Six Letters to a Mother on Church Questions - 3rd Letter

SIX LETTERS TO A MOTHER ON CHURCH QUESTIONS

by Richard Holden

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Third Letter

Bath, 10th January, 1873.

DEAREST MOTHER, 

How often have I longed, in bygone days, to find for my church position as clear warrant of faith as I had for my soul's salvation. It did seem so strange that God should have left it all indeterminate in His Word, and that nothing better remained for one than a weighing and balancing of human opinions, built on a few inferences from isolated Scripture texts, and only an opinion as the result, after all. I cannot express to you the sense of deliverance and repose with which I now rest on God's own Word about it all. It is all so plain to me now in Scripture, and it seems so marvelous I should have had an open Bible in my hands so many years, and yet have failed to perceive the truth now so simple to my eye. I can only compare it to what I experienced when first converted; when salvation by the blood of Jesus became so evident and precious that I marvelled I could have missed it so long. Well, praise be to God, He has led me into His plain path at last, however late, and it has opened the Scriptures to my understanding in a way that nothing else has ever done since my conversion.

Once the ruin is recognized and felt in the soul, the eye turns naturally to God, and the heart asks, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" If corporate responsibility has broken down, it becomes one to act in the sense of individual responsibility - one must seek to clear one’s own skirts.

The first question to be dealt with in such an hour is, What is the standard of truth? What is the divinely-appointed test? Where is the mind of God to be learnt with certainty?

A most noteworthy care has been taken by the Spirit of grace to give unmistakable clearness to this subject, in the very places of Scripture where the ruin is foretold. It is so gracious, so loving! 

Examine first Acts 20. Remark how the apostle closes his solemn admonition. He has set before them the danger: grievous wolves were coming to ravage the flock; perverse men from among themselves were about to arise and draw away disciples from the truth. What then? What safeguard can he point them to? Is it to an infallible pope or to an infallible council to abide with them, obedience to those authority shall secure them? Is there a bishop, or college of bishops, a synod, a presbytery? Alas! the presbytery is to be the very spring of the evil; how shall it, in any of its forms, prove a safeguard against it? No! not one such thought or suggestion has the apostle to proffer. "I commend you to God, and to the Word of His grace". God and the Word - not one thing more! God present by His Spirit, in terms of the precious promises in John 14-16; the Word present in their hands as His instrument for their guidance (Heb. 4:12; Eph. 6:17).

But not only is this all; he distinctly affirms it is enough. "Able to build you up." Yes, able, potent, adequate, in the face of the foreseen need; not merely sufficient for ordinary times, but for those "perilous times" that were coming. Could anything be desired plainer, simpler, or more to the point?

Look next at 2nd Timothy, the epistle whose special burden is the ruin. How carefully has the gracious Lord again brought in His clear testimony there to the all-sufficiency of the Word - mark, not ot its supremacy merely, but its all-sufficiency. “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived” - a perilous time, truly. How shall "the man of God" keep himself from the contagion? "The Holy Scriptures" are able to make him wise unto salvation, that he may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. What needs he more?

Peter is another prophet of the ruin, and in the very opening of his notes of warning he is careful to point to the "sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shines in a dark place."

So Jude points out as the antidote "the words which were spoken before of the apostles." Observe, not traditions, but words spoken in their own hearing. "How that they told you" - the apostle’s own words, the equivalent, to those who heard them, of their writings to us.

One must grasp, then, this truth firmly and resolutely: The Scripture is God's own word, and that word is, in the Spirit's hand, my all-sufficient guide. It is God's own voice - the Shepherd's voice (John 10), for the guidance of His sheep; and He has promised that whoso follows Him shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. "I commend you to God, and to the Word of His grace”. One must have such faith in God, and such grounded conviction of the sufficiency of the Word, that one shall be ready to walk by it alone. So sure that in it one hears the Master's call, that one can be ready to go forth to meet Him without the camp - outside of all that which, while calling itself by His name, dishonors Him - bearing His reproach (Heb. 13:13). 

Once the mind is settled in this conviction, all grows clear. The pathway of faith and obedience is indicated with great precision in 2 Tim. 2:17-22. Confusion was at hand. The overgrown building, weakened by the wood, the hay, and the stubble that had been built in among the living stones, was ready to crumble and break down. What then? The foundation of God would still stand sure - immovable, unchangeable as Himself; and the Lord, amid all the confusion, would still know His own. But how should these discern each other, and stand together so as to glorify Him, in such a day? A very simple course of action should bring it all to pass. Has the time for separation arrived? Is iniquity recognized by the man of God as pervading the Church and ruling the house? Is every man doing what seems right in his own eyes? Is man's will prevailing, and God's will set aside? "Let every one that names the name of Christ depart from iniquity!" But not from evil deeds alone, - from the men who do them he must separate. The courts of the house are polluted by the presence of impure vessels - men who by their self-will dishonor God. Would the man of God be a vessel unto honour, sanctified and meet for the Master's use? He must "purge himself from these". "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you," is now the Master's call.

But what if the mass of the Lord's own loved ones fail to see with him, and remain behind? Must the man of God detach himself from these as well? "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil”. The Master must be followed rather than the dearest and best - nay, than all of His servants. The disobedience of others must not be made an excuse for disobedience on my part. Is it clear to me that things are wrong, and hopelessly so? I must not waver. I must depart from iniquity, if even I have to do so alone - if I shall seem as solitary in the path as Elijah deemed himself of old. And this, moreover, the true charity. If one would help another out of a miry ditch, one must not place one's feet beside him in the mire; one must look first of all to one's own foothold - must plant oneself firmly on the dry bank above, and then one can reach the hand to lift one's neighbor out.

Yes; the Lord's direction is plain, and he who would be found faithful, in these times, must follow it at any cost, and quite irrespective of consequences or results - the issue of these rests with God.

Mark, now, how God's wisdom brings about, when man is obedient, those very results which obedience seems to renounce and abandon.

Man's wisdom. says, Stay where you are, and try to bring all your influence to bear on others to effect the reform of abuses; or, worse still, Stay where you are and make the best of things. God's wisdom says, Come out, as I bid you, and leave the consequences to Me.

Suppose, now, that my mind has been brought to bow at last to the Word, and I obediently resolve to "depart from iniquity" - to have nothing more to do with man's religious systems, cost what it may. I look again to Scripture that has guided me into this position, and I find another injunction treading hard upon it. I am to "follow righteousness, faith, love, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart”. Does this mean persons quite free from sin? Assuredly not, for John has warned us, that "if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart are not sinless beings, such as are only to be found in glory, but persons who, like ourselves, taken up the word of obedience and departed from iniquity, purifying their hearts from all known offence against God.

If, then, I can meet with any whom the grace of God has already led, before myself, into the parth of obedience, my place is with them. If I stand aloof from these I shall be as truly disobedient as in my old position. It becomes me, therefore, to inquire whether there be any such, and, on finding, to take my place among them. If I can hear of none, then I must stand alone till God shall show them to me. Some one must be the first, but God will add.

It is thus that the faithful obedience of individuals results, under God's hand, in a witnessing body - “a remnant” -  as has been His wont towards the close in each of His dispensations (Rom. 9:27; 11:5; Gen. 6; 1 Kings 19:18; Ezek. 9:4; Mal. 3:16, etc.).

What now will be the character of this witnessing remnant? And how far will it represent the "one body" of Christ, whose unity has been so long lost sight of? 

We must be careful to understand the exact terms of the we are dealing with. It is not a question of salvation - not of what saves souls, but of the way in which souls already saved by grace shall glorify God on the earth, and so fulfil the end of their vocation, "that they should show forth the praises of Him who has called them out of darkness into His marvellous light”. It is a question for souls who desire, like Enoch, to "have this testimony, that they please God." 

When a group of believing persons, each of whom has been led of the Spirit, in obedience to the Word, to depart from iniquity, find themselves, by the same Spirit, gathered into association, what is there left to them?

Firstly: They have "the foundation of God," standing sure as ever - Jesus Christ - on which they, as living stones, are builded together.

Secondly: They have come out without the camp to the Lord - not to each other; and as it was loyalty to His name that led them to depart from iniquity (2 Tim 2:19), so they have that sacred name as the one centre to whom the Spirit gathers them.

Thirdly: Being now "gathered together in His name," though in number, it may be, not exceeding "two or three," they have Himself in their midst, in terms of His own special promise (Matt. 18:20).

Fourthly: They have the presence of the Holy Ghost - Divine person, not a mere influence - in their midst, as also irrevocably promised (John 14:16,17).

Fifthly: They have His gifts for ministry, in terms of Eph. 4:8-13; Rom. 7:6-8; I Cor 12:28.

Sixthly: They have the Word of God.

By that Word everything is now to be sifted and tested, whether for corporate action or the individual life. Whatever finds not authorization there is left behind, and the result of this sifting reduces assembly or Church-order within wonderfully small and simple limits.

1st: There is the obligation to assemble themselves together, plainly laid before us in Heb. 10:25, without any special prescription of times or seasons.

2nd: As the assembly is, in the very nature of its constitution, a gathering of believers (by profession at least) (Acts 2:44, 47; 1 Cor. 1:2, etc.), and as all believers are to be baptized (Matt. 28:19; Acts 2:41, etc.), so the assembly is under obligation to receive into its communion only believers who have been baptized. Since, however, baptism is nowhere in the Word made a thing to be done in or by the assembly, or of its authority, but is always a matter between the evangelist and his converts (Matt. 28:19; Acts 8:27-39; 9:10-18; 10:34-48, etc.), and since no divine precept marks out the mode or time for baptism, so the when, the where, and the how, belong not to the assembly's responsibilities, but to those of the individuals before God. Rom. 14:5 comes in such cases.

3rd: There are two divinely-prescribed objects proper to the assembly: the breaking of bread, with accompanying ministry in the Holy Ghost (as seen in 1 Cor. 12-14); and discipline, as pointed out in Matt. 18:17-20, and 1 Cor. 5.

In regard of the first of these, no single hint being given in the Word of any such thing as a class of persons or any humanly-appointed person to whom the breaking of the bread, or any kind of presidency in the assembly, shall be committed, they must not take upon themselves to make any such appointments.

In regard of the second, it is a painful and humiliating thought that among believers in the Lord Jesus Christ - called saints, or saints by calling - there should ever arise any such manifestations of evil as should call for discipline or excision. While, however, the flesh is still present in God's children, and the devil ever ready to tempt and draw it aside, evil must and will appear: "It must needs be that offences come," said the blessed Lord, "but woe to that man by whom the offence comes." Unfaithfulness in the discharge of this painful, but solemnly needful obligation, has been, alas! the occasion of much of the evil that has defaced the Church of God, and hindered its usefulness. What solemn admonitions fell on the Churches of Ephesus, Pergamos, and Thyatira, for their negligence in this respect Rev. 2!

The Church is the dwelling-place of the Holy God, hence the needs be that it be kept pure - nothing unworthy of His sacred presence to be condoned within it.

A few plain and simple directions mark off the assembly's duties on this point.

A teacher of doctrine destructive of foundation truths, or those who share in it, must be put away as leaven. So one who associates with him who brings not the doctrine of Christ, makes himself partaker of his evil deeds (2 John 11). An immoral person must also be put away (1 Cor. 5:13).

Such, dearest mother, is, in brief, the substance of Scripture teaching with regard to the order of God's assembly or Church; all beyond is man’s invention, the outgrowth of his self-will.

How simple are God's ways as compared with man's, and how blessedly superior in practical results! But this I leave for the present. I want now to draw your attention to the way in which the divine principle of the "unity of the body" recovers its practical manifestation through this simple obedience to the Word.

If you will weigh carefully and compare with the Word the few items I have just set down, you will at once perceive that there is not one but has direct divine authorization. Now, no Christian can possibly object to anything divinely appointed, so that no Christian can hesitate about the propriety of doing any or all of the things in question. On the other hand, no Christian has a right to insist on other Christians doing anything that is not clearly and distinctly set down by Divine prescription. He may draw inferences from what he finds in the Word, and these inferences will properly bind his own conscience and control his own conduct; but he has no right whatever to insist that his inferences be accepted by the assembly of God, or anything set up there on the ground of them - if he does, and either leaves the assembly because they will not adopt his views, or drives others out by setting up what their consciences cannot sanction, he is guilty of the sin of schism; and that is most seriously stigmatized by the Word (1 Cor. 1 and 12, etc).

Whatever is set up in the assembly all the members have communion (i.e. joint participation) in; hence, the need for, and the divine wisdom manifested in, the fewness and simplicity of the regulations. If any single item be added, which the very weakest conscience in the assembly cannot have fellowship with, sectarian ground is taken up. Alas! man has deemed himself wiser than God, and, thinking to improve on His arrangements, has brought in all the confusion.

Take, for instance, baptism. Suppose any local assembly undertakes to make rules for the administration of that rite, and adopt either infant or adult baptism as its rule; it becomes a sect forthwith; it has taken upon itself to do what the Lord has nowhere authorized it to do - has added a term of communion that is not of His making, and so excluded from its fellowship saints who cannot see with it in the adopted view of the case.

There is one other point to be weighed, however, and that is, whether any divinely-prescribed thing is omitted. If any single item of Divine command for the assembly be left out, the charge of schism will lie against it as truly as if an unauthorized addition were made; for every single soul has a right to demand that all God’s will be done where it has fellowship. Now, I am perfectly satisfied that the Scriptures will be searched in vain for anything prescribed of God for His assembly, beyond what I have indicated, and thus you will perceive that the ground on which the path of scriptural obedience conducts is one on which all Christians can and ought, to meet, nay, must meet, if they would prove faithful to the Lord. Not to do so is sin - the sin of schism.

The name of Christ has now become the one centre or rallying point for the faithful, and this is laying the axe to the very root of the tree of sectarianism.

What is a sect? It is, as the term implies, a portion cut off. The sects are each cut off or separated from all others owning the Christian name, by those peculiarities of organization, doctrine, or discipline, whose mutual reception forms the bond of union among its members, and, consequently, their centre of union or rallying-point.

There is a Presbyterian Church. What is that? It is a body of people, all of whom may be Christians, but who are bound together apart from other Christians, on the ground that they are all agreed that the Presbyterian mode of Church government is the right or the best thing, and therefore they unite in the setting up of that form, in doing which they separate, or cut themselves off, from all Christians who don’t see it.

Here is a Baptist church. What is that? It is a body of people, all of whom may be Christians, as the others before-named, but who are agreed in the opinion that the baptism of adult believers, by immersion, is the only right mode of baptism, and on the ground of this common belief they have associated themselves into an organization or body, in separation from all other Christians who think differently from them on that particular subject.

This, then, is the principle of sectarianism; the setting up of terms of communion or centres of organization which God has not appointed - which stand on no higher ground than man’s will, or at best man's inferences from Scripture, as distinguished from God's express prescriptions. It is the principle rebuked in its first stage by the apostle in 1 Cor. 1.

I have instanced only two prominent denominations; you will easily apply the test to all others, as Episcopalians, Methodists, and the like.

Now, let us suppose a Presbyterian, a Baptist, an Episcopalian, an Independent, and a Methodist to get together and take into consideration on what terms they could all once more united, so as to form but one body; what must be their course? Clearly each would have to lay aside all that was peculiar to his denomination - the separating barrier - which would bring them on to the common ground I have indicated. Having laid aside the things they took their names from, the names themselves would no longer be needed, it would leave only the name of Christ. They would no longer be Presbyterian Christians, Baptist Christians, Episcopalian Christians, Wesleyan Christians, but simply CHRISTIANS - brethren in the Lord - as of old.

Exactly such must be the case could one suppose the Lord Jesus Christ to come down once more amongst us, to set things to rights according to the Word, and restore the unity of the Church. Can you suppose He would take position with any one of the “denominations” to the exclusion of the rest? Not for a moment! He would go outside of all, as Moses pitched his tent outside the camp when Israel had failed, and to that place of congregation all who loved Him must go, to gather around Himself alone, leaving for this purpose all their sectarian crotchets behind; and there they would be, gathered together in His name, with Himself and His Spirit in their midst; with "gifts differing according to the grace given", and the Word in their hands marking out for them the few simple, practical, corporate obligations we have already seen. If the Lord were then pleased, of His own direct authority, to restore ordained elders, or any other kind of officers, He could of course do so, but it must be of His own direct personal authority outside the Word, for the Word provides for nothing of the kind.

Now, although the Lord is not bodily present on earth, the principle is there, divinely set forth in the Word, for us to act on, just the same; and it is quite manifest that its practical adoption by all true Christians would result in the manifestation once more of the Church of God in the midst of the world as one united body, having no name but that of Christ; no centre of union, no head but Himself; no creed, articles, or standards save His word; no ministry save that of His own direct gift in the power of the Holy Ghost; no rules and regulations for the assembly, save the few simple ones by Himself laid down.

But then the difficulty is to get all to agree to this. Exactly! But the point to be seen is, that the measure of our personal duty is not the hopefulness of success, but the simple rule of obedience to God. We are to do our part in obedience and leave the rest to Him. An old proverb says, "The city is soon clean when every man sweeps before his own door".

Such, dearest mother, were the principles which led me out from all association with “denominational Christianity”, and brought me into association with "Brethren" whom I found already acting on the same principle, in the fear of God. In another letter I will tell you something of what I have found among them in the shape of practical results.

With much love, 

I remain,

Ever your affectionate son,

RICHARD HOLDEN.