Spiritual Energies in Daily Life

by Rufus M. Jones

CHAPTER VI
AGENCIES OF CONSTRUCTION

I
THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD

We have all been asking, “What is the matter with the Church? Why is it so weak and ineffective? Why does it exercise such a feeble influence in the world to-day? Why do men care so little for its message and its mission?” There are no doubt many answers to these questions, but one answer concerns us here. It is this: We who compose the Church do not sufficiently realize that God is a living God and that the Church is intended to be the living body through which he works in the world and through which he reveals himself. We think of him as far away in space and remote in time, a God who created once and who worked wonders in ancient times long past, but we do not, as we should, vividly think of him as a living reality, as near to us as the air is to the flying bird or the water to the swimming fish. We suppose that the Church is made up of just people, and is a human convenience for getting things done in the world. We do not see as we should that it is meant to be both divine and human and that it never is properly a Church unless God lives in it, reveals himself by means of it and works his spiritual work in the world through it.

This truth of the real Presence breaks through many of Christ’s great sayings and was one of the most evident features of the experience of the early Church. “Wherever in all the world two or three shall gather in my name there am I in the midst of them.” “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” “Wherever there is one alone,” according to the newly found “saying” of Jesus, “I am with him. Raise the stone and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood and there am I.”

Not once alone was the early Church invaded by a life and power from beyond itself as at Pentecost. The consciousness which characterized this “upper room” experience was repeated in some degree wherever a Church of the living God came into existence, as “a tiny island in a sea of surrounding paganism.” To belong to the Church meant to St. Paul to be “joined to the Lord in one spirit,” while the Church itself in his great phrase is the body of Christ and each individual a member in particular of that body.

What a difference it would make if we could rise to the height of St. Paul’s expectation and be actually “builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit!” We try plenty of other expedients. We popularize our message; we take up fads; we adjust as far as we can to the tendencies of the time; but only one thing really works after all and that is having the Church become the organ of the living God, and having it “charged” with what Paul so often calls the power of God—“the power that worketh in us.”

I saw a car wheel recently that had been running many miles with the brake clamped tight against it. It was white hot and it glowed with heat and light until it seemed almost transparent in its extraordinary luminosity. Those Christians in the upper room at Pentecost were baptized with fire so that the whole personality of each of them was glowing with heat and light, for the fire had gone all through them. They suddenly became conscious that their divine Leader who was no longer visible with them had become an invisible presence and a living power working through them. It is no wonder that all Jerusalem and its multitudinous sojourners were at once awakened to the fact that something novel had happened.

Our controversies which have divided us have been controversies about things out at the periphery, not about realities at the heart and center. We disagree about baptism, and we are at variance over problems of organization, ministry, and ordination, but the thing that really matters is the depth of conviction, consciousness of God, certainty of communion and fellowship with the Spirit. These experiences unite and never divide.

There is after all, in spite of all our gaps and chasms, only one Church. It is the Church of the living God. We are named with many names. We bear the sign of a particular denomination, but if we belong truly to the Church, then we belong to the great Church of the living God. It is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the building, fitly framed together, grows into an holy temple in the Lord. This is “the blessed community,” the living, expanding fellowship of vital faith, and it has the promise of the future, whether conferences on “faith and order” succeed or not, because it is the Church of the living God.