The Church of Christ: Yesterday and Today. . .

THE PATTERN FOR THE CHURCH

It is common to hear our folk talk about restoring the New Testament church, but this is hardly a defensible position in the light of the scriptures. Which congregation is it that we are to restore? Surely not Corinth, hardly Jerusalem or Ephesus or Sardis or Thyatira. Not even Thessalonica or Philippi, for we know too little about such congregations for them to constitute a pattern. Even all the congregations combined hardly compose a pattern in the sense of providing a blueprint for the work, organization, and corporate worship of the community, for these churches differ too much in these respects. We can come up with description but hardly prescription. Nor do the scriptures anywhere suggest that the various churches are to be imitated. The contrary would be nearer the truth for the scriptures sit in judgment upon the churches, censoring them for their failures. The scriptures come close to saying: don’t be like Corinth, don’t be like Ephesus, etc.

The idea that we are to be like the primitive Christians should therefore be qualified. Our problem may be that we are too much like them already! Sometimes they are exemplary, sometimes not. Even the apostles occasionally show weaknesses, and we have the likes of Demas, and Diotrephes, Hymenaeus, and Alexander. Paul described the Corinthians as carnal and Jesus said the Sardisians were dead. It is comforting that they were still addressed as “the Body of Christ” and “the church.” It answers the fallacy that problems are to be solved by starting another church. The scriptures do not so direct. They were rather written to provide for mid-course correction, not to call the faithful out.

So no man or group of men in the scriptures is the pattern, except Jesus himself. It is only of Jesus that the Bible says, “leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps.” Even Paul invites disciples to follow him “as I follow Christ.” The church is always to point to Jesus, not to tradition or private interpretations. The purpose of all scripture and all God’s work in history is “to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:10). God’s intention for all of us is that we might be “changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18).

Our ultimate glory is that “when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 Jo. 3:2), and in becoming “like him” we shall receive a body like his, as Phil. 3:21 promises: “who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body.” We are, therefore, to be like Jesus in both spirit and body. So God intends, and the purpose of all scriptures is to hold up the Christ “as a plan for the fullness of time.” Our reason for studying the Bible, therefore, is to see from its teaching how we are to become more and more like Jesus.

But we have not fully answered our question as to what is the pattern for the church in all its functions. Jesus is the ultimate pattern and the final authority for us all individually in our own private lives, and this of course goes far in identifying the church’s direction. But a congregation’s goal in terms of corporate worship, organization, and mission is another matter. Each church is, of course, to exemplify Jesus in all that it does, for this is what it is all about, but can we be more specific in identifying a pattern for the details of its functions, if indeed, there is a pattern?

A pattern (or norm) does emerge out of the literature of the Christian communities. While no one church, or all of them together, constitutes the way for our congregations today, there is “the ideal church” (if that isn’t putting it too strong) that surfaces in the scriptures. An illustration would be a business firm that has a far-flung sales force. As problems and contingencies arise the executives send directives and corrections to the various salesmen. With all such documents in hand, one could get a good idea of what the company believes to be “the ideal sales force,” even though no one office (or all of them together) measures up to it. Some may get stern rebukes or encouraging praise, or both, but in it all there emerges something close to the ideal, even if all the offices fall far short of it. Our long years of experience in education gives us a notion of the perfect teacher, though no one measures up to it. Plato built his philosophy around the concept that all particulars are shadowy reflections of the perfect. In a similar way we can see the perfect church, even in the congregations in the Bible, as reflected in the literature written to them and about them, imperfect though they be.

The Jerusalem community may never have seen the universal nature. of the church, but Acts 1 10 gives us an exciting story of a growing church, and such guidelines as Acts 5:42 surely serve to monitor our churches: “Every day in the temple and at home they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.” We gain still more insight from Acts 4:32: “The company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own.”

Corinth may be the most rebuked of all, but despite its imperfections it gives us significant understanding of what God’s people should be. Its evangelism, for example, reached to the farthest corners of degradation. 1 Cor. 6:9-11 shows that some of them had been idolaters, homosexuals, thieves, drunkards, and the like. “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” That shows that we should be reaching out to such ones and not be so concerned for our image. There is hardly an end to the information in the Corinthian letters about what the church should and should not be.

So it is all through the New Covenant scriptures. The Galatians had some serious hangups about the law, but that problem was the occasion of Paul saying things about freedom that continues to challenge the church, such as Gal. 5:13: “You were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.” The problem of the Hebrew believers of reneging their faith for the old order netted for us precious truths on what the church should do and be, such as: “Exhort one another every day, as long as it as called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” (Heb. 3:13). We don’t know much about the churches at Philippi and Thessalonica, but thank God that they are examples of “joy inspired by the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 2:7) and “God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).

These references indicate how we can search the scriptures for that emerging ideal of the church. John Stott does this with the seven churches of Asia in his What Christ Thinks of the Church, which could be as easily entitled What Christ Wants the Church To Be. What he does not want goes far in telling us what he does want.

There are problems to be sure in this approach, especially if one supposes that all this literature will yield an array of details that answers all questions about organization, worship, and work. The Bible is simply not a “Sec. 1, Art. 5” kind of guide. We have but little information about some things that concern us, whether it be social responsibilities, kind of organization (such as the way to appoint elders, how many, and precisely what for), or educational obligations. There is much that we think we need to know that the Bible says nothing about.

But we do have some information about all these things, and there are numerous principles that guide us in those areas where details are lacking. How much, for instance, does such a principle as “let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Ro. 14:1 9) teach us in filling in a lot of the blanks—and how many woes would it spare us if heeded?

Because it is the kind of book it is, the Bible is subject to varying interpretations, or, to say it another way, we are prone to fill in the blanks differently. Here love must rule and differences tolerated, which gives meaning to forbearance as a virtue. People who are whipped into conformity, falsely called unity, have no occasion to forbear.

It was the recognition of this problem that led our forebears to the motto “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, love,” which makes a lot of sense. If by “essentials” we mean those things necessary for life in the Son (being itself, not well-being), and by nonessentials those things more or less important to the enhancement of that life, where so many of our opinions and deductions come in, we will have to restrict ourselves to those things “clearly and distinctly set forth in scripture.

This kind of pattern calls for a central core of faith, such as the seven ones in Eph. 4, and yet allows for that diversity that makes for our own unique growth rather than the stagnation that would come from “jot and tittle” patternism. So it is just as well that God in His wisdom has given us the pattern rather than fearful men who are threatened by blank spaces to be filled in, however many principles there are to guide them.—the Editor

 

The unexamined life is not worth living.—Socrates