The Church of Christ

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 6, 1893

The Church of Christ.

The one organization given of God and fully equipped with spiritual gifts and all necessary offices and power, is the church founded by our Lord Jesus Christ. For the fullness of these blessings and gifts see 1 Corinthians 12; Rom. 12:4-8; Eph. 4:4-16. Whatever success, therefore, may attend the church, to God will be all the glory. Men will not boast themselves, nor glory in men, because of the triumphs of the body of Christ. All the glory will be given to the Head, which is Christ. But of the very necessity of the case a different spirit is manifest in the exploiting of the success which has attended the work of the church through some other organization. It is what the Sabbath school has done, or the Endeavor Society has done, or this society or that association, and, therefore, you ought to belong to this or that, by paying a dollar or fifty cents or twenty-five, whereas the church of God, and Jesus Christ its Head, get second glory at best. It is the, "WE have done." And yet every power, every talent, which will make any work effectual for God, must come through the church. Jesus Christ has honored the church, and honor paid his church in his way is honor paid to him. But when human organizations, with human conditions of membership, come in between the people and the divinely ordained agencies, it is man, not God, who gets the glory. Organization for work is good, but let the organization be such as will not interpose itself between Christ and the people. There are simpler, better, more effectual ways, all of which God will develop among his faithful ones in due time. Oh, for more of his Spirit for the purging of the carnal and human, for the development and manifestation of the power of the Divine!