THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH*  

 

By D. M. PANTON, B.A.

 

[*This tract was published in April, 1946: and its teaching is more needed today than ever! – Ed.]

 

There is no more dynamic movement in the Churches of the world to-day than a passion to achieve the unity of the Church; and there is no movement within the Churches fraught with more danger.  It can have only one goal - reunion with the Church of Rome.  Roman Catholics exceed Protestants; and a Pope has said that “a single flock under a single shepherd may be reached” in the near future.  Moreover powerful movements both in the Church of England and in the Free Churches are openly doing all in their power to produce such a reunion.  “Any scheme for intercommunion,” said a late Bishop of Gibraltar, “which does not embrace the Roman Church, would be like the play of ‘Hamlet’ without Hamlet Therefore it becomes of vital importance that every one of us should know exactly what church unity, according to divine revelation, is; and once to know this truth is to make reunion with Rome impossible for ever.

 

Vital Unity

 

The Church is to-day by far the most extraordinary work of God in the world; and Paul’s definition of the Church is a vital revelation.  “Ye, are the body of Christ, and severally” – individually – “members thereof” (1Cor. 12: 27).  All depends on my being a branch in the True Vine, possessing, and possessed by, Christ: he only is a member of the Church, who accepts the truth acceptance of which creates theChurch.*  Membership in the Body is degided by one thing alone - vital union with the Head: we may have a hand amputated, or an eye blinded, or a leg crippled without the loss of life; but separation from the head is death.  All perish who are not vitally one with Christ.  “He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life” (1 John 9: 12).  As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body: so also is the Christ” - the Mystical Christ, the Church.**

 

[* “If thou shah confess with thy mouth, Jesus as Lord” - incarnate Godhead – “and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead” - a literal rising of the body from the tomb – “THOU SHALT BE SAVED” (Rom. 10: 9).

 

** Therefore the church that welcomes into fellowship the unsaved – whether baptized infants or non-born-again adults – is not a church at all, but an amalgam of the Church and the world that is neither the one or the other.]

 

Organity Unity

 

The Church therefore is, secondly, a most wonderful organic unity.  It is no machine, acting mechanically; it is no collection of isolated Christians; it is no mere union of Christian friends, or a religious club: the Church is a God-selected band, planned for one another, possessed of one Spirit, and growing together in one body.  “Christ is head over all things to his church, which is his body” (Eph. 1: 22); and “God hath set the members each of them in the body, even as it pleased him” (1 Cor. 12: 18) - that is, not arbitrarily, but studiedly, as each member needs each other.  No child of God is unessential to the prosperous working of the Church.  “The eye can not say” - not, may not say, but cannot, for it would not be the truth - “to the hand, I have no need of thee: or again the head to the feet, I have no need of you It is God who tempered the body together: it is God who set each of us in his place, exactly positioned to be of the best use to all: it is God who can counter-balance weakness with grace as to “give more abundant honour to that part which lacked” (verse 24).

 

Functual Unity

 

So, the ideal church, as God planned it, has a marvellous functional unity.  The less gifted member can fulfil his function better than tht most highly gifted: by contentment with his place and office and gift, and with concentrated devotion, he fulfils the exquisite symmetry and health of the Body of Christ, and so does a vital work.  The good class leader, the skilful soul-winner, the born teacher, the fruitful evangelist, the wise organizer, the loving visitor of the sick, the succourer of the poor - we are to rejoice in each other’s gifts, and glory in the excellencies of our brothers and sisters.  And so if a brother falls - if an eye goes blind, or a hand is paralysed, or a foot grows septic - we are all to feel the hurt: as Paul himself says, - “Is any weak, and I am not weak? is any made to stumble, and I burn not?” (2 Cor. 11: 29).  The riper each saint grows, the riper the whole church grows and every member whose growth is retarded tends to cripple the whole Body: every member has an effect on the whole Church of Christ on earth.

 

Fellowship

 

The Church being thus a vital unity in Christ, membership rests solely on the fact of a regenerate life: if the Church is the assembly of all vitally united with Christ, then all vitally united with Christ must be accepted as the Church - that is, accepted into fellowship.  “Forbearing one another in love; giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4: 3): we do not make the unity of the Spirit, we can only keep it, exactly as we do not make a Christian, but can only receive him when made.  “Wherefore receive ye one another, even as Christ also received you, to the glory of God” (Rom. 15: 7).*  Dr. Thomas Cochrane admirably illustrates it thus:- “One evening an Irish servant girl went in to speak to a minister, and he had in front of him all his Catechisms, etc.  They were very strict in those days.  The minister began to ask this servant girl some questions, which she could not answer.  At last he shut his books; and looking at her, he said:- ‘Mary, do you love Jesus?’  And the tears started in her eyes, and she said: - ‘Sir, I could die for Him!’ Oh, friends, surely we should all be able to say that to-day.  The one essential for Christian unity is that we should recognise all who accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.  We may use different phraseology; but that is the one absolute essential.  And any man and woman who accepts the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord is my brother and sister

 

[* Our own rejection by our brethren does not affect our acceptance of them.  Most remarkably, the Apostle John, though excommunicated by Diotrophes (3 John 10), counters with no excommunication of him.]

 

Schism

 

Now looms up the tragic disunity of the Church of God.  “God tempered the body together, that there should be NO SCHISM IN THE BODY” (1 Cor. 12: 24).  He compacts His saints together: schism - a rent, a cleft, a division (Liddell and Scott) - tears them apart.  Schism is an evil that occurs within the body, a drawing off from one another when party spirit rises in the assembly.  To the Corinthian believers Paul says:- “I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better but for the worse; for I hear that schisms exist among you” (1 Cor. 11: 17).  The unity which we are to keep Paul describes:‑ “There is one body, one Spirit, even as also ye are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism” - the Church is now rent by two baptisms – “one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all” (Eph. 4: 4).

 

Heresy

 

But, there is a graver sin than schism.  Separation in the Body can become separation from the Body: the one is schism, the other is heresy.  Heresy is a ‘sect,’ that is, an organized faction, on principle separating from the other members of the Body; a section organized to enforce either a truth or an error.*  The command concerning such is very remarkable:- “A man that is factious (R.V. margin) after a first and second admonition refuse,” avoid (Titus 3: 10) - beg thyself off from (Govett).  And grave is the punishment to be inflicted on the sin of organized faction:- “The works of the flesh are manifest - factions, divisions, parties (R.V. margin) [heresies]: of the which I forewarn you, even as I did forewarn you, that they which practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5: 20).**

 

[* The retention of the Greek word in the English translation is gravely misleading, for our word ‘heresy’ has come to have but one meaning - error in doctrine.  Any group of Christians who enforce a non-fundamental doctrine, or a rite, or membership in a particular group as a condition of fellowship create a ‘heresy,’ that is, an organized division which Scripture forbids.  Supremely is this true of the Church of Rome.

 

[** There are also ‘damnable heresies’ (2 Pet. 2 : 1), sects of perdition (R.V. margin); nominally Christian, but fundamentally non-Christian: such are Christian Science, Christadelphianism, Mormonism, etc.]

 

Excommunication

 

Nevertheless there is an exceedingly grave separation which is not only allowed but commanded.  “I write unto you not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother” - that is, a Christian by profession, whether regenerate or not – “be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a. reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such a one NO, NOT TO EAT” (1 Cor. 5: 11).

 

Catholicity

 

So we arrive at the final and golden truth - that the individual believer can, by studied care, maintain the Church’s true catholicity: he can achieve an almost impossible ideal - the reconciling of love of the brethren with loyalty to the,truth.  The basis of countless sects assumes that we must enforce the truth, because it is the truth; and this enforcing of a doctrine or ritual or practise - whether true or false - as a term of communion compels division, an organized separation.  What is forgotten is that the truth will be vindicated completely without our enforcing it on others: there is but one judge, and every item of our creed will he analysed to its root at the judgment Seat of Christ, where all truth will be vindicated for ever.  But love, now, is to rule.  The local assembly which receives all believers - that is, all who give credible evidence of saving faith - into full fellowship, and the individual believer who does the same whether any local assembly receives him or not, is helping the Divine fulfilment of our Lord’s wonderful prayer when He foresaw the Church’s rent and bleeding divisions:- “Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou has given me, that they may be one, EVEN AS WE ARE” (John 17: 11).  Augustine has given us the lovely summary of Scriptural catholicity:- “I take the whole Christ (human and divine) for my Saviour; I take the whole Bible for my guide; I take the whole Church for my fellowship; and I take the whole world for my parish

 

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