WHAT THE CHURCH SHOULD BE – Charles Spurgeon
What the Church Should Be
“That you may know how you ought to behave yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” — 1 Timothy 3:15
Paul’s design in this epistle was to instruct young Timothy on how he should behave himself in the church of God, so as to discharge his office as minister, evangelist, and pastor with honor to himself and profit to the people. He reminds him that the church is the house of God, and in God’s own house, a man ought to be on his best behavior. For it is no light thing to draw near to the Lord. A poor man who is called to visit a prince or king will anxiously inquire how he ought to act. Likewise, we, poor creatures that we are, when admitted into the church, the house of God, should inquire what conduct will be decorous and comely for those who are permitted to dwell within the gates of the great King’s palace.
Especially should each of us endeavor to behave rightly in the house of God, if we know that we are looked up to and imitated. All who teach the young, all who are parents, all who are persons of age and experience, all who occupy influential positions, and especially all deacons, elders, and preachers, should pray the Lord that they may know how to behave themselves in the house of God, lest inadvertently their misbehavior should be injurious to the weaker ones. Such need to learn how they should behave toward their brethren, toward the Elder Brother, and toward the great Father of all. We need to learn the ways of the house, the customs of the palace. One part of the objective of the sermon this morning is that those of us who are in the house of God may learn how we should behave in it. Special prominence will be given to steadfastness in the faith, which makes a man not only a dweller in the church but a pillar of it.
I am not going to trouble you this morning with the various interpretations that have been given to the passage before us. It has been a sort of Plain of Esdraelon, where battles have been fought from time immemorial. Many suggestions have been made to avoid the sense given in our version, because that sense has been perverted into a defense of the Romish church. It seems to me, however, looking at it as carefully as I am able, that our translation is about the best possible one, and I feel sure that it has in it the mind of God.
Probably, the sense would never have been disputed if it had not been for the controversies which have arisen in which this verse has been misused and misrepresented. I am rather suspicious of interpretations which arise out of controversies. What have we to do with giving either a Protestant or a Catholic sense to Scripture? Is it not our duty to give the true sense, be it what it may? There can never be any justification for twisting Scripture to wrench it out of an enemy’s hand. Nor is there any need in this case, even if it were allowable.
In vain has the Romish church tried to gather from this verse that she is the great source of truth, for the passage can never apply to her. She has utterly gone aside from the truth and is described by the apostle in the verses which follow the text as departing from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, forbidding to marry, and so forth. Popery or no popery, let us take the Word of God in its natural and evident meaning, and we shall be instructed thereby. May God the Holy Spirit enable us to understand His own word.
I. The Glorious Name of the Church
First, I shall at some length expound the text and then try to enforce the lesson from it. In expounding it, I see three things to note, and the first is The Glorious Name of the Church—“The church of the living God.”
First, it is called the church. What is a church? It is an assembly. And a Christian church is an assembly of faithful men—men who know the truth, believe it, affirm it, and adhere to it. The Greek word signifies an assembly summoned out of the whole population to exercise the right of citizenship. An ecclesia, or church, is not a mob, nor a disorderly gathering rushing together without end or purpose. It is a regular assembly of persons called out by grace and gathered together by the Holy Spirit. Those persons make up the assembly of the living God.
In order to be a church, there must be a selection and a calling out, and that calling must come from God, who alone can call effectually. Touching all the members of this select assembly, there is an eternal purpose which is the original reason for their being called. To each of them, there is an effectual calling, whereby they actually gather into the church. Then, also, there is a hedging and fencing about this church, by which it is maintained as a separate body, distinct from all the rest of mankind. The command whIch calls them away from the world is very clear: “Come out from among them, and be you separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
The church is not a number of unregenerate people coming together entirely of their own notion to defend such-and-such dogmas. Such persons may form a club, but they cannot make a church. There must be a coming together of renewed men, in the name of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit. These must meet for purposes which God Himself ordains and be joined together after His own fashion. Jesus must be the uniting cornerstone, and His Spirit the indwelling power, as it is written, “In whom you also are built together for a habitation of God through the Spirit.”
The title grows upon us when we read it as “the church of God.” There is a synagogue of Satan, and there is a church of God. There are churches so-called that are not of God, though they take upon themselves His name. But what an honor it is to be one of the assembly of God, to be one of those whom God has chosen, whom God has called, whom God has quickened, whom God has sanctified, whom God loves and calls His own! How honored is that assembly in which He resides! The text speaks not of the church of a country, or of a city, nor of the church of king or prelate, but of the church of God. Blessed be God, since Jesus Christ ascended up on high, there has never ceased to be a church of God in the earth—generally hidden and concealed, often persecuted and always despised, yet still living.
This church, like its Lord, has often been found among the poor rather than the rich, more frequently confessing at the stake than honored in the palace. Still, she has been present, bearing witness for the truth, even in the darkest times. There has been left to us a remnant, according to the election of grace, in every age. I speak not now of this denomination nor of that, but of the truly spiritual people who have witnessed faithfully in the life and power of God to the truth as it is in Jesus. This is the church of God.
The title is further enhanced by the word applied to God. It is “the church of the living God”—not your congregation, O Diana, though they said of you that you did fall from heaven. But Diana was a lifeless image! What was Diana of the Ephesians? What life or power was in that senseless block? Timothy knew that the assembly which gathered in the name of Diana was not called out by a living god.
Brethren, it is a glorious fact that our God, the God of the church, lives and reigns, and that He shows His life all around us. We see Him sustaining nature, ruling providence, and reigning in the midst of His church. And while we see Him, we adore Him. Jehovah is the living God, and the divine life is seen in each of the adorable persons of the Godhead. Our Lord Jesus Christ is not to us a dead Christ. We love and bless Him because He once died upon the cross, and we adore Him because He always lives to make intercession for us. We are bold to preach the gospel because of His living power, and we are earnest to observe His commands because we acknowledge His living government in the midst of the church.
The living God proves His life among us by the Holy Spirit, by the conversion of sinners, by comforting and instructing saints, and by edifying the faithful into a building fitly framed together. Since, then, the church belongs to the living God, what is a dead church? Is that the church of the living God? How can it be? Only as you and I possess the Spirit of God quickening us to a life of godliness may we dare to think ourselves a part of the church of the living God.
O you dead and corrupt, how can you have communion with the living in Zion? Only when you live unto God may you be built up as living stones into the living temple of the living God. The thing most to be dreaded in any church is the decay of life. We may soon fall into formalism, and even hold the truth in the cold grip of spiritual death. Prayer may be neglected, and the other offices of spiritual life may be disregarded, and then all will languish. “You have the name that you live and are dead” is the dreadful sentence which must be written across the brow of a merely nominal church.
Brethren, if we would be the church of the living God, we must be thoroughly alive unto God.
II. Her Design in Reference to God
The Apostle speaks of the church of the living God as the house of God. This is a very beautiful and instructive figure. “The Most High dwells not in temples made with hands,” whether they are called cathedrals, churches, or meeting houses. Today there is no consecrated shrine, no appointed building where we must resort if we would meet with God. For behold, the Lord is to be found everywhere by those who worship Him in spirit and in truth. True hearts view the entire universe as a temple wherein everyone speaks of the glory of God.
Yet there is a shrine and a temple, but it is living and spiritual. The called-out assembly, the church of the living God, is the special abode of Deity. I suppose we are to understand first, by the church being God’s house, that it is the place of His worship. As of old the temple was the holy place to which the children of Israel went up in pilgrimage, the point toward which they opened their windows when they prayed, and the place of the one altar and the one sacrifice. So now, the church of God is the sole place of God’s true worship. He is spiritually worshipped nowhere else.
They who were never called and never quickened by Him may pretend to worship Him, but what is dead worship to the living God? They may profess to serve Him with gorgeous ceremonies, smoking incense, and harmonious music, but what is this to Him who is a Spirit and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth? It is only where men are spiritual that there can be spiritual worship. It is only with their love, trust, joy in the name of Jesus, and with their prayers and praises, presented by the power of the Holy Spirit, that God is to be worshipped at all.
Do not dream, you ungodly, that you can worship the living God. The first essential to your acceptance is that you accept His salvation. Be first reconciled to Him by the death of His Son, for how shall His enemies present to Him acceptable praises? You must become a part of the living church by being born again, or else you cannot worship the Lord at all.
But I like better still to get away from the somewhat ceremonious idea of a temple to the more familiar thought of a house or home. The Lord makes the church the place of His indwelling. The thought itself is charming. It is that old prophecy fulfilled, “I will dwell in them and walk in them.” God calls His church a house in the sense of His residing there. He is everywhere, but His special resort, the place of His feet, the home of His heart, is His called-out congregation—His elect, redeemed, regenerated, sanctified church.
Does not this invest believers with a wondrous dignity that God should dwell in them? “Know you not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit?” God dwells in you. If you are indeed quickened of the Spirit, the Spirit abides in you and shall be with you forever. Of the church we read, “God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.”
In his own house, a man not only dwells, for he might do that in any inn, but there he feels himself to be at home, and therefore, it is the place of his manifestation. You do not see the real man on the bench, for there you see a judge; nor on business, for there you see a trader. But at home, with the children, as one of them, you see the man, the father, the husband; you see his heart and soul. And God is not seen in the entire universe with anything like the degree of clearness that He is beheld in the midst of His people. The Lord God is more gloriously manifested in His people than in all the works of creation. First in the person of His Son, He has revealed Himself right gloriously, and then in all those who are united to His Son.
He manifests Himself to us as He does not unto the world. Oh, what unbending of divine majesty have we seen! What unveilings of the incomprehensible, what revelations of the infinite has the Lord caused to pass before His church! “I sat down under His shadow with great delight, and His fruit was sweet unto my taste.” “He brought me into the banqueting house, and His banner over me was love.” It is in the midst of His church that we see our Lord and are glad.
III. The Design of the Church in Reference to the Truth
Paul compares it to a pillar and its pedestal or basement, for that, I think, would be a fair translation. The temple of Diana, at Ephesus, was adorned with more than a hundred columns of stupendous size. They were mostly of Parian marble and were either furnished by the various cities of Asia as offerings to the goddess, or were contributed by wealthy men and princes. These pillars are said to have been immense monoliths—single stones of 60 feet in height—and they were set upon a basement, elevated ten steps above the surrounding area.
Diana had her pillar and her basement, but she had no pillar or basement of the truth—hers was all imposture throughout. Now, Paul calls the church of God the basement and pillar of the truth. What does He mean? Notice that she is not the creator of the truth, or the inventor and fashioner of doctrine. You would think from the talk of certain divines nowadays, that the church of God must surely be a manufactory of notions, a school of inventions where clever men think out new gospels for new times, or, like spiders, spin out of themselves fresh webs as the old ones are broken.
Our admiration is solicited for those who are “abreast of the times” and who keep pace with the wonderful advance of the 19th century. Now, the church of God is not the inventor of the truth; she is the pillar and basement of it. Let it be remembered, also, that the figure must not be pushed beyond what it was meant to teach. In a certain sense, the church cannot be the pillar and ground of the truth. Truth is true of itself, and owes its origin to God Himself and the nature of things. The church is not here described as the deepest foundation of the truth, for the basement of the pillar of truth rests on a rock, and the church rests on God, the Rock of ages.
But truth in itself is one thing, and truth as it exists in the world is another. You often hear it said at public meetings that truth is mighty and will prevail. I dare say the proverb is true, but if you put a truth away on the shelf and no man mentions it for ages, it will not prevail. Truth never prevails until some living mind believes it, vindicates it, and proclaims it abroad. The person who takes up a grand truth, declares it, fights for it, and makes it known, may be very properly called the pillar and the basis of the cause, for the spread of the principle depends upon him.
We may say of the Reformation, Luther was its pillar and basement. Or, of Methodism, the same might be said of Wesley. Note how in another place, Paul says that James and Cephas and John seemed to be pillars. That is to say, they held up the good cause. There are men alive at this day of whom we may say, “They are the pillars of the cause.” And in the same sense, the church of God is the pillar and the basement of the truth among mankind.
Notice that the text speaks of “the church of God,” meaning all the people of God and not the clergy alone. There is a very grave lesson here. We frequently hear it said, “So-and-so is gone into the church.” Now remember that everybody who has gone into Christ Jesus has gone into the church, but no one else. The clergy are not the church. It would be a great pity if they were. In all churches, it is a great fault if the whole of the people are not recognized in the work of the Lord, in the affairs of His house, and especially in the maintenance of His truth.
As fish are said to stink first at the head, so will you find that the first people to depart from the truth are those who ought to be the very last—namely, the professed teachers of it. If the people could but speak so as to be heard, we should not have one-half the heresy which now defiles the house of God. The people are very often put on one side, as if they were not at all to be considered, but were to be managed and catered to by their spiritual lords. Then, alas, these great ones betray the cause and sell Christ as cheaply as Judas did.
They mix up the teaching of the Spirit with the conceit of the flesh and become so wise that they refuse to know Christ and Him crucified. They will not keep to the Scriptures, but dive down into their own thoughts and imaginations, till they stir the mud at the bottom of their subjects and do not themselves know where they are, nor can any man tell them. Most of the false doctrine in the world has been suggested by those whose very office it is to preach the truth. Hence, the truth is not trusted to the ministry. It is based and pillared upon the whole church.
The poor old bed-ridden sister who sings of Jesus’ everlasting love is quite as much a defender of the faith as an archbishop, and perhaps more. The unlettered peasant, who knows the doctrines of grace by deep experience, and therefore will never let them go, is as true a guardian of the gospel treasure as the most profound scholar, and perhaps far more so. The whole of you who really love God are set for the maintenance of the truth in the world. Under God the Holy Spirit, the cause of truth depends upon you. You are its pillar and its basement.
What does the expression mean—the pillar and basement? I think it means, first, that in the church, the truth should abide. In the church of the living God, it always does abide, even as a pillar stirs not from its place. In the confession of the church made by each of her members, in the teaching of her ministers, and in the witness of the whole body, truth will be found at all times. The church of God is not the quicksand of the truth, but the pillar and pedestal of it. She is not the floating island of the truth, but the eternal column of it. The church stands steadfast and unmovable as a pillar of truth fixed on its base. If you find not the truth anywhere else, you will find it in the church of the living God, which is truth’s castle and stronghold.
“In which church?” you ask. I said in the church of the living God. I did not say in the Church of England, or in the Church of Scotland, or in the Wesleyan church, or in the Baptist church, or even in the assembly of Exclusive Brethren. But I did say that the truth of God is as a treasure in the church of the living God, and it is never removed from her keeping. Therefore, if the truth is not maintained by any so-called church, it is not the church of God.
When the truth is given up, everything is given up. The very idea of a church involves the retaining of the truth with constant steadfastness. If this is neglected, the so-called church has nothing left in it but the name. As a pillar and its base are always in one place, so must the church be a fixed, permanent, and unalterable column of gospel truth. Woe to her if she is not.
Conclusion
May we, as the church of God, continue steadfast in our responsibility to uphold the truth, glorify the living God, and faithfully maintain the pillars of the faith. Let us never forget our calling and duty to be firm in the truth, even in the face of opposition and error. May God strengthen us for the task ahead. Amen.