[BRANCHES OF THE CHURCH.]
WHEN we say the body, we do not mean any sort of body, or any kind of body, but the body of Christ; the one body into which all were immersed in the time of the apostles. This is the same as in “the Church of God,” “the kingdom of God.” The body of Christ has no branches except the individual members. There are no branch bodies. The kingdom of God has no branches. Every citizen is in the kingdom, and those not in the kingdom are not citizens at all.
The Church of God, the body of Christ, or the kingdom, is a divine institution. The Lord built his church on the rock, and no man who understands the matter, “loves the Lord Jesus Christ with all his soul” while he says, “I care not to what church a man identifies himself.” The man who identifies himself with the Church of God, or the body of Christ, identifies himself with God, Christ and the Holy Spirit—with the entire heavenly family. This is what we care for. But identifying a man with those bodies styled branches is another matter. We can not love the Lord Jesus Christ with all the soul and care not whether we are identified with his body, or, which is the same, with him or some other body or person.
But let us inquire about these branches. Are they branches of the Church of God? The Church of God has never branched any that we know of. The body of Christ has no branches except the individual members and they all belong to the body, and not to a branch of the body. A man is simply in the body, or not in it. The kingdom of God has no branches. A man is simply a citizen, or he is not. If our correspondent desires to know whether he is in a branch of the Church of God let him trace the branch with which he is identified back to where it branched off, and see what it branched off from; whether it branched off from another branch, or from the main body. If it branched off from another branch, then he might trace that other branch and see what it branched off from. Before he gets back to the body he may find some branches that are no credit to anybody.
The departures from the body and from the law of God are not honored as branches of the body. They are styled in Scripture a “falling away,” the apostasy. They are departures from God, from Christ and from the Holy Spirit. The great apostasy is styled the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition. That is the first branch. We do not want to be identified with it, or any branch of it, or any branch of a branch of it. We have gone back to the body of Christ from which it departed, and become identified with that body itself, and will recognize no departure from it, no matter how many pretty names may be given to it, nor how many good people belong to it, but will still hold it to be an apostasy, or a departure from God. There can be no union in branches only branch union; there can be union in the one body, in the one faith, under the one Lord, and nowhere else, such as the Lord will approve.
[WHOM THE LORD RECEIVES.]
