One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, One Church

The Bible is organic. The Bible is true, and as such is consistent, coherent, and comprehensible. And the consistent, coherent, and comprehensible truth is, it’s not ordered as a systematics text, far less as a book of church order. It is a consistent, coherent, comprehensible, organic book.

There are few places where this is more obvious than in the doctrine of ecclesiology. How swiftly we find ourselves, as soon as we start talking about the church, talking about government. And we find ourselves immediately face to face with the organic. There is, much to our chagrin, no Book of Church Order in our Bibles. We carefully scan the table of contents, and lo, it’s just not there. Not only is there no apostle called Robert, there is no copy of his Rules.

What we have instead is mostly history, with the rest of our information coming from what we virtually dismiss as the “pastoral epistles.” The only government we see in the church is authoritative pronouncements from the apostles, and, in one more less than organic presentation, the Jerusalem Council. I mean, there’s not even any mention of a gavel. How legitimate can that be? What we are shown is something that doesn’t exactly fit our circumstance.

Because the book was written to a people living in the apostolic age, we are not given an extensive exposition on how the church should be ruled in the post-apostolic age. Which may explain why we have rational, Bible-loving men who are Episcopalian, who are Congregational, and who are Presbyterians, who believe in rule by bishop, by elder and by congregation. Here is one more place where honesty requires a recognition of the organic. While we affirm the perspicuity of the Bible, we must confess that some parts of it are more perspicuous than others.

But the problem is older than this. The lack of a Book of Church Order is emblematic of a broader problem. For not only are we not given a handbook for governance, we are not given a birth certificate for the church. Never does the Holy Spirit blow His celestial trumpet and declare, “The church is being born.” Some say the church was born at Pentecost. Others argue that the resurrection birthed the church. Still others suggest that it was the calling of the apostles, while others go all the way back to the calling of Abraham.

When was the church born? In Genesis 3. The church age began as soon as the age of innocence ended. The church, after all, is neither more nor less than the people of God. Where God has a people, there is the church.

In the patchwork that is the people of God, we find not merely a remnant, but a collection of remnants. Between the death of Noah and the calling of Abraham we are given a genealogy, followed by the tower of Babel, followed by more genealogy, followed by the call of Abraham. Nothing good happening there, in the interim between the heroes Noah and Abraham.

But no sooner does God call out a people for Himself, the Father of the Faithful, and his clan, that we meet Melchizadek, the priest of God Most High. Where did he come from? Perhaps the same place as the Wise Men, the land of Spiritual Lost and Then Found Socks. That the Spirit blows where He wills not only means that strange things, like the conversion of Alice Cooper, happen, but it means that the Spirit has blown where it will. He has flocks we know not of.

God was pleased, in the old covenant, to have His people be visible in the nation of Israel. He was pleased to commingle a national identity, and a spiritual one. Now, in these latter days, He is looking for those who worship in Spirit and in truth. But His grace does not spread like water without a tide. The leaven will indeed get through the whole lump, but it will do so organically, not uniformly. Which means that we ought not to be surprised that God has blessed the west, that He has blessed this nation, nor that He has, as yet, not shown the same grace toward the Chinese, or the Libyans, or the Rwandans.

He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy. And He will have mercy when He will have mercy. But the point of that affirmation goes back to the will of the Spirit blowing. It happens not by the will of those who run, but by the good pleasure of the Father. We show ourselves strangers to the grace of God when we think He gives it because of how wonderful we are.

Isn’t it telling that after Paul gives a verbal whipping to the proud Jews in the church, that they should not turn up their noses at the Gentiles God was grafting in, he takes the time to give a preemptive scolding to the Gentiles. “Hey, don’t get cocky. It happened to them; it could happen to you.” And yet we continue to fall into the same sin. We think the kingdom of God will look rather like our neighborhood, and then pride ourselves in avoiding the folly of political correctness.

The truth is that the only thing we know for certain about the ethnic make-up of the kingdom of God is this, there were will be some of everything. The people of God are those covered by the blood of Christ.

This is the twentieth installment of an ongoing series of pieces here on the nature and calling of the church. Stay tuned for more. Remember also that we at Sovereign Grace Fellowship meet this Sunday November 17 at 10:30 AM at our new location, at our beautiful farm at 112811 Garman Road, Spencerville, IN. Please come join us.