The Greatness of the Church

The Greatness of the Church 
by T. Austin-Sparks

There is a painful slowness amongst Christians to apprehend the great purpose and intent of their salvation, to know and to understand the nature of their high calling; and it is in this connection that there is a great divide between the people of God. Christianity at its best has very largely become a general thing a matter of being saved and of going on in a general way as Christians, but not recognizing that in God' s mind we are saved with a mighty purpose, not just to be saved and then to be occupied with getting others saved, and stopping there. Both of those things are good; they are fundamental and essential, but they are only the beginning.

From that point something quite different begins, what Paul refers to here when he says, ''I....beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called''; and around that phrase, the calling wherewith ye were called, he gathers all these immense things about the Church; these immense things which, as to the backward aspect, reach far back over the ages; as to the upward aspect, ''in the heavenlies", with a vocation which is now heavenly; and then the onward aspect, ''the ages to come". These are phrases which indicate the calling wherewith we are called, but how few of us have really apprehended it!

We could say very much about the tragedy of the loss of that vision, the loss of that Divine revelation, and of the building up of something which has made it well nigh impossible for multitudes now to move into that calling, bound hand and foot as they are by a tradition and by a system of things which leaves responsible people not free, too much involved, too much involved for their very livelihood, to move into God's full thought.

The Church, as the Body of Christ, is the vessel chosen of God, appointed and revealed by God, to be the embodiment of the glory and greatness of Christ, the vessel, the vehicle, by which all that Christ is will be made known through the ages of the ages. The greatness of the work of Christ in His Cross indicates how great the Church must be. If Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it, if the work of the Cross of the Lord Jesus is so great, is not that a further indication of how great the Church must be? It has by His own parable been called a ''pearl of great price'' (Matt. 13:46), and to secure it He, the Divine Merchant, let go all that He had, and He had an 'all' which no merchant in the history of this world has ever possessed, a wealth and a fullness, a glory which He had with God before the world was, something indestructible, great, and wonderful. Seeking goodly pearls, when He had found one of great price He sold all to get it. We cannot understand that; it is beyond us; but there it is, it is Divine revelation. And the Cross was the price of the Church. For some unspeakable reason, the Church stands related to God in value like that. Christ loved the Church, the Church of God which He purchased with His own blood. It is evidently a very great and wonderful thing.

Now we must look at some of those features of Christ which are taken up in the Church, in order that we may know what this Church is that we are talking about. What is it? Well, if it takes up the things which are true of Christ, then what is true of Him is, in the mind of God, to be true of the Church; and it is true of the Church which is in God's eye.

And the first feature of Christ is His eternal being, the eternal conception. He was before the world was; He was before the order of time was instituted in the establishment of those heavenly bodies by the government of which time exists, years and months, day and night, summer and winter. These are all governed by heavenly bodies, and these are time factors. Before they were, He was, for He created all things. That is true of Christ.

But the letter to the Ephesians says that that is true of the Church: ''He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world....having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself'' (Eph. 1:4-5). This letter to the Ephesians is not set in time, it will have its effect upon time matters, the practical matters of everyday life, of our walk and conduct here on this earth, but it is set in the timeless realm. It goes back, and it goes on; it bridges all time in the Divine conception. That is where this letter is set, and until we recognize the implications of that, we have no real apprehension of the Church; and when we do recognize that, what nonsense all this 'churchianity' becomes, how small and petty, and how we feel that from God's standpoint we are just playing at some game of churches when we make so much of what has traditionally come to be called 'the Church.' One real Divine glimpse of the Church and all that other becomes paltry, petty, foolish; and a mighty emancipation takes place inside of us, but it requires revelation.

Christ as the foundation, as the rock, as the basis of everything, is founded, planted, and rooted in eternity, and nothing that time can bring can affect that. He is outside of it all. He is over it all. He is beyond it all. Nothing that can come in, even with Adam's fall and all its consequences through history, can interfere with that. The Church takes that feature of the absolute stability of Christ. It is something outside of time, before the world was, chosen in Him. The stability of the true Church according to God's mind is the stability of Christ Himself. This thing, on God's basis, in God's realm is an immovable and indestructible thing. The Church embodies the eternity and indestructibility of His very life.