The Church as the Fellowship of Christ

We will read 1 Corinthians 1:9, the ninth verse of the first chapter of 1 Corinthians, in the Revised Version:

God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Then I want to read that to you in the New English Bible. This is the way it puts it:

It is God Himself who called you to share in the life of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord; and God keeps faith.

Called to share in the life of His Son.

This is the way Moffatt puts it:

Faithful is the God who called you to participate in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Then I want you to turn to 1 Corinthians 10:16:

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ?
The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ?
Seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one body.

Now, that word communion is exactly the same word as fellowship. Fellowship and communion are the same word.

If you turn to 2 Corinthians 13:14:

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.

The communion, or the fellowship, of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Then I want you to turn to Psalm 122. It is just a little interesting sidelight. Psalm 122:3, in the Hebrew text, says:

Jerusalem, that is builded
As a city that is compact together.

Jerusalem that is builded as a city that is compact together. Now, in the Septuagint version, which is the oldest translation of the Old Testament into Greek, this is what we have:

Jerusalem is built as a city whose fellowship is complete.

Jerusalem is built as a city whose fellowship—the word koinonia again—is complete.

Then again, I want you to go back to 1 Corinthians 1:9. We will not read it; I will just quote it: “God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”

In my estimation, at any rate, that is the motto, if you like, for the whole of this letter.

So, if you go back to 1 Corinthians 1:2:

Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their Lord and ours.

Then again, verse 10:

Now I beseech you, brethren, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you.

The fellowship of Christ.

Then, if you will, turn back to Romans 12:4-5:

For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office;
So we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.

It goes on, you see, saying, “Having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy,” and so on. You need to read on there.

Then 1 Corinthians 12:12:

For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.
For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit.
For the body is not one member, but many.

Now again, we ought to read the whole of that chapter right to the end of it.

Then, if we could turn to 1 Peter 2:5 and 9. This time it is the word priest or priesthood that we are looking at:

Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Verse 9:

But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession.

Revelation 1:6:

And He made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto His God and Father; to Him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever.

Revelation 5:10:

And madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth.

Then, back to the first letter of Peter, 1 Peter 4:9-11:

Using hospitality one to another without murmuring: according as each hath received a gift, ministering it among yourselves, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God;
If any man speaketh, speaking as it were oracles of God; if any man ministereth, ministering as of the strength which God supplieth: that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, whose is the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

And then, back to 1 Corinthians 14:26:

What is it then, brethren? When ye come together, each one hath a psalm, hath a teaching, hath a revelation, hath a tongue, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.

If any man speaketh in a tongue, let it be by two, or at the most three, and that in turn; and let one interpret. But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church; and let him speak to himself, and to God.

And let the prophets speak by two or three, and let the others discern. But if a revelation be made to another sitting by, let the first keep silence. For ye all can prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be exhorted; and the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets: for God is not a God of confusion, but of peace.

And lastly, Matthew 23:8:

But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Teacher, and all ye are brethren.
And call no man your father on the earth: for one is your Father, even He who is in heaven.
Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even the Christ.
But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.
And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled; and whosoever shall humble himself shall be exalted.

The Church as an Organism Rather Than an Organization

Now, this evening, I am going to launch straightway, more or less, into the middle of the point that we were dealing with last week: the church, His body, an organism and not an organization. If you were not here last week, I can only suggest that you obtain the tape and listen to it. I trust that starting, as we will, in the middle of it will at least make some sense to you.

The fact is that there is a difference between an organism and an organization. An organism is something which has an organization. Sometimes its organization is extremely complex and intricate, but all of its organization has developed from the life within it. It never read a book. It was never taught how it should go, or what way it should go. Its whole organization developed from within.

Now, it is as simple as that. It must be living. An organism has got to be something living. Whereas an organization is something which, by its very nature, is static. It is put together from without, by man or by some other agency, according to a blueprint, a set standard of rules or regulations, or some plan. It can never change unless it is changed from without.

In other words, as I said, my body is an organism. Quite a few years ago, it was just a little blob of flesh and blood, and now it has developed into what it is. Where did I get the whole organization I have—the built-in thermostatic control, everything else that is inside my body, the means by which I expel foreign agencies continually that might come in, and so on? How did I get it all? Where did the organization come from? I never read a book. It all developed from something within.

But if I had a car from the 1930s today, that car would be precisely a 1930s car in the 1960s. It could not change. It would still have the organization of the 1930s because it was put together according to a blueprint, according to a plan, by man.

Now, that is the difference between an organism and an organization. Some people get the idea that because we say the church is organic, there should be no organization at all. That is not correct.

There is an organization, but it is produced by the life—the risen life—of Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that life of Christ real in us by the working of the cross.

Now, that is just very simply, at least, the point that we made. We made a lot of other points last week. If we would know the organic life and development of the church, we must first hold fast to the Head, and then know the life of the risen Head by the Spirit flowing through at least two of us.

For the church to come into being, there must be at least two members. It is as simple as that. You get true believers together, holding fast the one Head and allowing the life to flow through them, and before long that life will do everything. The pattern—everything else—is within the life.

Organic Order and Pattern

Now, the organic nature of the church covers every single aspect of its life and function. It covers, for instance, the order and the pattern. Why have we got so many conflicting church patterns? Why do they all claim to be New Testament patterns, or at least to be built on some system, some blueprint, that has been discovered in the Word of God?

Because, as we said last week, in my estimation there is no intended blueprint in the New Testament. It is an extraordinary fact that in the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, not one is given solely to defining the organization which some people would have us believe is so vital and so important.

God, who has foreseen all the mess, chaos, and confusion that has resulted, I would have thought, in all His wisdom, if the church was an organization, would have devoted at least one of the letters in the twenty-seven books of the New Testament wholly to defining this organization, so that once and for all we could be absolutely clear as to the church’s organization. But there is no such thing.

I am not going to go back over last week and explain Timothy and Titus and Corinthians and Acts, and so on. That we must leave. But what I do want to say is this: the order and the pattern—and there is an order and there is a pattern—in the church comes through the life within.

As that life progresses, develops, and increases under the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ, so the form, the order, and the pattern develop. It cannot all be set up at once.

Now, my dear friend, just think for a moment. God says if you have got true people, saved by His grace in Christ, holding fast to the Head on the ground of locality, you have got the church.

If you have got two people—supposing there were not another Christian in Richmond except just two of us, Michael and myself, these two of us make a fine pair—just the two of us here in Richmond, how on earth could we have elders and deacons? Unless I was an elder and he was a deacon, and as we could sort that, then we would not have a congregation.

Yet, as it were, we are the church in Richmond because the two of us are members of Christ. Where two or three are gathered together, there am I; and it is the same authority, the same power, and the same life present where two are there as where there are five hundred—precisely the same.

Those two can act, if only they are not ignorant, in the name of the Lord Jesus just as well as a large company.

Now, where are you going to have all your deacons and elders and all the rest of it if there are only two of you? And do you not see how stultifying it is if, as soon as you go to twelve, you decide to have elders and deacons and all the patterns?

No. The pattern has got to develop from within. It cannot all be set up at once. This is the mistake: we have got organizationalism in the blood. It is an extraordinary thing. We just cannot help it.

Get two or three people together and, before you know where they are, they have got to organize the whole thing according to their ideas of what Scripture says. As soon as they do that, it stultifies and paralyzes the real flowing of the life of God.

Now, the thing is obvious. Let us bother about holding fast the Head. Let us keep our relationship with the Head absolutely clear, and therefore our relationship with one another. Let us go on with the real job of serving the Lord together, being built together, and being used to bring others into a saving knowledge of God. Then all the order and all the pattern take shape.

The Illustration of the Onion and the Daffodil

You remember I showed you two things last week—not two onions and not two daffodils, but one daffodil and one onion. How is it that these two things, which look so alike—and there is a botanist here, I am sure, and in this matter even I, a layman, know I am right—no daffodil has ever become an onion, and no onion has ever become a daffodil. I hope I am right. But it has never happened in the whole of history.

Why is it that these two things, which look so alike and which I understand have at times been mistaken with dire results, have a different pattern? Why could it not be, as I said last week, if we took that little daffodil and put the onions all around it—hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of onions—would not the proximity of hundreds of onions turn this thing that looks so much like an onion into an onion?

But no. All the hundreds of onions grow up as onions, and that grows up as one daffodil in the middle of all those onions: a tiny little daffodil in an onion patch. Why?

Put the onion in the centre and hundreds and hundreds of daffodils all around it, and the influence of the proximity of all those hundreds and hundreds of daffodils will do nothing to the one onion. It still becomes an onion. The daffodils remain daffodils. Now, why is that?

Because inside that dry, ugly-looking thing there is onion life, and inside the life is an onion pattern and an order. Inside that bulb there is daffodil life, and inside that life there is daffodil order and pattern.

So put the two things together and the pattern develops. It does not bother its head about it; it bothers about living. This does not bother its head about becoming a daffodil; it bothers about living, and it becomes a daffodil.

When brothers and sisters bother about living, they become the church. The church includes the order and the pattern. Instead of getting all our heads mixed up and confused about this and that way, before you know where you are there is division and argument and everything else, all over one simple thing of order and pattern. The thing develops.

And that, to me, is the Book of Acts. Wherever you look in the Book of Acts, there are differences—the difference between the church of Jerusalem and the church of Antioch. There are differences, but it is the same thing: the same basic pattern, the same basic order, spreading all over the world. But it did not have a little book. It was inside.

Organic Government

It is the same with government, the matter of elders, or anything else you might say. What happens? People say, “Oh, but you must have elders, you see.”

But is it not an interesting fact that the Apostle Paul only appointed elders on his return journey, nine months later, when the believers who had come together had just been left alone with the Holy Spirit? Then, when he came back, he appointed elders in every city.

Then he writes to Titus and says, “I have left thee in Crete to appoint elders in every city.” But why did they not do it at the start? The point was that they were allowing for the organic principle.

There is no greater mistake than making men elders. Once you have made a man an elder, you cannot de-elderize him. It proves to be a disaster. Many, many companies have been shipwrecked upon this one point. They have rushed ahead and made this man and that man, and a bit later they find out it is all a terrible mistake. The whole thing is broken up on that. It is a mistake.

The Book of Proverbs says, “A man’s gift shall make room for him.” If a man is an elder, everyone knows it. In the end, it filters through the whole. It is not that everyone puts their heads together and says, “What do you think?” They just know. There is something in the man. You cannot help it.

Now, do not for that think that every elder should be like the Apostle Paul. They are just ordinary people such as yourselves, but we turn to them. There is something about them that we cannot help but turn to.

When you put them together, someone once said, “Take them apart, you could end them all on the scrap heap; but put them together and there is something there.” Government comes from the life of God within. Is that not so?

Ministries and Gifts Within the Life of Christ

What about ministries and gifts? They also come the same way. You see, the gifts and the ministries are within the risen life of Christ, and they are manifested by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes there has got to be a breaking of the sound barrier spiritually, and then suddenly the gift is manifested. But did the gift just suddenly drop on them? It was there in the life of Christ.

Now, to use a natural illustration: I can give you years of piano lessons, if I were a musician, but if you have not got a gift inside, what have I done? I have just turned out a very wooden pianist. They can go through the notes, but the thing is not in them. No one will ever really bother to listen to them, because it is rotten.

But when there is a gift inside, did it suddenly drop on them when they were twelve years of age, or when they were eight years of age? Or was it there within their temperament, within their very personality and life, and it just came out? Something brought it out.

Is that not the same with painting, with a gift of organizing ability, or with any other ability or gift? It is inside a person, and as they grow up, it is discovered.

You just discover it. Sometimes it is very strange. As it says, necessity is the mother of invention. How often that happens. You are forced to do something, and you cannot pay for it, you say, and suddenly you find you have a gift. That is on the natural level.

The gifts are not like apples tied on a tree. It is not as though God sort of ties this on you, then that on you, and then the other on you. It is something that He draws out from the life of God within you and manifests.

That is why so often the manifestation of spiritual gifts comes with the Holy Spirit coming on a person. The life has been cramped and limited and suddenly, when there is a release, out comes the gift. It is there; now it is manifested.

In the church there are all kinds of ministries and gifts. They are all locked up in the life of Christ. It is a release of the life that we need. Get the life released by the Spirit of God, and all the ministries and gifts are manifested.

Growth Through Divine Life

And then again, I must say, progress, increase, and multiplication all come as the life of God grows and develops unhindered in His people. Is that not the thing that brings men and women in? They sense the presence of God. They sense the life of God. They would not put it like that, but that is what it is.

There is something there that they say, “Well, I have not met before.” Something in the people. It is not just preaching; it is in the people. It is the life of God.

A Personal Lesson in Church Order

Now, I say “we,” but when we first came together in 1953—I mean, as a full company—we were more or less out from everything. We naturally believed in a New Testament pattern. What else?

So we had a week of prayer. We looked in the Scriptures and saw that they had the Lord’s Table every Sunday—or at least we thought they did. It seemed to be clear that some companies had it in the New Testament every first day of the week. So we said, “We will have that.”

Then we said, “It is quite clear they had elders and deacons, so we must have elders and deacons.” We numbered, I suppose, about thirty. So we had a week of prayer, and the result of that week of prayer was that we put aside three men as elders and four men as deacons.

We did it in the most spiritual way it was possible to do it. We did it with prayer—a whole week of prayer—and one or two of us even abstained from food. It was the most spiritual way we could do it.

We had a perfect church pattern. I must say this: even people who were well up in church patterns told me it was a perfect church pattern. As far as we were concerned—and those of you who were there in those days will bear witness to this—we were absolutely one, very, very happy. No trouble; no cloud on the horizon.

About two years after this appointment of elders and deacons, a number of us became aware of what we could only describe as a kind of spiritual earth tremor. It was something deep down in the company that seemed to be shaking us, and we could not understand. We had such a sense that something was wrong, yet we could not put our finger on it.

In the end, if I remember, on a Friday thirteen of us brothers spent the day in prayer and fasting. It so happened that whilst we were there it began to dawn on one or two of us, as we sought the Lord, that it was something to do with this matter of the pattern, the matter of government, and so on.

Yet the more I thought about it, the more I thought, what more could we do? We had spent a week in prayer. Surely the Lord did not expect us to spend more than that. I had gone without some food too. I thought, well, I mean, just after all, can you go very much further? I thought it was the most spiritual thing, the most spiritual technique possible. I could not think of anything better.

In the study there was, if you know what it is, a little acorn jar. If I had thought about this, I would have got it out and shown it to you. In the acorn jar was an acorn, rather like one of those hyacinth jars where you put a hyacinth bulb in water. It was only a little thing, about that size, and it was on the study table.

I was praying at the desk, and I looked across the room. Whilst we were praying, I saw that little acorn, and in a flash the whole thing came home to me. It was just as if the Lord said to me, “This is the secret of the whole thing.”

You see, that acorn has two kinds of pattern. One is the outward pattern. That is the shell. It is static. It is incapable of producing another acorn. It is perfect, but static. It has all the look of the right thing, but it is static.

Inside the shell is another kind of pattern which, if you will only let it—it is in the life—will smash the outside shell. It will ruin its form altogether, but it will grow into a tree capable of producing thousands and thousands of acorns.

It was the beginning of our understanding of the organic principle.

Now, do not make any mistake on this. We had always taught, as some of you can bear witness who were there in the beginning, that the church was organic. But, you see, like everyone in evangelical circles, we taught one thing and practised another.

The fact was that we had organized the church in the most perfectly spiritual way it was possible to do it. But if you do not observe the principle, no amount of spirituality will make up for it.

You can be perfectly sincere, but going in the wrong direction. If you want to go to Glasgow, as I believe some might, and you are on the road to Bristol, you are going in the wrong direction. You are perfectly sincere. It is no good someone saying, “Oh, how sincere you are.” It has nothing to do with sincerity, nor with the quality of your character. Your character may be perfect. Nor may it have anything to do with your driving. Your driving may be absolutely marvellous—super—but you are driving in the wrong direction.

That is exactly how it comes in this way. If we do not see this matter of the organic—that the church is an organism, not an organization—we are going in the wrong direction.

After that day of prayer, we decided the Lord said to us, “Now then, you have seen it. Do not do anything. You leave it to Me.” What happened? He got rid of the whole thing. Within two months, the whole thing went overboard. Then we reverted to just being brothers and sisters.

Then the most extraordinary thing happened. The one person whom not a soul in the whole company would ever have thought had anything of an elder in him suddenly began to grow head and shoulders above all of us. I will not mention any names. I mean, it was quite extraordinary. When the one thing went, the other grew. So it has gone on from that day.

Travail and Resurrection Life

Now, if we take the ground of the body of Christ—that is to say, that which is organic—if we are committed to that which is organic, that is, to the Spirit of life Himself, then we must understand that it is an extremely costly way. That is why so few companies walk it.

Why do I say that? Because a principle of the organic is travail.

Now, this is precisely what the Apostle Paul said. He did not shout about it from the rooftops, because not everyone can understand it. But the fact of the matter is that he himself knew what travail was, his co-workers knew what travail was, and there were people inside those assemblies, inside those churches, who knew what it was to travail with Christ.

Look at Galatians 4:19:

My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.

What a wonderful phrase: “Christ be formed in you,” all of you. And then he says, “again.” Mark that again. He had already been in travail over them once when they came into being. Now he is concerned about these churches in Galatia, and he says, “I am in travail again, that Christ be fully formed in you.”

An organism has to be born, is that not so? You can collect a whole lot of Christians together and say, “Now, here we are. We are together; we are the church.” Correct, correct. But it is not correct in another way. Unless there are those who can travail, the organic thing can never be born in the midst.

Unless there are those who can travail, then the organic thing can never be born in the midst. It has got to be born. And I will tell you this: once it is born, nothing on earth can overcome it.

That is the wonderful picture we get of the man-child born of the woman. The devil actually does everything, and the Lord just catches him up to heaven. It is a picture. I know it has another application, but what I am saying is that the abiding principle holds good: that which is born of God is invincible.

Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.

That is why so few companies that start out, as it were, to see the Lord recover the church in them, go through. The thing is never born. It is a costly business.

Every one of the assemblies in India came into being through nights and nights and nights of prayer. Bakht Singh himself told me that sometimes people used to come straight from work, get on their knees together with hundreds of others, wait the whole night, and go from there to work. Forty days and forty nights—the former days—came into being. From Madras the whole work spread over the whole of India.

I am only saying that this is why the matter of the church as an organism is not understood. People are not prepared for the price. They want to have things much more cheaply. They just want to be given it all, spoon-fed it all.

Then, if you will, turn to Colossians 1:24:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the church.

Now, is that not an extraordinary verse? I have often heard people refer to it as a mysterious verse: “Filling up that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ.” Is it not something to do with travail for His body’s sake?

You have got it again in Philippians 3:10, where Paul says:

That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings.

The word fellowship—koinonia again—sharing. “I share His sufferings.” Not, of course, His sufferings for our redemption, but the travail of our Lord.

Travail as a Progressive Principle

I do want you to note that travail is not only a principle initially, but progressively. That is, every single new progressive step taken in a company, in a church, has to have behind it some kind of travail if it is going to go through the fire. Otherwise the enemy will just come and blow on it, and the thing will be destroyed.

It is travail which brings the lasting value into every real move. Now, many of you are young. You cannot travail when you are just born of God, because travail is something to do with spiritual maturity. But let me say this: God has got to get men and women in this company, as in any other company which He is going to use in His recovery moves in these last days, who know what it is to travail.

That does not mean that you go around shouting about it, or wear it on your sleeve, so that everyone can say, “Oh, poor so-and-so. How marvellous it is. Do they suffer so much for us?”

You have got your reward if you go around like that. It is what the Lord said. If you fast like that so that you can be seen, you have your reward. They have seen you—precisely what you wanted. You wanted everyone to say, “Dear so-and-so, how they suffer.” You have got what you wanted. You will not get any other.

The Principle of Resurrection

Now, linked to this principle of travail is another, and it is the principle of resurrection life. I do not know how to put it in any other way: the principle of resurrection life, the power of His resurrection, if you like.

As we have said, everything is within the life of Christ, and that life is His risen life. That is, it is a life that has come through death. It is on the other side of the grave.

In other words, that life, and everything that is within that life—to know that life, we know it through His death, right? But we also know it through our death with Him.

Until people are prepared to lay down their lives, all into the ground and die, there can be no corporate experience of life.

This principle of resurrection God is very jealous over. In other words, every time He gets something, He says to the enemy, almost as it were, “Now, come on, you can do your worst. Let it go back into death. Let it all come into heaviness, dullness, difficulty.”

There are people who would love to escape from that. They come to me and say, “What is wrong? It is all so difficult.” But it is a principle of the organic.

If you have ever seen a tree sawn into, have you ever seen all the rings in it? Every ring denotes growth. And the growth has been through seasons: a fresh winter, a fresh spring, and a fresh summer. So it is with the organic.

When you have got something static, you can have it pegged at an artificial level of “Joy, joy, joy,” and providing you have got one or two personalities who can peg it there forever, you will have it there forever.

But, my dear friend, the fact is you can have that, but it does not mean anything as far as God is concerned. What God is interested in is essential, genuine spiritual birth, and that comes through the organic.

Therefore, you will find with the organic that every time there is a growth, there is a contraction; and then a growth, and a contraction. But each contraction is nevertheless followed by growth, so that all the time it is solid growth. That is what we call the principle of resurrection.

If you look into church history, you will find again and again that every time God gets something, He lets it go into death, that the devil may prove that there is something absolutely invincible in the life of God.

In the notes, when you get them, you will find some Scriptures that I have given for you, so that you can look at this matter, the principle of resurrection. I have given you Colossians 2 and Colossians 3:1-4. Look at the context. It is not personal; it is corporate.

I have also given you Ephesians 2:5-6. Again, look at the context. In the beginning, it is, “You did He make alive, when ye were dead.” Then He raised you and made you sit together with Christ in heavenly places. Then He talks about walking in works afore prepared. Then He goes on to make of the two one new man. Then He goes on: “Ye are being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone,” and all the building growing together into a habitation of God in the Spirit. In other words, it is the church.

It is all to do with this matter of resurrection life. So let us get that clear. As I have said, there will be times when corporately everything comes into death—a kind of spiritual wintertime—that in that time there may be a pruning, a purifying, and a purging work, that there may be a fresh bursting forth of divine life and power in resurrection.

I think there is something so wonderful about resurrection. Every time, when you look at it—for those of us here in the company, especially those who know the whole history of it—you know how again and again we have just looked and thought, “It is impossible. It is finished, over. This really is the end.” Yet it is amazing what the Lord does. It is just divine life.

God is unto us a God of deliverances;
And unto the Lord Jehovah belongeth escape from death.

Fellowship as Participation in Christ

Well now, unfortunately we are only going to be able to start this. The fourth principle that I would like to talk about is this: what does it mean when we talk about taking the ground of the body of Christ?

Let me put it this way: the church, which is His body, is the fellowship of Christ.

The fellowship of Christ. The word fellowship is often, I think, grossly misunderstood. Even where it is understood, it is understood only in part. I do not think it is given its full depth of meaning.

Fellowship is not just acquaintanceship. Some people have got the idea that fellowship is just being acquainted. Fellowship is not mere acquaintanceship.

It is not bonhomie, a kind of, “We are all friends. We all love each other here. That is fellowship.” Fellowship is not talk or chatter. Some people have got the idea, “Let us have a little bit of fellowship,” we say so often. What it means is a cup of tea and chatter.

Now, that may be fellowship, but fellowship is not merely that, as if fellowship is just having a little chit-chat and a little gossip—sometimes on a higher level than that.

Nor is fellowship informality. Some people think that as soon as anyone says something about fellowship, it means it is going to be informal.

Another idea about fellowship is meetings. I have often heard in certain circles that they talk about having fellowship with you, which means that you trot along to one of the meetings and you have fellowship. Or in other circles, “Would you have fellowship with us?” That means, “Would you give a word? Would you preach?”

Fellowship is not even spiritual talk. Some people think that if they get someone sitting on the sofa and really get dug into the Book of Leviticus, that is fellowship. But fellowship is not even only that. In fact, that might not be fellowship at all. It is a question of the kind of life that there is in it and behind it.

Nor is fellowship a society. We often speak of “the fellowship.” There is no such thing in Scripture as “the fellowship.” It is always a description; it is not used in that way. It is quite incorrect to refer to this company as “the fellowship.” If you look outside at the card in stone, you will see that “the” is not there. It is just “Christian Fellowship.” It is a description, not a title.

The word koinonia means basically a having in common—a having in common—and is variously translated in the New Testament. It means essentially sharing. You share. Fellowship is that you share something in common; you have something that you share together. That is fellowship. It is mutuality. It means partnership. It means participation together. It is sometimes used in this way: contribution.

It is not a superficial matter to do with externals, something that is just, as it were, non-essential. It is essential.

I have heard people say to me, “I am not one for fellowship.” I have heard ministers say that: “I am not one for fellowship.” My, well, I do not know what they are then, because by our very salvation fellowship should have been inherently within our constitution.

When someone says, “I am not one for fellowship,” they look upon it as non-essential. “Oh, let me hear the Word preached, I will be there. There is a prayer meeting, I will be there. Fellowship? I am not one for fellowship.”

In other words, “I am an individualist. I find it very hard to really share or be linked together in a team of any kind.”

Fellowship speaks of something absolutely fundamental and essential, out of which all the rest comes. All those other things are, in some ways, the more shallow levels of fellowship. But right at the root of it, the ocean bed, as it were, there is something absolutely fundamental and essential, out of which all the rest flows and is produced.

We have been called by God into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. We have been called into a participation in Him. You have been called into a participation in Him. I have been called into a participation in Him. All of us who have been saved have been called into a participation in Him. See 1 Corinthians 1:9. Glorious!

What does it mean to be a participant in Christ? It is that you are a member of Him. You are part of Him. You have become a partaker of His nature. You have become a partaker of His life. You have been joined to His Head: one life, one body.

You are now sharing Christ. That is the church.

I have Christ. You have Christ. We share Him. I have not got my own Christ. You have not got your own Christ. We have got only one Christ. We share the one Christ.

There is no such thing as a personal Saviour. It is a foreign word to the New Testament. A personal knowledge of the Lord is a different matter, but there is no such thing as a personal Saviour.

We all have one Lord, one Saviour, one Head, one life. We are participants in Him—I, you, all—the fellowship of His Son.

Oh, if we could only just get hold of it. It is just so wonderful, really. We have a common salvation, a common Head, a common life, and a common community.

That is what we are doing. “God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son.”

Now, it is this basic, essential, fundamental sharing of one Saviour, one Head, one life, one body, which produces all the other kinds of sharing.

You cannot share your home with other believers. You cannot share your car with other believers. You cannot share your money with the believers. You cannot share your time with the believers. You cannot share yourself with the believers unless first you have recognized the essential bedrock out of which it all comes.

Otherwise, it is triviality—a lot of nice chatter, chatter, chatter. Then when we fall out, “I am not going to talk to her,” okay? That kind of thing.

But when we have a common Lord and a common Saviour, we cannot say goodbye to one another. Sometimes it is rather sad, but that is the fact of the matter. We have to get through. That is the glory of it.

The church is not a United Nations. The church is a Saviour. It has one Lord, one life, one body.

Fellowship and Shared Possessions

If you look in Acts 2:44, it says:

And all that believed were together, and had all things common.

That is the word again: had all things common. Do you like fellowship? Is it?

Then again, if you look in Acts 4:32:

And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and soul: and not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.

It grew out of this tremendous sense of their one Lord, their one Saviour, and the one life that had come to them by the Spirit of God on the day of Pentecost. They were no longer a congregation made up of units. They were a body of interdependent and interrelated parts.

So they had all things in common. In this case, they sold everything and more or less pooled it all together, but the principle is the same. You look upon everything you have got as a steward. You are a steward of it.

That is why sometimes the Lord will not come in on some people’s homes and so on. They say, “Why is it? I have asked the Lord to help me in this and that and the other.” Well, the fact is, you want the Lord as a charwoman, to put it rather crudely and almost blasphemously. You want Him all the time to clear up the dirt.

You want to have your own home, your own possessions, everything; and what you will let Him have, you will let Him have. But when you are in trouble, you want the Lord there instantly cleaning it all up, getting it all sorted out. “I am a Christian. I deserve it. Why does it happen to those others there and not happen to me?”

But the Lord will not, because the Lord marks the question of whether you are your own or His. Once you are His, you can leave it with Him. “Lord, I am Yours. My body, my time, my money, my everything, my home—it is Yours. You do something. It is Yours anyway. Responsibility.” And the Lord does.

Fellowship.

The Church as the Body of Christ

It could well be said that 1 Corinthians 1:9 is the motto for 1 Corinthians, as I have said earlier: the fellowship of Christ. It has been called an apt and comprehensive description of the church—the fellowship of Christ—and I think it is best defined in 1 Corinthians 12 in terms of the body.

My body is a fellowship. Every single one of the large number of members I have in my own body, my personal body here, is a participant in the life and body of Lance Lambert. All these members have one head, one life, and one body. They are not yours; they are mine. You have got your own. Yours are participants in your name, life, and body. You see, it is a fellowship.

My body is not a finger, a foot, or an ear, but it is made up of all different parts, visible and invisible—or, shall we say, outward and inward. They are all there. They are all interrelated and interdependent parts, sharing one life, one entity, if you like. They have a body.

Now, it says in 1 Corinthians 1:9, “God is faithful.” What a wonderful word at the beginning of the Corinthian letter.

God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son.

Into the fellowship of His Son; into participation in His Son; into being part of Him; being sharers in His life, in His headship, in His body.

It is written over the whole of this book, with all its dark undertones and its unhappy factions and divisions. Here it is. Here we have got it in this term: the body.

A body is not one member, but many, all sharing one Head and one life—one entity. There is great diversity and variety of function and position.

My ear has a different position from my little toe. It would be an extraordinary mistake if my little toe was in the position of my ear. There is difference in position and function.

Yet every single part of my body is interdependent and interrelated. If I cut my hand off, I can still live, but I am that much restricted. If I cut my leg off, I can live, but I am that much restricted. I can cut both my legs off and live, but I am that much more restricted. I can cut both my arms off and live, but I am that much more restricted. If I cut my head off, I am finished.

Now, it is rather extraordinary. I always think that the devil starts trying to cut the Head off in the church. When he cannot do that, he starts on all the members—see if he can cut them off and so bring about paralysis in the body.

It is a fellowship of that Person. My body is a fellowship. Your body is a fellowship. So it is with the church.

Listen to Romans 12:4-5 again in the light of what I have said:

For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office;
So we, who are many, are one body in Christ.

Again, 1 Corinthians 12:12:

For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.

Verse 14:

For the body is not one member, but many.

Verse 20:

But now they are many members, but one body.

Verse 27:

Now ye are the body of Christ, and severally members thereof.

The church is a body, not a member. The church is a body, not a member. That is why when we talk about taking the ground of the body of Christ, we mean immediately members.

The body is many members, yet one body. It is not a member, but many members, but one body.

The Error of the One-Man Ministry

The church was never meant to be a one-man band or a one-man show, as if all were meant to revolve around and centre in one member for the rest. But is that not exactly what we see in the majority of churches of all descriptions?

Everything virtually surrounds one man. Why, in a service he will lead, pray, give out the hymns, and usually give out the notices. He does not take up the collection either—you might get it if he did—but he does everything. He does everything.

It is one member, one-man show. Now, I am not saying that people do that maliciously. Of course not. But the church is not meant to revolve around one member. I have even been in some groups where he has either played the piano or the organ as well.

But the church is not meant to be one member. It is many members. That is not the church.

Nor was the church meant to be an elite few doing everything, like a kind of vicar and curate, while the rest remain as spectators. They watch everything, listen to everything, and say, “Oh, he was good this morning. Oh, so-and-so. Oh, I did like the way he gave out the notices.”

But it is in the hands of just a few members, while everyone else is a spectator: a kind of pulpit-pew relationship. You all sit there, you should be there on time, everything is done for you and to you, and then you go off like a lot of good sheep.

I cannot help feeling, sometimes, when we view so many so-called churches, that I cannot help re-echoing the words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:19, changing the tense:

And if they are all one member, where is the body?

That is precisely what you have to ask: where is the body?

You see a lot of little drab people all sitting there. Some of them would not say boo to a ghost. Yet these are the witnesses to Christ upon whom the Holy Spirit is supposed to come with power. It is extraordinary.

Now, do not blame the poor folk in the pew. They have been emasculated. It is a terrible thing. They have simply been put into such a position that their very life has been drained out of them, so that the church has become one member and not many. That is all. It is a tragedy.

No one can tell me that that is what the New Testament teaches. All right, you argue with me. You say you do not accept what I say. Very well, but do you accept the finality of the Word of God? How do you explain 1 Corinthians 12? How do you explain Romans 12? How do you explain 1 Peter 4? How do you explain 1 Corinthians 14?

We were never meant just to be so many spectators for whom everything is done, rather like entertainment. We are spoon-fed.

Why, it is a tragedy in so many places—especially not quite so much in this country, but in certain places—not a soul even brings a Bible. Not even a Bible. A most extraordinary state of affairs.

But then, you cannot blame the sheep. I have been told by many theological students, “You start with a verse, depart from it thereafter, and never come back to it again.” I expect people to bring a Bible if the Bible is going to be explained, interpreted, and expounded.

The Priesthood of All Believers

There it is, and we will end here this evening. There is absolutely no scriptural warrant whatsoever in the New Testament for the distinction made between clergy and laity—a kind of priesthood of the few amongst the rest.

On the contrary, the New Testament is quite explicit in declaring the priesthood of all believers.

Now, most evangelicals give lip service to the priesthood of all believers, but many of them restrict it to personal access to God in prayer, for which we are thankful—that at least they give us that liberty.

But the Scriptures never did mean by the priesthood of all believers that it was just, and only, glorious as it is, personal access to God in prayer.

What is the priesthood of all believers? It is this: every single child of God born of the Spirit of God, every single member of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, is a priest, with the right of continual access into the presence of God Himself in the holiest place of all by the blood of Jesus.

And not only that, but with a continual right to serve the Lord.

Now, you have got that, if you want it. That is where I have to leave it to next week. I have introduced the subject, I think, and we will leave it to next week.

The fact is, what does it say?

Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Now, when you turn to Romans 12, what do you find?

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.

Priesthood.

Then you go on: “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Then what does it go on to say? It says:

For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office;
So we, who are many, are one body in Christ.

You have got the whole matter of the body. If you look at it, you will find that then you are told, “Let him that ministereth wait on his ministry,” and another on his ministry, and the other one on his. It is priesthood.

Every one of you is constituted a priest. God has made us, by the loosing of our sins in His precious blood, a kingdom and priests unto God. Every single one of us has the right not only to come into the presence of God, but to serve Him.

The fellowship of Christ.

Well, I think we had better end there, or we shall just go on point after point. I am sorry we have to end again in the middle of it. Unfortunately, we got into that last week. It looks as if we are going to go on like it, but we shall have to see.

Closing Prayer

Dear Lord, we do ask together that Thou wilt really, by Thy Spirit, reveal these things to us. Make us a people, Lord, who do not just take them because it is said, but rather those who search the Scriptures as to whether these things are so.

And, oh, by Thy Spirit, Lord, reveal what is truth to our hearts in these days of confusion and disorder, Lord, and impoverishment.

Oh, Father, wilt Thou make us those who understand what Thou art really seeking to do—not only just the outward aspects of it, but, Lord, the inward things that lie at the root of it all, those principles, Lord, in that life of Thine which must be observed if we would know the development and growth and increase of it.

Lord, we commit ourselves to Thee in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.