Books

Focus On The Fundamentals Of The Faith

By W. Douglass Harris

Essentials to the Perpetuation of the Lord’s Church

There is serious and widespread concern on the part of many faithful Christians today about the future of the church, because of the drifts away from the Old Paths. Many are wondering if our grandchildren will know the church as we have known it. Doctrines and innovations are being advocated today that are so contrary to the New Testament pattern (yes, there is a pattern), which were unheard of a generation ago. Efforts to destroy the distinctive nature of the Lord’s church are prominent in many places. Will the battle against digression that was fought in the preceding century have to be fought again?

If the church is to exist in any age as God planned it and as Christ through His apostles established it, there are certain principles to which men must be committed. As surely as any of these principles are abandoned, just that surely will the New Testament church disappear from history. Let us look at some of these principles.

1. There must be unqualified commitment to the absolute authority of Christ (as opposed to the authority of the councils, conferences, and conclaves of men). Christ’s supreme authority is emphasized repeatedly in the New Testament in the many times He is called “Lord”, as a word signifying authority (Acts 2:36; 10:36; 1 Peter 3:22). He proclaimed His absolute authority prior to His issuing the universal commission to His disciples (Matthew 28:18). His miracles were for the purpose of establishing His divine authority (John 20:30,31).

The exercise of this authority involves that authority of His apostles, whom He endowed and authorized to be His ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20; 1 Corinthians 14:37; 1 John 4:6). The red-letter statements in red-letter Bibles and Testaments are no more authoritative than the black-letter statements of the apostles. The apostles were given the authority by Christ to bind and to loose and assured them it would be sanctioned in heaven (Matthew 18:18; John 20:22,23). They were the plenipotentiaries of Christ.

Commitment to His authority includes the recognition that the church belongs to Him and He alone has the right to determine its teaching and practice. God gave Him the authority to be head over all things to the church (Ephesians 1:19-23). “This is an awesome subject. What would it mean in the life of the church for every Christian to know the reality of the headship of Christ? What a restoration, what a transformation would occur! The facts of the case are that we are failing to a large extent to accept Him as ‘head over all things to the church’.

“There are a number of ways in which this word ‘head’ can be used in reference to Christ and the church: He is head of the church as a general is head of an army. He is head of the church as the chief shepherd is head of all under-shepherds, and of all the sheep. He is head of the church as that portion of the physical body of man called the head is the total source of direction for all the members of the body.

“He not only teaches and saves and blesses (the church, WDH), He rules. And He has never abdicated nor delegated His authority. Any assumption of the headship which belongs only to Christ is rebellion against Him” (Pulpit Commentary).

2. There must be commitment to the New Testament as the final, revealed, and written authority in religion. This simply means that Christ exercises and expresses His authority through the New Testament, and through it alone, and it is God’s final revelation to man. No alleged latter-day revelations and no modern “prophets” can be accepted by people who accept the New Testament as the final authority in religious matters, and who are interested in restoring the New Testament church. The New Testament claims for itself that it is all-sufficient, complete, and final in meeting all of man’s spiritual needs (2 Timothy 3:16,17; 2 Peter 1:3; Jude 3). No honest appraisal of these passages can come to any other conclusion.

This commitment involves commitment to the Old Testament as inspired history and as necessary to our understanding of the nature of God and His dealings with man through the ages and of His unfolding plan of redemption through Christ, as the promised Messiah of the Old Testament. But the church is not to be governed by the Old Testament. The Law of Moses was no more given to govern the church than the Law of Christ was given to govern the nation of Israel (Deuteronomy 5:2,3; Colossians 2:14). Nothing in the New Testament church can be authorized by citing authority from the Old Testament.

This commitment also involves respecting the silence of the New Testament (1 Peter 4:11; 1 Corinthians 4:6 ASV). It must not be presumed that silence gives consent. To be approved of God and authorized by Christ all religious practices must be expressly authorized in the New Testament. This eliminates many denominational practices, such as mechanical instruments of music (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16), women preachers (1 Corinthians 14:34; 1 Timothy 2:11,12), tithing (1 Corinthians 16:1,2; 2 Corinthians 9:7), and the distinction between “clergy and laity” (Matthew 23:8). The New Testament is as silent as the tombs in the cemeteries regarding any of these and many other practices in the denominational world. To contend for and practice anything in religion simply because it is not expressly forbidden is to open the floodgates to bring anything men might desire into the worship and practice of the church. “If the silence of the Scriptures authorizes a religious practice, then everything in the Old Testament from the burning of incense to the offering of animal sacrifice would be permissible” (Garland Elkins). It was this very presumption and misconception that brought the digression and apostasy in the Lord’s church in the past century. And now because of our failure to keep focus on the essential of the faith, we are having to fight that battle again.

To perpetuate the Lord’s church, there must be absolute commitment to the New Testament creed (Matthew 16:16; 1 Corinthians 3:11; John 20:31), to wearing New Testament designations (Romans 16:16; Acts 11:26; 20:28), to obeying New Testament baptism (Mark 16:16; Romans 6:4; Acts 2:38), to observing New Testament communion (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 11:26,28), to practicing New Testament stewardship (Acts 20:35; 1 Corinthians 16:2; 2 Corinthians 9:7), and to living the New Testament life (Acts 2:42; Revelation 2:10).

3. There must be commitment to the New Testament plan of salvation. The only scriptural plan is the one made possible by the death of Christ on the cross and the only one revealed in the New Testament. It is a plan of grace and faith, not a plan of grace and faith only. If it is by faith plus grace, then it is not by faith only (Ephesians 2:8,9; Acts 17:27b). This last passage says we “believe through grace”. If this is true of faith, would it not also be true of repentance and baptism — that we believe and are baptized through grace?

God’s grace is the original factor (source of origin) of our salvation (Romans 4:16). Man’s obedience is the appropriating factor. God’s plan (provided by His grace) requires obedience as man’s response (Hebrews 5:8,9). The steps of primary obedience are faith (Hebrews 11:6; John 3:16; Mark 16:16), repentance (Acts 2:38; 17:30,31), confession of faith in Christ (Acts 8:37; Romans 10:9,10), and baptism for remission of sins (Acts 2:38; 22:16; Mark 16:16). Baptism is either necessary or unnecessary; it cannot be both. The New Testament says it is necessary (Mark 16:16; 1 Peter 3:21). It is necessary only as an appropriating act. There is nothing meritorious about it. Christ’s death is the only meritorious factor in our salvation. To perpetuate the Lord’s church we must call men back to this plan without any apology, because it is the divine plan.

4. Men must be committed to the identity of the New Testament church. The Lord built it according to His own wise plan (Ephesians 3:10,11; Matthew 16:18; Hebrews 8:5). He has revealed to us how it is to worship, what it is to be called, how people are added to it, what its purpose and mission is, the kind of government it is to have, how it is to be financed, etc. All of these are marks of identity. We must not outgrow preaching on the identity of the church. If this is not important about the church, why is anything important about it? Preaching on the identity of the church will make our preaching distinctive, as it ought to be.

5. We must be committed to proclaiming the gospel as the foremost task of the church (Mark 16:15; Matthew 28:19). The primary mission of the church is the same as the Lord’s in His coming to earth — to seek and to save the lost (Luke 10:10). Benevolence and edification are to supplement this primary mission. To lose sight of this is to jeopardize the perpetuity of the church.

As already noted, Jesus placed the perpetuation of the church in the seed (Luke 8:11), not in church succession. Indoctrinating and training others from the word is the only security we can give in perpetuating the Lord’s church (2 Timothy 2:2). May God help us to be diligent and effective in doing this so that future generations may be able to know and identify the Lord’s church.

Conclusion: According to verbally inspired Scripture, the only provision made for the perpetuity of the church is by the teaching of faithful men (2 Timothy 2:2). This is also the only church succession taught in the New Testament. The Lord’s church will always exist in seed form (Luke 8:11). If this seed (the word of God), unmixed by the doctrines and commandments of men, is planted in the soil of “honest and good” hearts today, it will produce now exactly what it did in the first century — Christians, and Christians only, and these Christians will organize themselves into local congregations. In this series we are discussing the principles revealed in the seed to which men must be committed to perpetuate the Lord’s church.