
Why? Well, because all the New Testament pictures of the church emphasize it.
What are they? What is the church? She's compared to a body. She's compared to a bride.
She's compared to a family. She's compared to a building. She's compared to a commonwealth.
And all the explicit statements emphasize this same thing.
They continued steadfastly. They were together, considering the apostles' doctrine and so on.
Now this unity is something, of course, that is emphasized right through the whole of the New Testament.
And we are told by our Lord Himself that it is to be a visible unity.
It is to be something that the world can see in order that the world may know.
He says that thou hast sent me and that He is in us and that we are in Him.
The world is to see this. The church is to manifest and demonstrate a visible unity.
In other words, a church is not a place where men come together in order to seek for truth
or to have a debate as to what is truth or where they may have what is called now a dialogue
in order that they may be able to smooth over their difficulties.
It's not a place of argumentation and discussion in order that you may arrive at something.
No, no. The word that is used about people who became Christian and church members in the New Testament is this.
They were added to the church. Why were they added to the church?
The answer is because of something that had already happened to them.
A church is not a forum for discussion.
You only become a member of a church in the New Testament after the discussion is over.
It is only because certain things that happened to them that they were added to the church.
You know, there is a very significant statement in the Old Testament that throws light on this.
You get the church in the Old Testament in pictures.
And do you remember that very interesting bit of instruction given in connection with the erection of the temple?
We are told that the stones that were to be put into the walls of the temple
were to be chiseled into shape before they were brought to the temple
so that there should be no sound of an axe or of a hammer as the temple was being built.
The stones were quarried and then they were chiseled and so on into shape far away from the temple.
And after they'd been prepared, they were then brought to the temple precincts and there they were erected in silence.
That's the church.
Not an official of one cathedral criticizing the officials of another cathedral
and so creating a public scandal and causing confusion to the men in the street
as to what the Christian church really is.
Not brawling and argument and disputation, one man getting up and saying one thing,
another getting up in the same pulpit and contradicting it next Sunday.
My friends, this is not the church. This is confusion.
There was to be no sound as the building went up.
It was to be erected in silence. Why?
Well, because the work had already been done.
And that's what you find everywhere in the New Testament about the church.
Who were the people who were added to the church?
Well, there were always people, as Mr. Carson said last night, who'd passed through and had shared a common experience.
What are these experiences? Here they are.
They'd known conviction of sin.
If you have not known conviction of sin, you are not a Christian and you're not really a member of the church.
These people had undergone conviction of sin.
They'd cried out saying, Men and brethren, what shall we do?
Have you known it, my friend?
I'm not asking whether you're a Methodist or a Congregationalist or a member of the FIC church or anything else.
I'm asking, have you known conviction of sin?
They'd also repented.
They'd also confessed their sin.
They'd also expressed a desire to turn from it and have turned from it.
But above and beyond everything else, they had been born again.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, accept them and be born again.
He cannot see the kingdom of God, leave alone enter it.
It's impossible.
And this is something that is vital, but we've been tending to forget this.
These men had passed through this same experience.
They'd got new life.
The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness unto him,
neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.
The only man who's a member of the church is a man who's got new life.
He's born anew, born again, born of the Spirit.
He is regenerated. He's got a new mind, a new understanding.
He has the mind of Christ. He that is spiritual judgeth all things,
yet he himself is judged of no men. He's a strange man.
He's become an enigma to his friends.
They say to him, why won't you come with us as you used to?
What's happened to you?
And my dear friends, if this sort of thing isn't true of us, we are not Christian.
He's a changed man. He's a new man.
He's a man who's born anew, born of the Spirit.
He's a partaker of the divine nature.
Christ is in him. The Spirit is in him.
In other words, these people are unique because they're sharing a common life.
And this is the most vital thing of all.
Peter says that as Christians, members of churches, we are lively or living stones.
In other words, you see, this question of life and this emphasis upon the church as a body
reminds us that the unity that is characteristic of the church is an organic unity.
It's a vital unity.
Look at the obvious illustration. What's a body?
Is it a mere collection of fingers and hands and arms and forearms stuck together anyhow loosely?
Of course it isn't. It's organic. It's one. You can't separate. They're vital.
Now, this is the great principle emphasized everywhere in the New Testament.
Know ye not, says Paul, that ye are the temple of God?
Know ye not that ye are an habitation of God through the Spirit?
This is the church, not an institution, not a mere gathering of people as such,
but these special people who, because they've all undergone this same experience of regeneration,
share the same life, it's in them, as the members of a family of the same blood
and this essential community resulting from that, so have these people.
They're born from above, born of the Spirit, born of God, children of God.
These are the terms.
And we must never fail to put this in the first position because, thank God,
a Christian primarily is not even a man who believes the right things.
He's a new man in Christ Jesus. He's a new creation.
He is one who is born of the Spirit and is a partaker of the divine nature.
And, you see, this has got to come first because it's the only way to avoid a dead orthodoxy.
You and I, my dear friends, are living in this evil hour in the history of the Christian church
very largely because of what became true of our grandfathers.
I'm old enough to remember some of them.
And, you see, they held on to their orthodoxy, but they'd lost the life.
They had a form of godliness, but they denied the power thereof.
And the only way you can safeguard yourself from a dead orthodoxy is to put life before even orthodoxy.
It's a life.
Not only that, you find in the New Testament everywhere that all the appeals for unity are based upon this.
The argument is, can you treat your brother like that?
When Paul deals with this question of meats offered to idols and drinking various things, that's his argument.
He said, don't you know this man, this weak man, he's your brother for whom Christ died.
Can you offend him? You have no argument. You can't deal with your ethical problems.
You have no sanction to apply unless you believe this doctrine of the unity in terms of life.
It's not merely the rightness or the wrongness of the thing.
Paul says, conscience not thine own, but of the other also.
This may be right for you, but if it's a hindrance to your weaker brother, you mustn't do it.
In other words, it isn't a mere bit of argumentation about ethics.
It's this great argument of the unity of the body, that we're all in the same family, and therefore he appeals in terms of this.
And as you know, the great appeal of 1 Corinthians 13.
Paul says, you may have all knowledge, you may understand all mysteries, you may speak with tongues of men and of angels,
but if you're lacking in love, in this true charity, in this true relationship to your brother, it's no use to you.
You're sounding brass, tinkling cymbal, it's useless.
Though you give your body to be burned, it's of no value.
This is the primary thing that must always be emphasized, and ultimately and lastly under this heading.
This is what makes schism such a terrible sin.
It isn't merely that you disagree with others, it is that you are dividing Christ.
You are dividing a body. You are dividing a family.
And so the apostle brings out his mighty powers of ridicule in 1 Corinthians 12.
He says, what would you think of a hand that said to a foot, I have no need of you?
Or an eye that says to a hand, I have no need of you.
You'd say the man's a lunatic.
You see, he ridicules it because of this great argument.
He said, you are dividing the body. What's it matter what gift you've got?
Doesn't matter how humble, how insignificant.
Men, he says, don't be envious of the men with the great gift.
And to the men with the great gift, he says, don't despise the men with the little gift.
What you both ought to be boasting about is this, that you're in the body?
What a wonderful thing it is to be a little finger in such a body, or a less comely part even than that.
You see, it is only in terms of this doctrine that he is able to show the terrible character of the sin of schism.
For brethren were agreed about the essentials of the gospel and were sharing the same life.
To be divided by history, tradition, any consideration is the sin of schism.
And it is a terrible sin.
Let me, before I sit down, just take another glance at these people with you.
And just ask a few questions as to how this life, this wonderful unity, this wonderful life, shows itself.
I mustn't keep you, but you know, don't you?
The first way in which it always shows itself is this, that they have a love of the same doctrine always.
They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, doctrine before fellowship,
doctrine before breaking of bread, doctrine before prayer.
It's the reverse today, isn't it? Fellowship is the great, let's all get together, let's all pray together.
No, no, doctrine first.
Why? Well, this is inevitable.
A man who has got something of the life of God in his soul is always a man who desires to know teaching and doctrine.
Peter uses this as a comparison, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that he may grow thereby.
How do you know that that little child that's just been born is a live child and not a dead birth?
The answer is the live child makes for the milk.
Every animal does the same. It makes for the food. Its nature demands it, cries out for it.
And the man who's born again is a man who always wants teaching.
Now, I want to ask some plain questions here tonight. I'm addressing evangelical people.
Do you enjoy doctrine? Do you enjoy sermons on doctrine? Are you interested in teaching?
I sometimes hear from my brethren that they visit churches where a limit is put on the length of their sermon and, indeed, on the content of their sermon.
The people say they can't follow doctrine. They're bored by doctrine. They want entertainment.
They want more singing. They want more happiness, they say. They don't want doctrine, they say.
Now, I'm free to admit that a man may preach doctrine in such a dull manner that it really is very boring, and I'm making no defense of that.
But I am here to say this, that unless you've got a desire within you to know more of this precious, blessed truth, you cannot be a child of God.
It's impossible. The child cries for it, as the babe always makes for the milk.
And you see how vitally important it is for us in every department of our lives.
Don't you see the dangers? Look at the false teachings round and about us. How can I be safe with regard to these unless I've got some objective standard?
Take all this emphasis upon experience. People say, I don't care what you believe.
As long as you've had an experience, your life has been changed, or you're a good and a kind man, and so on.
But, my dear friend, the cults can talk like that, and they do talk like that.
How do you know that you are right, and the man who's selling you these books at your street door are not right? How do you prove it?
It's no use saying, well, I've got an experience. He says he's got one.
It's no use saying, I'm zealous in my church. He is. He gives up watching football on Saturday afternoon to go round from house to house to sell his books.
He's very zealous, probably more than you are.
How do you tell whether a man's right or wrong? You can't in terms of zeal and enthusiasm or experience.
There's only one ultimate test, objective truth, the teaching, the doctrine.
It isn't what a man thinks or believes. What is this deposit that has come down?
We are founded on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Here is the only foundation.
And if we depart from this, we have gone hopelessly and helplessly astray.
And if you want to help others, how can you help others unless you know the teaching and the doctrine?
What's the use of going to a friend and saying, you know, I've undergone a great change.
I'm very happy now. You remember how miserable I used to be. I'm very happy now.
And this and that. Well, they say, yes, you know, Christian Science said the same thing to me yesterday.
What difference? What you say to them? Oh, says the apostle Peter, be ready at all times to give a reason for the hope that is in you.
You've got to be able to give them an understanding. You've got to be able to tell them.
You've got to give them an explanation. If you want to help others, you must know your doctrine.
You must understand the teaching. So this is the thing that is put first.
And then you come to fellowship.
But, you know, you can't have fellowship unless you're agreed and to work together, except to be agreed.
How can you have real fellowship with a man when you know that he doesn't believe in the deity of Christ and is a turning sacrifice?
It's impossible. Fellowship is based upon truth, breaking of bread.
What are we commemorating in our communion service? Is it the death of a pacifist?
Is it a tragedy that once took place? Or is it, as we were told this morning, the most glorious thing that's ever happened when I survey the wondrous cross?
How can I come to the table with a man who ridicules the blood of Christ and pour scorn on the preaching about the blood?
Groveling in blood, they say. The blasphemies that they speak against the blood, the precious blood of Christ, the Lamb of God.
You can't partake truly at the table with a man who holds such views.
Doctrine is essential to fellowship and breaking of bread and to prayer.
They say, we can all pray together. We don't agree, but we can always pray together.
But you can't. What is prayer? How do you get access to God?
One man says, all you need do is sit on a comfortable chair and relax and start listening to God. Is that it?
Another man says, anybody can pray whenever he likes. God's always ready to listen. Is that right?
Paul says, by him, by Christ crucified, we both have access by the one Spirit unto the Father.
My friends, there is only one way to enter into the holiest of all. There's only one way to pray. It is by the blood of Jesus.
I tell you, in the name of God, you cannot pray without the blood of Jesus.
There is no acceptance with God except by the blood of Jesus.
Unless you know that he is the one and only mediator between God and men, there is no value in your prayer.
God in his love and grace may answer you in spite of that, but you haven't been praying.
You cannot pray except in the way that is indicated and taught in the New Testament itself.
Well, I haven't finished. There's one thing that I want to emphasize in a sense above everything.
I'm looking at the New Testament church. We're all looking at it together, aren't we?
And there we see them continuing steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship and breaking of bread and prayer.
Yes, but we're told another thing about them. What's that?
That they were filled with gladness, with gladness and singleness of heart.
They did eat their meat from house to house.
They're a very happy people.
What's the matter today? Why are our churches empty?
I can tell you it is simply because you and I are such miserable people.
That's what the man in the street says of us. He says, I'm not going to join that miserable lot.
He says he's got happiness. He gets joy. He's got life.
He says, look at those miserable people slinking late into their morning services on Sunday,
sitting as far back as they can, hoping it will soon come to an end.
He says, that's Christianity. That's your church.
My friends, you and I are responsible for the fact that the masses of people are outside the church.
We give the impression that to be Christian is to be miserable.
Whereas the thing that characterized these New Testament people was gladness, joy.
They were the happiest people in the universe.
These were people who could sing even in the mouths of the lions in the arena.
They could sing in a prison at midnight.
Listen to Paul and Silas singing even with the stripes and the wounds and the agony and the feet fast in the stocks.
Singing, praying and singing praises unto God at the darkness of midnight hour.
Gladness and joy, Christian people, whether we're evangelical or not, we are useless until we manifest this radiant joy
and give our neighbors the impression that the only way to true and lasting joy and happiness is to become the children of God.
The other thing we are told about them is that they were praising God.
Whereas the praising God in our churches, thanking Him for Christ, thanking Him for what He'd done for them,
thanking God for what they were, thanking God for what they were yet to be.
These are the things that bound these people together. These were their characteristics.
There they were day by day meeting together in the temple and from house to house and what were they doing?
They were studying, they were listening and they were praising God and thanking.
They were singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
They were filled with an ecstasy and the world was amazed.
And with a world on fire and hell let loose.
With venereal disease, having assumed epidemic proportions again in this country,
not to talk about your LSD and your other drugs.
Is this a time when the church should be arguing about vestments and niceties of terminology and litomies?
God have mercy upon us.
This is what the world is waiting for, is for a people who have been emancipated, released, set free, washed,
cleansed, justified, renewed, made more than conquerors through Him that has loved them.
This is the church. This is the sort of people you find in the church.
They've got a great concern for the glory of God. They're ready to die for this if necessary.
They've got a concern for the glory of Christ and the Holy Ghost. They'll give up everything for Him.
They say that to gain the whole world and to lose Him is useless.
But they've got a great concern for others also.
They're troubled about their relatives who are outside.
They're troubled about the poor man who's a slave to drink or to drugs or to anything else.
They're sorry for him. They know they've been there. They've been delivered. They want him to be delivered.
They have a heart of compassion. They're like their Lord.
They saw mankind as sheep without a shepherd, and they see mankind as sheep without a shepherd.
And they're anxious to tell the others about this, and they did so and they do so in all times of real awakening.
They preached, they taught, and they were filled with the power from God through the Spirit to enable them to do this.
It is with this I want to close.
The New Testament church was a pneumatic church.
She was a church vibrating with life and with power. They all took part.
It wasn't the case of one man doing all the talking and all the praying and all of everything else,
and the others just sitting and listening. They were all taking part.
They were differing gifts, but they all had some gift, and they all exercised this variety of gifts.
But the thing that is so obvious about them was their liveliness, living stern, says Peter.
There was a life, an energy flowing through their very arteries, their spiritual arteries.
They were filled with this pneumatic power, and everybody who met them were always amazed at them.
Who are these people? That's why they turned the world upside down.
There was this energy, this ability, this joy, this happiness, this radiance.
This was the thing that changed the ancient world, and it was true of all of them, lively.
This is a time for self-examination. The preaching was lively.
Some of us are terribly dull. A dull preacher is a contradiction in terms.
Lively preachers and lively listeners. That's the New Testament church.
And lively in prayer. You didn't have to persuade them to take part in prayer.
The difficulty was to stop them all praying together at the same time.
You see, this was the problem, the problem of discipline and of order.
They were all so full of it. They were bursting, and they had to be told the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.
You didn't have to plead with them to come to church.
You didn't have to plead with them to take part in prayer or to give an experience or an exposition or something that had happened in experience.
No, no. They wanted to. They enjoyed it. They wanted to share. They wanted others to have it.
And the great problem was the problem of control and of discipline.
And yet, you see, this is the glory of life in the spirit, that you can have liveliness and control at the same time.
There is no riot. There is no excess. But there is this divine orderliness, life manifesting itself to the glory of God.
Oh, these are the only things that matter.
At the beginning, they were but a handful of people, as it were. Numbers don't matter, finally.
What matters is that we correspond to this picture.
The early church was but a handful of people, but because of the life that was in it and the power of the Spirit upon it, it was mighty.
It shook the ancient world. It did indeed bring down every high thing that was exalting itself against the name of God and of His Christ.
Well, my dear friends, there are the characteristics of the church.
Do we belong to the church? Do we share this life? Do we share in this unity?
Here it is.
One, the light of God's own presence, or His ransom people shed.
Sharing, chasing far the gloom and terror, brightening all the path we tread.
One, the object of our journey. One, the faith which never tires.
One, the earnest looking forward. One, the hope that God inspires.
One, the strain that lips of thousands lift us from the heart of one.
One, the conflict. One, the peril. One, the march in God begun.
One, the gladness of rejoicing on that far eternal shore, where the one almighty Father reigns in love forevermore.
What's the conclusion?
Onward, therefore, pilgrim brothers. Onward with the cross our aid.
Bear its shame and fight its battle till we rest beneath its shade.
Soon shall come the great awakening. Soon the rending of the tomb.
Then the scattering of all shadows and the end of toil and gloom.
Onward, therefore, Christian brethren. Amen.