p. 6 | ORGANIZATION AND LIFE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 15, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 15.

ORGANIZATION AND LIFE.

There are “unions,” and confederations, and combines, and trusts, without number; but they are not true unions. They are held together through personal, selfish interest or fear. When the fear departs, when a prospect for greater gain in safety is presented, the connection is broken, and the bond of “union” is dissolved.

Yet this is the only union the world can effect or know. Association in political parties and membership in societies, clubs, unions, and guilds, are of the same nature, and have a basis essentially selfish. Oftentimes they are held together for years through fear of calamity threatened, or by the glowing promises of great future prosperity of some strong leader.

We do not make mention of these organizations to condemn them. It is the best that the world can do. It is in harmony with its nature. It is to the selfishness of man that these organizations appeal. But they do not, can not, will not, meet man’s need. He who depends upon them will find them at last a rope of sand. And, therefore, this kind of union is not the union which God asks. It is not the union which should exist among His people. It is not the union which He gives. It is not the union by which He unites His people. And it is a low conception on the part of any Christian to exalt that sort of union. He ought not to desire to use it to forward the work of God. Any union in which only humanity has a part, by the regulations of which humanity seeks to bind humanity, is a thousandfold worse in its operation within the church of God than it is in its native element, the world. What it will do in the church is manifest in its full growth, the Papacy of the Dark Ages. It is a union of force and not of life, whereas the only true union is life-union.

God brings union among men by first uniting them with Himself. He does not unite two independent branches. Man could bind two live olive branches together with cords of steel difficult to sever; but the union bears no fruit, develops no power. If green and filled with leaves when first bound, they would retain this greenness only for a little while, and then—death, decay, annihilation.

God takes those two branches, almost destitute of all life, doomed to eternal death, grafts them into the true, living Olive Tree; they drink in of its ever-flowing life; they grow; they put forth bud, and leaf, and flower, and bear fruit to His glory. Every illustration used by Inspiration regarding such union demands life. The union is life-union. Is it the grape-vine?

—The union is a union by life; yet that not of the branch but the vine. Is the illustration of a living temple of character, builded of living stones?—The life comes not from the stones, but from the living foundation Rock beneath; and that life binds as one mass the temple above to the rock beneath.

That man who will yield himself to God will receive of the Spirit, the life of God. That man who feeds upon the Word partakes of the life of God, and builds himself still closer, still stronger to God, by invisible yet unbreakable bonds of life. That man who lets God’s life flow through him to bless others, becomes a channel of more life, and as freely as he gives, so freely he receives.

Two men so bound to God are bound to each other with the Strength of the Universe. Jesus Christ forms the bond of union, infinitely stronger than both of the branches He binds together. So, in the human body, the bond of union between the arms is the body. And life-union is unselfish union. Life is love. Each of the members bound by life-union serves the other. It may be concerned for itself, but it serves its fellows. The eye does not see for itself, but for the other members of the body. If in danger, it is protected by the eyelid, or by a movement of limb or trunk. The right hand does not wash itself; it washes the left, and vice versa. The foot runs at the behest of other members of the man. Unselfishness, life, love, service for others, is the true basis of all true union. Anything short of this is worldly, and will not meet the requirements of God nor the needs of humanity. But union with God will meet all needs, heal all wounds, weld all divisions, and bind all who are God’s into the “bundle of life” forevermore.

What then is the lesson?—Seek above all things else God and His righteousness, and all needed, helpful, blessed things will surely be supplied according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.