As a believer and disciple of Jesus in my twenties and early thirties, I learnt an enormous amount by the Spirit through a man of God called David Watson.
David wrote a number of the volumes in
the “I Believe…” series published by Hodder and Stoughton in the 70s and
80s. I still have six of his books in my
collection – I loved every one of them and learnt so much. I consider his Discipleship a classic and always contemporary and, to this day, a
wonderful help to those setting out on their adventure with Jesus – and to
those who mentor and lead them.
David wrote I Believe in Evangelism and I
Believe in the Church for Hodder and Stoughton.
My purpose in this post is to bore down
into the first part of my first post in this series, “What does ecclesia look like (1)”. What is the ‘macro’ or universal picture of ecclesia?
On this subject, David Watson, in his
1978 publication I Believe in the Church
has much to teach us today. Almost 35
years after this book was written, Christians who have been on the road all
that time still do not know what the Holy Spirit was teaching the people of God
through David Watson in this book.
He begins chapter three with these words:
“Christ came to establish a new society
on earth. It was not enough for him to
call individual sinners to God. He
promised that he would build his church.
It would be the most powerful force on earth providing it could be
created, inspired and sustained with his life and love. Nothing could stop – or ever has stopped –
the revolution of love which he began two thousand years ago.”
“It is worth looking first, then, at the
longing in the heart of Jesus when he prayed for his disciples shortly before
his suffering and death. In John 17 we
have a glorious picture of the purpose of God’s church on earth, as Jesus
prayed that it should be marked by four main things: the glory of God, the word
of God, the joy of God, and united in the love of God.” (p.39)
And I love how Watson expresses this
first part of the burden of Jesus for his ecclesia
– the glory of God:
“This word ‘glory’ (doxa) means basically the visible manifestation of the splendour
and power and radiance of God. It is God
revealing himself so that, as far as possible, we can see the beauty and
majesty of his living presence with us.
For example, after Solomon’s prayer of dedication, the temple was filled
with the glory of God; God was manifestly and powerfully in their midst.
“In New Testament days, of course, God
revealed himself supremely in the person of his son, when ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth’,
wrote John; ‘we have beheld his glory,
glory as of the only Son from the Father’,
“However, today the glory of God is
clearly meant to be seen in the church.
Paul wrote about the ‘glorious
liberty of the children of God’, or, literally translated, ‘the liberty of glory of the children of
God’, referring to the freedom that God’s children experience when his
glory is revealed in our midst.” (p.40)
Watson then goes on to expand on each of
these four things he sees as both the God-assigned purpose of the ecclesia and the markers or ‘signs’ of ecclesia within the world of humankind –
key things that distinguish the wheat from the weeds in Jesus parable of
Matthew 13.
On ‘the word of God’, he says: “In John 17 Jesus prayed much
about the word of God. ‘I have given them thy word… They have kept thy word…
Sanctify them in the truth: thy word
is truth…’ The word for ‘keep’ (tereo) means to keep safe, to watch
over, to hold fast, to guard. God’s word
is a sacred deposit that has been entrusted to the church for safe keeping and
… we are not to tamper with God’s word, not to alter it, add to it, or subtract
from it in any measure. We must be
concerned with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” (p.43)
In John 17:8, Jesus also said, “I have
given the words which you gave me,
and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they
have believed that you sent me.”
Interestingly, nowhere in John 17 does
Jesus make reference to scripture as
having been given to his disciples as a trust.
“I have given them your word”
is the Greek logos, meaning the word
of the gospel – God’s message of truth to the world in the person and work of
Jesus. Apostle Paul seems to take this
view too when he says to the Thessalonians that “we speak as men approved by
God to be entrusted with the gospel.” (1 Thess 2:4) Paul isn’t talking about being entrusted with
scripture.
And in John 17:8 (“I have given them the words”), the Greek here is rhema, meaning the specific things that
were said. In other words, Jesus not
only does what He sees the Father doing, He speaks the things (the specific
things; the rhemas) He hears the
Father saying. This is the same word
Mary used when she hid in her heart the specific things (rhemas) the angel
said to her about her conception and the birth of Jesus.
Paul instructed Timothy who was a leader
at Ephesus, to “Guard the truth that has
been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us” (2 Timothy
1:13) and to “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who
does not need to be ashamed, handling
accurately the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).
I love what Watson then goes on to
say: “However, there is also the need
for the church to listen very carefully to God, in whatever way he may
speak… The church that is alive and
relevant for today’s generation must always be a prophetic church. We must therefore listen very carefully in
order to discern what God is saying to us today.”
(p.43)
What does the scripture say? “He who has ears to hear, let him hear what
the Spirit says to the ecclesias.” –
the repeated message to the seven churches written to in Revelation 2 and 3.
On ‘the joy of God’, Watson says: “Christ longed that his
joy might be ‘fulfilled’ in his disciples.
Often he referred to this: ‘These things I have spoken to you, that my
joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.’ The New Testament church was filled with this
remarkable quality of Joy, even in the midst of the fiercest trials, and this
in itself was a powerful witness of the life of God’s Spirit within that church… In a world marked by hopelessness, gloom and
despair, the radiant joy of Christ in the lives of Spirit-filled Christians is
of special significance” (p.45-46)
And on ‘united in the love
of God’, Watson says
this: “In John 17, Jesus prayed four times that his disciples might be
perfectly united in love: ‘that they may be one, even as we are one…that they
may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee…that they may be
one, even as we are one…that they may become perfectly one, and that the love
with which thou hast loved me may be in them.’
The reason for his tremendous burden is also clear: it is that the world
might believe and know the truth about God and about his Son Jesus Christ.”
(p.47)
He goes on to say, “We have access into
God’s presence; and we are all one in Christ Jesus. There are no more walls of hostility – except
those of our own making. How, then, can
we preach a message of love, forgiveness and reconciliation – between man and
God and between man and man – unless the reality of that can be seen by our
unity and love as Christians? This
should be the distinguishing mark of all true disciples of Christ: that we love
one another as he loved us” (p.47)
Now, by way of contrast, I want to flick back in time to the Old
Testament prophet Ezekiel. Chapters 8 through
11 of Ezekiel recount, in the form of a series of visions given to Ezekiel, the
departure of the glory of the Lord, from the ark, then from the temple, then from
Jerusalem itself. Ezekiel was shown by
God why this was happening – the evil and the abominations and the violence and
corruption that the people of Judah were committing inside the walls, even
while they say, “The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land”.
If you read the first few chapters of
Jeremiah, you will find a similar message – and in it the people of Israel say,
in spite of all the evidence against them, “I am innocent; surely his anger has
turned from me”. But God replies,
“Behold I will bring you to judgement for saying, ‘I have not sinned’.” (Jer
2:34-35)
Fast forward many years now to William Tyndale in the sixteenth
century AD – a little over 500 years ago.
Tyndale lost his life and is known to us as a martyr because he defied
all prevailing authority and held tenaciously to his conviction that the thing
we call “the church” and the ecclesia
of God are NOT one and the same. What we
call “The Reformation” cut deeply to the heart of the matter of the ecclesia of God. “The church” looked very much like Israel and
Judah did thousands of years earlier.
The recorded history of the period is testament to the evil and the
abominations and the violence and corruption in “the church”.
I contend – speaking prophetically – not
just that William Tyndale was right, nor just that “the church” is not equal to
ecclesia. Most particularly, I contend that, as the
glory of the Lord had to depart from the ark, then the temple, then Jerusalem
itself because of the evil in it, God’s New Covenant glory never was placed
upon “the church” because it is an interloper.
God’s glory always was, is now and always will be on (actually in) the ecclesia – His called-out company.
And His ecclesia contains not
one single institution, organisation, ‘special clergyman’ or program.
“The church” is not the ecclesia now sick and diseased. “The church” never was the ecclesia, it just pretended to be. It stole the name ecclesia so it could lay claim to the people in it, to the things
the bible says about it, and to the benefits offered by the State. The ecclesia
has existed since it was brought into being on the day of Pentecost, and it
exists today, and it is marked by the things David Watson describes: the glory
of God, the word of God, the joy of God and unity in the love of God. The ecclesia
and “the Church” co-exist as the wheat and the tares co-exist in the parable of
Jesus. One brings a harvest for God, the
other is rooted up and burned.
So what does ecclesia look like? It looks
like what Paul describes in a section of 2 Corinthians:
“But to this day, whenever Moses is read,
a veil lies over [the sons of Israel’s] heart; but whenever a man turns to the
Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the
Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the
Lord, are being transformed into the
same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
(3:15-18)
“Therefore, since we have this ministry
as we received mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness
or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending
ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if the gospel is veiled, it is
veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has
blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the
gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.
“For we
do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your
bond-servants for Jesus’ sake. For
God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness’, is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
“But we
have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the
power may be of God and not from ourselves.” (4:1-7)
Take a look at Matthew 13:24-30 and
36-43. It is a pointless exercise to try
to turn tares (a weed) into wheat. And
it is not our responsibility to pull out the tares while they are growing
amongst the wheat. However, if we do not
recognise the two – distinguish between the two – how immature and ineffectual
are we in the kingdom of God and in the matters of the ecclesia that have been entrusted to us?
As the enemy is responsible for the weeds
furtively sown in amongst the wheat, the enemy is responsible for “the church”
furtively sown in amongst the ecclesia.
In my frame of reference, that is the
story of “church history”. And we cannot
claim we were not warned. Both Jesus and
Paul talked about it. But the enemy has
been so successful we now have great difficulty distinguishing between the work
of God and his work. That’s why ecclesia is “first apostles, second
prophets, third teachers” and the rest follow them. We need it to be this way but we always fight
and resist it (to our detriment) because we are uncomfortable without a guru
and a go-between.
Cheers,
Kevin.
Cheers,
Kevin.
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