To
those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God –
children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's
will, but born of God. (John 1:12,13 NIV)
What, in the thought of
God do Christians exist for? What does the Church exist for? There is only one
answer. The existence and the function is to be an expression of Christ. There
is nothing less and nothing more than that. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end, and all between! Let that be the starting point; let
that be the governing rule and reality in all matters of life and work, and see at
once the nature and vocation of the Church. This vast, incomprehensible
heavenly system, of which Christ is the personal embodiment, touches every
detail of life, personally and collectively. But remember only the Holy Spirit
sees and knows how it is so; hence, as at the beginning, there has to be an
utter submission to and direction by the Lordship of the Holy Spirit. What the
bloodstream is to the human body, the Divine Life is to and in "the Church
which is His body." What the nerve system is in the physical realm, the
Holy Spirit is in the spiritual. Understand all the workings of those two
systems in the natural, and you begin to see how God has written His great
heavenly principles, first in the person of His Son, and then in His corporate
Body.
As an individual believer
is the result of a begetting, a conception, a formation, a birth and a
likeness, so, in the New Testament, is a true local church. It is a
reproduction of Christ by the Holy Spirit. Man cannot make, form, produce or
"establish" this. Neither can anyone "join" or
"enroll," or make himself or herself a member of this organism. First
it is an embryo, and then a "formation" after Christ. So, all talk
about "forming New Testament churches" is nonsense. The beginning is
in a seeing of Christ.
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