"... the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. "
(1 Timothy 3:15)
"... the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all."
(Ephesians 1:22-23)
IN these two verses from his epistles, Paul offers two different definitions of the Church. At first sight they seem to have little or nothing in common; indeed, the mental images they evoke are direct opposites of one another. "The pillar and ground of the truth": the image is one of stability, solidarity and strength. It is a static concept which stresses the permanency of a structure supported by an unshakeable pillar. "The fulness of him that filleth all in all": this is fluid rather than solid, and dynamic rather than static. The image it evokes is that of a liquid flowing into every nook and crevice. It corresponds to what is going on a few miles from our home, where a great dam has been built. Behind the dam, a new reservoir is gradually forming. It will take many months for the water level to reach the top of the dam but, as it rises, it will be steadily spreading the water into the hollows and gullies of the valley, until one day the reservoir will be full; it will have filled the entire valley.
How can a single entity be both solid and liquid, both static and dynamic? That is hard to explain: yet this is the Church's double role. And we have to recognise that sometimes its members become confused between the two parts of the role; they are stubbornly unmoving when they should be flexible, and flexible when they should stand firm.
God's truth is unchanging, and His Church is called upon to uphold it as a pillar holds up a [89/90] roof. The Church has no authorisation to change the truth, but simply to assert it, to guard it, and to withstand any attempt to bring it down. In this role, the Church is to serve as a counter, a defence against all those views which see truth as something that only exists for me, in my situation, here and now -- against 'situational ethics', or existentialism, or whatever the name may be. The Church asserts that the truth of God exists independently of all situations; that it is, rather, the criterion by which everybody's situations and decisions are to be judged, in every era of man's history.
That Christians have failed always to stand firm for God's truth is all too obvious. They have been quite willing to be flexible about it, and to soft-pedal, if not actually abandon, parts of it which they found embarrassing or convenient. At the same time, they are equally prone to promote forms and manners and structures to a status equal to that of truth; to turn things which should be flexible and amenable to change into immovable objects. In this way 'my church', or 'our order of service' are elevated to a dignity equivalent to that of the truth itself. Probably the first and clearest example of this bad habit is mentioned in Mark 9:5 when Peter, having just shared in the marvellous experience of the Transfiguration, suggested building three tabernacles to give permanent form to the passing experience. At least, in his case, Mark charitably offers an excuse for this bad suggestion: "He wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid". But, alas, the Church has been busy every since institutionalising forms, events and even -- as with Peter -- single memorable experiences. Only the truth qualifies for permanency in our human existence; everything else is transitory, our experiences most of all.
But the truth is permanent, eternal. And truth is the Church's business -- not in the first instance activity, or evangelism, or even loving and caring, but upholding God's truth. The other things have their place, loving and caring, for example: Paul identifies the place of love in the life of the Church. He says that we are to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). Truth is paramount, and neither the demands of evangelism nor the claims of love take precedence over it.
To be flexible when we should be firm in relation to the truth is, Paul tells us in this same fourth chapter of Ephesians, a sign of spiritual immaturity. He pictures those who are spiritual children as "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine" (4:14). We are back to our reservoir! Here is the very essence of instability -- a cockleshell boat blown about on the surface of the moving water, a pathetic picture of Christians who eagerly chase after every new idea, who are swayed by the last doctrinal argument they heard, without ever subjecting those ideas and arguments to the challenge of truth. But, says Paul, "Ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard him and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus" (4:20-21).
The second contrasting definition of the Church poses a problem; in the first instance, a problem of understanding. How can the Church add fulness to a Christ who fills all in all? How can one add a further dimension of fulness to a container which is already filled to the brim?
This is a problem with a history of its own in the annals of the Church, for out of it has arisen a heresy which periodically reappears. The argument runs as follows: if the Church contributes some extra dimension to the fulness of Christ, then Christ is in some way incomplete; He is less than perfect, less than universal, and His work is less than final. The logic of this is difficult to deny so, if we are not to be driven to this conclusion, we must discover an alternative meaning.
For all the perfection of His life, His attributes and His service for the Father, there was one thing which Christ was not: something that even He could not be. He could not be many men. He was a single Person, perfect and unique, but still one and single. John says of Him: "We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father". But there are some things in life and, in particular, some relationships, which require two or more people for their fulfilment. No matter how wonderful a single individual may be, for the fulness of the relationship to be exhibited there must be someone else to act as recipient or respondent.
Let us try to see this by taking a very simple earthly example from the world of sport. Let us imagine that the greatest football player in the world is invited to come along to the local football ground and give an exhibition of his skills. We watch enthralled while he shoots goals from impossible angles and controls the ball to a hair's[90/91] breadth with his head or foot. Then we ask: 'Now will you please demonstrate passing the ball? And show us some team tactics?' He will of course reply: 'But to do that, I must have someone to pass the ball to. To demonstrate team tactics there must be a team.' In other words, the fulness of this player's skills can only be appreciated when he gives up his solo role and participates with others, for a part of that full range of skills which he so perfectly commands, is to be seen only in his relationship to other members of the team.
Paul did not use this image of the team in his letter to the Ephesians, but he used another of the same character -- the body, of which Christ is the Head. Who would think of assessing, let alone admiring, a head separate from its body? The full splendour of the greatness of Christ is seen when to the perfection of His single person we add the wonder of His relatedness to mere people -- His love for the Church and His union with it (Ephesians 5:25). How do you demonstrate love without someone to receive that love? How can you tell if a marriage is ideal unless you can meet the wife?
The Church is necessary to the fulness of Christ as the body is to the head or the team to the football star. Only by this means can 'fulness' be revealed. Paul goes on, in Ephesians 3:10, to speak of the Church in this role: he says that its task is to make known the manifold or many-sided wisdom of God -- to display all those facets of the immense wisdom of God which can only be seen and appreciated through the relationships of those who share with Christ the divine life here on earth.
Bearing in mind the drift of Paul's argument here, it is interesting and instructive to turn back in the Bible and read again the Lord's words in teaching and in prayer at the very end of His time with His disciples, which we have on record in John chapters 13 to 17. Well-known as these chapters are, they may contain more than we have realised for what, in essence, they are about (and very particularly what the prayer of John 17 is about) is the future, fuller dimension of the fulness of Christ which His death and, paradoxically, His departure from the scene was going to make possible. What the Lord Jesus was concerned to do in those last few moments alone with His followers was to make sure that the arrangements were all clear and in order for introducing this new dimension. What had previously been true of Himself alone was now to be true of -- and demonstrated by- - a group of His people.
So the Church is necessary to the full presentation of the greatness of Christ. But Paul carries these thoughts a step further. He declares the purpose of God to be, in the simplest terms, that Christ might fill all things (Ephesians 4:10). And wherever He penetrates, bringing His presence and His infilling into new areas of God's creation, there His Church will be needed too, adding its own special dimension to His fulness, exhibiting that fulness in the context of a life together. This realisation may well challenge our present understanding of what God requires of His people. Let us ask two simple questions that focus our attention on this subject. Firstly, is it not true that, in general there are some areas of life which we do not expect Christ to penetrate; areas which we assume that He would never want to fill, and so we have made no attempt to penetrate into them either, but have left them strictly alone? Secondly, is it not the case that we have ourselves decided which areas these are? Have we not said, in effect: 'But He would never want to fill that area; look how full of evil it is', and so we have decided that it should be excluded from the scope of His purpose. And of course it remains fun of evil, because the Church has not brought to it the fulness of Him whose purpose is to fill all things. A vicious circle indeed!
But experience has shown that this situation can be changed. There are areas of life in which, twenty-five years ago or even less, it seemed incredible that there could be even an isolated testimony to Christ and His fulness, let alone a real infilling of His presence. The academic world was one such area. All the brains seemed to be on the other side; yet today there is hardly a university or college in these islands where there is not a group of God's men and women to be found, exhibiting a life together as they make their contribution to scholarship. The world of the arts forms another such area -- apparently impenetrable to the infilling of Christ; apparently written off and best avoided by the Christian lest he be contaminated by it. (Some of us can probably recall the alarm we felt when our children announced that they wanted to go to an art college!) Yet in recent years this area has been literally invaded by men and women in large numbers who by their presence and activity have [91/92]brought Christ to fill new spheres on His way to the ultimate goal.
There are many such areas still remaining unfilled. We do not yet see all things subject to Him. But we have no right to assume that any area of life lies outside His purpose, and we must be ready to follow Him wherever His next 'invasion' may be. The definition of the Church in Ephesians 1:23 is a dynamic definition; it demands flexibility, readiness to accept innovation and readiness, therefore, to trust the Spirit's leading in one another. The early Church faced this problem. When the gospel spread to new areas -- Samaria, Caesarea, Rome -- along the way there were those at every step who were convinced that this could not be right -- the gospel could never be intended for Gentiles! But the 'invasions' followed one upon another, and we can thank God, in retrospect, for the men who held to the truth and followed the invading Spirit, sometimes bewildered by the swiftness of change, but content and ready to bring the fulness of Christ wherever the Spirit paved the way. There is no less need today for the Church to play its part, its unfinished task that of contributing its own particular dimension of the fulness of Christ in every fresh area of life to which He comes.
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