|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 41
And in doctrine there is a similar freedom. One can see in all the
Christian speakers and writers in the New Testament an underlying unity
in great convictions:--the God and Father of Jesus Christ is their one
God; Jesus is their one Lord; they are possessed and controlled by the
one Spirit of love; they are confident in a victorious hope; they draw
inspiration from the historic facts of Jesus' birth, life, death and
resurrection. But they interpret their inspirations in forms that fit in
with their mental habits. The fisherman Peter does not think with the
mind of the theologically trained Paul, nor does the unspeculative James
phrase his beliefs in terms identical with those of the writer to the
Hebrews.
Jesus left His Spirit in a group of men; that group gradually was forced
out of the national Jewish Church, and became the Church of Christ,
dominated by His living Spirit and organizing itself for work, worship
and teaching, out of the materials at hand among the peoples where it
spread.
We have taken this brief retrospect over the origin of the Church not
because it is important for us to discover the precise forms the Church
took at the start and reproduce them. It is nowhere hinted in the New
Testament that the leaders of these little communities are laying down
methods to be followed for all time. Indeed, they had no such thought,
for they expected Jesus to return in their lifetime and set up His
Kingdom; and they gave scant attention to forms of organization and
doctrine that would last but a few years. Nor is it reasonable to
suppose that forms which were suited to little groups of people meeting
in somebody's house, waiting for their Lord's return, will answer for
great bodies of Christians organizing themselves to Christianize the
world. No institution can remain changeless in a changing world. "The
one immutable factor in institutions," writes Professor Pollard, "is
their infinite mutability." Almost all the divisive factors in
Christendom are taken out of the past, by those who claim that a certain
polity or creed or practice is that authoritatively prescribed for all
time, by Christ Himself, or by His Spirit through His personally
appointed apostles. The chief question for the Church to decide, when it
considers its organization, is--What must we carry on from the past, and
what can we profitably leave behind?
The Church of Christ has always been and is one undivided living
organism, composed of those who are so vitally joined to Jesus Christ
that they share His life with God and men. Our bodies are continually
changing in their constituent elements, but remain the same bodies; the
spirit of life assimilates and builds into its living structure that
which enters the body. The Church of Christ in the world is constantly
changing its components as the generations come and go; each new
generation is in some respects unlike its predecessor in thought, in
usage, in feeling; but the continuity of the Spirit maintains the
identity of the Body of Christ. We must carry forward the Spirit of
Christ, and keep unbroken the apostolic succession of spiritual men and
women, all of whom are divinely appointed priests unto God. We must
realize that, as members in the Body of Christ, each of us must fulfil
some function for the Kingdom, or we are not living members, but
paralyzed or atrophied. There is a continuity of life in the Church that
cannot be interrupted; we must inherit this life from the past, and we
must pass it on to those who come after us. Just as the first Christians
felt themselves the Israel of God, so today we are conscious of being
the heirs of patriarchs and prophets, apostles and martyrs, churchmen
and scholars and missionaries, leaders of spiritual awakenings like
Francis of Assisi, Luther and Wesley, theologians like Clement,
Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, and of
countless humble and devoted believers who have been ruled by the Spirit
of the Master. They have bequeathed to us a solemn trust; they have
enriched us with a priceless heritage; they have transmitted to us
their life with Christ in God. The Church comes to us saying:
I am like a stream that flows,
Full of the cold springs that arose
In morning lands, in distant hills;
And down the plain my channel fills,
With melting of forgotten snows.
But the historic succession of Christians through the centuries is not
our sole connection with Christ; we not only look _back_ to Him, we also
look _up_ and look _in_ to Him, for He lives above and in us. The Church
is not a widow, but a bride; and shares its Lord's life in the world
today. The same Spirit who lived and ruled in the Church of the first
days has been breathed on us, through the long line of
apostolic-spirited men and women who reach back to Jesus, and lives and
rules in us. We must keep the unity of the Spirit with the believers of
the past, and with all who are Spirit-led in the world today; and we
must remember that "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
We are not bound by the precedents of bygone centuries in our
organization; we are free to take from the past what is of worth to us,
and we are free to let the rest go. Is not the Spirit of God as able to
take materials at hand in our own age, and to use them for the
government, the worship, the creed, the methods of the living Church of
Christ?
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|