The same thing is true for Christian parents and their own children. If we try to find everything in human relationships or if we forget that neither we nor they are perfect, we destroy them. The simple fact is that the bridge is not strong enough. To try to run on to the bridge of human relationships that which it cannot bear is to destroy both the relationship and ourselves. But for the Christian, who does not need to have everything in human relationships, human relationships can be beautiful.
Love is the interplay of the whole personality. The relationship is personal, and the whole personality of man is the unit of the soul and the body. The Bible teaches that there is such a thing as a continuation of the spirit, after the body dies. But we must be careful not to be platonic here. The emphasis in the Scripture is upon the unity of the man, the unity of soul and the body. And with communication—substantial, though not perfect—the body is the instrument. Actually there is no other way to have communication, except through the body. But in marriage this becomes a very special thing to understand. Sexual love and romantic love are both equally out of place if they are extramarital and therefore outside of the proper legal circle. Both are wrong, and equally wrong. And if either is the "all" even with the proper legal relation-ship, they must dwindle and end in an agony or a search for variety; but if the couple stand as personalities—personality facing personality—within that which is the proper legal circle, then both the romantic and the sexual has its fulfillment in the full circle of what we are, in thinking, acting, and feeling.
In such a setting, the Song of Solomon is a part of the song of triumph, "The Lord has triumphed gloriously." The enemy, the devil, has been dumped into the depths of the sea. Human marriage between Christians is supposed to be this. There is a ring of life within the legal circle of marriage. There is to be joy and beauty in the interplay of the total personalities.
Sin has brought a division between man and woman, and thus their bodies tend to be separated from their personalities. To the extent that we live thus, we are less than man was meant to be. If we as Christians live with this separation, we are saying that the twentieth-century man is right when he says, "We are only animals or machines." In the animal world the sexual relationship at its proper moment is enough, but it is never so with man. The personal is needed. The thing must be seen as a whole, as a unity, within the legal circle, but with the reality of communication and love.
If love and communication are not present in marriage, how can there be the next step, the person-to-person relationship between parent and child? This should grow from the substantially restored relationship of the husband and wife. This parent-child relationship too has its legal aspects. But again, it is not primarily legal, it is personal. With husband and wife, and then parent and child, the personal is meant to be central. The legal bonds are first in each case, because we do have a God who has a character and who is holy. But within the legal bonds, communication is to be there and love is to be there. With the addition of a child in the home, love and communication are no longer only reciprocal, but take on profound diversity.
Where the wife and husband are Christians, they are also brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as lovers—"My sister, my spouse!" (Solomon's Song 4:4, 9, 12). And then the children are added, also as brothers and sisters in Christ, as they grow a bit older and accept Christ's death for themselves. In such a setting what Christian would want to marry an unbeliever?
The call is not to all Christians to be married, but the call is to all Christians to show forth to a watching world the reality of the interplay of personality. There is a relationship of man to man, woman to woman, friend to friend as Christians and in the Church of Christ which can also show forth the substantially restored human relationship. There was a oneness of the early Church, that, while it was not perfect, nevertheless was a present reality. And as we read of their oneness in the Scripture and hear the words that were spoken concerning them, 'Behold, how they love one another," we see that this was a practical oneness, not just a theoretical unity.
How beautiful Christianity is! First because of the sparkling quality of its intellectual answers, but secondly because of the beautiful quality of its human and personal answers. And these are to be rich and beautiful. A crabbed Christianity is less than orthodox Christianity. But these human and personal answers do not come mechanically after we are Christians. They come only on the level of what God made us to be in the first place, and that is personal. There is no other way to have these beautiful answers. They cannot be achieved mechanically, or by only standing in a proper legal circle, as important as that is. They grow in the light of what we say we believe as orthodox Christians: that we are creatures, and that while we are not perfect in this life, even after becoming Christians, yet through moment-by-moment faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross, beautiful human relationships can and do come forth. There must be orthodox doctrine, true. But there must also be orthodox practice of those doctrines, including orthodoxy in the human relationships.
I hesitate to add, but I will, that this is fun. God means Christianity to be fun. There is to be a reality of love and communication in the Christian-to-Christian relationship, individually and corporately, which is completely and truly personal.
Substantial Healing
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Let us now examine true spirituality in relation to our separation from our fellowmen, particularly in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is a strong tendency in current theology to speak of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in terms which totally equate it with the beginning of a church, referred to as "his Body." This is pernicious and confusing. The Bible insists that this is not the case, and that Jesus was raised physically from the dead. However, let us never forget that according to the teaching of the Word of God, the Church is spoken of as the body of Jesus Christ. We must not forget the one, in rejecting the other. "For as we have many members in one body and all the members have not the same office, so we, being many, are of one body in Christ and every one members one of another" (Romans 12:4, 5). We are one body, in Christ. "For as the body is one and of many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many" (1 Corinthians 12:12-14).
So Jesus Christ rose physically from the dead, and also the Church was born at Pentecost in the particular form in which we now know it. It is, in very specific ways, his body. And as his body, the Church should exhibit him to the world, until he returns. Just as our bodies are our means of communication to the external world, so the Church as the body of Christ should be Christ's means of communication to the external world. We think our thoughts and then we convey our thoughts to the external world through our bodies; our physical body is the point of communication with the external world and this is the way we affect the world. So the Church, as the body of Jesus Christ, is called to be the means whereby he may be exhibited and whereby he acts in this external world until he comes again. Since the fall of man there have been two humanities, and not just one. There are those who are still in revolution against God, and there are those who by God's grace have returned to him on the basis of Christ's work. The Church should be the reality and the exhibition of this distinction, in each generation. There should never be a moment when any generation can say, we see nothing of the exhibition of a substantially re-stored relationship between men in this present life. Every single generation should be able to look to the Church of that generation and see an exhibition of a supernaturally restored relationship, not just between the individual and God, though that is first; not just between the individual and himself, though that is crucial; but between man and man, in the Church.
"Church" in Greek (Ecclesia) simply means "that which is called out," called out of a lo
st humanity. That is the calling of the Church of Jesus Christ. In our generation in the arts, in music, in philosophy, in drama, everywhere you turn, man is coming to see that man is less than he knows he should be. Our generation sees this, but the problem is not new in our time. Ever since the fall rebellious man has been this way. And the Church is called out of this humanity, in order to be humanity before a lost humanity.
The basic thing is not organizational unity, though it has its place. The human body is directed by the head. The hands are not in direct relationship with each other. The reason they cooperate is that each of the hands, each of the joints, each of the fingers, is under the control of a single control-point, and that is the head. Block the body from the head and the body is spastic; the fingers, for example, could never find each other, and uniformity of action would come to an end.
It is exactly the same with the Church of Jesus Christ. The real unity is not basically an organizational unity; the real unity is not of one part with the other parts, but a unity in which each part is under the control of the Head and therefore functions together. The unity of the Church is basically the unity of the Head controlling each of the parts. If I as an individual, or if groups of Christians, are not under the leadership of the Head, the Church of Jesus Christ will be functioning like hands that cannot find each other; the whole thing will be broken and a "spastic" situation will exist in which the Church functions in a most disjointed way. This is true not only in the whole Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, but it is also true in any specific group of Christians. A specific local church, a specific school that is supposedly Christian, a specific mission, or whatever you are talking about proportionately as each of the Christians of that group fails to be under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, under the headship of Christ, that group will proportionately be spastic.
Remember the "two chairs." As I am living individually in the supernatural, moment by moment there will be individual results, and an individual exhibition. But equally, as we are living as a corporate body in the light of the supernatural, there will be corporate results and an exhibition. It is not only that the individual should so think and live, but the whole group as a group should be attuned to living consciously, moment by moment, in the reality of the supernatural. Then there is the exhibition; then there is the result there should be.
There is a very special calling, a special oneness in Christians working together—a unity that is not merely organizational or abstract. It will not be perfect in this life, because the Bible does not say we are going to be perfect in this life, but on the basis of the finished work of Christ there should be a substantially restored relationship among Christians in this life. Thinking of these things, we come to some immediate practical considerations. First of all, as the Church exhibits who and what God is to each generation, there must therefore be a proper legal emphasis. God does have a character. We are not exhibiting a God who is "the unknown God," in the sense taught by Tillich. God has a character. And because he has a character, there is to be an exhibition of that character, and this means functioning in the proper legal circle. The proper legal aspects of the Church will deal first with doctrine, because otherwise the body is telling lies about its Head.
The next step is that in the proper legal circle there will be a dealing with the life of both the individual and the group. The legal aspects are not arbitrary. They are rooted in God's existence and in his character, concerning which he has spoken to us in the Bible. The Church is not a body which thinks up ideas; the Church is a declarative statement of what God has revealed concerning himself in the Scripture. So the legal aspects are fixed by God himself. The Church should represent the supernaturally restored human race in reality, and as such it is very obvious that there must be the proper legal circle of those in the Church in distinction to those not in it.
Many stress that a Christian must not marry a non-Christian, but then they are willing to be in a church where many, including the outstanding officers, openly reject the God of the Bible. To try to have proper love and communication that would please God in such a condition is like trying to have a sexual life that would please God, with another man's wife or another woman's husband. The proper legal circle must be first or the Church in name is not the Church in reality. Men will not always be led to apply the same action at the same moment in regard to the Bible's command concerning the practice of the principle of the purity of the visible church, but if the principle is given up as such, the proper legal circle falls to the ground just as certainly as if we cast aside Christ's and the Bible's command concerning the proper legal aspect of marriage.' So the Church has its legal relationships in regard both to doctrine and life.
But though the legal is important and has its proper place, it is not all. Within the proper legal relationship of the Church, the person of God and his full character are to be set forth by words and exhibition. Only God is infinite and finite man cannot exhibit that. But as we are made in his image, individually and together we are called upon to exhibit the fact that he is personal. This we can do; it is our calling. Because of the fall it will not be perfect exhibition—we must keep saying that. But as Christians it can and should be a true one, and of all relationships this is most certainly the calling of the Church as the body of Christ.
The matter of the proper legal circle, the battle against false doctrine and sin, will never come to an end in this life. But the proper legal relationship, while right in itself, should be only the vestibule to the reality of a living, personal relationship, first the group with God and then between those who are in the Church. Really to glorify God, to enjoy him, and to exhibit him, can never be mechanical and can never be only legal, but personal. When the Church of Christ functions on less than the personal level, it is exhibiting less than what God is, and therefore it is less than the Church should be. There should be an exhibition of redeemed human personal relationships.
The Church has always put emphasis, in words, upon these things. We speak of the brotherhood of believers, and we have already mentioned the fact that we come into a new relationship with other Christians when we accept Christ as Savior. At the new birth, I come into a new relationship with each of the three persons of the Trinity, and I become a brother to all other Christians, to all the others who are in Christ, the family of God. It is meant to be a true brotherhood and therefore a visible demonstration of brotherhood. As orthodox Christians we reject the present emphasis that destroys the distinction between saved men and lost men. The liberal theologian deliberately breaks down the difference between saved and lost. But woe to any church of Christ which is strenuous in keeping this distinction clear, but then shows no sign of brotherhood. In the Apostolic Creed we state, "I believe in the communion of saints." We state this as firmly as we do the other items of the Creed. This is not to be merely a theological phrase, yet how little communion we see—how little reality. It is not just to be comprehended that it exists, and that it reaches across all space and time with all believers. There is a mystical union of saints, true enough, but the communion of saints is to be exhibited as well.
What should the Church consciously be, then? The Church consciously (and my emphasis is very strongly on the word consciously) should be that which encourages its members in the true Christian life, in true spirituality—in that which we have set forth in this book. It should encourage them in freedom in the present life from the bonds of sin, and in freedom in the present life from the results of the bonds of sin. It should encourage substantial healing in their separation from themselves and a substantial healing in their separation from their fellowmen, especially fellow Christians.
No matter how legally right a church is, if it does not provide an environment conducive to these things, it is not what it should be. First the Church should teach the truth and secondly the Church should teach a practice of the existence of God, and a practice of the reality of and the exhibition of God's character of holiness and love. The
Church cannot merely teach these things in words; we must see the practice of these things in the Church as a corporate body. Can faith be taught? People often ask me that, and I always have an answer: Yes, faith can be taught, but only by exhibition. You cannot teach faith only as an abstraction. There must be an exhibition of faith, if faith is to be learned. Each group must operate on the basis of God's individual calling for them—financially and in other matters—but there is an absolute rule, and that is that if our example does not teach faith, it is destructive. There can be many callings but there cannot be a calling to destroy the teaching of faith. The church or other Christian group that does not function as a unit in faith can never be a school of faith. There is only one way to be a school of faith and that is consciously to function by faith.
The Church or other Christian group must also teach in word the present meaning of the work of Christ. Then as a corporate body it must consciously live on this basis. It must not think that just because the Church or group is legally right, its corporate Christian life will come automatically. It never will; God does not deal with us automatically. Any Christian group must function moment by moment by conscious choice on the basis of the work of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, by faith.. It is not that the group just calls its individuals to so live, but that the group as a group so lives. It is death to think that things are going to come automatically just because of past legal decisions, even though they were right. There must be the present choice, a moment-by-moment choice, a conscious choice of operating on the basis of the work of Christ.
Every Christian group must also teach in words the duty to exhibit that God exists and that he is personal, and then as a corporate body practice this truth. There is a cost in this, for the church's methods must be chosen with much prayer and care, and "results" alone will not now be the sole, simple criterion. It must practice the choice of means in its work which will exhibit that God exists.
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