Article 2
UNITY IN THE PAULINE
EPISTLES
It
is however in
the Epistles of the apostle to the Gentiles that we find fuller light, where
unity rises (beyond the union of God's children however sure, sweet, and
blessed, as seen in John's testimony), into the truths of God's habitation, and
Christ's body. To be built together is close indeed; to be constituted an
organic body, the one body of Christ, is yet more, the closest unity possible.
Let us trace this new thing to His praise.
In
the Epistle to the Romans unity is applied practically, after the gospel of God
has been elaborately set forth in chaps. i. - viii., and God's sovereign grace
to all is in chaps. ix.- xi. conciliated with His special promises to Israel.
The saints are exhorted to present their bodies a living sacrifice, not
conformed to this age, nor with high thoughts but sobriety. "For as in one
body we have many members, yet all the members have not the same function"
(thus communion is taught, each fulfilling his own place in the one body, but
not exceeding his measure), " so we the many are one body in Christ and
severally members one of another."
Thus,
in this Epistle as in all the N.T. and in the nature of things, God does not
fail to make it evident that it is for the individual to repent and believe. We
are reconciled to God and justified individually. Before the body of Christ was
formed or revealed, the believer had through His blood the remission of sins,
and was a son of God by faith in Christ Jesus. The work of redemption was now accomplished;
Christ had taken His seat at God's right hand; and the Holy Spirit came down to
baptise all who received the gospel into one body, and to dwell in them as
God's house. Then and there was the church of God formed. "The Lord was
adding day by day such as should be saved together " (Acts ii. 47); and
this united body was in due time called " the church " (chap. v. 11).
The
saints who believed through grace were no longer left as of old among their
brethren after the flesh (Mal. iii. 16), however slowly they gave up habits and
prejudices. They had now " their own company " (Acts iv. 23), outside
Israel and of course the Gentiles. Their hearts, their prayers, their praises,
rose up to God and His Anointed, Whose bondmen they were bought with a price,
and therefore to glorify God in their body. They were taken out of Israel and
brought into the body of Christ by the uniting power of the Holy Spirit before
they could explain its nature and character. But His descent they knew well,
and that they had received Him. It was for Paul in due time to interpret the
result and even to reveal it as bound up with Christ, given to be Head over all
things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in
all. The presence of the Spirit sent from heaven was their bond that made them
one body, not their faith nor yet life which they had antecedently as
individuals. They were no longer children of God scattered abroad, but gathered
together in one; no longer invisible as units in the midst of the outwardly
chosen people, but a corporate body on earth one with their Head in heaven, and
as distinct from Jew as from Gentile (1 Cor. x. 32).
In 1 Cor. xii. the apostle, before writing to the Roman
saints, had discussed the constitutive principle on the side of the Holy
Spirit's presence and action in the church, in the course of which the truth is
stated as much above the Reformed systems or those who dissented from them, as
above the ancient and so called catholic claims of Greece, Rome, or any others.
His was the power that wrought in all the gifts varied as they were, some of
which the Corinthians were singling out for ostentation, all of them given to
exalt the Lord Jesus. That love, a way still more excellent, must animate and
direct each in order to a right exercise of any gift is clearly shown in chap.
xiii; and that power is to be subject to the Lord's authority in the regulation
of all is the aim of chap. xiv.
In these distinct manifestations then the
same Spirit distributes, the same Lord is served, the same God effectuates, by
each for common profit. For as the one body has many members, and the many
members are one body: so also, he boldly says, is " the Christ," the
body and Head. How truly then is it " one body in Christ! " Of this
unity the Holy Spirit now given and present is the power. "For also
[besides working in each] in virtue of one Spirit were we all baptised into one
body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and we were all given to
drink of one Spirit" (13). It is not new birth, still less water baptism,
but the effect of the Spirit given when Jesus was glorified.
But in the body are many members, not one merely. The lower are as
essential as the higher (15, 16). All are proper to the body; and God set the
members each one of them in the body as it pleased Him. How blessed and
conclusive to faith! "But if they all were one member, where the body? But
now [they are] many members, yet one body;" and the superior cannot do without the
humbler members: all have need of each other (21). Pride is as out of place as
discontent. Nay, those that seem weaker are " necessary," rather than
the higher (22); " and the less honourable we clothe with more abundant
honour, and our uncomely have more abundant comeliness " (23). "God
tempered the body together, so that there might be no schism in the body"
(24, 25). Hence if one member suffer, all suffer together; if one is honoured,
all rejoice (26). Such is the true organisation of the church through the
Spirit, without Whom it could not be.
Very important too are vers. 27,
28. The first proves that the local assembly (here primarily at Corinth) is
Christ's body, and severally members. It represents in the locality that body,
assuredly not as independent of, but as one with, all on earth. Compare chap.
i. 2. All the saints here below were God's assembly, and each a member not of
an but of the assembly, Christ's body. So the second demonstrates
that if God set some in the assembly, it means not of course locally, but in it
as a whole on earth. Certainly the apostles, &c. were not set in the
Corinthian church or any other locality in particular. God sets the gifts in
the assembly as a whole. They are, like the humblest Christians, members of the
body; and the Holy Spirit acts therein by each as He pleases here below, for
obviously it is no question of heaven. Thus, as the given Spirit abides with us
for ever (John xiv.), it is unbelief to doubt that Christ's body exists here
still, or that He can fail on His part. Let the members of Christ see that they
be subject to the written word which alone secures the truth.
1 Cor. xiv. furnishes, what was so necessary,
the Lord's regulation of the assembly. For the exercise of gift therein
(whatever the liberty where is the Spirit of the Lord) is not left to the
licence, any more than the authority, of man. It is for His glory Who is the
Second Man. The apostle therefore explains not only the relative value of the
gifts, which men were apt to mistake, but the order that befits God's presence
and promotes the edification of saints. What he wrote they were to recognise as
the Lord's commandment. Now is all this, so due to His name, so full of enjoyment and growth and communion, is
it obsolete? Is it not only lost for our joint walk, edification, and worship
(15-17), but so fatally that we are not to seek thus to assemble, or to count
on God's blessing in the only order He prescribes for the proper assembly of
His own here below? Of course evangelising, or trading with individual gift, is
not here in question.
In Eph. ii. the truth appears no less clearly, though viewed, on
the side, not of the Spirit's presence and action to glorify the Lord, but of
Christ's love to the church. Hence are omitted all references to such sign
gifts as tongues, interpretations, miracles, healings. But nowhere is the unity
of the church revealed more plainly, nowhere with greater elevation, or out of
love so deep. Yet here as ever (and it
is due to Christ and to God, to say nothing of the soul), the individual
blessedness of saints is carefully treated before the church is so much as
named, in the strongest contrast with the catholic system which makes all
blessing hinge on the church to its own glory but really its shame. Now in
Christ Jesus believing Gentiles, once far off, are become nigh by the blood of
Christ. For He is our peace who made both (i.e. Jews and Gentiles) one, and
broke down the middle wall of partition . . . that He might create the two in
Himself into one new man, making peace, and might reconcile both in one body to
God by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby. So at the close of chapter
ii. we are said to be built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
as the Ephesian saints also were being builded together for God's
habitation in the Spirit. Thus God's house, like Christ's body, is shown to be
the church, founded on redemption, and made good by the Spirit sent from heaven
to that end.
Eph. iv. presents the Spirit's unity with great fulness before
treating of the gifts : "one body and one Spirit, even as also ye were
called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God
and Father of all, Who is over all, and through all, and in you [or, us]
all" (4-6). Diversity follows in the gifts, which are not simply powers
here as in 1 Cor. xii., but persons endowed for special ends in Christ's love
to His own. His ascension is the declared starting-point after His wondrous
humiliation and its fruit. "But to each one of us was the grace given
according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he
ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men And he gave
some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and
teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, unto ministerial work, unto
edifying of the body of Christ, until we all attain," &c. This is
unmistakeable if we are simple, deriving both the one body and the several
gifts from Christ on high after His victory over Satan to our deliverance, and
that work of redemption which has perfectly glorified God even as to sin and
our sins, so that His love can flow to the uttermost. Thus and therefore is
Christ set as Head over all things to the church His body. What a glorious
place this gives to not only the church but those gifts, the exercise of which
constitutes ministry of the word!
Beyond controversy
the foundation gifts are the apostles and prophets. The basis of N.T. truth
they so well laid that there was no room for their continuance, still less for
the delusion of their revival. The όthers, evangelists as well as pastors and
teachers, are given " till we all attain," &c. Do we wish better
security than the written word? Does unbelief tempt us to think that the one
body admits of change without sin, or that the gifts of Christ fail, so that we
need human imitations to supply their place? Do we believe that Christ's body
abides on earth from the first, as that only to which we belong wherever we
dwell, according to which we are called to walk and in nothing else? Do we
believe that He has given evangelists to win the unconverted, or pastors and
teachers to tend and feed His sheep as truly now as on the day of Pentecost?
The Epistle to the
Colossians teaches no other doctrine, though its design is to assert the glory
of Christ the Head rather than to develop the nature and privileges of the
body. Indeed the special aspect of the mystery made known to the Gentile saints
is Christ in them the hope of glory i.e. on high;
the converse of what the O.T. prophets teach, Christ the glory of His people
Israel with all the nations blessed but subordinate. A marked warning is
against not holding the Head from Whom all the body, being supplied and knit
together through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God
(chap. ii. 19). Heathen philosophy and judaising ordinances were the dangers;
and so they are to this day. Christ, not merely as Lord, nor yet as Saviour of
sinners, but as Head of the body, is the object of faith, Christ ever working
for the best good of all the body, not only through such a gift as Paul, but
through the less considerable and marked, " the joints and bands "
(cf. Eph. iv. 16). Thus was " all the body" to increase with the
increase of God.
What a contrast with
the increase of man when the spread of profession became multitudinous! "
In the distress of the battle of Tolbiac Clovis [still a Pagan] loudly invoked
the God of Clotilda and the Christians; and victory disposed him to hear with
respectful gratitude the eloquent Remigius, bishop of Rheims, who forcibly displayed
the temporal and spiritual advantages of his conversion. The king declared
himself satisfied of the truth of the catholic faith; and the political reasons
which might have suspended his public profession were removed by the devout or
loyal acclamations of the Franks, who showed themselves alike prepared to
follow their heroic leader to the field of battle or to the baptismal font . .
. The new Constantine was immediately baptised with three thousand of his
warlike subjects; and their example was imitated by the remainder of the gentle
barbarians, who in obedience to the victorious prelate adored the cross which
they had burnt, and burnt the idols which they had formerly adored"
(Gibbon's D. & F. chap. xxxviii. A.D. 496).
The departure of the
ancient systems into sanctioned error and evil is no doubt true. The Reformed
Protestant systems began without any intelligence of the church of God; the
Dissenters split off with less sense of it if possible. If we feel for the
Lord's injured honour, and if we love the church, are we not bound to purge
ourselves from the vessels to dishonour, as in a great house? What can we do
but humble ourselves before God fur that ruin in Christendom which we have all
shared, and fall back on all that is open to us to obey in this evil day? We
are sanctified by the Spirit to obedience: the divine word is the rule, and He
is the yet abiding power. We are here and always to follow the Lord, not
men. Are we to slight the organisation of Christ's body and His gifts for
either the old devices or the new inventions around us? I trove not.
The Bible
Treasury, New Series 1vol 1 page 358