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Tract Number 325
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THE CHURCH JESUS BUILT
"I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," are the words of Jesus in Matthew 16:18. On the day of Pentecost in A. D. 33 that holy institution was fully dedicated and sent forth into the world, "full of grace and truth." The statement, "I will build my Church," placed its building yet future, and although he already had many followers at that time, never did he try to organize them formally into a church, neither did he make any efforts to add to their numbers by any formal means. But there was one thing he did constantly do. He taught the need of personal experience of heart-changing salvation. From the very first of His ministry he began to lay special emphasis upon the fact that if men were to be his followers their religion must begin in a definite heart experience. Thus after His baptism by John and the wilderness temptation it is said, "from that time Jesus began to preach and say, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Matthew 4:17. And to Nicodemus, a formally religious man, he said, "Ye must be born again." John 3:3.
Although He preached to thousands and fed the multitudes, never did he try to join them into an organization, neither did he give any instructions to his disciples about how to organize a church. That was not their job. Among the last words he spoke to them, he was still stressing experience, for he said— "Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high." Luke 24:49.
Thus the church he said he would build was to be the out growth of personal experience of full salvation which would deliver men from their sins and just naturally separate them from sin and sinners. Thus the New Testament Church was the natural outgrowth of such experience, and without this experience there can be no church in the Bible sense. So it was that when the day of Pentecost was fully come and when they had been filled by the mighty power of the Holy Spirit they went forth preaching with power the need of a real vital sin-killing experience in the souls of men, which resulted in the salvation of three thousand souls on that very day. And just here for the first time is anything said of Church membership. It is said "The Lord added to the Church daily such as were being saved." Acts 2:47. And in verse 44, "and there were added unto them about three thousand souls." Thus God added to the original numbers those who were also getting this vital experience. The church then came into it’s full organized being and force on the day of Pentecost, as the direct results of the personal experience of God’s salvation. The Church was then the visible, tangible expression of the "kingdom of God." For the "kingdom of God is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." Romans 14:17.
Never did Jesus nor any of his disciples in their writings teach that the church should be a humanly organized ecclesiastical institution which could be formally joined. But in every scripture in the New Testament pertaining to the subject it is represented as Divinely built and Divinely organized. The direct result of the personal sin-killing experience of justification and subsequent sanctification by the Holy Ghost. It is therefore definitely spiritual and can only be entered by spiritual experience. Jesus said, "I am the door, by me if any man enter in he shall be saved." John 10:9. And though baptism is one of the ordinances of the church it is easily seen it is not the means of joining. It is a spiritual institution composed of spiritual people, for every one that is saved becomes a member of God’s kingdom or family. Ephesians 2:19.
While the church was and is the out growth of this personal experience, it also has another foundation stone. It is also the product of the preaching of the whole truth. After one is saved and sanctified there must be a "growth in grace," and in knowledge of the truth, else he remains underdeveloped and soon goes back. One of the very works of the Holy Spirit is to "guide into all truth." John 16:13. Paul said to Timothy, "till I come give attendance to the doctrine." 1st Timothy 4:13 and "that they teach no other doctrine." 1st Timothy 1:3. He referred also to those who are "carried about with every wind of doctrine." There are many today who do not know what they believe, being carried here and there by the doctrines of men. While Jesus saved men from sin and it’s quilt by his atoning blood and infinite grace, yet that was only one branch of his work, for John said "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." John 1:17. And again Paul says "Who will have all men to be saved and come unto a knowledge of the truth." 1 Tim. 2:4. Jesus would have all His children established in an experience of full salvation and in the entire doctrinal teachings of His Word. To the Colossians Paul exhorted to be "rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith as ye have been taught." (Not established in faith, but in THE FAITH, the entire doctrinal truth). Peter speaks of those who "are established in the present truth." 2nd Peter 1:12, and this present truth in which they were established was "the faith once delivered to the Saints." Jude 3. It is folly to think of God having an established church unless it’s members are willing to accept and become established in a definite understanding of all the doctrines of the Word. Jesus said "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." The modern sect system and party division has so mutilated and torn apart the sacred truth of the Word of God until Christians who adhere to them only receive a meager portion of truth, which is shorn of much of it’s power and glory by reason of not being associated with all other doctrinal truths. For example, one is saved from sin but he has become associated with a particular division whose creed does not admit the doctrine of entire sanctification, this man’s Christian experience is anemic and undeveloped, deprived of much power and glory by reason of not accepting the truth of entire sanctification. While this is an example, it is true of leaving out any Bible truth. The New Testament Church is "the pillar and ground of the truth." 1st Timothy 3:15.
God wants a people not only separate from sin and sinners but separate from all divisions. Separated unto Him, a separate body whose functions and powers are functions and powers of the Holy Ghost working in and through them. Jesus plead for the unity of all believers in one body, separate from all divisions. But this cannot be realized in fact until it is first realized in individual experience. Just to get saved and to stop here is not enough, we must grow in grace and knowledge of the truth which makes us free. Sectarianism and division is sin and it takes a full experience of old time salvation (justification and sanctification) to make freedom from sin a fact in experience. It takes a knowledge of the truth to lead us into the further facts of God’s will and plan for his church, to make us one, to establish us in the truth, so that we may know what to believe, and to find our place in the Body of Christ.
Since Sectarianism is divisional and contrary to the entire plan of God for His Church, and since membership in the family of God or Church of God is by a definite experience of blood-bought salvation, then it naturally follows that the Church bought (Acts 20:28) and built (Matthew 16:18) by Jesus Christ is an entirely different institution. It is the only one that salvation makes one a member of. And that experience will not make one a member of any Sect on earth. Things that make men members of Sects will in no wise make them members of the Church of God. Sectarianism has only succeeded in dividing God’s children and confusing the minds of the lost. Thus God calls His people out of all divisions to oneness and unity in Him and all truth. It was for this cause He prayed so earnestly, John 17:17-21, "Sanctify them through thy truth—that they may all be one—that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me." This is the only foundation for unity and the only hope of the Church ever convincing the world. It is impossible to bend and twist the truth to accommodate the whims and beliefs of men, for it will not thus yield itself. But when Christians begin to humble their hearts and accommodate themselves to all of God’s Word then these truths will bring them out from all divisional institutions into the one great "Body of Christ" rightly representing the New Testament Church, "full of grace and truth" and then will the world begin to believe, and not until then.
Jesus built but one church and that at the cost of His own blood. Acts 20:28. The preaching of the entire truth brought men out of sin and established them in that "one body, the church." That same truth then, and does now flatly condemn divisions, isms and cisms in the Church universal and local. And so long as that message of truth was preached they were kept in "the one body of Christ." Not until leanness of soul, sin and apostasy came and the "doctrines of men" began to take the place of the message of Divine Truth, was there sects and divisions among them. If the Lord had intended that His people be divided into different denominational divisions each preaching different doctrines and governed by man, He would have had it so from the beginning. But on the contrary he only established the one church. As in the case of the widely different Jews and Gentiles, "He broke down the middle wall of partition between them and reconciled them both in one body by the cross," Ephesians 2:11-16, And this is just what he will do for us all if we will but give him a chance. Thus would the prayer of Jesus for unity begin to be fulfilled. John 17:21.
By H.F. Allen.
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