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This delightful home in which we stay has as one of its kind courtesies an arrangement by which, at this hour in the course of a meeting, when people are about to face a forty-minute talk, if they feel they are sitting in a chair that's too comfortable and they're liable to fall asleep, they may apply to be changed over into a hard, uncomfortable chair. In addition to that kindness, a little civility that I offer myself is that if you can't find a hard chair and you feel in danger of going to sleep, you can now give in your name to me, and when I see you about to fall, I shout out your name.
More than that, I'm afraid we cannot do. Now, this morning we were considering together the authority of our blessed Lord, and I was advancing the thesis that we, in the first place, should look upon the authority of our blessed Lord, not as some severe and rigorous demand that is made upon us, but something of a veritable gospel of salvation. That his authority is, in a word, our salvation, as he uses his authority to put his massive shoulder under our weaknesses and infirmities, and thus deliver us from powers that we, from which we could not possibly deliver ourselves.
Let us who preach remember it, that when we preach the authority of Christ, we are not calling people to some dismal discipline. We are offering them deliverance and salvation. Of course, as we accept his authority, we shall be expected to respond to that authority by obedience in the endless path of progressive discipleship. And we tried to follow this morning what continuance in that path of discipleship will mean for those who accept the authority of Jesus Christ. Now, tonight, I want to go on to discuss a topic that is not unrelated to this matter of our Lord's authority, and that is the church and its relation to our salvation.
It must be evident at once to us all that the church is somehow connected with this matter of our Lord's authority. Had our enemy the clock not defeated us this morning, then we should have come across a portion in the Gospel of Matthew that underlines this connection. As we heard our Lord saying, upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against her. We should have come across a number of exceedingly import- important and fundamental statements relative to the power that our Lord Jesus dedicates to his church.
Let me just briefly remind you of some of the stories in that part of Matthew that illustrate this very thing. That being in the church of Christ means access to his power, and in some sense employing the power that he himself possessed. By way of a preparatory lesson, our Lord chose Peter, as you may remember, on another sea journey in the night of the storm. How were the manful apostles rowing their ship? When, making little headway and becoming disfigured, they saw what they imagined was a ghost coming across the water.
That terrified them, but didn't surprise them altogether, because, as anybody knows, if they know anything, I suppose, ghosts are so much nothing, so they can easily walk on water. Turned out not to be a ghost. And a familiar voice cried above the noise of the wind and the wave, it is I, be not afraid. Peter, as he listened and tried to be logical, did a per- per- peculiarly petrine thing. He came to a conclusion, overleaping all sorts of, sorts of logical steps in the process. He said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come upon, to thee upon the water.
Well, how did the conclusion follow from the if? Lord, if it be thou, bid me do what you're doing. I ask again, how did the conclusion follow from the premise? Now that Peter wasn't always worried about pedestrian logic. I suspect, though I mustn't say it is so, I suspect if he had thought it would have gone like this. Well, now it isn't a ghost. See that? It's the Lord himself. Well, he's no ghost, we know that. He's pretty solid, flesh and blood like we are, bones in addition.
Well, if he can walk on water, what about me? So he says, in a moment of enthusiasm, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come to thee on the water. I don't know whether John privately thought, what a blast of a suggestion. Of course you can't do like Christ does, Peter. Of course you can't, man. What are you suggesting? Ah, but our Lord had arranged it so that Peter should learn that was precisely what he was expected to do. He could do like Christ did. Come, said the voice, which was all the authority needed to indicate that Peter's suggestion was not undue enthusiasm.
Some Christians do give way to undue enthusiasm and try to do all sorts of things in the name of faith that God never asked them to do, and are silly things to do anyway. If you're going to do some great bold venture of faith, you better have authority for it. Faith without authority isn't faith. Presumption. Divine voice said, come! And faith responded to a word of the Lord. He found that with his eyes on Christ, he could do what the Lord did.
Oh yes, you say, it didn't last. Well, I know that. Hasn't lasted long with me on any occasion. And, uh, soon I find where the true authority lays, lies, where the true power is, is not in me ever. But so long as my faith is going out to the Savior, he can give me the power to walk as he walked. And Peter did it. When his attempt broke down through lack of faith, through fear, and he began to sink, our Lord proved what a master he is in the teaching of his disciples.
When they fail their lessons, he's there to carry them. When Peter began to sink and the water gurgled around his mustache. Our Lord didn't first preach a lesson to him and say, you silly man, Peter, why did you doubt? Learn to have strong faith on the body. No, it had been under, sunk. If our Lord had waited for any such lesson, stretching out his hand, he seized him. Then he preached to him. And he discovered that Jesus is indeed the Son of God. Oh, what a discovery.
To find that I have redemption through his blood. Whose blood? The blood of him in whom all the creation was made. For my salvation and eternal glory, he made this planet. That's why it's here. That I might be born on it, and in the course of life, find the living God through Jesus Christ, and be taught to walk as he walked. And he's master of the planet that he built so that I could be here, and on it find God and be saved.
Or you may remember that passage of Matthew that is discussing the church and what the church means. It has another incident recorded by Matthew, for doubtless Matthew in his old age, or even in middle life, looked back upon many of these incidents that happened in the life of our Lord and saw in them wonderful preparative lessons that Christ had given them in his wisdom, so that they could look back on them and see illustrations of what it would mean to live with Christ in his church. Our Lord went up the mountain of transfiguration, you may remember. Took three favored disciples. Why, they were gone up a lot. There came a father with his son to the remaining disciples down the bottom of the mountain, requesting that these people cast out a demon, and they couldn't do it.
When our Lord came back down the mountain, he expressed his wearied frustration. How long shall I be with you, and you get the lesson? I don't have to be physically here for you to do the work that I want you to do. Why couldn't you have done it even though I was up the mountain?
Presently, he was to tell them that where two or three are gathered together in my name, the Lord Jesus, ascended in glory as though he is body, is in the middle. And being in the church means being in that company of people in which the blessed Lord is present. And therefore, it must become obvious to us, even from a superficial reading of the New Testament, that the church has some authority. And somewhere along the line, this authority gets itself involved with the matter of our salvation.
Here all sorts of difficulties begin, don't they? We must know strangely little of ecclesiastical history if we're not immediately aware that so far from helping salvation and the work of the gospel, there have been periods in the history of the church when it has been precisely the church and ecclesiastical, uh, structures of all sorts and kinds that have impeded the gospel rather than help, and have lain like an incubus upon the hearts and spirits of individual believers, and instead of promoting their growth, has contributed to their being stunted.
So much so that some people, in reaction thereto, have become impatient with all things ecclesiastical and said, bother the church, as though it were an expensive irrelevance. Let's forget the church and get on with the work of evangelization, not have any formal structures. That kind of situation leads us eventually, surely, to ask ourselves again. Can we indeed afford to dispense with the church? Is it an irrelevance or an impediment? If we can't afford to dispense with it, how shall we organize it?
In our second session this morning, we discussed among ourselves, did we not, other related topics, the role of tradition, and discovered, according to the New Testament, there are bad traditions that damage people spiritually and insult the Lord in addition. There are good traditions. The gospel is one, and church ordinances are another, which we are expected to keep faithfully, and if we keep them, Paul the Apostle will praise us for keeping them. I praise you that in all things you keep the traditions which I delivered to you.
For I have received of the Lord Jesus that which also I delivered unto you. So evidently, not only the gospel, but the traditions, uh, the ordinances of the church that do come to us from our blessed Lord, these are traditions that we must keep. That leads on to the question, how then in general shall we order our churches? I want to argue with you this evening. I want to argue with you this evening that when we face that practical problem in our generation, how shall we order our churches? That we could follow the example of the Apostle Paul in the way that he regulated the churches of his day.
And my thesis that I develop will be a simple one, and it is this. The overriding basic principle that must determine the way we order the church... is an institution set up by God for the furtherance of our ongoing salvation. And that therefore, whatever we do in our churches, we must see to it that nothing we arrange, no organization that we construct, impedes the work of ongoing salvation.
That is going to be my general thesis. And I'm going to argue it from certain examples taken from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, the first of the letters by that name. But here I am aware that I ought and cannot, I ought not and I cannot discuss such a question of the relation of the church to our ongoing salvation, without remembering, of course, certain large claims that have appeared in the course of Christendom's history that are quite false, and I must mention it now because I would not wish anybody to misunderstand what I am about to say.
It has been put, hasn't it, in extremer days than perhaps we live in now. It has been argued by some that there is no salvation outside the church. That is not what I am preaching tonight. It is the very opposite of what I preach. It is wrong on a number of counts. It is false, that claim that there is no salvation outside the church, because in the first place, it gets the true order of things gloriously the wrong way round, or ingloriously, and puts the cart before the horse in a magnificent fashion.
No salvation outside the church. What a mistake. The contrary is true. You can't get into the church unless you're first saved. If there were no salvation outside it, you'd never be in it. Let me, uh, show that my contention is true to scripture. I had read to us that familiar story of Peter's encounter with the Lord Jesus. He came to our Lord as Simon. And our Lord, looking upon him as Peter came to him, he said, Thou art Simon.
Thou shalt be called Cephas, which is Aramaic for Petros, happens to be Greek, meaning a stone. That's a not thing to say to anybody, isn't it? There it is. When Simon came to Christ and received Christ, and Christ received him. Simon was given a name that, of course, wasn't just prettier than one, the one he had before, but a new name, significant of a new life and character. Incidentally, that's why you have a Christian name, if you've got one, I don't know whether you have, you have a Christian name.
I hope it means what it appears to say. Then the missionaries went to the pagans, and they preached the gospel, and the pagans received Christ and were born again, some early Christians were in the habit of giving these new converts a new name. It was a Christian name. Why? Because before they received Christ, they only had one life, one nature, ordinary human nature. When they received Christ, they received a new life, and with it, of course, a new nature, became what they never were before, children of God.
And in recognition now that there was something there that was never there before, a new life, eternal. They gave them another name. That's what happened to Peter. He came as Simon. He met the Savior. He received the Savior, and the Savior received him. Our Lord gave him a new name. It is, of course, possible to have a Christian name nowadays and the whole thing be a sham. Because you have never received a new life. You've never really been born again, but that by the way. Peter, in his letter, his first letter in chapter two, indicates that his experience was not meant to be unique in this particular.
Paul says he to his fellow Christians, to whom coming, that is coming to the Lord Jesus, you also. What do you mean also? Well, as well as I. You also were built up as living stone. You see, when I came to Christ, I was made a living stone. When you came to Christ, you made a living stone. Whatever for? You were turned into a living stone so that you could then be built up as a spiritual house. God is in process of erecting a spiritual house.
Another name for it is the church. Its architect's specifications specify that every stone in the building must be a living stone. How do you become a living stone? One theory is that you get a lot of old dead stones and you build them into this building and hope by being in the building they will one day emerge into living stones. That is a fallacy. The house has got to have living stones in it. That's what it's built of. How do you get the living stones?
Well, you have first to make them living stones, and then they get put in the church. Yes. To say there's no salvation outside the church is therefore nonsense, chronologically speaking. Or if you want a simple, plain statement of scripture, the last verse of the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles informed us what happened on the day of Pentecost and thereafter. As God added to the company of the believers, whom did he add? The people as they got saved, that's whom he added. He added to them those that were being saved.
As they were saved, so he added them. Of course, is the process. The other reason why the notion that there is no salvation outside the church is defective is it becau- is because it springs from a detect- defective view of salvation itself? Salvation in Holy Scripture, of course, is a very wide term that covers a very large area. Initial salvation, ongoing salvation, final salvation. But alas, some people have the notion that even initi- uh, salvation in the sense of acceptance with God is a thing that lies at the end of the Christian road.
I imagine salvation like a university degree course. You know, if you want to take a degree in a university, I'm not doing a little bit of surreptitious advertising, but if you do, the first thing you have to do is get into university. That isn't always so very easy, but you'll not get a degree, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, of university without first getting into the university. And moreover, I must tell you that if you manage to get into a university, as you know, well know, that near getting into the university is no guarantee that you're going to get the degree at the end. Of course, it's a reasonable expectation. Doing the best you can, with exceedingly indulgent and helpful tutors.
Patient beyond all measurement. And sympathetically minded. You might at last get through. No university that I know of will guarantee you a degree just by getting in. And you'll have to wait till finals to know whether you've got it or not. Many people suppose that salvation is like that. If you want to be saved, first you get into the church. And the church, being kind and indulgent almost as well as university lecturers, will do her best with the various courses that she will put you through to prepare you for finals.
But whether you are at last saved or not cannot be known until you pass final. And therefore they say there's no salvation outside the church, like we would say there's no getting a Queen's degree outside Queens. That is horribly mistaken, isn't it? As to salvation in the sense of acceptance with God, it lies not at the end of the journey, but at the beginning. Oh, by God's great grace, the moment in repentance and faith, I put my faith in God and receive the Savior, I am justified, accepted with God, with entrance into the holiest of all, now and forthwith and immediately.
And I don't have to be in the church to get it. It is because I got it that I then become part of the church. Having said that, let me now emphasize the fact that having received initial salvation in terms of acceptance with God, entrance into the holiest of all, having accepted initial salvation, I am born again. I am a- I- I am alive with a new life. I am a living stone. I now built in the building, that spiritual building. It is evident, is it not, from scripture that the church will now be used of God to further my ongoing salvation.
Now, I'm using the term salvation in the sense, for instance, in which Paul would talk in his fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians. We are in the body of Christ, and we are to grow up unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. How shall we grow? We shall grow by that which every joint supplieth. It is the plain fact that having become a child of God, I shall find that some of God's grace, grace comes to me directly. A great deal of God's grace comes to me indirectly through other people, through my fellow believers, through other members in the body of Christ.
And it is thus ordained of the Lord that so it shall be. I cannot say, or if I say it, I'm foolish, that I do not need the church. God has set some in the church, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, for the perfecting of the same. And if I am to grow, as God intends I shall grow, much of the grace that he gives me, by which means I grow, will come to me indirectly through other members of the body of Christ. Then how shall we order the church, that it might do its functions, and save it from imbibing all sorts of traditions that are harmful, from impeding the very work it was meant to further.
To ask the question is in part to show the lines upon which the answers must go, is it not? In considering how we ought to run the churches, to correct them when they've gone astray, it appears to me that one of the basic considerations that we shall have to bring to the problem. Is the constant prayerful examination. Now, does this structure, does this arrangement fit in with God's design for the ongoing salvation of his people.
Does it fit in with God's purpose in having a church? Consider that purpose how you will. Perhaps you say there are many such purposes, maybe. One of them is that we shall act as a dwelling place for God, a temple for his praise. The church must ever be organized so that it does not impede the purpose for which the church is constructed. Let me therefore, rather than theorize, take some examples. What I propose to do is to look at some of the problems that afflicted the church at Corinth so extraordinarily early in her history.
And not only remind you of the solutions, for I am persuaded you know off by heart both the problems and the solutions. All I want to do in reminding you of the problems and of the solutions is to point to the principles that underlie what Paul is saying, the kind of consideration he brings to bear upon the problem, that we might learn thus not only to obey what he says, but to copy him in our approach. So in the early chapters, Paul indeed spends the first four chapters of his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul turns to that scandal that was beginning to develop among the Christians, that they were calling themselves after sundry prominent Christian apostles and preachers, and thus dividing the believers into factions, each carrying the label of a different name of a different creature.
On the wrong of it, I do not propose to talk at length. Though I have to confess to you that when I have been tempted on times to talk at length on good Christian friends, whose judgment I on the whole admire, tell me that this is such a silly little matter that you waste your breath upon it. What's in the name, they say, quoting, I think it's Shakespeare or somebody to that effect. It's marvelous how when it comes to the things of God, we're prepared to dismiss this matter as a simple problem, but we wouldn't dream of dismissing it as another.
What's in a name? Nothing much. Doesn't matter what you call yourself. Did I ever tell you? I expect I did because I'm getting old and I repeat myself. Did I ever tell you... of that good woman, Mrs. Smith? Excellent woman. Uh, she was one night sitting by the fire with her husband, cleaning out her handbag, and accidentally she tipped the contents of it upon the carpet, and Mr. Smith, being a gallant gentleman, rushed to her help and helped her to gather up the contents of his handbag and put them back. And presently he came across what looked to him like a visiting card, and being rather rude, he read the name on it, and it read Mrs.
Fitzgerald Smith. That's interesting, my dear. Mrs. uh, Smith, but she's Mrs. Fitzgerald Smith, of course, double-barrelled Smith this. Must be an important Smith, I should think. Not like us ordinary Smiths. Plain Smiths. Uh, may I ask who this Mrs. Fitzgerald Smith is? Oh, it's me, she says. You? It's me. No, you were Fitzgerald Smith. I'm not Smith Fitzgerald Smith. How'd you come to be Fitzgerald Smith? Oh, she said you'd forgotten who Fitzgerald was, I suppose.
Don't you remember when I was first introduced to you at that dance years ago? It was a man called Fitzgerald that introduced me to you. So what? Oh, well, there are lots of Smiths about, and I thought it would be nice for people to know which Smith I am. If I also took the name of the man that led me to you. I call myself not just Mrs. Smith, but Mrs. Smith. It's Gerald Smith. What do you suppose Mr. Smith would say? Oh, an excellent idea, an excellent idea, my boy.
No, he wouldn't. Or if he did, he's a weakling of a husband. But if he were jealous, he'd tear the card up and put it in the fire, wouldn't he? And forbid her to print another such. And I tell you, the Lord our God is a jealous God, and he won't have you putting somebody else's name alongside on. Not even to distinguish you from some other Christian. How will Paul answer the problem?
Oh, this isn't a little matter, you see, because it, says Paul, can't you see how allowing yourself to take all these names conflicts with the very basis of the gospel? First of all, it detracts from the unique glory of the Lord Jesus and from what is the basis of salvation. Tell me what the basis of salvation is. Well, you say the basis of salvation is that Christ was crucified for me. Yes. Who was? Was Paul crucified for you, by any chance? Ah, you say he told me about the gospel message, he told me about the cross, so he may have done, but telling you about the cross is one thing, being crucified for you is utterly a different thing.
You call yourself after Paul, because the unique glory of us o- of Jesus Christ as our saviour. What else does it do? It conflicts with the deliberate strategy of God that is aimed at our salvation. Tell me, how did you manage to get into Jesus Christ? You are in Jesus Christ, I hope. How did you manage to get into Jesus Christ? You say, I'll tell you, actually. There came to our place where I live a very clever man.
His name's O'Fackety. Wow, he had such a logical brain. And he argued so finely and incisively that he destroyed all my doubts and he put me in Christ, and I've been a Christian ever since. I'm very sorry to hear that. For one simple reason, that one of these days they'll come up to you a cleverer brain who will be named O'Flickety. He'll have even better logic, and he'll be an atheist or agnostic, he'll take you out of Christ. Because it's a flackety who put you in, a flickety who take you out.
How are you in Christ, says the apostle, of God you are in Christ Jesus, and God put you in? And for that reason, God will not share his glory with any anybody else. It is basic to your salvation that you should see that you are in Christ, not because of somebody's wisdom or because of somebody's riches or because of somebody's anything. No flesh shall have the glory of having put you into Christ, only God himself, that your faith might be in the power of God and in nothing else. Don't you go and confuse it by labing- labeling yourself an oflackety Christian.
And to organize our churches under the label of some man or other, or some doctrine or other, or what have you will, other than the name of Christ, conflicts with what the Holy Spirit is trying to do. Why are you so little titches, you Corinthians, says Paul, when it comes to spiritual things? You're like a little, like a lot of little infants, aren't you? Instead of having grown able to take strong meat for your spiritual diet, what went wrong with you. You began to put yourself, your faith in men, brilliant preachers and teachers.
You've got your eyes off the only true source of spiritual growth, which is the Holy Spirit himself. No man understands the things of God. Say the Spirit of God. If we would understand the things of God, we should only understand them as the Holy Spirit takes the things of God and reveals them to us. Sure, he will use brilliant preachers, and otherwise... he'll use veritable donkeys. Don't ask me how I know, I do know. But then also it is written in scripture that on one occasion he ate a donkey, so I take courage.
But if we suppose it's the donkey and put our faith in the donkey, or we suppose it's the brilliant preacher and put our faith in the preacher, and we lose that sense of immediate dependence upon the Holy Spirit, we are on the way to spiritual poverty and stunted growth. It matters, says Paul. You mustn't go and organize your churches, even in such an apparently innocent thing as the taking of names. You mustn't organize them in such way as derogates from the unique glory of Christ, or stands opposed to God's deliberate strategy, or takes people's attention from the blessed Holy Spirit.
Or take another problem that arose in this church. And incidentally, my interrupt to say that after my fearful disaster this morning, uh, I was comforted by being told that tonight I might preach, uh, uh, al- almost up to the end of my period because there is to be an extended question period tomorrow, where I promise to keep as quiet as possible, and others will contribute, and uh, questions will be answered. So let me proceed just a moment. Let's take another problem in the church. Immorality, so we are told, in chapter five of First Corinthians, broke out in the church of Corinth. So much so that the Gentiles living around were absolutely shocked.
Such immorality as was not heard of even among the Gentiles. What is to be done? And why should you do it? Well, what is to be done, according to chapter five is that the go- the man, the s- the sorry man that had done this thing was to be delivered unto Satan. Such people were to be judged, says the end of the chapter. And I write unto you not to keep company if any man that is named a brother be a fornicator or covetous or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner, for such an one know not to eat.
Tell you that you must, in the name of the Lord Jesus, deal with such a person. Being gathered together in the name of the Lord Jesus, my spirit, the power of our Lord, deliver such an one unto Satan. For the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Now, there are some people that have argued seriously, Jason said, that church discipline and excommunication is a thing that oughtn't to happen. And they have argued this on the basis of our Lord's famous parable of the tares and the wheat, in which our Lord likened the kingdom of God with fields in which, uh, God planted good seed.
When the good seed was sown, the enemy sowed tares, and presently they both began to grow. And the servants inquired of the master, Lord, shall we root out the tares? He said, no, let them both grow together until harvest. Don't try and root out the tears, lest in rooting them out, you root out the wheat as well. Many have thought, sincerely thought, that that is a direction for how we ought to behave in the churches. Should not attempt to excommunicate people whose lives are in this grievous state. Lest in rooting out, root out genuine beliefs.
In such a context, I must speak with all deference and humility. I submit to you that that is, of course, a misinterpretation of the parable. First of all, our Lord wasn't talking about the church, he was talking about the world. The field, said he, as he interpreted the parable, is the world, not the church. Secondly, his permission, don't you root out the tares, was addressed not to elders of the Christian church, but to the angels responsible for the final judgment. When at last command is given that the tares be rooted out, it will be the angels that come and do the rooting out, not the elders of the church.
When they're rooted out, they're consigned to the furnace. What our Lord is saying, that in the field of this world, there are genuine believers, yes, there are other hypocrites. Final judgment is not yet. Final judgment shall not come till the end of the age. God does not propose to institute the judgment now. But both go on together until the harvest. Whereas Paul is not talking about the world, in fact, he expressly excludes it. I do not judge them that are without reason.
Then God judges. So I have to judge those that are within. Why must we do that? Sad and sorry thing it is. Paul answers it by appealing once more to an aspect of our salvation. He reminds them in chapter five that Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us. He's, of course, referring, uh, by analogy to the Passover in ancient Israel, when ancient Israel were delivered out of the land of Egypt by being sheltered from the wrath of God through the blood of the Passover lamb.
In that same, same, similar, but higher fashion, we too have been delivered. We too have a Passover lamb, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that by his blood we might be saved from the wrath of God. Ah yes, but in Israel, that wasn't all the story. In Israel, if you were true to God's directive, you could not be redeemed unless simultaneously you were prepared forthwith to keep the feast of unleavened bread. There was no Passover redemption that left it as an option whether you would keep the feast of unleavened bread or not.
And to this day, Jews who observe the regulation keep feast of Passover and unleavened bread together, without a gap between them. That Paul indicates is a divinely given parable as to how we are to behave. Redemption through the blood of Christ brings with it immediately, not as an optional extra, but as an integral part of the deal, that we keep the feast of unleavened bread. Not now literally, purging literal leaven from our houses, as do the Jews.
But spiritually, from the church, as indeed from our own lives, seeing that the old leaven is passed out. Why is that important? I submit to you, for the very sake of the gospel. You're a Christian church, you preach the gospel, you profess to get folk converted. Here is a man in your church, of course, not in your church, your church would have, you never have any such person. Let me think of some hypothetical church somewhere. In this hypothetical church, there's a man who is rumored about town, makes his money out of keeping brothels downtown.
He's a big boy in the com- business community, got money to spend, and he supports the church. You say you can't turn him out, you can't. You better stop preaching the gospel. For if the gospel your church preaches, not your church, this hypothetical church, if the gospel this hypothetical church preaches, is that being redeemed by the blood of Christ permits then church members to indulge in such antisocial sin. Who's going to believe your gospel? Why Paul was getting so very upset.
We're allowing immorality in the church, such as even shocked the Gentiles. How many Gentiles were going to get converted after that and listen to the gospel? If that's what the gospel means. Church discipline is there, not of course to enforce some exclusive rigid heartless regulation, but first for the sake of the gospel, and then for the sake of the man who is dealt with. For if he is a believer, then if all else is fair, may this succeed.
The discipline might lead to the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit be saved in the day of the Lord. Talking about things less severe in chapter six, but serious enough, on this same matter of immorality, Paul, of course, continues the same thesis. It is a mark, perhaps, of how the gospel has progressed in our own country, or used to progress, or once did progress. I don't know how to put it. That in these parts, everybody recognizes that fornication is wrong.
Why I say that is because in Greece, and a clue it was wrong. And the apostles had to tell converts in the church that fornication was wrong. Well, I never would have guessed it. Never heard such a thing, half of them. They had to be told. On what grounds would Paul forbid? Ah, he will take the thing back to the principles of salvation themselves. Have you been redeemed by the blood of your great Passover lamb? Listen to what happened at the Exodus when Israel was redeemed.
At that time, the wrath of God hung over the head of every firstborn in Egypt. If an Israelite firstborn had not been protected with the blood of the Passover lamb that night, he must have perished under the wrath of the angel of God. He was as a good as a dead man, had it not been that the lamb died instead of him. Righto, said God, now from now on, I claim that firstborn as my own. You see, he owes his life to me, doesn't he? I claim him.
Every firstborn that opens the womb is mine, says Paul. On the ground of Eden. Why may I not commit fornication? Why must the church take a tough line? Because, says Paul, if you have been redeemed, you are not your own. You have been bought to their price. The body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. You are a living stone in the very temple of God.
Let us not dwell merely on negative things. Let us dwell on the last fifty-seven seconds. Let us dwell upon positive things. How shall we order our church when it comes to the ministry of the church? Does it matter? Well, yes, of course it matters. Why is that? Because the church is meant to reflect what the salvation of God has achieved and is achieving. No organization, therefore, of my church ought, knowingly, to impede what God himself is doing.
What did God do when he saved us? Among all the other things he did, he did this, says Paul in one Corinthians twelve twelve and thirteen: In one spirit, you were all baptized into one body, and you were all made to drink of one spirit. Thus were you implanted into the very body of Christ, that wonderful, glorious reality that God is in the process of making these days.
A new thing. That marvelous thing that you will not read of until the day of Pentecost, in which real human personalities are taken up into the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is put into them. So they are in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is in them. And by that means, they are formed into one body, still being individual personalities, but now part of something that is more than an individual personality. For just as my members form one body because they each share the same life, so you and I, if you are a believer, I am in the same body as you, whether you like it or not.
You can't do anything about it, for Christ has put you in his Holy Spirit and his Holy Spirit in you. Well, by his grace, that's not astounding, but it is the fact. By his grace, he has taken me up into his Holy Spirit and put the Holy Spirit in me, and between me and you and around me and in us both is that same life of Christ. That's what salvation has done. And why did God do it? Because he wanted a body through which Christ could express himself through each member. And he who made our human bodies with the intention that each member should function has created the body of Christ with that same intention that each according to his gift should function.
We must therefore, I suggest, see to it that in our organization of our churches, we encourage and not impede the functioning of each gift and each member according to its gift. And my time is gone, but I trust I have made my general thesis clear. Well, a fraction longer on that last observation. My being a member of the body of Christ is a direct and immediate result of my salvation. But my functioning as a member of the body of Christ is important to my spiritual growth, and therefore to my ongoing salvation.
And if I don't function, I should be stunted. Even if my right arm would be stunted if I never used it. And my thesis, therefore, is simply this, that in these days when we must, if we would be true to God's word and our Lord's example, examine our traditions again, and hold fast those traditions that come to us from the Lord himself through his apostles. Hold them fast and tenacious. And on the other hand, any traditions that we find that do not come from him and go against his word, or even contradict it, must resolutely be put aside.
Then in that context, as we come to face the matter of our churches in our modern century, how shall we order? I suggest, not presuming to give individual detailed regulations part of it, I suggest as a basic working principle, this one shall be prominent among others. The ordering of the church must fit in with, indeed, its spread, the fundamental principles of our salvation, initial, ongoing, and by God's grace, preparing us for the final. In your long suffering, suffer the world of its own.
