Father's family-true church

Chapter 18 

 IN THE FATHER'S FAMILY
- THE TRUE CHURCH

There are many different meanings given to the word church. Sometimes church refers to a building, sometimes a meeting, and of course a wide variety of organizations call themselves churches. However, the church about which the Scripture speaks, and for which Christ died, is none of these but is, first and foremost, the Father's family.

God is creating a family in the likeness of His Son. The Lord Jesus lived in this world, and died and rose again, to make this possible, and the Holy Spirit has come into the lives of His children to complete that work and bring it to glorious fullness.

The Lord sees us not as isolated, separate, and scattered individuals, but as members of His great family. We do have a personal relationship with the Father but as part of His family. The individual believer is a part of the church, a member of the family, and he or she serves as a priest, so to speak, in God's temple, and is engaged in Gods work like a son in his father's business.

This relationship with God and with each other strikes at the roots of our self-centered individualism. We cannot do without one another. We cannot grow or survive spiritually in self-chosen isolation.

The first thing about the real church, which is the family of born-again believers, as opposed to the man-made institutions merely called the church, is that it is like a living organism. It is not a collection of people who merely assent to certain beliefs and follow certain practices. The only church the Lord recognizes is made up of people who are spiritually alive because they have His own eternal life. I will build My church, He said, and He does so by creating and building with living stones. There is no other church than the one that He is building, whatever men may think or say.

This church, like a living organism, has its own inbuilt form or structure, and such organization as the church has must be the expression of its own life. For example, because prayer is the life-breath of the church, it decides to meet for prayer. It is not a matter of simply attending services out of a Christian duty and peoples expectations. The real church meets to express His life within it. The various pictures of the church in the New Testament, such as His Body, the Holy City, a Spiritual House or Household, each contribute something to our understanding of God's mind for His family, as it expresses His life, nature, and character.

One day the Lord will have a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:27). But now it is a work still in progress. How can we cooperate with Him in this, His great work and the desire of His heart?

First, we must receive and serve all truly born-again believers as our brothers and sisters in Christ. Such, and only such, are His church. A clear distinction between those who are the Lord's and those who merely go to church or say that they believe in God, who merely profess to be, or hope they are, Christians, must be made. Of course, there is no ground for pride here. It is just a matter of facing up to the true situation and it is essential for clarity. Pretense helps no one. We are called to a local and worldwide commitment to all who are truly in the Father's family, both in prayer and in such practical ways as are possible, and we must shun all narrow-mindedness and exclusiveness.

The Lord wants to build a local expression of His church in every place in so far as that is possible. Sadly, we have to add in so far as that is possible, because of the tragic confusion which exists today among His own people. This confusion is partly the result of the past centuries that contained so much false Christianity, partly the result of our own unwillingness or inability to allow the New Testament to judge our ideas about the church, and partly because the intrusion of our fallen nature constitutes a constant threat to all that the Lord wants to do. Our natural wisdom and our worldly ways defile everything that is from the Lord.

Nevertheless, we must seek to cooperate with Him in His work and move in the direction of His will as far as possible. All good things in church history are associated with His servants who have not surrendered to the natural order of things. But to do this, we need to see clearly what is essential in true Church life. We suggest the following as a summary of these essentials.

We must see clearly that

The true church consists of born-again believers only, living stones. The Lord builds with nothing else.

The church is the Father's Family and not an institution. Anything inconsistent with family life must be false. The simplicity of what we find in the New Testament stands in stark contrast to the complexity of that which claims to be the church today and what has been called the church throughout history.

Christ is the Head of the church, and He must be trusted to initiate and take charge of everything. A formal acknowledgment that He is Head is useless if in reality we decide and run everything by ourselves. The recognition and reality of His Headship through the Spirit, whenever the church gathers, is essential. The church meets in and under Him.

As Christ, who is the Living Word, must be given His rightful place, so the Scripture also, the written Word of God, must be given its rightful place. Teaching and preaching the Scripture is vital to the life and building of the church.

It is of paramount importance that we strive continually for a balance between liberty and order, as clearly set forth in the New Testament. There must be freedom for the Lord to express His life, but recognition that His is an ordered life. There is no room for carnal self-expression. Paul had to write to the Corinthians about this problem. The nicely kept cemetery and the religious free-for-all must both be avoided at all costs.

It is also of paramount importance that we see and follow through the implications of the church being a family, in which every member has a part to play, contribution to bring, and gift from the Lord to use for the benefit of all. The inter-dependence of all the members needs constant affirmation. It is so easy for just a few to end up doing everything.

That, in the Lord's plan, there are those within the family who are gifted and called to carry special responsibility in shepherding the flock, in giving instruction, in providing leadership and so on. These brethren are equal members of the local church, in no way superior to other members, but they do have special responsibilities under the Head, and must be so recognized by the family if it is to grow in the Lord.

These things provide us at least with some signposts that point in the direction of the Lord's will for the local expression of His church on earth. Needless to say, at the heart of true church life is the spiritual consciousness of His presence in the midst, without which we meet in vain.

But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: The Lord knows those who are His, and Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.

In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and earthenware, some for special use some for ordinary. If anyone purifies himself from these polluting things, then he will be a vessel for special use, consecrated and useful to the master of the house, ready for any good work.

Matthew 16:18. John 14:26, 16:13-14. Acts 1:4,8, 2:33. Romans 8:29, 12:3-8. 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, 6:19-20, 12:4-7,12-14,28-31. Ephesians 1:13,22-23, 2:19-22, 4:1-16,30, 5:18,25-27. Colossians 1:18. 2 Timothy 2:19-21. 1 Peter 2:4-10, 5:1-6. Revelation 1:3, 21:2.