Within the Church

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 15, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 11.

Within the Church

It pleased the Father that in Christ Jesus should all fulness, “all the fulness of the Godhead,” dwell. Col. 1:19; 2:29. In all that pertains to humanity or to human salvation, Jesus Christ is the representative of the Father. Over the desolated rock tomb of Joseph He cries: “All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations: . . . and lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the age”—till the time the church militant becomes the church triumphant. Matt. 28:18-20.

Jesus Christ earned—won—the position of power and authority which God bestowed upon Him. He prevailed—overcame—in order to open the seven-sealed book of eternal salvation and a harmonized universe.

But the great drama of soul-saving is not complete. Christ Jesus is on high, yet present by His Holy Spirit. He is the Head of the Body, the Church; and upon the Church has He bestowed all of His fulness, that the Church might rightly represent Him, and be a body through whom He might work for the enlightenment of the nations and the salvation of souls. Read this declaration of His apostle regarding Christ and His church:

“And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far ABOVE ALL PRINCIPALITY, AND, POWER, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and hath put ALL THINGS UNDER HIS FEET, and gave Him to be THE HEAD over all things to THE CHURCH, WHICH IS HIS BODY, the FULNESS OF HIM that filleth all in all.” Eph. 1:19-23.

This fulness is manifest in all the various gifts and offices necessary for that church to do its work, such as wisdom, knowledge, faith, prophecy. 1 Cor. 12:4-11; Rom. 12:3-8. We further read:

“And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helps, governments, divers kinds of tongues.” 1 Cor. 12:28.

Note the great fact that they are all placed “IN the church.” God provides for no worldly organizations to do His work, for no extra-church organizations. Sometimes when His poor backslidden church has failed to respond to His call, too sleepy with worldly opiates to hear it, too busy to attend to it, God has wrought through individuals, and these individuals have built up human organizations. But God has not worked because of multiplied man-made machinery, but notwithstanding its existence. Men soon

get to giving glory to their own schemes and plans and organizations, and the Spirit departs, and the lauded human machine falls into innocuous desuetude. So it has ever been with all extra-church organizations. So it ever will be. Every society or organization so started comes to naught, falls into dead formalism, or becomes a political cult or party, kept alive by political ambitions.

God's wondrous plan guards against all this. He knew His church would organize for study, for propagation of His truth, for effectiveness; therefore He placed within His own divinely planned, life-connected, Spirit-endowed Body the gift of "governments." But all these are intra-church, not extra-church; they are within the church, not without; they are so guided, if doing His work in His way, by the wisdom, the knowledge, the counsel of His Spirit-endowed church, working in fullest sympathy for the extension of the Master's kingdom. Then not to man, or man's devices, will be given the praise, but as all the power is of God, so all the glory shall be of Him through Jesus Christ; and the church militant will rejoice, even in her tribulation and labors, that she is complete in Him.