The Church of Christ: Yesterday and Today. . .

HOW TO IDENTIFY THE RIGHT CHURCH

In the days of my youth this was one of my favorite “evangelistic sermons”—identifying the church in name, doctrine and practice. I was persuaded that the true church could be as easily recognized as anything in this world. My favorite illustration was of the person who went to the railway station to meet a stranger who would be dressed in a white suit, a straw hat, and would have a cane in one hand and a bird cage in the other. No way to miss him! Ouida always chuckled at that story, and I am suspicious that she thought I was overdoing it, but she never said so. But the right church could be found just as surely as the stranger at the depot. Of that I was confident. If I could find it, by virtue of having parents that belonged to it, then anybody else could.

My thinking has changed some since then, though I still believe the subject is a significant one. I would no longer contend that the church has any name at all, whether Christian or Church of Christ, for to name it is to denominate it (or denominationalize it), which is contrary to its inherent oneness. If there is but one church, it is meaningless to name it, for there is no reason to distinguish it from other bodies. The Body is one, and, just like my physical body is one, it needs no name. And so the scriptures give it no name.

Nor would I now be so sectarian as to claim that any community of believers is right in doctrine, certainly not in such a manifest way as would be the identity of the stranger at the station. One editor of a Church of Christ journal recently made the point that our people have been making too much of right doctrine, but in doing so he made it clear that he believed that our doctrinal position is invulnerable in the light of scripture, that no man can touch us on that score. I have to question this. I rather believe that in every doctrine that is distinctive to the Church of Christ is suspect just as I believe that about every denomination. Any point of doctrine that cannot be given universal application (and is consequently generally conceded by biblical scholarship) is to be seriously questioned, whether it be baptism for the dead (Mormons), transubstantiation (Roman Catholics), “Once saved always saved” (Baptists), or total depravity (Calvinists). So with the exclusive view that to be a true church the singing has to be acappella. Or that it has to follow a so-called “five acts of public worship.” Or that it has to wear the name “Church of Christ.” Any community that assumes itself to be the only church is in serious error on a most basic doctrine, the doctrine of the nature of the church.

And it is sheer folly for any of us to contend that we are substantially better than anyone else in practice. That the modern church is far from what it ought to be is generally conceded, and we should all be busy making things better rather than to confuse the issue by implying that some of us have it made and have need of nothing. I once debated the famous Baptist preacher, D. N. Jackson, many years my senior, on the proposition “The church known to me and my brethren as the Church of Christ is scriptural in name, doctrine, and practice.” I would now be no more comfortable with that proposition than if it read the Baptist Church . . . The reason is simple. I do not now believe in any sect and have no desire to champion the cause of any of them.

Still I believe it proper to ask if the right church can be identified, right meaning the way God wants it to be. The church certainly has some clear marks in the light of scripture, and some of them may well be as distinct as a man carrying a cane and a bird cage.

Already in this series I have pointed to that primitive creedal statement “I believe in the one, holy, catholic, apostolic church,” and I have insisted that God’s community upon earth is to have all four of those marks if it be truly His. The church cannot be divided; it cannot be impure like the world around it. It cannot be southern or European or white or rural, but all these and more if it be truly universal. And it must be built upon the testimony of the apostles rather than on every enthusiast who supposes he has some special revelations from the Spirit.

There are many other marks that are also important. It is a baptized and a baptizing community. It is almost certainly true that there was not a single unimmersed member of the primitive congregations. And each of those communities baptized those who entered the fellowship. Biblical scholarship generally recognizes that baptism was the door into the church, and we believe it should be no less so in our day.

It is an assembling and worshipping community. This is unique in the Jewish-Christian religion, for no other world religion makes a point of congregational gatherings. It assembled especially on “the day of the Sun,” but at other times as well. The corporate worship was hardly uniform, but it had the same features as the synagogue in terms of prayers, reading of the scriptures, the saying of the Amen, and mutual sharing. It also had a love feast (in the earliest church) along with a memorial Supper, but of the frequency and the time we cannot be sure, except to say that “the first day” was the most usual. But in all this it was a believing and dedicated church, loving Jesus and looking for his return. The gatherings were fellowship in that the saints shared their common trust and hope.

In his book What Christ Thinks of the Church, John R.W. Stott is doing this kind of thing with the seven churches of Asia, looking at them in terms of identifying the true marks of the Church of Christ. He sees in the letter to Ephesus that it is agape love that Jesus found lacking in that congregation — “You have abandoned the love you had at first.” Stott observes that Jesus finds that church with many good qualities, such as endurance and hard work. And they were sound in the faith, hating evil things. But a church can hate evil without really loving, Stott notes. If Jesus would threaten to remove the candlestick from their midst if they did not repent and start loving again, then love must be an essential mark, every whit as important as soundness.

The congregation at Smyrna was called upon to be a suffering church—“Do not fear what you are about to suffer.” Stott says the modern church does not suffer because it is too much like the world. It pleases the world. Let it preach those truths that really level with the world, such as the sinfulness of man and the wrath of God, and it will be persecuted as was the early church. He points to Lk. 6:26 where Jesus tells the church: “Alas for you when all men speak well of you.” It was at Smyrna that old Polycarp served as a bishop. He was martyred because he would not renounce his faith in Christ. “Eighty six years have I served him, and he has never done me any harm. How can I deny him now?” are his words that come ringing down through the centuries in testimony of a suffering and martyred church. Is it to be otherwise in the twentieth century?

“You did not deny my faith,” said Jesus to those at Pergamum, indicating that the church is to be the pillar and ground of God’s truth, while Thyatira was commended for its holiness in that it would not tolerate the ugly immorality of the woman Jezebel. The Sardisians had a reputation of being alive while actually they were dead, the Lord observed. He wanted their religion to be for real, not phony. Stott thinks that when Jesus told them to “Remember what you have received” that he was talking about the Holy Spirit, which every believer receives at baptism. By being Spirit-filled they will come alive and no longer be dead. This makes reality—being alive in the Spirit—a necessary mark of the church.

Stott sees in those words to the Philadelphians, “Behold, I have set before you an open door,” a mandate to every church to enter through the door of opportunity that God has given it. The missions will be different, but we all have some opportunity. A church is to do something in the face of opportunity to serve. And of the Laodiceans, who were rebuked for their lukewarmness, the Lord asks for wholeheartedness. He wants them hot and zealous, whole, or not at all.

There you have it within a few pages of the New Covenant scriptures, the sine qua non for the Church of Christ, the absolute essentials for the true and faithful church. A community that loves and suffers for Christ; one that guards the truth and is holy as He is holy; one that is for real, being alive with the Holy Spirit, one that moves through its door of opportunity; and one that is wholehearted rather than halfhearted.

These same letters reveal to us that churches can be busy and big, growing and rich, influential and powerful, sound and enduring, and still not have the essences that Jesus calls for.

The identifying marks are clear enough. There may be peripheral points about the church’s life, organization and work that are not spelled out with the detail that we would like, but it is clear enough what the church is to be or to become. Once we get this straight the procedural uncertainties will not matter so much.

At the outset of our Movement Thomas Campbell came up with this higher view of the nature of the church, recognizing it not only as necessarily one, but as made up of people whose lives are renewed. He put it this way: “The Church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one; consisting of all those in every place that profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things according to the scriptures, and that manifest the same by their tempers and conduct, and of none else, as none else can be truly and properly called Christians.”—the Editor