If you would like to turn to one of your Scriptures this morning, first of all, to John 17, from verse 20.
Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on Me through their word;
that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us: that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.
And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as We are one;
I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them, even as Thou lovedst Me.
Father, I desire that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.
O righteous Father, the world knew Thee not, but I knew Thee; and these knew that Thou didst send Me;
and I made known unto them Thy name, and will make it known: that the love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be in them, and I in them.
Then in Ephesians, the Ephesian letter, chapter 4, from verse 1.
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called,
with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;
giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Then in the Old Testament, Psalm 133.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
for brethren to dwell together in unity!
It is like the precious oil upon the head,
that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard;
that came down upon the skirt of his garments;
like the dew of Hermon,
that cometh down upon the mountains of Zion:
for there the Lord commanded the blessing,
even life for evermore.
Let us just bow together in prayer.
Father, we do thank Thee that we are gathered here in Thy presence this morning. We want to recognize and confess that Thou hast made our Lord Jesus Christ Head over all things to the church. We thank Thee, Father, that Thou hast made Him our Lord and our Head. We recognize His headship this morning, and we look to Thee, Father, that we might know the most wonderful ministry of Thy Spirit to our hearts.
Things that perhaps we already know may come to us with fresh life and power. Things that perhaps we have not seen before, we may see. And where there is only a mental or academic appreciation of these things, oh Father, grant through us that spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Thyself, that the eyes of our heart being enlightened, we might know these things.
Lord, we do thank Thee that there is this anointing upon the Head that runs down to the very hem of the garment. We thank Thee for the anointing upon the Head, our Lord Jesus, that runs down, as it were, to include every member of the body. Together now we all stand into it, Lord.
Whether in hearing or speaking, we all confess, Lord, our bankruptcy when it comes to spiritual things. But, Lord, we praise Thee that Thou hast made provision for us. We would come, Lord, through the righteousness of Thy Son and on the basis of His finished work, and we would take that provision that we need for this morning.
We stand into the anointing for every single member of the body here this morning, for speaker and hearer alike, that we might know, Lord, Thy presence in our midst and hear Thy voice beyond the human words, and hear what the Spirit says to us. We do ask it, Father, with thanksgiving, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Last night I introduced this matter of fellowship. We spoke about fellowship—what real fellowship is. Remember that verse in 1 Corinthians 1:9: God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
We, I believe, saw that fellowship is not just a little bit of friendliness, or informality, or spiritual talk, or just meeting together. It is that we share something together. We have something in common, and of course it is our Lord Jesus Christ.
God is faithful, through whom you were called into the sharing of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. I am in the Son, and you are in the Son; and the Son is in you, and the Son is in me. I have something to give of the Son that you have not to give, and you have something to give of the Son that I have not got to give. As we share the Son, we come into a fullness; we come into understanding; we grow in grace; we grow up into Him, the Head.
Of course, this basic sharing of the Lord Jesus Christ naturally affects every other thing: our time, our homes, our possessions, our energy. All of it is shared.
That does not mean that you allow your things to be abused or misused. There is this idea that, once you see that everything you have belongs to the Lord and is therefore at the disposal of the church, somehow other people can just come in and do what they like. You must stand by and watch them spoil your home or spoil your car.
I know people, for instance, who feel that they must lend their car to anybody. There are some people who come along who cannot drive for toffee. But because they feel that their car is no longer their own, but the Lord’s, they should allow someone who cannot drive to drive it. You know what I mean. The person thinks they can drive and has a driver’s license, but the way they drive is anybody’s business.
Whilst we are not the owners of what we possess, we are the stewards, and we are responsible to God for all that belongs to Him. Our homes, though they are His and at the disposal of the family of God, are entrusted to us as stewards. They are not there for any Tom, Dick, and Harry to take over.
We are responsible to the Head. We are responsible to the Lord Jesus to answer for the way in which those possessions of ours are used. That is a very important point just to make.
But we have seen, I think, something about fellowship. So I want to talk this morning about one of those principles of fellowship. In the time that we have, we will only be able to take one or two of these principles, and I want us to take those which I think the Lord would have us really share, which are fundamental and essential for this whole matter of fellowship.
The first principle is the principle of unity—the principle of unity. I do not think there is any principle related to this matter of fellowship that is more important than this principle of unity.
The unity of God’s people is not just some luxury to be desired that we can do without. It is not just some kind of regulation that we can break with impunity if there is no one there to see us break it, or if we do not have some accident, as it were. This is a principle.
If we contravene the principle of the oneness of Christ, then the consequences are always the same and always follow. There is no stopping them. Once we contravene or contradict the principle of the oneness of Christ, death results; paralysis results; weakness results; bondage results; corporate inhibition results. There is a kind of tension and strain about everything.
Once we recognize and obey the principle of the oneness of Christ, immediately we discover that there is development, increase, expression of Christ, and the equipping of the saints. There is the raising up in our midst of ministers, and the qualifying of leadership. All these things result from the principle of the oneness of Christ being recognized and obeyed.
Therefore, dear child of God, there is no principle more important than this. I go around to many, many companies all over the place, and I see many companies in which people recognize a certain amount of church truth. They see something of the nature of the church, something of the ministries of the church, and something, as it were, of the purpose of God.
Yet the great cry is, “Why is there no leadership? Why is there no real leadership? Why are there no real ministers amongst us? Why are there not being raised up in our midst men who have the ministry of God’s Word—prophets, teachers, evangelists?”
Always it goes back to this point: somewhere or other, some essential and fundamental principle of fellowship is being contradicted. What is one of them? What is the basis of our fellowship together? That is a good question.
What is the basis upon which alone we can know true fellowship? Listen carefully to this, because even though we say the basis of our fellowship is Christ, we can deceive ourselves. Although we say it is Christ, in practice it may be many other things.
It is not truth, however important. It is not teaching, however correct. It is not experiences, however necessary. It is not an emphasis of truth, your technique, nor our denominations, nor the membership roll. All these are among the many things that we make the basis of our fellowship.
Some groups, for instance, will make baptism in water the rule of membership. You are allowed to attend, but until you have been baptized by immersion, you are not in the church. You are not a member of the church.
Others make some other point. Some, for instance, will make some experience of the Holy Spirit the sort of key for being really in. Many groups will say, “No, we do not expect that.” Nevertheless, there are first- and second-class citizens. There are those who have seen and those who have not seen. Those who have seen are in, and those who have not seen are out.
Those who have not seen later feel very out by those who are in and have seen. In other words, all the line all along is, “You have got to see. You have got to see. You have got to see.” We do not leave it to the Holy Spirit somehow to draw people into our fellowship because we all love Christ, and because we include every single one who is in.
Oh no, no, no. We are all the time labouring the point that there is something this person has not experienced or something this person has not seen. Therefore, we may have in our fellowship a first- and second-class citizenship. There are those who are first-class citizens—the ones who have seen or experienced and are in the elite inner circle—and there are those who have not seen and are out.
Now, do not get me wrong on this matter. Of course, there are things we have to see. In a living church, in the church as God would have it, there will be believers of all stripes, sorts, and colours. The fact is that there will always be those who have not seen, and there will always be those who have seen and who are progressively seeing more of the Lord.
But every single thing depends upon the attitude of those who have seen. It is not those who have not seen who are the problem; it is the people who have seen who are the problem. It is not those who have not had experiences who are the problem; it is those who have the experiences who are the problem.
Sometimes the Lord may take years with us to bring us to a place where we see something. But the moment we see it, we expect others immediately, in an instant, to come in. We will give them tracts, pamphlets, postal courses of instruction, and I do not know what else, to get them in as quickly as possible. The impression we give is that we are in and they are out.
Now, we love them. Why do we give them the pamphlets? Why do we give them the plans? It is not always because, as in some cases, we are looking upon them as a scalp to be counted. In many cases, we have a real love and concern for the people of God. But our whole conception of fellowship is wrong.
Babies are babies. You do not put babies in a high school. You care for babies until they grow to such an age that they can go through the various stages of education, and then be put into high school and finally university.
What is wrong with our fellowship? All the time, we expect that as soon as a person is born again, they have got to grow in some kind of greenhouse so that they have seen all that we have seen in a matter of moments. Such understanding is nearly always artificial.
I believe that when, in any company of God’s people, there is a nucleus of those who have really seen and really experienced things of the Lord, who have gone deeper and are going deeper with Him, and who have laid down their lives for the whole, then those who are saved will rapidly grow.
They will not need to go through the years that we went through. I remember I went through four years of darkness before I came into an experience of the Holy Spirit. I promised the Lord, when I came there, that I would give every person who ever found the Lord through me, by His grace, a full gospel—the whole counsel of God—and not just the little bit that I had to live on.
Nevertheless, we must understand that spiritual things are organic. They cannot be organized. Dear child of God, do you not see that we who believe so much in the organic nature of everything that is spiritual are ourselves guilty of organizing things?
We are always organizing everything so that those who smoke will not smoke, those who drink will not drink, those who are worldly will not be worldly, those who have not had an experience of holiness will immediately have an experience of holiness, and those who have not had a baptism in the Spirit will have a baptism in the Spirit. We are organizing everything all the time. We do not leave it to the organic.
What is the basis of our fellowship? There must be a minimum truth; that is obvious. We must be very careful that we do not go too far in this matter by saying truth is not the basis of our fellowship, but Christ, and giving the impression that He is some ethereal, abstract, vague Christ.
Christ is a Person. There is a sense in which there is minimal truth concerning the person of God, concerning the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, concerning His atoning death and His bodily resurrection. These things are essential too. No one can really be in the fellowship who does not at least recognize and understand that minimum.
But beyond that, there are thousands of other truths. I know companies where people have been put out because they believe that we are going to go through the tribulation. My goodness me! Fancy putting people out of fellowship because they believe you are going to go through the tribulation. I wish I could be as dogmatic as that.
“So we are all going to be raptured before the tribulation, are we?” However, other groups look down their noses at anyone who believes that we are going to be raptured before the tribulation. Then there are those blessed and most spiritual of all people who believe that we shall be taken during the tribulation, and that only those who are ready for the Lord will be taken. They shall be divided on such things.
I know an assembly in a place in Britain called Topperdown. They put out a dear brother whom I know very well simply because he believed that only the overcomer would be raptured. He did not preach the same. He did not even major on it. He just happened to believe it, so they put him out.
Of course, they lived up to their name. They cut her down.
You cannot put out someone whom God has received on some basis like that. The whole danger of the charismatic movement—and I speak from some experience of the charismatic movement—is that we make a charismatic experience the basis for fellowship.
Thank God for everyone who has been renewed by the Spirit of God. You may tell me that the charismatic movement is all up the wall and full of extremes and excesses. I tell you that I know literally thousands of people who were dead, dry bones before the Spirit of God came upon them.
Am I to deny that the Spirit of God has come upon them? Suddenly I find them full of spiritual life, full of the Lord, full of praise. Suddenly those who were stuck are moving on with God. I cannot deny that God has done something.
From my heart, I thank God for all that He has done through the charismatic movement. But to make the charismatic movement the basis of fellowship, or even to make a first- and second-class citizenship, is utterly wrong.
There are those, of course, who meet on the ground of denominationalism. There are those who meet on the ground of Christ plus Methodism; others meet on the ground of Christ plus Baptism; others on the ground of Christ plus Episcopalianism; and others on the ground of Christ plus Pentecostalism.
But this is not the basis of our fellowship. What is the basis of our fellowship? It is Christ alone—not Christ plus, nor Christ minus; not less than Christ, no more than Christ. The foundation of our fellowship, the basis of our fellowship, is Christ.
We must receive all on this basis. We cannot reject one whom Christ has received. For it says in Romans 15:7:
Wherefore receive ye one another, even as Christ also received you, to the glory of God.
How did Christ receive me? Did He receive me as an elite, going-on saint? No. Did He receive me as someone who would be a servant of the Lord? No. Did He receive me as someone who would please Him? No. Did He receive me as someone ready to go through the waters of death? No. Did He receive me as someone prepared to know an experience of the cross? No.
How did He receive me? He received me as a hopeless sinner whom He saved by His grace through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That was the basis upon which He received me.
How shall I receive you? Why, if I were to receive you on the minimum basis that you are a sinner saved by grace, all my problems would be over. But we do not receive one another as sinners saved by grace. We receive one another as great saints.
Oh, we see those lovely shining faces and say, “Oh, lovely being with so-and-so. So-and-so is such a saint,” until we get to know them. Then suddenly we find that the cosmetics disappear. The spiritual cosmetics go. The spiritual hairdos go.
We see them, as it were, in their bedroom spiritually. We see them with their hair down, or their hair in curls, or whatever it is—their teeth out. Then suddenly we are shocked to the marrow. “Oh,” we think, “dear, dear, dear, dear. I never thought it of so-and-so. I thought he was so spiritual. I cannot have fellowship any more with so-and-so. It is no good. My fellowship with them is ruined.”
You poor soul! Is that the basis of your fellowship? So you reject someone whom Christ has received.
We have this weird idea that God is always getting surprises about us. It is a strange thing that we all have this idea that God took us on and was quite pleased with us after He had saved us, and then He begins to find things out about us.
We lose our temper and feel, “Oh, He is so disillusioned. The Lord is so disillusioned.” Then the devil comes and says, “Do not you pray again. How could you pray? God is so upset.” Or you get irritated, or some unclean thought comes into your head, and the devil says, “Now you cannot pray. God is so disillusioned with you—disappointed. That is the word for it. He is disappointed with you.”
But do you know that when God saved you, He had your whole life like an open book? He saw every single thing that you would ever do, as it were, already an open book. I am a good Calvinist in this matter.
God saw every single thing about you when He saved you. There is not another thing about you that will surprise Him. Do you know that He still saved you, with all that rebellion in the future, with all that resistance that He saw, with all that ugliness, with all that refusal to allow Him to deal with you? Still He saved you, with your whole life like an open book before Him.
He is not surprised. You are the one who is surprised. Do you know what stops us from coming back? It is our pride. How can we get so surprised about ourselves, so shocked? Because we are shocked about ourselves, we think God is.
Now, God does not condone our sin, but He is not surprised. God knows our capacity for evil far, far more fully than we do. He knows what we are capable of if we are subjected to the right temptations. That is why He taught us to pray:
Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
My point is this: God is quite unshockable when it comes to you. He knows everything about you, and a good deal more than you know about yourself and what you are capable of, and still He received you as a sinner whom He saved.
You and I are to receive one another as Christ also received us. He received me as a sinner; I must receive you as a sinner. Now we are going to get down to the nuts and bolts. That means I do not receive you with your spiritual teeth in. I have got to receive you for what you are.
The fact is this: if God has received you through Christ, I must receive you. Can I reject someone whom Christ has received? People tell me again and again, in my fellowship with Catholics, that I should have nothing to do with them, that I am being deluded and deceived, and I do not know what else.
But can I reject someone who happens to be a Roman Catholic whom God has received? Never. Am I to receive some dead, nominal liberal as a brother whom God has not received through Jesus Christ, but reject the Roman Catholic whom God has received through Jesus Christ? I cannot do it.
If God has received a person, I must receive that person. If God has received that one on the basis of His finished work, I receive that one on the basis of His finished work.
This is the principle of unity. You see, it is a principle. You withdraw your fellowship from one whom the Father has received, and you contradict the principle of the oneness of Christ. Put them out for any other reason than apostasy or discipline, and you have put out Christ.
Now, I would like to say something more about this whole matter of unity. I want you to notice that there are two kinds of unity that we have in Ephesians 4.
In verse 3, we have the unity of the Spirit. Notice how we are introduced to it:
Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Then notice verse 13:
Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man.
Do you notice there are two kinds of unity here? First, we have the unity of the Spirit, and we are told that the unity of the Spirit we are to keep, or maintain. Then we have the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, which we are to attain to.
Now, we in Christian circles have inverted the order. We have made the unity of the faith something that is the basis for our fellowship, and the unity of the Spirit something to which we are coming. God says the unity of the Spirit is something which is yours, and you entered it by new birth.
When you were born of God, you were born into the unity of the Spirit. You were born into the oneness of Christ. Did you notice those wonderful words of our Lord Jesus Christ: “That they may all be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us”?
Do you realize that this unity which is ours is the same inexplicable unity that exists between the Father and the Son, and which has never at any time been adequately reduced to human words?
“As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they may be in Us.” Now you begin to understand something of this idea Brother Stephen Kong spoke about: the counsel of God. Here you really have it—the desire of God to bring us into Himself, to bring us, as it were, into union with Himself, to make us partakers of His own nature, and in so doing make us, as it were, one body.
That they may be in Us. Now you understand the principle of unity. If we contradict the principle of unity, we do damage to the very nature of God. In some way, it is not just the nature of the church, but the very nature of the Trinity. In some way, we sin against it when we are part of a faction or a division.
If I were to go and get drunk, as I have said to you on other occasions, you would all be shocked. You would say straight away, “What a dreadful thing. They asked that brother to come and speak to us, and he got drunk. Fancy! What kind of people are they that organized this time? Did they ask a brother to come to us who had such a feeling for drink?”
If I got drunk—and I am not in any way lessening the sin—the fact is that I sinned against my own body. But it is an extraordinary thing that we can all be part of divisions or factions, or out of sorts with one another, and no one sees it as a sin against the body of Christ.
If I commit immorality, I sin against my own body, against my own being. But when I am part of a faction or a division, or when I am in a state of collision with another saint, I am sinning against the body of our Lord Jesus.
Those very solemn words were said about those who do not discern the body of our Lord—not meaning the bread and the wine, but the spiritual entity that is, as it were, contained and expressed in the bread and the wine:
For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep.
That is what this principle of unity means. It is cause and effect. There are sicknesses amongst the people of God that are due wholly to the fact that people are in a state of division. There is weakness amongst the people of God wholly due to the fact that we are in a state of division. There are even deaths.
Do not argue with me about this. Read 1 Corinthians 11:27-29. Then you begin to realize the serious nature of this whole matter—our oneness. When we begin to see that the unity which exists between us and our Lord, and between us, is the same essential unity as that between the Father and the Son, we see that it is something God has brought us into: one life, eternal life, the life of God. It is one life.
Having said that, may I say something more on this matter, so that we can get the whole truth even clearer? We have a unity of the Spirit, and we are told in Ephesians 4:3 to give diligence to keep the unity. It is ours. We have been born into it, thank God.
Are you a child of God? You have been born into this oneness. You do not have to fight toward it. You do not have somehow to attain to it. You do not have to make it your goal. It is yours. You may be the youngest Christian in this place, but you have been born into this oneness. By the grace of God, you have been introduced into the oneness of Christ. You are experiencing it, even if you do not know it.
That is why you will find that every young believer, before the older believers get their clammy hands on them, feels a wonderful love for all the people of God. I have never known a single person who, when first saved, thought he was a Baptist, or a Methodist, or Episcopalian, or any of the multitudinous denominations you have on this side of the Atlantic.
I have only found that when a person is saved, they fall in love with all the people of God. It is when the older believers start to get their sticky hands on them and say, “No, you are a Baptist. You are a Methodist. You must understand, you have been born into the correct people, the proper people, the only people.”
But there is a unity of the faith to which we are to come. We are to attain it:
Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God.
You see, this unity that is ours is a fact, but we have to be perfected into one. Did you notice in John 17 that our Lord first says in verse 21, “That they may all be one,” and then in verse 23, “I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one”?
First, we have something complete, something done, something already ours—the fact. But the second thing is this: when we are in it, we have to be perfected into it. We are to grow up into the Head. We are to be knit together. We have to be fitly framed together. We have got to find each other in the Lord. We have got to work at it.
This unity of the Spirit is not something you can simply say, “Oh yes, yes, of course we are all one. We are one. Christ is our oneness. Oh, goodbye.” Then you live your own sweet little life, contained within your own family circle. You come to meetings, see the saints, sing a few hymns, say a few prayers, listen to a word or two, participate if you have a freer type of meeting, and off you go.
Somehow you feel that, somewhere in the great unseen, this fitly framing together is taking place in some kind of magic way that no one ever sees. We are all being knit together and fitly framed together. But the Bible says we are to grow together; we are to be fitly framed together; we are to be builded together as a habitation of God in the Spirit.
In other words, we have to give diligence to keep this unity of the Spirit. It is not enough that we should see the oneness of Christ. The next thing we have to do is commit ourselves to the oneness of Christ and then be prepared for all the many difficulties, limitations, and problems that will come in being perfected into one.
Oh, if only it were one of those wonderful instant things that you have over here—instant cream, instant coffee, instant lemon tea, and instant I do not know what else. It would be lovely if we could have this kind of instant perfection into oneness. But it is here that we have all our problems.
It is much easier to be one with the saints in Melbourne, Australia, than one with the saints in Ashland, Virginia. I always hear people say, “Oh, it is so wonderful to be in the body of Christ,” and what they mean by the body of Christ is the saints in Africa, Asia, Australasia, South America, and the other side of the United States.
But God says the whole thing comes down to where you live. It is no good saying, “I believe in the oneness of Christ,” if we do not recognize that oneness where we live.
Somehow or other, we are to be built together in that area in which we live, because the whole thing finally comes down to where we live. Whatever we may feel about locality, the fact is that in the end all spiritual things come down through your body, and your body is located on this earth.
It comes down to your home, and your home is located in some place on the earth. It comes down through the company of believers where you live in some locality on this earth. It stands to reason. I can talk until I am blue in the face about going on with the Lord, and the whole thing can be some kind of pipe dream—up there in the clouds.
We have all met people who talk and talk and talk and talk, and who have nothing in their lives but theory. They live in some kind of fool’s paradise, some kind of daydreaming all the time. God brings the whole thing down to the matter of where we live, the believers in the same area in which we live, how we are getting on with them, and in what way we are being built together.
You may say, “Well, that is not so easy, because in the area in which I live there are Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists, and others, and really they will not come together.” But there may be some who at least see something of the oneness of Christ, and with whom you can move together, fellowship together, and be built together.
We do not shut out other people; we include them. The church is not exclusive; it is inclusive. That has been one of the great mistakes of church history. Every time people have seen something, they have become exclusive instead of inclusive.
Instead of taking in the whole family of God and saying, “Well, if they want to go their way, we cannot stop them, but we will put no bar on them. They belong to us; we belong to them. We will love them, and we will serve them, and if necessary we will lay down our lives for them.”
Some people’s attitude is this: “If a person is a believer but a Baptist, I am not going to lay down my life for him. That would be a waste. If someone is a believer who has really seen something, I will lay down my life for him.” But that is not the cross.
The cross is that the Lord Jesus laid down His life for us all. The vast majority of those of us who have been saved are a load of trouble to Him. We do not progress as we ought to progress. We do not grow as we ought to grow. Yet He laid down His life for us all.
May the Lord help us to see this basis of our fellowship in practical terms, and see that there has got to be some perfecting into that oneness. There has got to be some building; there has got to be some growing up into the Head, from whom the whole body, fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplies, increases and builds itself up in the love of God.
That leads me to another point I would like to make: the great variety that there is in this unity. Now, bear with me for a few moments on this matter.
It is an extraordinary thing in the history of God’s work and of the church how, as soon as men—and real men of God—begin to see something of the nature of God’s purpose, they in the end reduce the whole thing to uniformity. They seem to equate unity with uniformity.
Many of these will be the first to deny it and say, “No, no, no, we believe in diversity in unity.” But when it comes to it, we all have to do what they say. We all have to think as they think. We all have to act as they act. We all have to clothe ourselves as they clothe themselves. We are not permitted to be original people. We all have to be little uniform copies of some master pattern.
You see it again and again and again. Take the Quakers. Was there ever a movement of the Spirit of God more adequate? But before very long, it was all “thees” and “thous,” buckles on hats, and buckles on shoes. Forgive me, but you know what I mean.
Then you go to the Mennonites: no buttons, certain clothes. Thank God for the Mennonites. What a movement of God it was. But it was reduced to uniformity. I can tell a Pentecostal, by the way they pray, what kind of Pentecostal they are. It is amazing, this uniformity we get.
Somehow we have to reduce everything to a system, everything to a structure, everything to a kind of uniformity. But in this unity of Christ, there is tremendous variety, tremendous diversity, and tremendous originality.
Never be afraid of being yourself. God can never be Himself through you until you are yourself. God can never be Himself in a company of people until every member of the body of Christ is himself or herself.
When we all hate one another and try to be one another, we do terrible damage to the whole work of the Spirit of God in really building up the body of Christ. Whole movements of the Spirit of God, such as the Exclusive Brethren, have gone right off the rails on this issue. They have reduced everything to such a uniformity that they have lost the headship of Jesus Christ and found the headship of men.
We must be built together. In being built together, we have to sacrifice our individuality—our individualism, that would be more correct to say. We must know a certain limitation.
How can one stone be built next to another stone, with another stone on top and another stone underneath, without feeling somewhat claustrophobic? There is a limitation in fellowship. There is a discipline in fellowship. There is something that gets to the very root of the fall in this whole matter of fellowship, which is that we want to be our untouched selves.
But having said that, our being built together, and all the discipline and limitation of fellowship, must never extinguish variety and originality.
Is it not interesting that at the beginning of all these movements of the Spirit of God there has been such expression—sometimes, for instance, in hymnology, in song, and in all kinds of things—because everyone under the government of the Lord has accepted the Lord in an original way? But as time goes on, you find less and less and less. When you do get anything written, it is hideous, because it is just a party line.
Now I must say a word of warning about eccentricity. God, in His great mercy, has saved a number of eccentrics. Every company of the Lord’s people has within it eccentrics. Nor should we throw them out because they are eccentric.
Some eccentrics—and I could keep you here for an hour or two telling you stories about eccentrics I know—have been really used of the Lord in their strange, eccentric way. But nevertheless, we must never think that originality is eccentricity.
There is within all of us some desire to be exhibitionists, even those who are introspective. It is only pride, so often, that makes them hang back in the background. Really, they are just as much exhibitionists as the rest of us, but we are a little afraid of it because we are afraid we might make a mistake in our exhibition. I was trying to blow the gaff.
We have to be careful of eccentrics and, at the same time, feed them. This oneness of Christ does not mean that we put up with anything. There is a discipline in the body of Christ. There are times when the brethren have to speak to someone whose eccentricity is damaging the testimony of the Lord.
We have seen eccentrics, and I could tell you of a number in our own company, who have really been modified and adjusted—still eccentric, because God made them eccentric—but modified and adjusted without destroying their originality.
Every one of us is different. Every one of us has something to give. We have different backgrounds, different temperaments, and different emphases.
If we had John Newton with us, could he do anything else but accentuate the grace of God? His very background and temperament would mean that his emphasis was the grace of God. Whenever we met together, in some way or another you would find that his contribution was always related to the grace of God.
You may have other people who, in the most wonderful way, have something else to give—perhaps the love of God. They are always overwhelmed by the love of God. They have this to give because their very background, temperament, and everything somehow led them to an appreciation of the love of God.
We all appreciate the love of God, but they have something to give in this matter. Do you understand? God forbid that we should all be the same.
In our company, we have those who believe in predestination, normally called Calvinists—I am one of them—and we have others who are Arminians, those who believe in the freedom and responsibility of man. I am free simply to say that I believe firmly in the sovereignty of God in all things, and others go on talking about the responsibility of man. We need each other.
I do not see how people can be anything else but Calvinists when some things happen to them. I had a friend, long since gone to the Lord. He was a captain in the merchant navy, and he got drunk. He did not want that, but in his drunken stupor God appeared to him. When he came out with a hangover, he was praying. That man became a Calvinist. What else could he be?
It would be stupid to say to him, “Ah, but you are in error. You are in error. The man has been converted in a drunken stupor.” Even more amazing, his dear wife, who outlived him by quite a few years and has only recently gone to the Lord, was so puzzled by this amazing change in his behaviour that she said to me, “I was sweeping up in the hall, and suddenly I leant on top of the broom, and suddenly I was converted. I just thought, ‘Whatever has happened to Charles?’”
She got saved, of course, and they became outstanding Calvinists. Someone else will be saved by going forward in a meeting, and it will be just as real a conversion. That person sees the freedom of man and man’s responsibility; they see it.
But do you not see that in this oneness there must be a place for both of us? We are all too small to contain the infinity of God. We cannot do it. However much we know, we only know in part. What I see has to be tempered by what you see, and what I give has to be, as it were, tempered by what you give.
I used to wonder, when I was first saved, why there was a Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I did not understand it, although when I was saved I had never read my Bible. I knew nothing about it.
When I was first born again, I got hold of a whole Bible and began to read it. I was very, very bothered by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, especially when I heard from some Christians that there were contradictions. How extraordinary, I thought. They tell me it is the Word of God and verbally inspired, yet there are contradictions.
So I went to a godly old man in the church and asked him all about it. He told me, “Matthew reveals Christ as King, Mark reveals Christ as Servant, Luke reveals Christ as Man, and John reveals Christ as God.”
Then I said to him—being a very irreverent youngster; I was only thirteen—“Well, I cannot understand that. If I had been God, I would have taken John. You say he is the most spiritual. Why could not John have written the whole lot and revealed Christ as King, Christ as Servant, Christ as Man, and Christ as God? Then you would not have your contradictions.”
Of course, he gave me up. He felt I was a hopeless case. I still believed in the authority and inspiration of the Bible. It was only many years later that I came to see that when God wanted to reveal Christ the King, He took Matthew, who was an income-tax inspector.
You read about kings, their government, and their institutions. From his background, his very conservative Hebrew background—he was of the Levitical type—Matthew was able, as it were, to express Christ as King.
Then He took Mark. It was, of course, as we often say, the voice of Peter and the hand of Mark. The fact of the matter was that it was Peter the fisherman, and through Peter we see Christ as the Servant of the Lord.
Then He takes Dr. Luke and reveals Christ as Man through a man who understands anatomy and understands something of the makeup of man. Finally, He takes John and reveals Christ as God.
You bring that view, and more, and then together you have fullness. When you divide them, you have fragmented the unity. Our churches are all Matthews over here, Marks over there, Lukes over here, and Johns over there. We have fragmented the unity of Christ. When we bring them together, we have fullness.
All of us are Matthews, or Marks, or Lukes, or Johns. We have it everywhere. You can still tell the difference between the Apostle Paul and James in the very style of writing. You can tell the difference between the Apostle John and the Apostle Peter in the style of their writing.
How come it is not uniform? How come all these styles have not been overcome by the Spirit of God? Because the Spirit of God does not bypass human personality; He expresses Himself through human personality.
Pagan inspiration is always the bypassing of the mind. That is ecstatic. Mediums go out and say things, and they do not even know what they are saying. But true inspiration, the exercise of spiritual gift, is always under the control of the prophet. The spirits of prophets are subject to prophets.
They may not always understand exactly the meaning of what they say, but they do know the words they are using. For instance, they inquired as to what the Spirit of Christ in them did mean when He signified these things. They were not just blotto, unconscious, and manipulated by the Spirit of God, as some people imagine. No, not at all.
The Spirit of God gets into us. He takes us all. I believe there are things that Paul would never have written if he had realized that they were Scripture. Do you think the Apostle Paul would have written things like, “You are making me boast, all of you,” or, “I was so sorry about that first letter I wrote you. I wrote buckets of tears over it. I got your second letter, and then I realized that all was okay”?
If he had realized that thousands and thousands of Christians, down through the generations, were going to study those words, he might have said, “I must cut that out. I am going to cut that out.” But when the Spirit of God came through the Apostle Paul, we find that part of the Apostle Paul comes over as well. We find the man is there.
He is disciplined, he is broken, he is joined to the Lord, but it is still Paul. It is still Peter. It is still James. It is still John. That is the wonder. If we are really to know this oneness of Christ and interdependence upon one another in the right way, we must also know originality, variety, and diversity in this oneness.
Now I will close, but may I say four things? I will only just mention them. In the maintenance of this unity, which is very essential, here is the first: recognition. Romans 12:3-6. You may want to go away and look those up.
We shall never be able to maintain the unity of the Spirit until we first recognize the unity of the Spirit. In other words, this may sometimes cost us everything.
I cannot touch things that are divisions. I love all the people of God, but I cannot become a Baptist. I cannot be a Methodist. I cannot be an Episcopalian. I cannot touch those things which divide the body of Christ.
But the people of God within them I belong to. I will serve them to my last day. I belong to them, and they belong to me. We are the Israel of God.
Recognition: we are one. Not that we ought to be one—we are one. I start on that basis. I do not look at my sister and say, “Shall I have her as my sister or not?” I start on the basis that she is my sister.
We have problems at times, especially in the past, but she is my sister, my flesh and blood. I belong to her; she belongs to me. We are in the same family. So we must recognize every true child of God as a member of the family.
They may not exactly be to our liking, but they are our brothers and sisters, and we have to love them and serve them. That is the first thing.
The second thing is that we must receive one another. That is Romans 15:7. Compare that with Romans 14:1:
Him that is weak in faith receive ye, yet not for decision of scruples.
Oh my, do we not go in for that sometimes? As soon as we find a new believer, we want to find out: have they been baptized? Have they had an experience with the Holy Spirit? Do they know what holiness is? Are they separated from the world? We investigate their conscience.
If we feel they have not got too much of a conscience, we will give them one. We will make up their deficiency of conscience, making sure that they are quite clear as to what is right and wrong in these things. We cannot leave them to the Spirit of God.
We are to receive one another as Christ also received us. If you want another verse, Philippians 3:15-16:
Only, whereunto we have attained, by that same rule let us walk.
In other words, do not you come down from what God has done with you. If God has brought you to a certain point, you stay to it because God has dealt with you. But do not expect everybody else immediately to be brought to that same level. God may have dealt with you for particular reasons. You obey the Lord, go on with Him, and love the rest.
Thirdly, maintenance: Ephesians 4:3. This means we have to work on this matter.
Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
You cannot just leave it as a vague, abstract matter. You have got to give diligence to keep it. Now, that may cost you an awful lot at times.
There are times when you feel someone has something against you, and you may have to go to them and say, “I have sensed that you have something against me.” There are other times when you have something against someone else. After you have sought the Lord, you have got to go and get that settled. Keep the unity of the Spirit.
Remember what our Lord said:
If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive your trespasses.
Remember, He taught us to pray in the pattern prayer:
Forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those that trespass against us.
That is a tremendous thing to pray, for we are praying that God will only forgive us in the measure in which we forgive others. Our Lord took this one thing out of the whole pattern prayer and said this is the most important thing of all. He put it first in the positive and then in the negative: if you forgive men, your Father will forgive you; if you do not forgive, neither will your Father forgive you.
Is that not tremendous? That brings you immediately to the tremendous importance of this matter of the oneness of Christ.
Lastly, openness. 1 John 1:7 says:
If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
You cannot maintain fellowship when you are doing things in the dark. Sometimes people have all kinds of things, but they will not bring them out into the open. They will not bring them out for fellowship. They will not bring them out into the light. They hide them.
They are so afraid of what their brothers and sisters will do if they bring it out into the open. Sometimes it is not something dark or wrong. It is simply a question of career or job: where are you going to go? We are so afraid to bring it into the open and share it because we feel that somehow they may dictate to us, or say, “Do this,” or, “Do that.” Never.
We must walk in the light as God is in the light. Then we have fellowship one with another. Shall we pray?
Lord, Thou knowest just how fundamental and essential this principle of unity is in the matter of fellowship. Lord, wilt Thou take all this that has been said this morning and get it into our hearts?
Where there is already some understanding, give greater understanding; and where there has been no understanding of this matter, Lord, let Thy light shine in and give, we pray, an understanding of this whole matter.
We want to be a people who give diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. We want to know all that increasing with the increase of God. We want to know the body building itself up in love.
Oh Lord, help us. If, Lord, there are things that are wrong amongst us, give us grace and help us, Lord, to put those things right. We ask it together in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.