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CHAPTER SIX
UNITY IS FIRST WITH CHRIST
AND WITH HIS WORD,
AND THEN WITH HIS PEOPLE
LIVE WITH A CLEAR CONSCIENCE AND AN ASSURED FAITH
JOHN 17 AND LUKE 18:7-8
It is understandable that the unity prayed for in the case of the apostles, as in John 17, should be achievable, with marvellous forbearance as between Paul and Peter (cf. Galatians 2:11-22), on the part of those who had in the main, not only been with Christ, but able to experience as eyewitnesses, His majesty, power, sanctity, love and practical mercy. What however of the second part of John 17, namely John 17:20-26 ? What of the thousands of Christians in the world who, following the apostolic age, would populate the church ? how do they in fact relate ?
There are, as earlier, but now in summit mode, ambitions, extremists, bally-hoo agencies which merely make use of Christ (as in Philippians 1:18), sects, seditions, false apostles, self-appointed spiritual millionaires, some literal, those who sell the flock and those who are sold, and severed from the flock. The combined work of II Peter 2 and II Timothy 3-4, with Matthew 24:24 has to have lebensraum! Amid all this, a divinely worked marvel, the elect are not deceived; for if it were possible, they certainly would be (Matthew 24:24). It is only because of God that it is not even possible (John 17:11-14,23).
As major workers, formerly sound churches explode rather than receive expiation for their sins, dally, shilly-shally, then abruptly fail, categorically fail, make up a god who neither designed man and his model world, nor judged his sin in curse, nor will judge for eternity, being specified so by various parties who plagiarise His words, in part, for their own creation, so the actual church continues, the kingdom of God in the very midst of some. There it remains, arising in sharp contrast, now here, now there, now in revival, now in strengthening, in awakening to more than the sin of the soul, even to the feverish failures of so many, partaking of cultural substitutes for biblical truth, as though they were mother's milk.
Let us then consider some of the ways in which UNITY may be expressed, that the world may believe (John 17:20-21), even in this highly astringent times.
8 ASPECTS OF THE ATMOSPHERE OF FIDELITY
1) If when Christ returns, the question is, Shall He find faith on earth ? (Luke 18:8). Then we need not be too concerned if people fragment in various forms of confrontation with the word of God, not accepting or receiving them by faith. It is imperative, on the other hand, that what the gates of hell could not swallow, does not lounge! Are you still sleeping can be applied not only as it was, by Christ after Gethsemane to drowsy disciples, but to the Church of today.
2) It is good to avoid all merely personal stress and dissension and confusion, and separate, if need be (Romans 16:17) on grounds that are a matter of the word of God which both instructs and tests all. Where this holds, nothing stays.
3) It is helpful to keep open to all approach from those who may be Christian (cf. SMR What is a Christian ? pp. 520-524).
4) it helps to invite approach where feasible, as on a visiting card, where the open hand and heart and the word of God alike are freely offered.
5) It strengthens to realise that fraud and fiasco at this phase of history in terms of Matthew 24, Luke 21, I and II Timothy and II Peter, are at their height, so that disappointment ought not to cause travail of spirit.
6) Sound is it to remember the 7000 who did not show much at all of themselves to Elijah during his intensely lonely time, as the prophecy took effect: time and place are not always overcome in such matters, and disciples of Christ should be encouraged at this, to persevere.
7) At the same time, NEVER for the sake of unity, is it sound to allow the word of God in its plain sense to be set aside or made optional, lest the whole counsel be forgotten, through a slackness which slowly bleeds faith in the WORD of God to death. Here is a splendid case of SHOW me your FAITH by your works (James 2:18). Treat the Bible in its clarity (Proverbs 8:8), with the fear of God, with reverence for Him whose word it is. To breach or belittle or distance it is to smack the Son in the face, in the mouth part.
8) Finally, in some matters, such as the meaning of wearing or not, hats in church, there is really a matter of spiritual understanding, and there it is best not to be too particular about solving it this way or that, lest it be merely a superficial short-circuit of underlying truth, giving a bold perspective. Such a case has its own integrity, however, and does not constitute a type of ground for ignoring things in the Bible, only in some cases, to distance them a little, till the time is more suitable for understanding, as in a course. However, such things are not in view where categorical statements are available, which do not leave the matter in any doubt or need of increased depth, except for digging a ditch for disbelief.
THE GLORIOUS EARLIER CRY
THAT COVERS THE CHILDREN
As to that, let us see that aspect in the earlier part of John 17. This is given new emphasis in part, in the last. But what do we find here ? There is that cry of Christ to His Father, the earlier cry, saying:
"I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work You gave Me to do.
And now Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory
which I had with You before the world was."
What is it like ? It is like a ship built, ready for launching. Engineers, boat-builders, drills, electrical equipment, the huge cradle, steel on steel, cabins, crew, all are ready. Years have been spent in its construction - with Christ, some three and one half of His Messianic ministry, not to mention the thousands of years that went into rescuing man after the flood, and the whole glorious paraphernalia, gamut, grace and glory of the prophecies that focussed on Christ then to come, the gate and wonder of the dock where He would be launched, the focus and feature and name of the ship, Christ, Saviour and Lord. He emptied Himself of glory in the FORM of God (eternally invulnerable, all-knowing, inviolable) to take the form of a servant, even a slave, one doing the bidding of another in another realm, even this world, coming not to judge it but to save it, as many as would come.
What then is it like ? Here is the ship at last complete. The work force (Christ embodies it all), they cry out in their anguished relief, for the pain has been great, and though the actual launching is essential, the work has been done, the remainder, without which it would all come to nothing, is nevertheless now in sight, in another six hours crucially. To leave the figure, it is the six hours on the cross.
It is now finished in contemplation, requiring only the lordly launching, where all the little wheels will groan as the great mass will shortly, at the appointed time, move down the prepared slope, to the great and deep waters (leaving the figure again, to the populace for which it becomes a transport, from this world to "the kingdom of the Son of His love," as in Colossians 1:13, the end of the voyage.
What glorious composure, what illimitable assurance, what wonder in the work of the blessed Trinity, that the Son should so know His eternal Father and the Father so work with His Son, that the race is already won, the execution of it like a great and beautiful dawn, which comes as the hours pass, and more surely than they; for the Lord had already spoken of the event of the cross (Psalm 22), of the raising of the body (Psalm 16, Isaiah 26:19), which would lead to that of the passengers as well, when the time came, at the final shore (I Cor. 15, Phil. 3:20ff., Isaiah 53-55).
Now therefore this earlier cry of Christ to His Father, that of John 17 before of Luke 23:46), as we have been hearing it in the former, it penetrates as we read and contemplate it. So the inter-personal side is unveiled: God gave His Son the words of life and the Son passed them on to His earnest and received followers, the apostles to be, minus the Judas of the 12, as already also long appointed (John 17:12, Psalm 69, 109, 41). Christ having manifested the NAME (in power, peace and purity, love, grace and compassion) of the Father, now as predicted is the date fully arrived for action of a categorical kind (The Christian Prescription Ch. 2).
The NAME has been manifested, and the WORDS which define, deliver and enshrine that One with the propositions, directions, salvation by grace only, through faith only, buttressed by irrepressible truth: these have been both received by Christ, faithfully transmitted through Him (cf. John 12:48-50), and received onto the personal computers, that is the hearts, and into the hard-disks, that is the minds, of the selected, close disciples, bar the one who was to fail and has accomplished for his part, that failure, even Judas (Psalm 109).
So the name manifestation and the word transfer have both been accomplished as part of the necessary and extensive prelude to the launching in agony, and the production in anguish, of the ship of faith. To this there is the free entry to all who come up the established gangway, which will take in its time, so many more on board (John 17:20).
Who are these first of all ? It is the residual 11. as in John 17:6-9. This word of God they have received, not some word or words, but the word GIVEN, and they have kept it, this corpus of words, unlike Judas for example, it being bound to their hearts like a mitre valve, integral to it and undetachable, wrought by regeneration, and inscribed by grace (Titus 3:1-7, I John 3:9, I Peter 1:23, Hebrews 8:7ff.), readying them for that "inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you," as found in I Peter1:5 and in life, eternal life (John 5:24, 6:47, Romans 6:23, 10:9).
Faith has flourished here, for "they have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me," John 17:8.
For them exclusively (plus those to believe through their word - 17:20), uniquely He prays. That embraces all who have believed, do believe and will believe (John 17:20), including those who received the Lord in the preliminary phases, like Abraham and his, not the ones from stones or of stone, but Jews inwardly (Romans 4, 2:27-29). It embraces none other in this matter of salvation and security, redemption and cross-coverage through His sacrifice, even to His own blood (cf. Acts 20:28, Romans 3:23-27). The world is the system whether planed as by Hitler, or elevated as at Babel, or of the Fourth Empire (as with Daniel 2, 7, Revelation 13, incl. vv. 11-12, and 17) or the false pseudo-church as in II Peter 2, II Corinthians 10-11); and in it He has no saving part nor for this does He pray. That possibility is stringently negatived. It goes its way with Caiaphas, Judas and Sennacherib (Isaiah 37), with Tyre and Babylon, both the city and empire and the mystery Babylon of Revelation 17. For this world as such, there is no redemption, even its heavens with earth destined for removal (Isaiah 51:6, II Peer 3, Matthew 24:35).
There is a cleavage that is not partial, but absolute. Christ, His prayer and His work on the one side, and this world on the other (cf. James 4:4). The world can, because it will, go to blazes; for this is its inheritance for non-faith; and the utmost having been done as the ship is launched, it is only OUT OF THIS WORLD that saints are won, not as IN IT and far less as OF IT! (cf. Romans 12:1-2).
Those who are the Lord's are select persons, like those who chose to emigrate to Australia, in terms of nations, after World War II. They are elect because God knew who they were before time began (Ephesians 1:4), and though it is HE and not they who perform the work of this selection (John 1:12), since they are tarred with the obscurities of their condition (I Cor. 2:14, John 1:12), it is as BEFORE HIM, only by an ultimate unbelief, manifest to the Maker before ever man was on earth, or sin touched down, where liberty was manifest, that many are known to be ultimately lost; and so it is rendered into history. The things of Christ may indeed come near to them as in Hebrews 6 and 10, and they may even taste of the things of the "world to come", but they spit them out.
It is for the select, the elect, not in superiority but in freely receiving Him in truth and reality, that He prays, and is effectual without loss, in carrying them into history and out of it, into the place of glory with His Father. Indeed, He DOES PRAY for those who believe in Him according to His word, that sharp interface, and to them He gives the glory which the Father has given Him.
So they are assured with His assurance, which works down from above and secures each one of them (John 6:65), and His endless and changeless love is not in vain lavished: so that these among all called, do freely come, and are those who do not fail because "THIS IS THE CONDEMNATION that the light has come into the world," even the light of Christ as defined in John 1-13 with such éclat, "and men loved darkness rather than light ..."
That is the ground for the failure to save all, and they are many indeed (Matthew 7:13), DESPITE the fact that God has such a love for the world (out of which many would come) that He gave His ONLY begotten Son so that two things might happen. First that anyone who believed in Him (and He sought all - Col. 1:19ff., I Tim. 2, Ezekiel 33) with intense longing (Matthew 23:37, Jeremiah 9, 48), even the most polluted. Secondly, it was NOT (the negative aspect) to condemn the world that He came (merely to give place to a machined future), but to SAVE IT.
The amplitude of His coming in love, was the entire world; the attainment is more limited, because of the way in, through faith, where it is seen to belong before creation even was. God does not do things by halves, as in Ephesians 2, but through faith by grace, does He work, so that the whole things is of this kind, with no part added. It is HIS Gospel, HIS desire, His word, HIS formulation, HIS coming, His call to all with all of His heart, His appointment as receptor, His office to secure what is already secure in His knowledge, and His way to implement that love (not force) toward the world that has His own, without one lost, both found, kept and given a heart for it.
True, this is done by selection where love would reach as in Ephesians 1:4, I John 4:7ff., as is natural to love; but it is not a sovereignty which rules God on this point, but one which IS that of the Being who IS love, and has NO desire to condemn but to save, and has done for ALL (I John 2:1ff.), sufficient that ANY might come, but NONE in prevarication or pretence, pretension or pride, deviousness or mere instrumentalism, using God as a base for what in the end become devilish desires. Nor does He fail any, however meek, lowly, humble, desolate or devastated in heart. He knows His own and leads them and favours them, giving them what posts He chooses, that each may contribute IN the world, while emphatically not OF this world, from the world above, where Christ dwells till His return (Acts 3:19-21). He has already accomplished His death (as in Luke 9:30-31).
Such is the motivation and method of love:
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losing none saveable (this, without defiling the image of God in them), |
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gaining none aspiring to misuse the kingdom, |
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bringing home out of this world those who board the vessel of His love, |
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calling as in love in predestination, and finding some, |
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foreknown as His in
truth and reality, |
It is a love so
rebutted by so many for so long with such results, foreknown from eternity,
and in manyreceived, most blessed,
as its work is implemented in time, its results secure and real,
infallible in execution, and bringing the great reward (Romans 8:32-36, Ephesians 1:4-11).
So is His prayer NOT for this world. Indeed, whatever wants to combine with it in any way, merely deludes himself, or indeed herself, old or young.
So with this preliminary cry in John 17, Christ prepares for His return to His Father, the cycle of salvation already viewed as complete, as envisaged in Colossians 1, committing His children, then and to come, to that same Father as He goes into the brilliant dawn of a Calvary which finishes its last rapport with that beginning of sunrise, when His body, being driven by life - as was that of raised Lazarus, in a glorious preview touching death and its overthrow - left the tomb and being absent, mocked those who had put it in its splendid and carefully marked repository, a gift of the rich, in accord with the prophecy of Isaiah 53.
Those who remain IN this world have a task in the truth, a citizenship in His kingdom (Phil. 3:20-21), with an inheritance when He who overcomes all things, overcomes the rule of death on stricken life in its sin, and then "transforms our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body," by a WORKING irresistible, as was the creation, as is salvation, target this world as scene of thrust, with the accomplishment in His people, Jew or Gentile, high or low, and not many high.
Indeed then few there are compared with the unruly streams, and many are the impostors as the last phases of a ruinous world work themselves out, inglorious testimony to the need to come where only going is found, going godless or with feckless, faith-free fraud (II Cor. 10:13 - 11:15), a world desperate and ready for more aimless antics, under more impostors till its time comes to go. Meanwhile, let us rejoice, however few there may be at any one point, and be willing as was Elijah, to be singled out as the time comes nearer, for disembarkation.
A PRACTICAL APPLICATION
The practical problem can arise, when a once great denomination fails, as did the PC of Australia, when it radical liberalism made it a non-Church, its assaults on the Bible a contrary-minded residue for some time. Then it was swayed to the opposite extreme, each preventing biblical sovereignty in doctrine and fidelity. Once it was done by direct assault, then it was with the monstrosity of tradition added at this level IN PRACTICE (Mark 7:7). With all that one could do in the way of testimony, when in a position to do so, now done, what remained ?
To gain a sense of unity, one can conceive of the Church in which one now worships as a CONTINUING CHURCH of the original PC of Australia, and so it can be called. Thus the position is CLEAR, as to where one stands, defined as not innovative in some egregious style, and one gives testimony to past work which should be continuing, but is not so continuing. In this way, the testimony stands in a union with those who did not move, have not moved and do not plan to move in continuing the telling testimony within and beyond this once great nation. If you want detail, as an example, see the italicised section below.
The Presbyterian Church of Australia in its 1901 Constitution has an acceptable statement on doctrine: the substance of the Westminster Confession required, with a carefully sensitive Declaratory Statement added, in terms of which the Confession has to be read. This supplies grounds of flexibility and faith alike, but sadly there has been an implicit nullification of the DC by the 1991 ruling that it has nothing not already in the Confession, which removes impact from what the Confession does not mention, but the DC does. The increased scope of the DC is thus aborted, and its provisions of emphasis and wisdom lost. In this way, the Confession rules with one of its original grounds of union stripped of its extras, and of all faithful additives so that it becomes a different Church, confessional in kind.
This has impact most particularly on the extent of the crucial love of God, through which, in
terms of the blood of Christ as in Colossians 1:19ff., for example, He would
have all men reconciled to Himself. It is when an understanding is built on such
a love as that, in the full biblical
perspective, that all
philosophical
problems
of this world are surmounted and removed, leaving the biblical approach unique.
Indeed, this beautiful result is shown to be
necessarily so,
comprehensively providing the necessary scope for understanding, as the light of
the world penetrates,
shed through the word and way in the Lord of all z
(cf.
LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST,
WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS).
. Christ is indeed then seen as the light of the world, not only in spiritual dimensions, but logical, empirical and in a comprehensive harmony of concept. So is it fitting for God to speak through His eternal word, made flesh.
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Leaving aside, then this 1991 move in the PCA, one which silences the special and constitutional content in the Declaratory Statement, and added a new, sapping and binding Confessionalism, how does it relate, is it relatable ?
It is the original 1901 Constitution which was and is generally a splendid presentation. In that spiritual and original sense, the Australian Bible Church is a continuing member of that original PC of Australia, where formerly the written word of God ruled all doctrine absolutely and practically, without waiting for the finale of wisdom on the word of man in much or in little, as criterion: whether man would add or assault.
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Neither the radical liberalism which
confessedly defiled the Church for some 40 years, |
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nor a more pharisaical-style binding of the traditions of man in confessionalism in the 1990s, which followed, |
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meets biblical
requirements, to which the Constitution directs. We have not changed, by the
word and grace of God kept free |
The word of God
is neither bound nor broken (II Timothy 2:9, Hebrews 1:3, Joel 2:11),
but as to this world, it fails in both categories.
Its need is the
word of Christ and the Christ of the word, the Bible.
Not only does He not change; He is immutable (Hebrews 13:8).