01.09. HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS
Chapter 9 HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS
" From whom the whole body, by joints and bands having nourishment ministered and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God."
It may assist us to grasp more clearly the fulness of thought in these words if we disentangle the main idea from the subsidiary clauses gathered round it. That main thought is that from Christ, the Head, the whole body increases. Three things are contained therein - the source of the life, the derived growth, the oneness of the body and the participation of all its parts in that growth. But this main thought is enriched and arabesqued, as it were, in Paul’s eager, impetuous fashion, with pregnant additions. He seldom draws a plain straight line, but surrounds it with many a curve and involution, like the light, flower like decorations which encrust the firm framework of the upper spire of Antwerp Cathedral. They hide but do not weaken the direct upward spring of the rigid metal. His thoughts come fast and press on one another, and the result seems, to careless readers, confusion, when it is but the prodigality of a fertile soil quickened by the warmth of Christ’s love into productiveness, which is richness, not riot. The subsidiary clause describes more fully the twofold manner of the growth of the body, and the office in relation to that growth, of the subordinate parts. The body is a whole, made up of parts differing, and therefore adapted and harmonious. These have each their function in transmitting the life. That life manifests itself in the double effect of assimilating nourishment and effecting compaction. There are, then, large truths involved in this representation, as to the source of vitality, the various and harmonious action of all the parts, the consequent growth of the whole, and the individual union to Christ, which is the condition of all individual and corporate increase which is healthy and according to God.
I We have to consider the Source of all the life of the body.
According to the context, Christ is the Head, and, as Paul puts it without being very careful about physiological accuracy, therefore the source from which all parts of the body partake of a common life. There are three symbols chiefly employed to represent the union of Christ with His Church, one of them being that used by Christ Himself, and the others principally by Paul. One knows not which presents that real and mysterious bond in the most striking fashion. These are the emblems of the vine, the body, and the marriage bond - the first drawn from the noblest example of plant life as conceived by the old world ; the second, from the noblest type of animal existence ; and the third, from the deepest and closest union of human spirits. The first expresses the calm, effortless, uninterrupted process by which the sap rises in the branches and broadens in the leaves, and loads the boughs with purple clusters. The repetition of similar parts is the characteristic of vegetable growth. The second brings into view more of the notion of exercise and office on the part of the limbs of the body, which do not grow without effort, and maybe diseased and disabled. Variety of parts cooperating in one growing whole is the characteristic of animal increase. The third lifts our thoughts into the region of love and voluntary choice, and reminds us of the original distinctness of the persons who become one, because they love and therefore wish to be one. When we look up into some great tree, which to our northern eyes is a nobler type of vegetable growth than a vine, and mark the clouds of foliage, and measure how far it is from the firm bole and the deep roots to the tiny leaflet at the topmost tip of the furthest branch, we gain a wonderful image of the unity of life which permeates the Church. But still more expressive of the deep mystery which is involved in the thought of the oneness of Christ and His people is that other symbol of the body and its head. The mystery is part of the felicity of the figure. Who can explain the connection of soul and body, the process by which the thrill of a nerve becomes emotion, and the throb of a bit of grey matter in the skull a thought ? Who can tell us what life is ? Verbal definitions are plentiful enough, but they help little to the comprehension of the thing. That commonest of facts, which makes dead matter glow and move under spiritual stress, is still inexplicable after anatomist’s scalpels and psychologist’s abstractions have done their best to lay bare its secret. Of man in his complex nature we may reverently say, as we say of God, in whose image he is made in regard to part of his being, "clouds and darkness are round about him." We may expect no less thick darkness to rest upon that mysterious and blessed union which intakes the dust and ashes of sinful humanity into a living body, glowing and molded by the spirit of life which was in Christ. We can get no deeper down nor further back than His own claim, " I am the Life." But that union, though mysterious, is most real. It is not merely that Jesus Christ gives to those who trust and obey Him certain gifts as from without, which gifts may be possessed and retained in the absence of the Giver, but that He is in His people individually and collectively, and by His indwelling imparts life within. What keeps a body from becoming a carcase ? The life. What keeps a Church from becoming an offense and a stench? Christ, who is the Head to the body. His Church, and more than the head is to the physical body, since He is not only the sovereign Member but the all pervading Life, whose seat is not in this gland or that part of the brain, but everywhere, filling all, and quickening each part of the mighty whole with the capacity for reception and the power of action proper to it.
II Note the various and harmonious action of all the parts.
We need not inquire particularly as to the physiological doctrines underlying the metaphor of the text, or seek for the precise equivalents in the social organization of the Church for the "joints and bands" referred to. It is enough for our purpose to note the twofold office which these discharge. They receive from the Head and communicate to the body the double gifts of nutrition and unity. They originate nothing, but all which they impart they first derive from Him. However it may be in the physical body, in the spiritual analogue which is the community of Christian souls, each member has both the direct communication of life and its gifts from the Head, even Christ, and the indirect participation by means of gifts received through the brotherly mediation of others. He who has no personal access to the fountain of life, nor ever draws at first hand from it, will profit little by anything that men can say or do for him ; but, on the other hand, he who does not value and use the gifts bestowed at first on his brethren that they may filter to others, will be apt to have a disproportionate development of the life, and often to mistake his own imaginations for Christ’s voice, and his own inclinations for Christ’s command. Exaggerated individualism on the one side, and dependence on the reports of Christ’s mind and will brought by others on the other, are equally far from the type of character which corresponds to the two facts in question, namely, that the life which the Head imparts to His Church is imparted both by direct contact of the individual soul with its Lord, and through the medium of other members of the body. The direct communication between Jesus and the soul does not make the help of brethren superfluous. The agency of human teachers and guides or of the collective body, does not supersede the need for the direct contact of each soul with Christ. "Joints and bands" minister nutriment and compaction, but only on condition that they are fed from the true bread of life, partaken of by that faith which is the personal contact of the single soul with the sole Redeemer, and are knit to all who hold the Head, because they realize their own union to Him by their own grasp. The linked chain clasp hands and thus transmit the thrill from Him, but each unit in the chain grasps the Lord’s hand with his own, or no tingle of influence will reach him through his fellows. From Jesus comes all nourishment of the Divine life, even when we think that we instruct or stimulate each other. He is the Fountain of wisdom and good, and what ever may be the vessels which bring the water to our lips, they are filled by Him and with Him. Just as the bread which we earn by the sweat of our own brows, or receive by the hospitality of others, comes in truth from a Divine hand opened to supply the wants of every living thing, so, but in still more wonderful all pervasiveness of influence, does Jesus feed all souls with the Bread which is Himself. From Jesus comes the oneness of the body. Many attempts have been made to secure that unity in other ways, and to knit other bonds than His own all present and compacting life; but these are vain, substituting mechanical and formal for real oneness. Agreement in opinions as expressed by creeds, uniformity of polity as crystallized in organizations or forms of worship, and the like, are but poor travesties of the one true principle of unity. The oneness of the branches of the vine, in which the same life manifests itself in wood and leaf and cluster, is not more unlike the artificial oneness of a bundle of faggots held together by a piece of string, than is the true oneness of the true Church of Christ to that of these artificial agglomerations. The one derived life is the only real bond of unity. In the old covenant, the seven branched candlestick represented the formal unity of Israel, which was one by reason of mere natural descent from one ancestor, and the rigid stiffness of the symbol may be taken as expressive of the mechanical and external nature of the bond which held the tribes together. But the golden candlestick lies deep in the sea, and in the new covenant order its place is taken by the seven which the seer beheld, which are one in their seven foldness because the ascended Lord walks in the midst of them. This is a better unity than that of old. The nearer, then, we draw to Jesus Christ, the nearer we shall be to one another. The radii of a circle are closer together the closer they are to the centre, and if we who stand round Jesus Christ travel each on our own direct line of progress towards Him, we shall find ourselves in closer neighborhood with separated brethren journeying to the one point to which widely removed and even opposite paths converge. Life, and life alone, resists the chemical and other forces which tend to disintegrate the physical body. Death means resolving that into its elements. Union to Jesus Christ is the bond and the power of true unity.
Since these issues of the Divine life are ministered by the members, even while all derived from the Head, we may lay to heart the manifold uses of fellowship and the need which each has of others. The true value of Church union is much obscured today, not only by the many other forms of association which fill so large a place in modern life, but also by the opposite and mutually producing exaggerations of theories in which the Church is everything and the individual nothing, and of those in which individualism is so asserted that there is scant justice done to the idea of the community. It is hard to keep the true path between these extremes. But if we give due weight to the two short clauses of this text, " from whom " on the one hand, and " by joints and bands " on the other, we shall at least have the materials for a duly proportioned estimate of the two modes of thought, which are complementary and harmonious, though often pitted against each other.
It is not good for man to be alone, and the religious life which is developed in solitary reliance on the individual perception of truth in Christ and reception of grace from Him will usually be deformed by exaggeration of individual peculiarities, and disproportionate prominence given to fragments of truth. It is not good for man to be so lost in the community as to distrust his own judgment, enlightened by the Spirit of Christ, unless he has its sentences endorsed by the body, or to depend only on other men and on rites for spiritual supplies. ’’From Christ" relegates the soul in the last resort to Jesus as the Source of all its life and nourishment; "by joints and bands" bids it thankfully use brotherly mediation.
Since the laws of nourishment and growth are thus stated, each member of the whole body has its work. In these offices there is the greatest variety, just as there are many organs with different functions in the physical body. The same life is light in the eye, strength in the arm, color in the cheek, music on the tongue, swiftness in the foot. " So also is Christ." The higher we rise in the scale of being, the more the organs are differentiated, and each confined to its special function. The lowest form of life is but a sac, which can be turned inside out without harm, and has no division of labour to separate portions of the unspecialized whole. So in society, the more it is developed, the more are its members confined to ever narrower ranges of work. In primitive communities, each man does all the simple offices which any man does. The measure of "civilization" is the limitation of function. So in the Church, the effect of Christianity is to develop individual character, and also to knit men more closely together. The whole octave is needed. Diversity is the condition of harmony. Do we not, then, fail in tolerance ? We are all apt to require that all voices shall sing our part, forgetting that the whole score must be sounded in order to represent the great master’s purpose. We fail in welcoming different modes of work, different reproductions of the perfect life, different reflections and refractions of the light. We fail in courage to be ourselves, to see for ourselves and to act accordingly, one after this manner and one after that. White light is produced by the blending of all rays of different hue. It needs the combination of all types of excellence and of all partial glimpses of truth to set forth the fulness of that Christ who filleth all in all, and is more than all. " All these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will." Let us, then, take heed that we are good stewards of the manifold grace of God, honoring its variety of operations in the Christians most unlike ourselves, and cultivating the special form of its gifts entrusted to us, neither trying to make others like ourselves nor ourselves like others.
III Note the consequent increase of the whole.
" The increase of God " is a solemn expression, which may either refer to the increase of the Divine life in the members of the body, or to the increase of the body from without. Probably both ideas were in the apostle’s mind. He would have us discriminate between other sorts of growth and that only wholesome kind, of which God is the Author which is imparted from Christ to those who, as the previous verse describes, " hold the Head." The increase of life in the Church, then, both as a community and in its separate elements, depends on the harmonious activity of all the parts. Not only does each organ contribute to health and growth, but the condition of its own health and growth is its activity. The disused member atrophies. The used faculty is strengthened. " To him that hath shall be given." If a man in Christ desires His own religious character to be deepened, let him exercise the religion he has, and by it control his life. Let it underlie his actions, and let him translate all his creed into conduct, and set all his devout emotions to drive the wheels of daily duty. Faith exercised will become more clear and longsighted, like the sailor’s keen eyes, and will see the land that is very far off, where others are aware of nothing but cloud. The true way to increase any Christlike trait of character is to give it full scope in life. The collective growth in the Divine life is also dependent on the activity of all, and sadly hampered when some are idle. A very insignificant member of the physical frame can become of immense importance by failing to do its work, and there are many professing Christians who are able by the same method to stop much progress. The dead weight of carelessness and non-participation in Christian life and service which every Church has to carry terribly retards its progress. A tiny clot of blood blocking a thread like artery can kill a man. The inert masses of nominal Christians have arrested the march of every out burst of quickened religious life, as we hear of armies of caterpillars stopping trains. So much heat has to be expended in converting ice into water, that there is little left for making the water boil and give steam. We have all more power to help than we often believe, and far more to hinder than we think. In like manner the increase of the Church from without depends on its vitality within, and on the concurrent activity of all its members. The great Lord of the household has left " to every man his work," and no one can neglect his own task without damaging the well being of the household. Great gifts designate for great work, as it is called by vulgar opinion ; but great or small are adjectives which have no place in God’s judgment of our service. The smallest part of a machine is as needful as the largest for the working of the machine. Ignorant spectators admire the huge cranks and polished columns of steel which serve as pistons; but take away a screw or two half an inch long and unseen, and crank and piston are motionless. The feeble members, says Paul, are necessary. Great and small, weak and strong, are man’s adjectives, often wrongly applied and always foreign to the Divine criterion of work, which is not its magnitude, but its motive and its aim. But the increase of the body from without depends not only on the action of all its parts, but on their health and vitality. Work for Christ is warranted and efficacious only when it is a consequence of life in Christ. There must first be life, and then the acts of life. And this sequence is needful to be kept steadily in view in these busy days, when so many voices urge to activity. It has come to be the fashion to engage in some kind of Christian service, and, amid all this bustle, there is danger that the inward communion, without which all the outward service lacks its consecration and its power, may be starved. The galvanized twitchings of a corpse simulate life’s movements in a ghastly parody ; and much of the whipped up activity of Christian people, to which so many voices urge now, is little better than these.
There is an increase which is not " the increase of God." The vulgar worldly estimate of success invades the Church, and popular preaching, crowds to listen, wealth, social status, fine buildings, large contributions, vigorous organizations and the like, which shopkeepers would count prosperity in their business, are too often complacently pointed to as signs of a healthy Church, But all these can be attained without one tingle of the Divine life passing through the carcase. Such increase, without the deepening and spread of the quick vitality drawn from Jesus Christ, is not healthy growth, but a diseased wen, which must be excised before soundness returns, or a dropsical swelling which must be reduced. The autumn meadows are full of puffballs which look white and solid, but have nothing inside but an acrid powder. The difference between these and the ripening fruit in the orchard, is the difference between the increase with which too many Christian communities are pleased, and that which is worthy of being called "the increase of God." It is not hard to build quickly and high, if we are content to take our mortar from the slime pits, and to make bricks a substitute for stones. But, sooner or later, the lightning will fall on the tower, and the speech of its builders be confounded, and their confederation scattered. The true building can only rise when each stone is built on the one Foundation, and all are held together by no outward bond, but by the life that pulsates through all the courses of the temple that rises through the ages for an habitation of God.
IV Note the personal hold of Jesus Christ which is the condition of all life and growth.
Nourishment, unity, growth, all come from Him, and are realized by us if we fulfill the plain condition stated in the context, and are " holding the Head." In the vine the sap rises naturally without effort on the part of tendril or leaf, and the life circulates through the body by the automatic and unconscious action of the organs. But these metaphors fail in describing the requisites for the reception of life from Jesus, and we have to make them out with the other symbol of the bride and bridegroom, in which the union of persons is ennobled, because it requires voluntary choice and conscious cleaving of the one to the other, in an effort which itself is blessedness, and is the condition of tasting the fullest sweetness of the purest joy of earth, which in its purity mirrors the heaven bending above loving hearts.
What, then, is the effort which we should put forth in order to secure the flow of Christ’s life through ourselves and our Churches? The apostle uses a vigorous word, the force of which may be felt by reference to other instances of its employment. It is used to describe the action of the women after the Resurrection, when they clasped Christ’s feet with the grasp of love that had passed in one astounding leap from the depth of misery to the height of rapture. It is used to describe the tight clasp with which the lame men held Peter and John, afraid that, if he let go, he would fall. So it implies a firm, almost desperate clutch, in which Love and Need, like two hands, clasp Him and will not let Him go. Such tenacious grip implies the adhesive energy of the whole nature - the mind laying hold upon truth, the heart clinging to love, the will submitting to authority. It will not be attained and continued without effort. The fingers slacken unless their grasp is continually renewed, and the appeals of sense and of the necessary tasks concerned with the material present, through they may be so answered and done as to bring us nearer to our Lord, may also part us from Him. They will certainly separate us from Him unless we have sacred times in our lives when we shut out the world and renew our hold of Him. The will has much to do with the firmness of a Christian’s hold of Christ. If we honestly and earnestly resolve that, God helping us, we will not let the world and the flesh loosen our grasp of Him, we shall have a new criterion for the world’s good and evil, a new test for its treasures, a new insight into what is our true felicity. That firm grasp is the indispensable condition of drawing life from Him, and the measure of our adherence to Jesus Christ is the measure of our vitality. So all the manifold duties of the Christian life come at last to be summed up in this one, of keeping close to Jesus. When Barnabas was sent down to see into the strange new phenomenon of Gentiles who had received Christ, what did he exhort these new converts, just rescued from heathenism, and weak and ignorant, to do ? He did not bid them seek to acquire fuller theological knowledge, or to secure an orderly ministry of ordained men, or to organize themselves in proper fashion. All these things, if necessary, would come, if what he did enjoin were done. " He exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they should cleave unto the Lord." Do that, and all else will follow. Hold fast by Him, like the limpet to the rock. He Himself has summed all our duty and pointed the path of safety in His parting invitation, which offers all blessedness, and enjoins a duty which love will find a sweet necessity and purest joy : " Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me."