Would you turn with me to a number of passages in the New Testament?
And what the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might,
which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:
and He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
But speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him, who is the head, even Christ;
from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.
For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, being Himself the Saviour of the body.
And He is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence.
For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,
and in Him ye are made full, who is the head of all principality and power.
And not holding fast the Head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God.
Shall we just bow together in a word of prayer?
Heavenly Father, we are so thankful that, as we come to Your Word, the Lord Jesus said that the Spirit of truth Himself will lead us into all the truth. We pray that we may be granted that spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, that the eyes of our hearts might be enlightened, that we may know these things.
O heavenly Father, we want together to recognize our inability without Yourself. We need You, Lord. We thank You for the anointing which is made available to us through the finished work of our Lord Jesus, and made a reality in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
We take that anointing for hearing and speaking together this night, that Your purpose in this time may be fulfilled, and we may meet with You, and Your Word may dwell in us richly. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Now, the burden that has been mine in these days, which I have been seeking by the grace of God to communicate to you, is contained in the words of 2 Corinthians 11:2-3:
For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy: for I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ.
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness, your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ.
The burden is all to do with our relationship to the Lord Jesus in the last days of world history. I think most of us are reasonably convinced that we have passed into the last phase of world history. If that is so, then we need to take a long and hard look at the values of our lives: the reality of our service, our work, our church life, and our personal Christian life.
The end of all these things is that we may be presented to Christ as a pure virgin; that our minds may not be corrupted from the simplicity, the singleness, the unaffectedness, the uncontaminated devotion which is toward Christ.
I have spoken about knowing the Lord Jesus in certain ways. There are so many ways of which we could speak, but I have been going day by day by that which the Lord has laid in my own spirit as the aspect I should communicate to you.
We have already spoken about Christ as our covering. There is no way that we are going to endure—or more than endure, overcome—and fulfil the purpose of God in the last days of world history unless we know the Lord Jesus as our covering: the One who has atoned for us, justified us, and become our righteousness.
There is no other way to see the purpose of God fulfilled than to know what it is to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might, and to have put on the whole armour of God, that we may be able to stand in the evil day. That is covering.
Then I spoke about the Lord Jesus as the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit and fire. I could have suspected that this would cause a tremendous amount of questioning. I am surprised that there have not been some who have berated me for speaking about it. But a number of you have come to me and told me how frustrated you are by what I said. Look, I left you hanging there—but that was intentional.
I was not going to get into a three-step, five-step, or four-step formula by which you can come into that immersion in the Spirit and in power. If you get your eyes on the experience, you take your eyes off the One who brings you into the experience. It is the Lord Jesus who is the Baptizer.
This is a fact often forgotten. People seek and search for a power, for a thing, and altogether ignore the emphasis in God’s Word, found at the beginning of every one of the Gospels and at the beginning of the Book of Acts: He it is who baptizeth you in the Holy Spirit and in fire.
“But how?” Now, that is a good question. I asked that question for years before I came into an experience of the Holy Spirit. Every time I heard one of these marvellous things, I used to think, “But how?”
I looked at all those shining faces singing, “My chains fell off,” and I thought I was the black sheep. I was the only one who had not got the experience. They sang of being cleansed and empowered. Well, I knew what it was to be free from the guilt, but I did not know what it was to be free from the power.
I used to think, “But how? But how?” It was only when I saw the Lord Jesus in a new and living way that heaven opened, and I found myself in a new way altogether with the Lord.
I want to tell you: once a person has been alone with the Holy Spirit, they know it. And everybody else knows it.
If you are wondering whether it has to be a second experience, thank God that you can have the right Person to bring you into everything. F. B. Meyer used to say, when he was asked, “Do you believe in a second experience? Do you believe in the second blessing?” “Yes—a second, and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth.”
My dear friend, if you feel in your heart that there is no power and no fulness, and that you have nothing within, then may God open your eyes to see the One who can immerse you in the Holy Spirit and in power. Do not be afraid.
I remember years ago a sister in the church in which I was brought up. She was a little older than I was, and she was a staff nurse. She treated us all as though we were still probationer nurses. She was always putting us right, always correcting us, because groups tend to be a misery—they normally do.
Then she went away and came back. I remember how she had scolded me over a certain thing before she left. But when she came back, there was something totally different. She said, “Have you got a moment for some fellowship?” I nearly died.
In all the years I had known her, I had never heard anything like it. She had gone away coming from below; she came back with a real anointing. I said, “You do not have to tell me that you have had an experience of the Holy Spirit.”
“How in the world did you know?” she said.
“Why, you did not have to tell me.”
Oh, the crabbiest become the sweetest. The most tight-fisted become the most generous. Those who have never actually loved, love. Something happens when the Lord Jesus takes a person and immerses them in the Spirit and in fire.
There are three things, and they must come in that order: first revelation, then faith, then experience. There is no other way into anything in the world of God. That is how you got saved. The Word of God came into your heart; you saw the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world. Then faith was born in your heart, you responded, and the experience of salvation followed.
So it is with everything else.
Someone gave me a little plaque; I suppose they thought I was so political last time, and they pinned it on my garment. I did not have the courage to take it off. But this is what interested me: all these great old saints, these great hymn writers, these great leaders in the Church of God in days gone by, evidently all had this same experience.
Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove,
With all Thy quickening powers;
Kindle a flame of sacred love
In these cold hearts of ours.Look how we grovel here below,
Fond of these earthly toys;
Our souls can neither fly nor go
To reach eternal joys.In vain we tune our formal songs,
In vain we strive to rise;
Hosannas languish on our tongues,
And our devotion dies.Dear Lord, and shall we ever live
At this poor dying rate?
Our love so faint, so cold to Thee,
And Thine to us so great?Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove,
With all Thy quickening powers;
Come, shed abroad a Saviour’s love,
And that shall kindle ours.
My friend, you see, they all had something of the same experience. It is marvellous. I am not bothered how you know the immersion in the Spirit and in power, provided you have a real experience and an ongoing experience.
Ephesians says, “Be filled with the Holy Spirit.” The only way you can come into that is by seeing the Lord Jesus, the One who immerses us in the Spirit. The only way you can go on being filled with the Holy Spirit is by continuing to see the Lord Jesus as the One who baptizes us in the Spirit.
I want this evening to speak about Christ as our Head.
If you and I are going to be presented as a pure virgin to Christ, we have got to know Christ as our Head. Now, just a few words about the significance of this term.
It is used always in a collective sense in the Bible. Wherever you find in the New Testament the Lord Jesus described as the Head, you will discover either immediately before or immediately following the reference to the body.
This term is not used in a merely personal sense—as though it were simply one isolated believer knowing Christ as Head—but always in relation to a whole number of believers who are related to Christ as Head. That is obvious, is it not?
Why did the Holy Spirit inspire the writers of these letters to use the terms head and body? Why not king, potentate, or ruler? Why use the term head? Because you have never seen a living headless body, and you have never seen a living body without a head.
The Holy Spirit uses the terms head and body because they indicate something inseparable, living, and organic. It is not that the Lord Jesus cannot live without us; it is true that we cannot live without Him. Nevertheless, the whole expression is used to show that we belong to one another in the work and purpose of God, and only as we live in the good of our union with Him—only as we are related to Him as Head—are we going to see the fulfilment of God’s purpose.
Let me put it another way. By the grace of God alone, I am in Christ. By the grace of God alone, you are in Christ.
There are not as many Christs as there are Christians. Each one has a personal life, of course, but there is only one Christ. I am in the one Christ, and you are in the one Christ. We are in the same Christ; we share the same life in the same Christ.
But then I say, “Christ lives in me.” Richard says it; so does Peter; so does Stephen; so does every believer. What has happened? We are all in the same Christ, and the same Christ is in us all.
It does not matter how many believers there are in the world. There is only one Christ, and every believer—whatever race, colour, nationality, or origin—is in that one Christ. That one Christ dwells in us by the Spirit of God. Amen.
There is the union. Is it not marvellous? This is what Paul speaks of as the mystery: “Christ in you”—in you all—“the hope of glory.”
God is building a vessel. He is building a city in which He is going to dwell. He is producing a people who are going to share His glory. We are all one in Christ. This union is tremendous—absolutely tremendous.
This union is called in the New Testament the church. Described in different ways, it is called the body, the temple of God, the household of faith, the bride of Christ, and the wife of the Lamb. However you describe this union, it is the same matter, and it lies at the heart of God.
The Lord Jesus said:
Upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
When we look at all the divisions and factions—not only the major institutional and denominational ones, but all the divisions and factions among those of us outside all of that—we must sometimes wonder whether these words of the Lord Jesus are a mockery.
But, my dear friends, the words of the Lord Jesus are surely to be fulfilled: “Upon this rock I will build My church.” Not any church, but My church. “I will build My church.”
It is over that building work of the Lord Jesus that the whole of hell has come out against. The powers of darkness have mobilized to destroy any possibility of the Lord Jesus finally fulfilling His heart’s desire and completing that building work of the church.
Furthermore, the more we move into the last phase of world history, the more fierce, fearful, and terrible will be the work and devices of the enemy: to divide believers, to split believers, to embitter people, and to disrupt fellowship.
Only God-given faith and heavenly vision will ever bring this into the experience of completion. Why should we throw in the towel? That is exactly what the enemy wants us to do: to throw in the towel and believe that the heavenly vision is an ideal impossible of realization.
But, my dear friends, this battle is going to become greater and greater and greater. Thank God, it is the Lord Jesus who came to do the building. If He had said, “Upon this rock you shall build My church,” I would be very afraid. I would begin to wonder, “Oh my, upon this rock you will build My church.”
No—the Lord Jesus said, “Upon this rock I will build My church.” Therefore, I have confidence that, through storm and sunshine, the Lord Jesus is going to build His church. He will use the very circumstances of the last days to draw God’s people together, to dissolve the petty things that divide us, and to pressure us into touching one another’s spirit in the Lord and moving together into the fulfilment of God’s purpose.
How interesting it is in the Old Testament, where we have a picture of this in the prophecy of Zechariah, particularly in Zechariah 3 and Zechariah 4. I will only touch on it, but I find it very interesting.
This whole matter is to do with the house of God. In Zechariah 3 we have Joshua the high priest and that priestly service of intercession, worship, and standing before the Lord for the fulfilment of God’s purpose. In Zechariah 4 we have the building work, with the lampstand all of gold, symbolizing the testimony of Jesus held by the church.
In the first chapter we see that the high-priestly ministry is dependent upon covering. Joshua has to know, in New Testament terms, Christ as his covering. The only way he can fulfil his ministry is for iniquity to be taken away from him and for him to be clothed with the righteousness of the Lord Jesus.
Then, in Zechariah 4, we find those who do the building. The building of the house of God is being contended with and challenged. We find great mountains in the way; we find controversy, difficulty, and problems. Then comes the word:
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
There you have Jesus as the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit and in fire. There is no way that the fire in the lamps can be kept going unless you and I know the ministry of the Holy Spirit. There is no way that the oil can be poured into that lampstand unless you and I know the ministry of the Holy Spirit. There is no way that the mountain can become a plain except by the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
There is no way that we will complete the work except by the Spirit. The topstone shall be brought forth with shoutings of, “Grace, grace, unto it.”
I have said it probably before, though not to many of you, and I will say it again. I always think it would have been a much more obvious thing to shout, “Glory, glory!” It would have been more dramatic. I would have thought that, when they saw the topstone, they would exclaim, “Glory, glory! The Lord has done it!”
But no: “Grace, grace.” In other words, when we see the completed work, the only thing we can say in the midst of all the mess, difficulties, and problems is, “The grace of God has done it. He founded it.”
That is why it has to be not by might, nor by power, but by His Spirit. We shall give up if we are looking for some perfect little fellowship.
Most of us are looking for the ideal fellowship. But all the time, even in the New Testament churches, there were Jezebels, teachers of Balaam, Nicolaitans, divisions, error, factions, Apollonians, Petrines, Paulines, and exclusives. They were all there.
We do not understand that, when you have the church exactly as it ought to be, all the scum comes to the surface as the Lord applies the heat and the pressure. It is all there in the New Testament. Yet we go on looking for the perfect fellowship.
This matter of knowing Christ as our Head is all-important. I hope that, by the grace of God, I will be able to communicate that to you this evening.
This great battle over the church will be so huge, so fierce, and so oppressive that you and I will be tempted by a thousand demons on every side to throw in the glove and give up.
It will only be an immersion in the Holy Spirit and in power that will keep us obedient to the heavenly vision and believing that He will build His church. That is what it is to be an overcomer.
God is interested in overcomers. God would prefer that the whole church be an overcoming company, but unfortunately that is not so. God is interested in those who, by His grace, will go right through, serving their brothers and sisters, and who will stand before Him and hear the word, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
Now, I want to draw your attention to the word head. The Head is never mentioned without its connection to the body.
Even in Colossians 2:10—“In Him ye are made full, who is the head of all principality and power”—the “ye” is plural. “In Him, you all are made complete.” Wherever you find this term head, it has the body in view. It is never used without relationship to the body.
But I want you to learn that I am not talking about knowing the body. I am talking about knowing Christ as our Head.
This is tremendously important. I hope it will come over to you, not negatively but positively. We never create the church. We never produce the church. We never build up the church by mere knowledge of church truth.
This is a basic mistake many people make. They think, “If we can clear up what the church is, then we will have the church.” My dear friends, that is not true. There are people who could sit down and give you a lecture for two hours on the nature of the church, but when it comes to the experience of church life, they do not understand a thing about it.
We can have a knowledge of church truth and know that we are a heavenly people. We can have knowledge of church pattern and church order. We can have a church pattern, and it may not be the church. Everything may be worked out according to the New Testament, but there may be no life in it at all.
The only life we ever get is when we agitate the thing, manipulate the thing, push the thing, and then it moves a bit—rather like puppets on strings. But it never lives in itself. It does not move because it has the breath of God in it.
We can have knowledge of church order and think that, because we have that and have adopted it, we have the church. That is not the church.
Do not misunderstand me. We can get our church ground right. In other words, we can take the ground that the church in any place consists of all the believers in that place. But it does not mean that we have the church.
We can block all denominational and institutional lines and simply come together, but it does not mean that we have the church. Many people think that if we could only get the people into the right form, we would produce the church, express the church, or create the church.
But, put another way, we do not create the church by knowing church truth, by discussing church truth, or even by crying over church truth. It is always relationship to Christ as Head that brings the church into being.
Knowledge of church truth is important, and knowledge of church order is important. But church truth will never become a living reality unless there is a whole relationship to Christ as our Head. Otherwise, we deceive ourselves and have a counterfeit church.
In the final analysis, it is seeing the Head with the eye of the heart, hearing the Head with the ear of the spirit, trusting the Head with all our being, and obeying the Head that brings about true church life.
Unless you and I know Christ as our Head, there is no way at all for the church to be born. That is, for me, the secret. The church cannot be put together.
We say, “We are going to get our church together, and we are going to put it together.” How can we put it together? We might take one living stone and another living stone and tell each one exactly what to do, define their ministry, give them people, and arrange everything. But we are trying to build the church.
Do you think you can do this whole thing? There may be people in Anglican, Presbyterian, or Roman Catholic settings who are living in the Lord, loving the Lord, worshipping in the Spirit, and moving together in a living way. They may not be on church ground, but they are in touch with the Head—and so they have church life.
Christ is my Head, and Christ is your Head. What happens? Somehow or other, we come into relationship with one another.
How do we get into relationship with one another? Not because I am a member and you are a member and we decide that we have got to get together. No. Because I have a relationship with the Head and you have a relationship with the Head, suddenly we discover that we are meeting together.
You have never seen a head with one member. Can you imagine anything more ludicrous than a head walking along with one little foot? The whole point of the head is that there are many members, and every one of those members is in a living relationship to the head.
When you begin to see it like that—my Head, your Head, his Head, her Head—we all have one Head. The whole body performs all kinds of different functions. When we really know that Head, we live together in a marvellous unity.
But there is more than that. In His greatness, power, wisdom, and knowledge, I only receive something partially. You receive something that I do not receive, and I receive something that you do not receive. We need one another.
Consider a few of the Scriptures that we looked at this evening. Take Ephesians 1:22:
And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
Head over all things for the church, which is His body—the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. Brothers and sisters, it is only when we completely see that Jesus has been made Head over everything for the church, and declare it, proclaim it, stand by faith in it, and enter into the good of it and the power of it, that the church will know what it is to be the fulness of Him who filleth all in all.
Any single company of believers striving together to see something of the nature of the church, and not merely fellowshipping together, will discover that the enemy will see that they are robbed of everything within his power. Yet they must know how to declare that Jesus is Head of everything.
Head over all things does not mean merely over good things or spiritual things. He is Head over all things. He is Head over principalities and powers. He is Head over the rulers of this darkness. He is Head over the wicked spirits in heavenly places that would seek to destroy fellowship and all progress in the building up of the body.
It means that He is Head over all things in relation to the earth: political circumstances, national circumstances, and local circumstances. Why? With the church in view. With the church in view, He is Head over all things, that His purpose concerning His body may be fulfilled.
More than that, He is Head in order that the members of His body may know what it is to be His fulness—He who filleth everything in every way.
Do you believe that you and I are going to know the purpose of God without challenge? Do you not think that we have enemies, just as Israel had enemies in the old days—every kind of force seeking, one way or another, to nullify the purpose of God, rob God’s people of their inheritance, compromise them, and bring them down?
You and I will never know what it is to be His fulness together over everything and everyone unless we learn to take our position in union with Him as Head over all things.
Again, take Colossians 2:19: “Not holding fast the Head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God.”
Did you notice it? I find this an amazing thing. We never think of a body growing out of the head. It is an extraordinary picture: a Head, and out of the Head comes the whole body. The body increases with the increase of God. It grows up; it becomes full-grown. How? Only in relationship to, and by holding fast, the Head.
This word holding fast is a strong word. It means to apprehend the Head, to lay hold on the Head, to arrest the Head. There is nothing passive here.
Those of you who know something about mountain climbing will know the need to hold on. To lose your hold is a serious thing. Do you know, if you could speak spiritually, that the increase of the body depends upon holding fast the Head?
My friends, you and I never build the church by finding one another. This is why there are disappointed people all over the world now in church life.
Thirty years ago, no one ever spoke about the church. The church was a Cinderella. Did anyone ever give a message on the church? I remember when I used to speak about the church, people’s mouths would drop open. They would come to me and say, “Is that in the Bible?” I would say, “It is.” “But why have we never heard about it?”
Today everyone talks about the church. Wherever you go, everybody talks about the church: church, church, church. They talk about the body, body life, and body ministry. Yet, strangely enough, it has not made division any less. There is as much division, as much confusion, and as much error as before.
My dear friend, there is only one thing to do: hold fast the Head.
Now, I do not mean by this that you have to stick with something from which all life has gone. I must be very careful here. I believe it is very important to stay in something right through until we are one hundred percent sure that the ark of the Lord has gone. Once the ark of the Lord goes, we go with it.
I remember years ago an old sister in California. Someone asked her why she had left her denomination. She said, “I was born in it; I was brought up in it; I was in it all my life. I thought something was wrong, but I remained there. I could not see that there was any point in getting out just to get out.”
“But finally the Lord gave me the word, and I went.” Then she told of the leaders coming to see her and asking, “Miss Bouncer, why are you leaving the sinking ship?”
She said, “When I saw the captain getting into a lifeboat, that is when I knew it was time for me to leave the ship.”
Some of us are more faithful than our Lord. You know what I mean. We have got more faith in it than in Him.
The whole of the Bible is not an “I and it” relationship. It is an “I and Thou” relationship. Think about it. The whole Bible is not in an “I and it” relationship; it is in an “I and Thou” relationship—the life, not the thing.
Sometimes we get so loyal to the it that we become disloyal to the Lord. So, my dear friend, this is very important: holding fast the Head. That is a word of caution. I do not want you to think that you must remain with something that has absolutely departed from the Lord, or that you must leave something merely because another force draws you away.
Then I think of Ephesians 4:15-16:
But speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him, who is the head, even Christ;
from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.
Here is another marvellous thing. We are to grow up in all things into Him who is the Head. How wonderful! We are to grow up, not be knocked over by the circumstances of fellowship, but rather, in all the things we experience, good and bad, grow up into Him who is the Head.
My dear friend, every single experience in the life of the church is intended to make us grow up. Many of us want to remain little babies, carried around and nursed, fed with spiritual food forever. But God uses fellowship to make us grow up.
We have to grow up in all things into Him who is the Head, and then discover that the whole body is there, fitly framed and knit together. There can be no real increase of the body in love unless we grow up into Christ as the Head.
What is the objective of the church, His body? I think that is a good question.
When we have some expression of the church, there is real fellowship, a measure of real function, a maintaining of the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and a real measure of building up and bearing one another—ministering and being built together.
But that is not the end. Some people get the idea that, once you have seen the church, that is it. We fall into the same mistake that everybody else makes. There are those who believe that baptism is it—the end. There are those who believe in a second blessing of entire sanctification or perfect love, as the Methodists used to call it—and that is it.
But once you have seen what the church is, that is not it. There is an objective. What is it? The church is to express Christ.
That is true both generally and particularly. My body expresses my head. It expresses the personality of my head: the way I walk, the way I stand, where I go, what I do. My head communicates through my body. My body is the expression of my head.
So, when you get the term head and body, it really means that the church is to be the expression of the Lord Jesus. God the Father wants us to be the body of Christ, with the Lord Jesus present in the Person of the Holy Spirit. We are to express Him on this earth.
The church is to express His love. Do you not think that is one reason why the enemy has, as one of his supreme objectives, to bring bitterness, hatred, jealousy, gossip, and backbiting into the church? He wants to poison the church and destroy love.
There is no way for you and me to stay in love with the Lord and to stay in love with one another unless the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. There is no other way. Our situations, circumstances, and relationships are too much for us.
I believe the church should be a place where even the most proud are broken and become servants of the Lord and of one another. The church is to be a place where you serve, not out of duty, but out of love. The church is to be a place of reality, where every one of us can be ourselves.
Unless we are so in touch with the Head that we hear His word, “Repent; thou hast left thy first love,” this matter of love will have to come again and again and again to the heart. The Lord wants life; He does not want a machine. He does not want something metallic.
That is why this matter of love will come again and again. If we have got to the last days, as our Lord Jesus said, the love of many shall wax cold because iniquity abounds. Do you think your love will somehow be exempt from that pressure? No, it will not.
Unless you are alive to, in touch with, the Head, and know Christ as our Head, then He will keep us all the way through in love with Himself. Because we will be in love with Himself, we shall be able to love and serve one another.
Again, another thing: we speak of Christ expressing Himself in the church—His will. The church is to be the place where the will of God is expressed.
This whole world is moving toward anarchy. It is moving into a realm where everything is against authority and everything is against government. The church is to be a place where the rule of God is expressed.
The Lord Jesus taught us to pray:
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
Not only one day, maybe, Lord—but let the kingdom come now. Let it come in now. Every real church is an embassy of heaven. It is a statement in a particular locality that this belongs to Him, and one day is coming back to Him.
One of the marvellous things is that His will becomes expressed and the whole thing is ruled by Him. When there is a fulfilment of this, when we discover a company of God’s children perfectly governed by Him, we can rule and reign, holding the keys of the kingdom of heaven, binding what heaven has bound and loosing what heaven has loosed.
Then there is His power. I think the church will be the expression of His power—not merely in signs and wonders and miracles, though these have their place.
I know very well that you can stay with the miracle, the sign, and the wonder and never find out the way of God. But when God is in the midst of a company, there is marvellous power. When they pray, God answers. All kinds of situations get straightened out. It is marvellous to be in touch with the Head.
I always think of it like this: if Jesus were here now, what would He do? And if we are the body of the Lord Jesus, then we ought to be doing that kind of thing.
There has never been a real move of the Holy Spirit in the whole history of the church that has not been attended by signs, wonders, and miracles. It is the evidence that God is moving.
And so, my dear friends, I have to conclude. If you and I are to be presented as a pure virgin to Christ, it requires some real experience of church life.
But you and I will never have a real experience of church life if you and I do not have a new, direct relationship to Christ as our Head.
The simplicity and purity that is toward Christ are essential. I do not think there is any place in the whole world where we can become more affected and unnatural than in church life. When we are not in touch with the Head, it all becomes so artificial. But really knowing the Head strips all unreality away, again and again.
He moves with brothers and sisters to bring us right down to reality. Then we discover whether the love we thought we had was the love of God or merely sentimental. We discover whether what we thought was patience was simply caution, whether what we thought was strength in the Lord was only our own self-respect, and whether what we thought was humility was merely false modesty.
For the first time, we come to know the reality of God. We will not speak falsely, because the Lord does not want unreality. Simplicity that is toward Christ, and purity that is toward Christ, are found in living, real fellowship, where we help one another to keep pure and not depart until the coming of the Lord.
May the Lord help us.