The Heavenly Nature, Vocation, and Destiny of the Church as the Body of Christ

The experiences of the cross which lead to a life in the Spirit will normally lead to a corporate realization, an experience “with all the saints.” Sparks concludes his editorial with the church as the Body of Christ:

The next thing, into the spiritual value and significance of which we found ourselves being led, was the heavenly nature, vocation, and destiny of the Church as the Body of Christ.

That which the Lord had done in us through the deeper work of the Cross...resulted in a strange detachment in spirit from the earthly aspect of things religious.

That which the Lord had done in us through the deeper work of the Cross had, among other things, resulted in a strange detachment in spirit from the earthly aspect of things religious. We found ourselves lifted spiritually from the forms and systems, the titles, designations, divisions, and orders of Christianity as here known amongst men: and our concern was for “all saints” without discrimination....

The very object of the Altar—the Cross—is the Church.

The Altar always leads to the House: pointing on to the fact that Calvary leads to the Church. There can be no Church until there has been an Altar, but the very object of the Altar—the Cross—is the Church. And so, with steadily increasing clearness and fulness, there opened to us the reality of the Church as the Body of Christ. Its aspects or meanings are various.

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Firstly, there is the fact that Christ’s exaltation and reign is not just a personal matter where He is concerned. When, at length, Satan and his hosts are dispossessed of the heavenlies and cast down, it will be done through and by the Church in union with Christ as its Sovereign Head, and it will be that Church—Head and Members—that will take the place of that deposed kingdom to fulfill the governmental purpose which they have usurped and evilly exercised in God’s universe. The Lord Jesus will reign and govern through His Church in that age to come.

Then, as being all-of-a-piece with this inclusive purpose, several other things became clear to us.

It is the Church which is of primary concern to the Lord in this dispensation.

It is the Church which is of primary concern to the Lord in this dispensation.

Everything is related to that in His mind and activity. This means, among other things, that all unrelatedness and independence, all that is merely personal, sectional, exclusive or separate must certainly fail to reach God’s full end or to have His seal upon it beyond a certain point. It must inevitably stop short and be spiritually limited. Every Divine provision is unto the securing and perfecting of the Body (Eph. 4:14), and individuals can only reach fullness in a related way….

But when we have said this, and all that we could say of this kind, there remain some other points which call for explanation. They mostly come under and out of the matter of Church order....

There is a company of the Lord’s people who regularly meet at Honor Oak, London….

Thus, having set aside all the former system of organized Christianity, we committed ourselves to the principle of the organic. No ’order’ was ’set up,’ no officers or ministries were appointed. We left it with the Lord to make manifest by ’gift’ and anointing who were chosen of Him for oversight and ministry. The one-man ministry has never emerged. The ’overseers’ have never been chosen by vote or selection, and certainly not by the expressed desire of any leader. No committees or official bodies have ever existed in any part of the work. Things in the main have issued from prayer. We are very conscious that mistakes have been made, but the result of these has only served to re-emphasize the above principles.

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Baptism of believers by immersion has clearly become the only way by which testimony to union with Christ in death and resurrection can truly and rightly be given. The Lord’s Table is seen to be the combination of all the Christian testimonies, i.e., Christ’s death for us; our death in Him; the oneness of all believers in and with Him as “one loaf” (I Cor. 10:17); and the “blessed hope” of his coming again.

We also feel that the Spirit’s way of bearing testimony to the oneness of the Body of Christ is by a simple act of ’laying-on of hands’ by representative members (’elders’) of the Church, particularly in the case of the newly baptized. This is what we believe the Scriptures mean in this connection....

Believing so strongly, as we do, that everything must proceed from the Lord by the Spirit and not be of man, we could never advise or influence people to leave their ’church,’ ’mission,’ or connection. This we have never done, but have carefully avoided doing. Some have mistakenly felt that we meant that they should do so, and have done it. Others have acted under very definite exercise before the Lord. We feel very strongly that this matter must be one which involves the spiritual life, and that it should have no less an issue at stake than the walk with God….

Everything must proceed from the Lord by the Spirit and not be of man.

[We] have always believed that the main purpose for which this ministry was raised up was the feeding, instructing, and helping of the Lord’s people, so that they might do His work more effectively….[W]e recognize without question that a great and essential part of the Church’s business is that of bringing Christ to the unsaved. If unsaved ones were not continually being brought ’into the Kingdom’ among us and through this ministry, we should be most distressed, and should seek earnestly that the Lord would show us the reason why. Hence we do seek, by very definite ways and means, both at home and in other lands, to bring souls to the Saviour. Many have gone from us, during the years, into many parts of the world with this specific burden on their hearts. But, even so, evangelism is a related matter and not an end in itself. We repeat: It is the Church which is the primary and inclusive concern of the Lord in this dispensation….

What we have written above has been but our testimony. We do not give it as a Statement of doctrine, ’Principles and Practice.’ (A Witness and a Testimony, March 1956, “A Statement from the Editor,” pp. 30-33.)

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