All-Sufficiency Of The Church
The church is the divine institution. Christ built it upon the great, central and fundamental truth that embraces all truth, that he is the Christ, the Son of God. He is the Head of it and every one whom he saves is a member of it. The church includes all of God's people. No one out of the church is a child of God nor is in the service of God.
God, in his wisdom, created the church as the institution through which to do all of his work. Every member of the church is a worker together with God in doing every good work. The Word of God completely, thoroughly furnishes every member to do so. The divine injunction is that every member personally and individually abound in every good work. The hope of the world is in the work in which every member of the church has a part. The church in every neighborhood is the greatest blessing that could happen to it. The humblest member of the church, who actively participates in its work, is a greater benefactor to his country and the world than the man who occupies the highest political office in which his country can place him. We note the work of the church as follows:
(1) The church is the institution that God ordained to preach the gospel to every creature. It is truly the light of the world and shines over its neighborhood as a brilliantly lighted city set upon a hill. It is a veritable power-house of light radiating over its own community and out over regions beyond. It's every member is a missionary, personally and individually striving to lead every person he can contact to Christ. Besides disseminating the gospel over its own community "publicly, and from house to house," every church sends "once and again" to sustain those in regions beyond, not for occupying a position as a professional clergyman, but to sustain him in actually preaching the gospel "publicly, and from house to house."
(2) The church is God's school or college to give its every member a Christian education. No human institution can give a Christian education. The church is God's Bible college to teach the Word of God to its every member and to train them for usefulness in God's service. The church is the educational institution to teach and train its members how to live the Christian life. The teaching done in the church is done under the supervision of the elders appointed because of their having the required qualifications. None but "faithful men" have any business presuming to teach the Word of God. "And the things which thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be, able to teach others also." (2 Tim. 2:2)
(3) The church is the institution that God ordained to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked and to minister to those in affliction or distress. It is God's orphan home to visit the fatherless and widows in their need and distress and to give them the help and encouragement necessary to a life of usefulness and happiness. They can know no better care than that provided under the direction of the deacons in leading the whole church to personally and individually render every possible service, all under the supervision of the elders, who watch for their souls.
The church, being the divine institution, is entirely and wholly different from any and every human institution. God, in his wisdom, planned and established the church. Its ordinances of divine service, its order of work and worship, and its every characteristic and feature, came from God and were set forth "once for all" by the apostles. The New Testament church as planned in the mind of God and as set in order by the apostles, shows what God thinks the church should be and how it should function. What God thinks about the church and what men think is infinitely apart. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith Jehovah. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isa. 55:8,9).
The church, then, is the work of God and was created in Christ Jesus to do every good work. "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Eph. 2:10). The church is formed by men and women obeying the gospel, which "is the power of God unto salvation." God adds all who are saved to the church. It is an infinitely wonderful institution that all Christians are members of. The institution that includes all Christians and that embraces their life-work has an infinitely glorious mission to accomplish that includes the performance of every good work. Every thing that can be done in the name of Christ and in which Christians may engage is the work of this glorious church, "That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." (Eph. 5:26,27.)
It is obvious that false teaching concerning the church, and its apostolic order of things, comes from the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition, who wickedly appeared as the climax of the Great Apostasy. The poison emanating from him who is the personification of "the Falling Away" has permeated the thinking of the religious world with disjointed and incongruous notions of what the church is and of how God ordained it should work. There is no religious body today but what is more or less indebted to "His Holiness" for things they have and practice. Thinking of the church and its work in terms of a human denomination is one of the main things perverting the evangelization of the world.
When fleshly ambitious and presumptuous men begin to tamper with the apostolic order of things in the church, and to introduce things for which the apostles gave neither precept nor example, they commit the presumptuous sin of setting their own wisdom above the wisdom of God and rob the church of its efficiency and power. A perverted gospel cannot save, nor can a corrupted church succeed in doing the work that God so completely, and thoroughly furnished it to do. In God's way the church evangelized the whole world in thirty years. "But I say, Have they not heard? Yea verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." (Rom. 10:18.) Since the Man of Sin began to introduce general organizations to control the resources of thousands of churches, instead of each church functioning autonomously, evangelistic enterprise has been a dismal failure. Instead of preaching the gospel "publicly, and from house to house," they have built up huge hierarchies and general organizations with a strangle hold on the churches.
The early churches fed and clothed the needy, and visited the fatherless and widows, in their afflictions, with such efficiency and perfection that it aroused the amazement and admiration of the whole Pagan world. But since the introduction of general institutions, under the pretext of taking over the work that each church, under its own elders and deacons, was taught by the apostles to do in its own neighborhood, the care of the poor and distressed has been but a well-advertised mockery of what it once was under the apostles. No general institution, under a general board, can possibly do the work that the apostles ordained that the deacons of each church should have charge of in directing the whole church in personally and individually doing in its own neighborhood. There is no other such organization on earth as the church. Human organizations, besides the presumptuous sin of having them, are miserable and wicked failures from every standpoint.
We submit that the Word of God teaches, and that the New Testament churches practiced, the absolute all-sufficiency of the church in every neighborhood to do every good work. We also submit that the gospel was preached to the whole world, and that the poor and needy, and the fatherless and widows, were wonderfully cared for, by the church in every neighborhood, and that thus, under the apostles, the pattern was delivered "once for all," to which all churches must conform "unto the end of the world." Only by conforming to that for which the apostles, in the New Testament churches, gave the precept and set the example, can the churches today "walk by faith," and only as thy "walk by faith" can they render acceptable service to God and enjoy God's blessings upon them in their work.