Eph. 1:22, 23—“the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” He who is the life of nature and of humanity reveals himself most fully in the great company of those who have joined themselves to him by faith. Union with Christ is the presupposition of the church. This alone transforms the sinner into a Christian, and this alone makes possible that vital and spiritual fellowship between individuals which constitutes the organizing principle of the church. The same divine life which ensures the pardon and the perseverance of the believer unites him to all other believers. The indwelling Christ makes the church superior to and more permanent than all humanitarian organizations; they die, but because Christ lives, the church lives also. Without a proper conception of this sublime relation of the church to Christ, we cannot properly appreciate our dignity as church members, or our high calling as shepherds of the flock. Not “ubi ecclesia, ibi Christus,” but “ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia,” should be our motto. Because Christ is omnipresent and omnipotent, “the same yesterday, and to-day, yea and forever”(Heb. 13:8), what Burke said of the nation is true of the church: It is “indeed a partnership, but a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are yet to be born.”
McGiffert, Apostolic Church, 501—“Paul's conception of the church as the body of Christ was first emphasized and developed by Ignatius. He reproduces in his writings the substance of all the Paulinism that the church at large made permanently its own: the preëxistence and deity of Christ, the union of the believer with Christ without which the Christian life is impossible, the importance of Christ's death, the church the body of Christ. Rome never fully recognized Paul's teachings, but her system rests upon his doctrine of the church the body of Christ. The modern doctrine however makes the kingdom to be not spiritual or future, but a reality of this world.” The redemption of the body, the redemption of institutions, the redemption of nations, are indeed all purposed by Christ. Christians should not only strive to rescue individual men from the slough of vice, but they should devise measures for draining that slough and making that vice impossible; in other words, they should labor for the coming of the kingdom of God in society. But this is not to identify the church with politics, prohibition, libraries, athletics. The spiritual fellowship is to be the fountain [pg 889]from which all these activities spring, while at the same time Christ's “kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).
A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 24, 25, 207—“As Christ is the temple of God, so the church is the temple of the Holy Spirit. As God could be seen only through Christ, so the Holy Spirit can be seen only through the church. As Christ was the image of the invisible God, so the church is appointed to be the image of the invisible Christ, and the members of Christ, when they are glorified with him, shall be the express image of his person.... The church and the kingdom are not identical terms, if we mean by the kingdom the visible reign and government of Jesus Christ on earth. In another sense they are identical. As is the king, so is the kingdom. The king is present now in the world, only invisibly and by the Holy Spirit; so the kingdom is now present invisibly and spiritually in the hearts of believers. The king is to come again visibly and gloriously; so shall the kingdom appear visibly and gloriously. In other words, the kingdom is already here in mystery: it is to be here to manifestation. Now the spiritual kingdom is administered by the Holy Spirit, and it extends from Pentecost to Parousia. At the Parousia—the appearing of the Son of man in glory—when he shall take unto himself his great power and reign (Rev. 11:17), when he who has now gone into a far country to be invested with a kingdom shall return and enter upon his government (Luke 19:15), then the invisible shall give way to the visible, the kingdom in mystery shall emerge into the kingdom in manifestation, and the Holy Spirit's administration shall yield to that of Christ.”
(c) The Scriptures, however, distinguish between this invisible or universal church, and the individual church, in which the universal church takes local and temporal form, and in which the idea of the church as a whole is concretely exhibited.
Mat. 10:32—“Every one therefore, who shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven”; 12:34, 35—“out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. The good man out of his good treasure bringeth forth good things”; Rom. 10:9, 10—“if thou shalt confess with thy month Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved: for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation”; James 1:18—“Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures”—we were saved, not for ourselves only, but as parts and beginnings of an organic kingdom of God; believers are called “firstfruits,” because from them the blessing shall spread, until the whole world shall be pervaded with the new life; Pentecost, as the feast of first-fruits, was but the beginning of a stream that shall continue to flow until the whole race of man is gathered in.
R. S. Storrs: “When any truth becomes central and vital, there comes the desire to utter it,”—and we may add, not only in words, but in organization. So beliefs crystallize into institutions. But Christian faith is something more vital than the common beliefs of the world. Linking the soul to Christ, it brings Christians into living fellowship with one another before any bonds of outward organization exist; outward organization, indeed, only expresses and symbolizes this inward union of spirit to Christ and to one another. Horatius Bonar: “Thou must be true thyself, If thou the truth wouldst teach; Thy soul must overflow, if thou Another's soul wouldst reach; It needs the overflow of heart To give the lips full speech. Think truly, and thy thoughts Shall the world's famine feed; Speak truly, and each word of thine Shall be a fruitful seed; Live truly, and thy life shall be A great and noble creed.”
Contentio Veritatis, 128, 129—“The kingdom of God is first a state of the individual soul, and then, secondly, a society made up of those who enjoy that state.” Dr. F. L. Patton: “The best way for a man to serve the church at large is to serve the church to which he belongs.” Herbert Stead: “The kingdom is not to be narrowed down to the church, nor the church evaporated into the kingdom.” To do the first is to set up a monstrous ecclesiasticism; to do the second is to destroy the organism through which the kingdom manifests itself and does its work in the world (W. R. Taylor). Prof. Dalman, in his work on The Words of Jesus in the Light of Postbiblical Writing and the Aramaic Language, contends that the Greek phrase translated “kingdom of God” should be rendered “the sovereignty of God.” He thinks that it points to the reign of God, rather than to the realm over which he reigns. This rendering, if accepted, takes away entirely the support from the Ritschlian conception of the kingdom of God as an earthly and outward organization.
(d) The individual church may be defined as that smaller company of regenerate persons, who, in any given community, unite themselves voluntarily together, in accordance with Christ's laws, for the purpose of securing the complete establishment of his kingdom in themselves and in the world.
Mat. 18:17—“And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican”; Acts 14:23—“appointed for them elders in every church”; Rom. 16:5—“salute the church that is in their house”; 1 Cor. 1:2—“the church of God which is at Corinth”; 4:17—“even as I teach everywhere in every church”; 1 Thess. 2:14—“the churches of God which are in Judæa in Christ Jesus.”
We do not define the church as a body of “baptized believers,” because baptism is but one of “Christ's laws,” in accordance with which believers unite themselves. Since these laws are the laws of church-organization contained in the New Testament, no Sunday School, Temperance Society, or Young Men's Christian Association, is properly a church. These organizations 1. lack the transcendent element—they are instituted and managed by man only; 2. they are not confined to the regenerate, or to those alone who give credible evidence of regeneration; 3. they presuppose and require no particular form of doctrine; 4. they observe no ordinances; 5. they are at best mere adjuncts and instruments of the church, but are not themselves churches; 6. their decisions therefore are devoid of the divine authority and obligation which belong to the decisions of the church.