Listen to this message:
Albert N. Martin
Now, in planning the pastors’ conference three conferences ago and about two and a half calendar years ago, my fellow elders requested that I speak on the Monday evening of the conference of 1989 on the subject of Our Vision for These Days. It was their intention that in that message I should attempt to bring into sharp focus the distilled essence of the concerns which, above all others, unite us in the fellowship of this conference. It was not their intention that I could bring into distilled essence all of the concerns that each of us legitimately has if we are committed to a life lived under the light of the whole counsel of God and committed with equal zeal to teaching the whole counsel of God, but rather, it was their intention that I should highlight and focus upon those mountain peaks of spiritual concern, which, indeed, unite our hearts in this particular fellowship.
On that occasion, I intended to speak to you on Our Vision for These Days in terms of three predominant concerns. Concern number one: the recovery of the biblical gospel. Concern number two: the renewal of biblical holiness. And concern number three: the return to biblical churchmanship. While on that occasion, God drew near to us in a very marked way, and in the present enlargement of preaching in that context, I was able only to address the first of those three headings, namely, the recovery of the biblical gospel. We considered that subject under three simple headings: its essential, doctrinal content, its appointed means of communication, and its efficacious power to transform lives. I sought to underscore, on that occasion, that it is our great burden now as it was then to see a recovery of that gospel in the integrity of this content, in the use of the appointed means for its communication, and in its efficacious power, even the power of the Holy Spirit, to transform lives.
Then, approaching last year’s conference, my brethren and I were a bit more realistic and decided that I should address only the second heading, namely, our concern and vision for a renewal of biblical holiness. I took up that subject, again, under three headings. We considered the centrality of holiness in the purposes of redemptive grace, the indispensability of holiness in the application of redemptive grace, and the theology of holiness in the outworking of redemptive grace. For some of you brethren who are with us here, for the first time, tapes of those two messages are available.
Now, we come to take up the third of these things that constitute our vision, not in the sense that we have had some supernatural revelation, but the word “vision” being used synonymous with our perspective concerning the great need of these days. The third strand of our vision for these days is what I have entitled “A Return to Biblical Churchmanship.”
In taking up this subject in a day when the ecumenical movement is pressing for an ecclesiastical togetherness orgy in which all biblical distinctives of the doctrine of the church are blurred (except, eventually the standards of Rome who would recall her, “separated brethren”) to take up the subject of biblical churchmanship seems strange to many people, for the moment we begin to consider the doctrine of the church we immediately think of a very marked expression of the little cliche, “doctrine divides.” Perhaps few doctrines divide more quickly than the doctrines of the church.
For while there are many in our day who have found great unity in returning to the great historic, biblical, and reformational truths concerning the doctrine of salvation, commonly called the doctrines of grace, let anyone introduce to such a gathering of men committed to the biblical doctrine of salvation a concern for the biblical doctrine of the church, and immediately people get restless and uneasy, for they say, “All of the unity we’ve attained in our coming together around our soteriology will now be fragmented by this pesky concern with ecclesiology.”
Furthermore—in a day when movements and parachurch organizations, independent evangelistic associations proliferate and promote themselves, and like leeches suck the finances and energies of the church, but in self-justification call themselves arms of the church—again, I say, it seems strange that anyone would say that one of the three major focal points of our vision for these days is a concern for biblical churchmanship.
Nonetheless, in spite of the ecumenical movement, in spite of the proliferation of parachurch organizations, and even a pressure to be ecumenical around the doctrines of grace and allow everything else to remain up for grabs, I am indeed convinced—as are my fellow elders and as I know many of you are—that indeed one of the most pressing concerns of the hour is a return to biblical churchmanship. While many may regard this a matter akin to fiddling while Rome burns, some of us are deeply convinced that whatever gains there have been in a recovery of the biblical gospel and a restoration of biblical holiness, they will become abortive unless they flow into and are productive of a return to biblical churchmanship, and so it is within that perspective of the vital and delicate and interpenetrating relationship of these things that I take up my subject tonight. I will address the subject under two major headings.
1) We must have a biblically based conviction concerning the centrality and uniqueness of the church in the purpose of God.
If there is to be a return to biblical churchmanship, then I assert in your hearing that, first of all, we must have a biblically based conviction concerning the centrality and uniqueness of the church in the purpose of God.
If there is to be a return to biblical churchmanship, there must be in our hearts a biblically based conviction concerning the centrality and uniqueness of the church in the purpose of God.
What is the origin of the whole idea of the church?
Who spawned the notion that companies of gospel believers who have openly confessed Christ in His ordained ordinance of baptism, that such gospel believing confessed disciples in a given geographical area should constitute themselves a community who meet for stated seasons of worship on God’s appointed day for the ministry of the Word, for prayer, for mutual service one to another and for participation in a memorial supper and then go out from those gatherings aggressively to bring the gospel to others with a view that as men and women are brought to repentance and faith and confess that faith in the ordinance of God’s institution, they too should be gathered in their area into a worshipping ministering, serving and evangelizing community? Who spawned this notion?
Is this noble institution something which like Topsey, just ‘growed’?
Is it something that was contrived by the genius of some early followers of Jesus, and is it as an organization designed by men and perpetuated by tradition to the present hour?
I ask further, is the church but the one institution among many which deserves our energies, our time, our money and our prayers for the accomplishment of God’s designated purposes?
In answer to those questions, I’m prepared to assert in the plainest terms possible that there will be no solid return to biblical churchmanship until we are convinced from the Scriptures that the church as an institution is both central and unique in the revealed purpose of God.
The church is central as opposed to peripheral, it is unique as opposed to one of several or many institutions.
Since he who asserts has the burden of proving, I gladly take upon myself that burden and I would first of all draw your attention to the centrality of the church in the purpose of God, and then, secondly, the uniqueness of the church in the purpose of God.
1. The centrality of the church in the purpose of God.
First of all, as to the centrality of the church in the purpose of God, turn please to the passage read in your hearing: Ephesians chapter 3.
While passing over the major thrust of the more remote, and even more immediate, context to which Pastor Lamar alluded prior to reading this portion of the Word of God, we pick up the reading at verse 6. Ephesians 3:6. Paul says that the essence of this mystery—this truth hidden for ages and generations but now revealed—has as its essence the following: “That the Gentiles are fellow heirs, and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”
The mystery, that truth hidden, that purpose of God locked up in His heart but not revealed until this gospel age, is not that Gentiles would be the recipients of saving mercy through the Messiah.
That truth is bound up in the entirety of the Old Testament. The very promise to Abraham was that in him and in his seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed. Paul says, in giving that promise, God preached before the gospel unto Abraham. The gospel that this night says to anyone in this building who does not know the pardon of his sins and acceptance with God, turn from your sins, throw yourself upon the One who is promised in that promise to Abraham, even the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Seed of Abraham par excellance in whom God holds out the vilest of sinners full and free pardon of all sin.
The mystery was that in that relationship of reception of saving mercy, Gentiles and Jews would come into an entirely new relationship: that of fellow heirs. The Jew would have no precedent over the Gentile in the new economy, in the constitution of the New Israel, in the constitution of the New Covenant temple and sanctuary of which Christ is the chief cornerstone and the apostles are foundation blocks into which Jew and Gentile are built. Here is the mystery: that they are fellow heirs. They all stand on equal redemptive privilege, on equal ground as to redemptive privilege.
Now Paul says, in a very unique way, it was given to him to be a minister of that grand and glorious truth. He says in verse 7, “Whereof
In fact he says, “I feel utterly unfit and unworthy to be the recipient of such a stewardship.”
“Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.”
So that Paul is very conscious of his own unworthiness in being given this stewardship, and in expressing it he tells us that the way in which this mystery is unfolded is by proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Verse 9, “And to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which for ages has been hid in God who created all things.”
What’s the grand intention in the unfolding of this mystery—the proclamation of the unsearchable riches of Christ being the medium by which this mystery comes to its unfolding—when Jew and Gentile embrace the gospel, and are incorporated into God’s new covenant building, His new covenant sanctuary, His new covenant family?
Listen to his words very carefully.
Verse 10, “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church.”
The community founded through the proclamation of the unsearchable riches of Christ, Paul assumes is not some parachurch movement, not some evangelistic organization, not some arm of the church, but the proclamation of Christ constitutes (under the blessing of God) the church of Christ. He says that through that Church is now made known unto unseen powers in the heavenliness—unto principalities and powers—the manifold wisdom of God. Why is this so?
Because it was the eternal purpose of God that it should be so. Verse 11, “According to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
So when the Apostle conceives of this divine arrangement of gathering together Jew and Gentile, now on equal footing as they embrace the Lord Jesus who comes to them in the proclamation of the gospel, He says when these who repent and believe and are gathered into those communities who owe all of their spiritual life to Jesus Christ there is manifested in and through that community the many-faceted wisdom of God to the amazement of principalities and of powers in the heavenly places, but for our purposes I want you to focus upon those words: “Might be made known through the church according to the eternal purpose which He purposed.”
Now in God’s mind and heart, in God’s own eternal purpose, is the church peripheral or is it central?
Is it an afterthought in the mind of God, or does it come into being as an expression of eternal thought purpose and will?
Well, the answer of this text is obvious: that the church in the purpose of God is absolutely central.
God is determined to cause oohs and ahhs and breathless wonder by angels and cherubim and seraphim and other heavenly non-earthly creatures who behold His work upon earth. The oohs and the ahhs and the breathless wonder is to be seen through the church, the manifold wisdom of God displayed in the theater of the church, of the church, of the church. According to this passage we may say without pressing the text beyond the place to which its words take us, that God’s purpose to make the church central is an eternal purpose, an unchanging purpose.
The church is central in the purposes of God.
The second witness that I would add to my attempt to prove that the church is central (much more briefly) are the familiar words of our Lord Jesus in Matthew 16:18. Familiar words to many, if not all of us. Our Lord has just drawn from Peter a confession with reference to His own identity, and has said that Peter’s accurate answer was not something learned of men but taught him by His own Father.
He says in verse 18, “And I also say unto thee that thou art Peter and upon this rock”—not upon you as the Roman catholic church has perverted this text, the Lord did not say, “I say unto thee thou art Peter and upon you I will build my church.” He could have said that, but He didn’t.
He said in other words, “You are Peter. You have spoken on behalf of the other disciples, and you have acknowledged my identity as the Christ, the Anointed One, God’s final Prophet, Priest and King. You’ve acknowledged the identity of My office as Messiah, My Person as Son of God (“thou art the Christ the Son of God”) and upon this rock, upon the realities of who I am in My person and office, I will—now notice, of all the ways He could describe the certain success of His mission as Messiah and Son of God, isn’t it significant that He chooses to describe it in these words? Not “I will gather My people, I will establish my kingdom.” He could have said any of those things and they would’ve been true, but He said, “I will build my church.”
In the first explicit reference to ecclesia in the New Testament, our Lord clearly underscores the centrality of the church in the accomplishment of His own saving purposes and from this point on, having established by this confession His identity as to office and person, He begins plainly to tell them that in pursuit of that task He must first be crucified and buried and be raised from the death, and though their comprehension is clouded and murky at this juncture, our Lord goes on to do those very things and accomplishes in space-time history those redemptive acts in the virtue of which and in the virtue of which alone He fulfills the promise, “I will build My church.”
You see, from the cross of Christ and the open tomb of Christ and the session of Christ and the sending forth of the Spirit of Christ—it finds its terminus in the building of His church. So that in the mind and heart of our blessed Lord all of the agonies He underwent in conjunction with His rejection, His scourging, His mockery and His cruel death, all of the triumphs of the empty tomb there in that garden and all of the glory of His being received back to the right hand of the Father and His sending forth of the Holy Spirit, has as its focal point of outworking in the application of redemption to build His church.
Therefore, if the eternal purpose of God shapes and molds the gospel proclamation of the mystery referred to in Ephesians 3 to the intent that there might be made known unto principalities and powers in the heavenly places through the church the manifold wisdom of God, and if our Lord Jesus says that the focal point of His own redemptive work as to its application can be summed in the words, “I will build My church,” then surely the church is central and not peripheral in the purpose of God.
2. The uniqueness of the church in the purpose of God.
Not only is the church central, the church is unique, and I want briefly now to try to demonstrate the uniqueness of the church in the purpose of God, and by unique I mean one of a kind.
There is no other like it. There is nothing else alongside of it. It has no copy. It has no substitute. It is unique, one of the kind in the truest sense and in the strictest meaning of that word.
The proof of my assertion I set before you under first of all the explicit statement of 1 Timothy 3:15 and then the implicit argument of apostolic labors and teaching.
Where do we find the doctrine of the uniqueness of the church in the purpose of God?
The explicit statement of 1 Timothy 3:15 is perhaps the clearest most focused assertion of the uniqueness of the church in the purpose of God.
Now you remember the setting. A church has been established at Ephesus primarily through the labors of Paul. He labored there altogether—as best we can fit the chronology together—a total some three and a half years. He has left his spiritual child and laboring companion, Timothy, there at Ephesus to carry on pastoral duties in that congregation. He tells him very explicitly, in the middle of the third chapter, why he has done what he has done.
He says in verse 14, “These things write I unto you hoping to come unto you shortly.”
My letter’s a stopgap measure. (When you write letters as a stopgap measure you have apostolic precedent.) He said, “I write these things, and all the while I write them I’m hoping to come unto you shortly, but..” (because he had no direct revelation from God as to the time frame with reference to a return visit to Ephesus, or if such a visit would ever come to pass,) “But, if I tarry long, if I cannot come and do in my person what is burning in my heart, if I cannot come in the will of God and accomplish through my labors what to me is utterly and absolutely crucial, Timothy, I want you to have it in black-and-white—I want you to have it with ink on parchment. Here it is.”
“But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the ground [or buttress] of the truth.”
In this text the Apostle indicates that that which lay at the heart of his tremendous concern for the details of church behavior at Ephesus was his understanding of the glorious identity of the church and the awesome function of the church.
Now, you see a man so burdened for the whole Roman world, carrying continually peculiar burden for his own fellow Jews. “I have continual sorrow and heaviness of heart for my kinsmen, my brethren according to the flesh.” He describes them in Romans as his ‘fellow Jews.’ He carries this burden. He’s always looking for new frontiers to push back for gospel endeavors. “I have no more place in these parts.” He says to the Romans, “I long to come to you and after some mutual fellowship and encouragement and strengthening of one another’s faith I plan to be taken by you on my way to Spain.” There’s a new gospel frontier! Here’s a man alive with passion to see the gospel taken to the ends of the then known earth.
Well, why in the world would he be so concerned then if a church, a strong church, a church where he labored longer than any other church is already in existence, through it tremendous impact for the gospel has been made upon all of Asia Minor, why in the world is he concerned to go back there himself and get involved in all these little niggling details of behavior in the church—the right place of women, and men, and all of—what’s a matter? Has he lost his vision? Has he lost his burden? Has he somehow been affected by all of the pressures upon him so that now he wants to retreat into this lovely ecclesiastical backwater and just tidy things up until the Lord takes him home?
Not this man Paul. No. He says, “Timothy I am passionately concerned for the details of behavior there in the church at Ephesus because I understand the glorious identity of the church and the awesome function of the church.
What is its identity? It is the house of God. The church is God’s house. It is His house by possession. Yes. It is His house by indwelling. He is both the owner and its glorious tenant. You may own a house and not live there. You may live in a house and not own it and be a renter, but God’s house is His because He owns it. He’s the tenant and He says this house is the assembly of the living God.
He understood the glorious identity of the church, and he’s not using the concept of church here in some nebulous undefined synonym for God’s people, whoever they are wherever they are, whether gathered in visible assemblies or not, the niggling details of the ordering of concrete church life is what bristles through this epistle. He says, that congregation at Ephesus in its glorious identity is nothing other than God’s house and the living God’s possession. It is the ecclesia. It is the called-out assembly. It is the place of the living God’s dwelling and possession; understanding its glorious identity, he wants everything in God’s house to be glorious, reflective of its owner and tenant and of the livingness of its God who possesses it.
He also understood its awesome function. Notice what else he says of the church, “Which is the pillar and ground of the truth.”
Now, he does not mean that the church is the mother of the truth (again, one of the false claims of catholicism). No, there was a church at Ephesus that was the child of the truth. The apostle Paul says in the second chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, “He, Christ, came and preached peace to you who are afar off and to those that are nigh.”
When did Christ come and preach peace to the Ephesians? Well, when the Apostle as a duly sent one came and preached, Christ Himself comes upon the wings of the messengers, on the message of His appointed messengers. The Lord Jesus had come, and He had come in terms of the proclamation of the truth. The church at Ephesus was the child of the truth, but then, he says, when there were enough children of the truth to be constituted into a church, that church becomes the unique steward of that truth in that part of the world in which God has placed it.
It is the church thus brought into being and gathered by the truth that now becomes the steward of the truth: the pillar that upholds the roof, and then, the ground (which could mean the foundation which supports the pillar or the buttresses). In either case, the imagery is clear. Though we may not be able with precision to settle particularly the significance of the second word, this much is clear: separate the truth from the church and in any given area there is no reason to believe that the truth will be upheld, that the truth will be propagated, that the truth will be enfleshed, that the truth will be embodied; in that sense the church is the pillar and the ground of the truth; and that is not said of any other institution. It is not said of any other grouping of men of any kind.
The uniqueness of the church in the purpose of God is clearly asserted in 1 Timothy 3:15.
Then there is the implicit argument of the apostolic labors and teaching.
Summarized simply, a reading of the Book of Acts and many sections of the epistles leads us to this conclusion: all of the labors of the apostles and those with whom they labored and those whose labors they approved of were labors aimed at the establishing of churches as the fruit of God-blessed evangelism.
In fact, Luke so writes the history of the Book of Acts in such a way that the success of the gospel is invariably described in terms of the establishment and growth of churches; and there are terms used synonymously by Luke under the inspiration of the Spirit (believers were the more added to the Lord, believers were added to the church; disciples were multiplied—those are all synonymous terms).
He does not describe God-blessed fruit in evangelism in terms of decisions, in terms of little groups that have no resemblance to New Testament churches; and while we have the record of the conversion of individuals, and nothing is said about their subsequent involvement in any specific church or their being particularly used to be the nucleus of a church—I’m conscious of that. I’ve chosen my words carefully.
Wherever Luke intends by the Spirit to describe God’s owning the proclamation of the gospel, he describes it in terms of churches coming to birth, churches being strengthened, churches walking in peace and in the fear of God.
When Luke describes the new advances of the gospel into the Roman empire, he is careful to show that it is in the scattering of the church at Jerusalem that the gospel begins to penetrate beyond the boundaries of Palestine.
When there is the first, what we would call, formal missionary journey, by one called and set apart to bear the name of Christ to the Gentiles, the Holy Ghost is so clear to emphasize in Acts 13: “It was in the church [that strange construction that baffles all the Greek scholars] that was there at Antioch, five of its gifted men are named and out of the five, the Holy Ghost separates out of the womb of the church Saul and Barnabas for the work to which He called them.”
It is not enough that the apostle Paul be saved by an intervention of direct revelation by the risen Christ, and clearly and articulately marked out as a commissioned herald of the cross. God spends years seasoning him and teaching him and disciplining him, and then He embeds his life in a living, thriving church where he learns accountability even as an apostle, where he learns to work with his brethren, where he learns to bow to their judgment on matters that are not matters of patent biblical truth and principle and clear matters of righteousness. Only when thus prepared does God say, “Separate Paul and Barnabas and the ones who are sent forth.” Luke says, by the Holy Ghost, are sent out of the womb of the church. The sending of the Holy Ghost is always in conjunction with the life and ministry of the church.
Then, if you read Acts 14:21-28, you have a beautiful summary of this whole emphasis on the apostolic labors being found in conjunction not only with the establishment of churches as the fruit of evangelism, but with the systematic return and the strengthening of the churches, helping the churches to recognize their Christ-given gifts of leadership—when they had ordained for them elders in every church. They just didn’t go and have a Bible conference with some little groups of people who love Jesus and turn them loose to do their own thing.
There were churches established, churches strengthened, churches furnished with God-given gifts of pastors and teachers. Now, it’s interesting, this same book, the Book of Acts, and the epistles, these same letters, they contain a record of temporary committees established for specific crisis. A committee was sent up to Jerusalem to sort out the crisis of doctrinal aberration in the church at Antioch. That’s all it was, and I marvel how people will try to make a standing form of church order out of what is patently a temporary arrangement in the face of a crisis!
On their way they reported to the churches. It doesn’t say they picked up presbyters along the way to have a synodical meeting at Jerusalem. No, the text is clear that the church decided who would go up to Jerusalem to the apostles, elders, and the church to sort out this matter of these people, these mavericks who came out supposedly sent by the Jerusalem and were confusing and upsetting the believers and when they couldn’t sort it out they said, “Here’s a problem.” So they formed a temporary committee for the sorting out of a doctrinal issue, but it didn’t become the standing doctrinal-sorting-out committee, nor is such to be found anywhere in the New Testament.
When there was a famine and the poor saints in Judea were to be the recipients of the benevolence of the Gentile churches, a temporary committee to handle this particular situation was formed by apostolic direction, but it did not then become frozen into the benevolence committee of the apostolic church! When it did its job, it was dissolved and the only thing that remains are specific, local congregations.
Now, brethren what do we do with all that data? I say we either rationalize it away piece by piece (and in the process sell out our consciences) or we come to the conviction that the church is not only central in the purpose of God, it’s unique in the purposes of God.
Very interestingly, in 1963, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, speaking at a special gathering of the Westminster Fellowship there in England, spoke on the theme, “Consider Your Ways, the Outline for a New Strategy.” Listen to the words of the doctor (I quote from this collection of addresses, Knowing the Times, printed by the Banner of Truth magazine, page 176). Listen to these words:
It is that while evangelicals have tried to solve their problem and get out of their difficulties by forming movements, they have evaded, avoided and bypassed the whole question of the nature of the church. That would be my fundamental criticism of our spiritual grandfathers and those before them during the last century. The moment they began to meet the situation by forming movements they had already gone wrong. I think it is there that they departed from the Scripture. Surely these are matters that should be decided and determined in terms of the church and in the realm of the church, but they allowed the position to develop in the church [that is, liberalism and all the rest] and they went out of it as it were and met in their little conclaves.
He goes on to say,
Now, look here, people will say you’re offending these others. If you begin to be concerned about churches, you will wreck their movements. The whole thing will collapse. You cannot do that. The result is that in our fear of causing division, or in our natural love toward our brethren, and our desire to avoid putting them, as we say, on the spot, and in a difficult position, we have left the whole doctrine of the nature of the church unconsidered. We’ve just evaded it. It think you will all have to agree that this is a simple statement of fact and I’ve given you the reasons why I am pointing it out. Surely the doctrine of the church is central, it is foundational. All these other matters arise out of the church and it is because we’ve been evading the doctrine of the church in this way that we find so many of our present difficulties to be what they are. The church is the pillar and ground of the truth. All activity should be church activity and if we’re uncertain as to the nature of the church, how can there possibly be a true unity or a true activity?
Is this some off-beat notion dug up by narrow minds and narrower yet spirits? No, when men who are sensitive to the Word are honest with that Word they must come to this conviction: the church is central to the purposes of God, the church is unique in the purposes of God. Brethren, I submit to you that there will be no return to biblical churchmanship until we have a Bible-based conviction of both the centrality and the uniqueness of the church in the purpose of God. If you don’t have that conviction, my plea is, with the Berean spirit, go to your Bible in dependence upon the Holy Ghost and ask God to teach you if indeed His church is central and unique, “Lord convince me from Your Word,” and having been convinced from the Word, let God be true and every man a liar.
Let every institution of man crumble and come to naught, but He will build His church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it!
2) We must be deeply committed to labor to see the church in which we serve conforming the totality of its life to the Word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Now, my second heading is this: if we are to see a return to biblical churchmanship there must at the starting point be a Bible-based conviction concerning the uniqueness of the church, but brethren, that’s not enough. You see, that still is in the realm of what we might call internalized spiritual theory, and that must be joined to this second commodity and it’s what I’m calling: we must be deeply committed to labor to see the church in which we serve conforming the totality of its life to the Word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.
(Now, that’s a mouthful, but I didn’t know how to reduce it and still be accurate.)
When will there be a return to biblical churchmanship? Not only when we start with a Bible-based conviction concerning the centrality and uniqueness of the church, but when we are brought to a deep commitment to labor to see the church in which we serve—not sitting in an ivory tower pontificating about the church generically, or everyone else’s church in a distance, but deeply committed to labor, as Paul says, to have spiritual birth pangs to see Christ formed in our people, to fill up that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for His body’s sake. The church deeply committed to labor to see in the church in which we serve—now my next word is a key word—conforming—not conformed (past tense) but laboring to see the church in which we serve conforming (present tense), always adjusting—to what? To the totality—the totality of its life to the Word of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
(Now, please do not put any meaning on those words other than those that I have sought to place upon them.)
It’s interesting, when we turn to the Great Commission, that this is what our Lord envisions His followers would do.
Will you turn to the familiar passage in Matthew?
Once again, the burden of proof is on me, and I’ve asserted that if there’s to be a return to biblical churchmanship, we must be deeply committed to labor to see the church in which we serve conforming the totality of its life to the Word of God by the power of the Spirit of God.
In Matthew chapter 28, the risen Lord appears there at the appointed place in Galilee and He, first of all, before commissioning His own, points to Himself and His regal position.
Matthew 28:18, “And Jesus came to them and spake unto them saying, all authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth.”
In other words, “Whenever you think of Me, My Person, My Words, My Works, think of Me as I am: the One who has received as the reward of My obedience, I have received this mediatorial authority, the authority that is My rightful possession as God, aspects, the exercise of which I voluntarily relinquished in the days of my humiliation. Now as deposited in my hands as the pierced and exalted Lord, the Messianic King, all authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Whatever has to do with My Person, My Work, My church, remember who I am! I have all authority, therefore there is no realm you’ll face in pursuit of a task that I cannot alter by My authority. There is nothing I say that any man has a right to override by his authority.”
“All authority has been given unto Me in heaven and in earth, going therefore, make disciples of all the nations,” and how do you do that?
Beautiful example of it in Acts: “And when they had preached the gospel and made many disciples in that city”—they didn’t make disciples by going around with a basin and sprinkling people in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and say, “You’re now a disciples”; nor did they go around and put chloroform on people’s faces and get them knocked out and dunk ’em and say, “You’re now a disciple.” They neither sprinkled them or dunked them. They made disciples by preaching.
When the Holy Ghost owned the preaching and men saw their sin, and saw in the gospel that Christ was the only hope of sinners and turned from sin and professed adherence to Christ they were thus baptized into the name of the Triune God, into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit
As we read the commentary on their obedience to that injunction, those who were made disciples and were baptized upon profession of that attachment to Christ were gathered into communities called churches. In that context, what was to be the focal point of their burden?
Now notice verse 20, “Teaching them,” those who have been made disciples and gathered into assemblies of disciples, teach them to observe, to keep, to treasure up, to obey—all of that is bound up in that verb, ‘to keep.’ It can mean to keep as you would keep a precious jewel, to keep in terms of preserving something precious, but it also means to keep with a view to compliance with.
“Teaching them to observe”—now look at the next words, “All things whatsoever I commanded you.” All things; there’s to be meticulous conformity to the word of Christ.
“All things I have commanded”—then notice the universality—“All things whatsoever I have commanded.”
So you have the microcosm and the macrocosm. You have the whole and all of its parts. You have the parts, and you have the parts in their totality.
If I’ve commanded it, it’s worthy of being taught—not put into artificial categories by you who go out in My name, “Well, this is nonessential, it need not be taught. Oh yes, I believe it. It’s clear Christ taught it, but, you see, not everyone likes that, so we’ll keep that in the cupboard and if someone comes and says, ‘Do you believe that Jesus said..?” Oh, yes, I’ll show you I do, and I take it out of the cupboard and say, see, see? I believe that.”
Oh no. He said, “You teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.”
Now, brethren, if there were no other text in the Bible, surely this should suffice to convince us that if the church is to begin to be what it ought to be as God has purposed it should be, the theater within which He displays unto principalities and powers His manifold wisdom, pillar and ground of the truth, embodying the truth, displaying the truth, living the truth, proclaiming the truth, then we must take seriously the words of Jesus and be deeply committed to labor to see the church in which we serve conforming the totality of its life to the Word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, for in the parallel commission passage in Luke, He said, “And behold I send the promise of My Father upon you. You cannot do this in your own strength, but I’m sending the comforter, I’m sending the Spirit and ye shall receive power, the Holy Spirit coming upon you and you shall be witnesses unto Me.”
Now, brethren, in the concrete and the specific, what does this mean? Let me, as I try to bring our meditation to a focused conclusion say that if we are deeply committed to labor to see the church in which we serve conforming (I emphasize conforming, no church this side of the consummation will ever be able to say we’ve arrived, conforming, the reformed church is the reforming church, and I don’t even attempt to say it in Latin to impress you), to see the church we serve conforming the totality of its life to the Word of God, what will that bring within its orbit? May I say, it must bring these five things within its orbit? I’m not going to spend long on each of the heads.
1. Conformity to the Word of God with respect to standards of membership in the church.
Number one: conformity to the Word of God with respect to standards of membership in the church.
I’m amazed at how many people think that the Bible has next to nothing to say about who should get into the church, what should be expected of them when they come in, what must they do and be to remain in, and what are grounds to put them out. Seems to me, for Christ to say, “I’ll build My church,” and give no instructions on those things, He did a pretty pathetic job. If He has not measured the door of entrance, if He has not described it, if He’s not given the rules within His house, if He’s not told us the behavior expected of His children, and that which is intolerable and yet to remain part of His visible house, then I tell you, I’d quit the ministry tomorrow and go into construction work where at least the contractor had the decency to give me a blueprint so I’d know how to go about where to lay my bricks and cut my two-by-fours, how long to cut them and where to put them, and will you say that a builder of an earthly house has more concern for his dwelling than God for His?
“Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” That means we must go to our Bibles with a heart dependent upon the illumination of the Spirit, and having gone to our Bibles go to the older standards, go to those books of church order and those confessions of faith such as our own confession of faith and the Savoy Declaration and the Cambridge platform of church order, and Benjamin Britus on the true nature of a gospel church and a host of other witnesses from the past. We will find that in our commitment to Biblical standards of who gets in, what is expected of those when they come in, what must they do to remain in and what are the grounds to put them out, the Bible does not speak with a garbled tongue.
2. Conformity to the Word of God with respect to the worship of the church.
Secondary in which we must be deeply committed to labor to see the church in which we serve conforming the totality of its life to the Word of God in the power of the Spirit, not only with respect to the standards of membership in the church, but secondly, conformity to the Word of God with respect to the worship of the church.
It’s as though God never wrote the second commandment or that commandment never had no application to present church life.
I’m amazed how many people profess adherence to the 1689 Confession who remain utterly indifferent to such statements as these:
“The acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by Himself and so limited by His own revealed will that He may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men.”
“Well, I think it would add to the worship if we.” My friends, God doesn’t give a hoot about what you think! He alone knows what pleases Him, and when you come with the fruit of your own aesthetic influence or your own desire to have a pleasant climate in which to make unconverted rebels feel comfortable, God says of that will-worship, who has required this of your hands?
If we in our day are to have anything that resembles a return to biblical churchmanship, we’ve got to be committed to labor at any cost to see our churches conforming to the revealed will of God in the power of the Spirit with respect to the worship of the church.
It’s very interesting, isn’t it, that it’s in the midst of giving what we would again call legalistic details (current charismatics would call them that, that’s the way they treat them, most of them) it’s in terms of how many prophets can speak, what gender, and in what order. It’s at the end of giving such mechanical, mathematical details—if the prophet speak, let it be by the most two, three.
When he’s all done giving all of those details what does He say in 1 Corinthians 14:37? “If any man among you thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I say unto you are the [entole] the commandments of the Lord.”
You mean, Paul, that if we don’t implement these directives that are precise and mathematical and categorical we’re defying the Lord? He says, yes.
In the name of speaking the Word of the Lord, you defy the Word of the Lord if you have four prophets speak. I said, the most three. You can count can’t you, Corinth? One, two, three? Uno, dos, tres, cuatro? Eh? Stop at tres.
“Oh, I’m so full of the Spirit, I gotta speak!”
Commandment of the Lord says to keep your mouth shut. The Spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets.
“But I have this marvelous gift. I must sing for the Lord!”
Well, good. Sing in your shower; sing at your table; sing in your living room; sing at family night; sing on the street corner to the glory of God, but until God says He wants you warbling in His presence in a performance role, keep your mouth shut in the church.
That’s what I’m talking about. “The things that I say unto you,” Paul says, “Are the commandments of the Lord.”
3. Conformity to the Word of God with respect to the name, number, gender, functions and standards for church officers.
The third area, if we’re serious about a recovery of biblical churchmanship, brethren, we must be committed to conformity to the Word of God with respect to the name, number, gender, functions and standards for church officers—name, number, gender, function and standards. I’ve used up too much time, but for you men who have the materials and can investigate it, I urge you to look up in the Savoy Declaration (it’s in Mather’s work on the History of New England, volume two, page 219) on what he says about appointing any other officers other than elders and deacons and calling them any other names. I tell you, it’s strong language. It’s interesting when Paul says,
“Oh, Timothy, I hope to come shortly, but if I tarry I want you to know how men ought to behave themselves.”
What is one of the primary focal points of his passionate concern for the behavior of the church?
“If any man seeks the office of an overseer, he desires a good work. The bishop therefore, they must be”—not it is an idealistic standard if perhaps he is in nine out of ten—I shall never forget twenty-three years ago, when we were teaching on the biblical standard and name and number and gender of church officers, I went to some friends and I said, isn’t this marvelous? It was like I was discovering the wheel. I said, look, we don’t need to be at the whims of who’s a nice guy and who’s got personal charisma! The Bible’s got a standard.
I remember the first time I studied in the Greek 1 Timothy 3, “The bishop, they must be”—I said, “Here it is, Lord! There’s a standard.” I was so excited.
I went to this brother, “Look!” He said, “Oh Lord, help us, just take it easy! You mustn’t take that seriously. I mean, that is a noble ideal, but I mean, if you start pressing that, you’re never going to have any elders. You’re never going to have any deacons. I mean, if someone, you know, meets seven or eight out of them, you’ve got to be realistic.”
I’ll never forget what happened to my spirit. It drove me to my knees. It drove me back to my Greek text. It drove me to do a word study. Is that particle of imperative to be taken seriously? Away with this pragmatism! Away with expecting so little of God’s grace! What a denigration of the sanctifying power of Christ that He cannot make men meet His own standard by His own grace.
There will be no return to biblical churchmanship until we are ready to labor in our own assemblies in dependence upon the Holy Ghost with respect to the name, number, gender, functions and standards for church officers.
Breckenridge in some unpublished material that one of the men (I referred to it earlier) dug out the rare book section. Listen to Breckenridge who writes,
The qualifications for the office are clearly laid down in the sacred Scriptures, not only point by point in many detached passages, but also in compact and lucid treatises written by perhaps the greatest of the apostles to his own sons in the ministry teaching them how and what they ought to preach and what description of persons with what kind of endowments and pastors of the church ought to be (1 Timothy 3, Titus 1) and in every examination of the proof whether or not a man be called of God, whether that examination be made by himself, by a congregation or by a presbytery, these Scriptural qualifications constitute the divine standard of judgment.
He goes on to say that to put a man in office while ignoring them is to nullify the very act, or words to that effect.
4. Conformity to the Word of God with respect to the specific areas of the church’s tasks, functions and ministries.
Fourth area, (I said I would attempt to be brief), if we are committed to a return to biblical churchmanship then we must be deeply committed to labor in our own assemblies in dependence upon God to see conformity to the Word of God with respect to the specific areas of the church’s tasks, functions and ministries. Conformity to the Word of God with respect to the specific areas of the church’s tasks, functions and ministries.
Everybody’s telling the church what it ought to do, it seems, except Jesus the head of the church. Has Jesus told the church to give general education to its young? No, that’s the task of parents. Has Jesus told the church to organize and confront specific social evils by a standard of selectivity determined by men? No. The evils of abortion and the killing of children were far more rife in the age of the apostle’s ministry than it is even today. One of our brethren has dug out of very reliable sources that a Roman child was not considered worthy of being protected even at birth, not until the child having been placed on a mat outside the home was picked up by the father taken in. Otherwise, it could be left to starve, left to be taken. There’s not a hint that any apostle sought to organize the churches into a concentrated organized effort to attack that specific evil—or any other evil, and there were plenty if you read Romans 1.
The apostle who wrote about them knew they were there but he never called the church to organize as church and to fight this, that or the other evil; and know how some people get around that? They say, “Well, the influence of the gospel wasn’t pervasive enough, therefore we need to look to the times after Constantine.
In other words, you don’t believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. Can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Either you say you believe in open ended revelation on ethical matters or you say the Bible is sufficient to get the agenda for the church as church.
Who’s to take the gospel to the world?
Oh, the church can’t do that.
It can’t? I commend to you the marvelous work of Thornwell, volume four. Read that section where Thornwell debates the issue. Can the church do all Christ has called her to do if she will wait upon Christ for the gifts and the manpower and the grace and the substance to do it? Thornwell’s intransigent answer against all the sophistry of Hodge was, “The church can do all she is called to do if it is the will of her Lord to do it.
5. Conformity to the Word of God with respect to the church’s resources, weapons and methods of accomplishing her God-given tasks.
Finally, if we’re serious about this matter of restoration of biblical churchmanship, then we must seek conformity to the Word of God with respect to the church’s resources, weapons and methods of accomplishing her God-given tasks. Conformity to the Word of God with respect to the church’s resources, weapons, methods and for accomplishment of her God-given tasks.
The pivotal text, of course, is 2 Corinthians 10:3-4, “Though we walk in the flesh we do not war after the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”
What are the weapons with which the church shook the Roman empire? Prayer, preaching, godly-living, aggressive evangelism, self-denying community in which each regarded other better than himself. No man said that aught that he possessed was his own. It was a disposition of heart, not a liquidation of all titles and right to personal property. It was a disposition of heart and those were her weapons with which she conquered, with no fax machines, no telephones, no jet planes, no printing press.
Her weapons were mighty through God.
Oh, dear people, are we simple enough to believe that those weapons are still mighty? How will we know if we clunk around in Saul’s armor and never go forth as an army of God’s Davids to be laughed at by the Goliaths of this world, who if in the name of the God of Israel meet God’s Davids with God’s weapons will find their heads severed from their shoulders?
Now, brethren, I would be less than honest if my final note were not this. You come to that Bible-based conviction concerning the centrality and uniqueness of the church in the purpose of God, come to a deep commitment by the grace of God to serve the church in which you labor to the end that there will be continuing conformity to the whole revealed will of God in the power of the Holy Spirit, and you have put yourself not only in the way of the greatest joys you’ll know this side of heaven, you’ve put yourself in the way of suffering.
Listen to Lloyd-Jones (and this is my final word, I let the one who being dead now speaks through the printed page),
I must mention one factor which affects our thinking because I think it may be a potent one. Namely, the fear of consequences. We have got to face this. Men who have tried to conceive of the church and to function in the church in New Testament terms have generally had to pay for it and have had to pay for it very dearly at times. It seems to me to be almost a universal rule that it may involve suffering. [I go beyond the doctrine, I say, it must involve suffering.] As our redemption was procured in the suffering of the Savior, its application only comes in the way of the suffering [non-redemptive, but the suffering] of the servants of God.
“I, for my part,” Paul said, “fill up that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for His body’s sake, the church.”
What’s lacking? Any expiatory virtue lacking? No, He cried, “It is finished!” The veil was rent. He is perfected forever by one sacrifice, those that are sanctified. Well, what’s lacking in the sufferings of Christ with respect to His church? The suffering that inevitably comes in the way of the application of that redemption in and through the church and through the servants of God who labor for her perfection.
You want it easy? Then you’re not serious. Why did Jesus say, “He that will lose his life for my sake and the gospels, the same shall save it”?
That’s our vision for these days, brethren: not only to see a recovery of the biblical gospel, a restoration of biblical holiness but a return to biblical churchmanship.
Thank God for what our eyes have witnessed of that return, but oh, surely, surely our great and exalted Savior deserves far more than He’s begun to receive from any one of our assemblies. May He yet see of the reward of His sufferings and be satisfied.
Let us pray.
Our Father, we bow in Your Holy Presence, and we feel ashamed of our love of ease. We confess our love to Your Son, but how little we’ve been willing to bear for the sake of His body, the church, that which He loved and for which He gave Himself, and which He continues to nourish and cherish by His ever living intercession.
Oh, Lord, we confess that when we look into Your Word and begin to contemplate what it reveals of the centrality and uniqueness of the church in Your purposes, we feel ashamed, again, of the years that many of us spent regarding the church as some human creation or some sloppy act or thought in Your mind.
Oh, God, forgive us that we would treat so lightly that which You’ve prized so highly from eternity. Then we pray You would forgive the level of our shallow commitment. Our indifference to so much of the Word and command of Jesus. Lord Jesus, we do love You, but we confess, we have not been diligent both to learn and then to teach all things whatsoever you have commanded. We confess that oft times we’ve attempted to do it but we’ve not done it in conscious dependence upon You. Our prayerlessness is eloquent testimony to our creature confidence. Oh, Lord Jesus, forgive us. Help us so to abide in You and to have Your Word abide in us that we will become mighty in that weapon of all prayer. See the pulling-down of the strongholds of human pride and the casting-out of all of the encumbrances that have entered Your house.
Oh, Lord, Jesus Christ, we love You and we want to obey You, but we fear our own hearts and our own cowardice, our own love of ease. By the power of Your grace, put these things to death in us, we pray. Come, Holy Spirit, gift of the ascended Christ, and fill us this night, not that we may have happy feelings, but oh, that we may be holy men, holy committed to see our Lord Jesus glorified in His church in our generation. Hear then, our cry and answer our plea for Your dear name’s sake. Amen.
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