The Christadelphian November 1950, John Carter

“Fellowship (Part 1)”

The subject of fellowship inevitably has an important place in any consideration of God’s ways. From Eden onwards belief in the purpose of God has separated mankind, men of faith being drawn together that they might help each other in the way of life. There seems to exist in man a fatal waywardness which makes him prone to follow human schemes and devices rather than adhere to the revealed will of God. The history of the race, therefore, is a melancholy story of declension in every new development that God has introduced, as is seen in large scale in the antediluvian apostasy, the revolt under Nimrod, and the adoption by Israel of Baal and other gods. We need not therefore be surprised at the history of Christianity.

In every age God has warned men through a succession of preachers—Enoch, Noah and the prophets. In the Christian era the warning preceded the decline, for apart from the guidance of the Spirit in the earlier days, the Christian centuries have been without any direct communication from heaven. The silence will presently be broken in ways that it will be impossible to misunderstand.

The purpose of God by the preaching of the gospel is briefly defined by Peter and James—“that the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe”, to which end “God did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name” (Acts 15:7, 14). The believers among the Gentiles heard the message given as the word of God which effectually worked in them, turning them from idol-worshippers and practisers of pagan abominations into enlightened men and women, worshippers of the living God, whose aim was to walk worthy of God while waiting for His son from heaven. The purpose was not world-conversion; preaching is not the way to achieve that: but at the same time, in view of the gracious and rational character of the gospel—emancipating from fears and providing a completely satisfying rule for life now with a blessed hope for the future—we might expect that those who knew the gospel would keep it unadulterated. Such a view, however, fades away when we read the warnings of the apostles. “Of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them”, “grievous wolves shall enter in among you not sparing the flock” (Acts 20:29, 30). One of the earliest of the epistles foretells a “falling away” and a manifestation of “that man of sin” who would make pretensions to divine honours, while, under the guise of a Christian system, being really founded on “signs and lying wonders, with all deceivableness of unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:9). Men would turn from Truth to fable (2 Tim. 4:4); false teachers among them would introduce “damnable heresies” (2 Pet. 2:1). How could the Christian centuries have been other than what history records without falsifying these utterances of the apostles! How then amidst such widespread decline could the work go on of taking out of the Gentiles a people?

Men who protested against error had perforce “to come out and be separate” to maintain faithfully the testimony in the face of opposition and persecution; but again and again history has repeated itself—the brightness of a new beginning has been dulled by human soiling until the reflection of truth could not be seen. Yet provision was made whereby the corruption could be stayed within a community, and that provision concerns fellowship. Obviously we who believe that in these last days the truth has been revived, should know by what methods that truth can be preserved from both moral and doctrinal declension.

It is significant that the first indication should be found in the Lord’s own teaching. When Peter made his great confession that Jesus was the Christ, the son of the living God, Jesus said that upon that truth, or on Peter as the utterer of it, he would build his church. “Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). With that clear understanding of the future which marked all his sayings, Jesus indicated that beyond the cross, of which he spoke in the context of his answer to Peter, there would be an era of preaching when his church, as against the Jewish church, would be established. Perhaps with a hint of persecution in the reference to the apparent triumph of death, his saying that the gates of hell would not prevail shows that his community—all who are of the truth and who hear his voice (John 18:37)—would be heirs of eternal life. Another reference by Jesus to the church is important in its teaching on fellowship.

Speaking with great seriousness of offences, because of the “hell fire” of which those who offended were in danger, he required the one who knew of the offence to seek out his brother in order that he might be led to realize his trespass, repent and be forgiven. The effort had to be persevering; first alone, then with one or two more, and if the offender would not hear then, said Jesus, “tell it to the church”. Whatever meaning his hearers attached to his words at the time, it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus was thinking of that “church” to which he had made earlier reference. If the offender would not hear the church he had to be “unto thee as a heathen man and a publican”.

The heathen man and the publican were men who were regarded as outside the fraternity of Israel: and the man who will not recognize and admit his sin, the incorrigible man, has to be so regarded by the brethren of Christ. But this position is reached after a decision of the church that a man is not amenable to spiritual influence. The decision of the church binds the member who has initiated the efforts of reclamation: “let him be to thee a heathen man”; and will therefore bind all members of the church.

This method laid down by the Lord is workable; it emphasizes the spiritual aims of the community, its duties to members who err; but it places an offender who is perverse outside the community, thus restricting his power to influence others. The Lord’s instruction is given in connection with personal offence, but the method is not restricted to that sin; from the epistles we find it is extended to others. The decision of the church is “binding”, Jesus said; and he added words which make the duty of obedience a grave one, but which are at the same time an encouragement to righteous judgment by the church, for whatsoever is so “bound” is endorsed in heaven. With that consciousness of being in the presence of the Almighty that marks all the thoughts and sayings of Jesus, he here would have his followers act with a like conviction. In such a spirit unjust motives will be closely watched.

The church or the ecclesia is the whole body of believers—“the church which is his body” (Eph. 1:22); but the word is used appropriately of a part of the church where the members form a community. Thus there was the church, or ecclesia, in Thessalonica (1 Thess. 1:1). The word is used of a meeting of brethren and sisters held in a house of one of its members—“the church in thine house” (Philemon 2). In one large city there might be several ecclesias which found hospitality for their meetings in the houses of brethren so placed that they were able to provide suitable accommodation (Rom. 16:3, 5, 14, 15): but all had a sense of their corporate relationship to each other.

What was the discipline of the early church as revealed in the epistles of the inspired apostles? We have seen their warnings against error; we read in the trouble at Antioch about the circumcision of Gentiles which led Peter into fault, that Paul was quick in defence of a vital principle and Peter was wise and sensible enough to accept reproof and large enough to bear no malice (Gal. 2); we learn of the high code of conduct required of the Christian; we also are informed of the steps to be taken when there was grievous lapse from the moral standard or a denial of essential truth.

There must be no fornicators, covetous, idolaters, railers, drunkards or extortionate, in their company (1 Cor. 5:11). The blasphemer was delivered to Satan (1 Tim. 1:20). A heretic3 must be rejected after the first and second admonition (Titus 3:10), a command which is evidently related to that of Jesus in Matt. 18, and this shows the method of Matt. 18 is one to be generally followed in all cases of error, whether moral or doctrinal.

In the case of grave immorality in Corinth Paul rebuked the ecclesia for failure to take some action. He, though absent, had already judged what should be done and he instructs them in words which have the ring of a formal resolution which the apostle in putting before the meeting: “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh” (1 Cor. 5:3–5). “When ye are gathered together”: the action was that of the community, and it was a formal decision made in an assembly. We may be certain that the method Paul enjoins in this letter he would have all ecclesias follow. The letter to Corinth copied and read by other ecclesias was no less God’s commandment to them than to those in Corinth. Besides that, oral instruction would be given as required and when Paul confirmed the churches and appointed elders, general ecclesial order would be a subject of instruction. There is evidence that such corporate action was the practice during the first two centuries.

The decision of an assembly in such a matter might not be unanimous; some would be more tolerant, some more severe than a decision reached by the ecclesia. Such differences happen today and might be expected in ecclesias of every age, even in the first century. In fact, an allusion in 2 Cor. 2:6–8 suggests that the decision in Corinth was not unanimous. On the repentance of the sinner, his spiritual recovery called for his return to membership of the ecclesia. “Sufficient to such a man is this punishment which was inflicted of many”—now he must be restored and comforted. Is it pressing the words “inflicted of many” too far to find here an indication of a majority vote, with possibly those who had previously defended the action of the offender abstaining from voting? The rule that we “submit one to another” would call for submission of the minority—the only possible way of reaching an effective collective decision in a community.

(To be concluded)

Note on Heresy, from History of the Christian Church, by P. Smith, B.A.

It is to be observed that both Peter and Paul distinctly use the words “heresy” for errors that are to be resisted, condemned and dealt with by severe discipline; not (according to the shallow argument from the etymology of the word) as opinions to be tolerated on the ground of free enquiry and individual conviction. The word which the Greeks used for their own philosophic sects, was naturally applied in a bad sense (like the Latin “factio” and our word “party”) by opposite sects to each other, and the bad sense was now fixed upon it. Paul himself was described by the hired orator of the Jews as “a ringleader of the heresy of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5), and he answered: “After the way they call heresy, so worship I the God of our fathers”. But this wrong application of the word to Christianity itself, did not deter him from branding with it whatever doctrines and practices within the nominal church were opposed to “sound teaching” ... When divisions (schisms) arose in the church in Corinth he wrote that “heresies” must needs arise within to test those who would stand fast. He classes heresies with idolatry and with the most flagrant crimes against morality ... By his own apostolic authority he rejects from the church and delivers to Satan the blasphemers who (such is the powerful figure by which he describes unsound belief and practice) had “put away a good conscience and made shipwreck of the faith”; and in bidding Titus to reject the man who was an heretic after one and a second admonition (3:10) he adds a definition of the very spirit of heresy as a sin of perversity. Peter likens the “false teachers” to the “false prophets among the people” of old as those who will bring into the church “destructive heresies”, at the same time bringing swift destruction on themselves. So clearly did the Apostles treat heresy as pernicious and sinful.