T. Austin-Sparks · 1 of 5

The Threefold Challenge to the Church Which the Lord Will Build

Reading: Matt. 16:16-18.

That with which we are occupied is the nature of that which issues in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The object is what He has called: "My church". We are not now so much concerned with the contemplation of the object, the church, as with a looking into its essential nature, its spiritual factors upon which, and by which, it is constituted, and the very title itself contains the basic and central thing of our consideration, that which issues with the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Now looking at this passage again just for a moment, we recall the familiar elements in it, but do so by way of being able to pass on to something fuller. "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." That is the statement made, and the Lord Jesus says of that statement that it was the result of a revelation from the Father to the one who made it. He took up that statement and declared that upon that truth revealed from heaven, that truth known in heaven, He would build His church. And then almost immediately there comes in a threefold challenge to both the statement and to the church which the Lord declares He will build.

1. The Challenge of the Cross

The first challenge is the challenge of the cross. Notice: "From that time began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed..." (Matt. 16:21). That is the challenge of the cross from man's side; that is what man will do. "And Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from You, Lord; this shall never be unto You. But He turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind Me, Satan: you are a stumbling-block unto Me; for you do no mind the things of God, but the things of men" (Matt. 16:22,23). You have got a deeper element there; the challenge of Satan through carnal nature. It is a challenge to the church. It is a challenge to the intention of Christ. And then you go deeper still: "...and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it". As we speak of that clause you notice the meaning is: "The house of death" - that is meant by "the gates of Hades". And the 'house of death' at this time, at this point, is seen to be something antagonistic and inimical to the divine intention, to the church which He declares He will build. It is seen on its positive side, not as something neutral or latent, but active, opposing, seeking to gain mastery over, or asserting itself against the church. The gates of Hades, the house of death, shall not have power to overcome or to hold down. You see that threefold challenge to a declaration? A challenge in the realm of man, and that religious man. The challenge in the realm of Satan, active through carnal nature in a disciple. And the challenge coming from the deepest depths, the power of death itself.

And when the Lord Jesus says: "I will build My church" in spite of that threefold challenge, He in effect says that "My church" will be something different from and superior to all that. In resurrection all those things will have been put behind, because if He is now going to the cross, and is going to build His church, it means that He must get past that cross, past that killing, and be alive again, so that it will be the Risen Lord who will build the church, and if so, the threefold challenge, with its content, will have been ruled out and overcome.

Now, if you do but recognise it, from this time onwards those are three of the great things which are continuously opposing the building of the church by the Lord Jesus. Religious man, carnal nature in disciples, and the positive power of death. These are the challenges which all truly spiritual work has to meet, and these are the things which in the building of the church are being continuously overcome.

Now for a great illustration of that you turn to 1 Corinthians and that whole letter just sets forth that truth magnificently. In that letter you have the power of natural religion, the philosophy of natural religion, by which the destiny of man is analysed and systematized, and brought in and accepted. It found its way into the Corinthian church, the first, and perhaps the greatest of the churches in the Greek world. And in the early part of this first letter you see the positive activity of that thing here working against the true church, the spiritual church. There is so much more lying behind these two chapters at the beginning of this letter than we have either time or ability to make clear. If you care to resort to some of the standard works on the life and epistles of Paul, you will get great help. Take up Conybeare & Howson's 'Life and Epistles of Saint Paul' and you will get a lot of light on the matter, and you will discover that the whole realm of Greek philosophy, which had as its object the destiny of man - in other words natural religion, the religion of the natural man, the religion of nature - that had crept in and got a hold. And the apostle has to bring in this tremendous emphasis against the wisdom of this world, the wisdom of man, and he shows how the wisdom of this world, and the wisdom of man had accomplished the most calamitous and terrible things in relation to the Lord's Christ, and therefore was opposed to: "You are the Christ", and being opposed to that, was opposed to: "I will build My church." The wisdom of man expressed in terms of the philosophy of religion is a positive antagonist of the pure spiritual church of the resurrection. You may think that that is remote, that that carries you back to Corinth, away back into the Greek world, but it does not. It is very up to date.

The greatest force today against the Christ of God, the Anointed, and the true church of the resurrection, is what is called Modernism. There is no force in this world more positively detrimental to that which the Lord Jesus determined to have. It strikes first of all at the very heart of things because it strikes at the Person of Christ, and striking at the Person of Christ, it strikes at the very nature of His church. And yet it still keeps a Christ, and it still keeps a church, and still seeks to persecute the building of the church that it calls the church of Christ. And the Christ that it has is the Jesus of history and not the Christ of the resurrection; and the church that it has is the church of man's natural ideas about God.

In the days of Elisha the prophet one of the golden calves which had been set up in Israel had its location in those days in Bethel, the House of God. And, unless we are mistaken, we understand that to mean man's natural ideas about God had come to be the characteristic of the House of God, whereas originally Bethel was divine revelation. Now it is reason versus revelation; now it is man's natural conception of the things of God versus His revelation of His own things. Reason is having a Christ and having a church but not the Christ and not the church. It is, rather, opposed. It is a Christ opposed to the Christ. It is the Jesus of history over against the Christ of God in resurrection. It is the church of man's conceiving over against the church born out of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. These two things are running on through the ages over against one another. And the fact that it is so, forms the battlefield and the conflict of the true people of God. To make that perfectly simple, is it not true that our real spiritual conflict is between that which is revealed by the Holy Spirit as being God's mind about His church, and that which man himself has thought out as being God's idea for His church? That is the battlefield. I can put that in another way. The most difficult task that spiritual men and women have is to bring (now I have got to use a word in a very general sense and not in a perfect sense) "Christian" people to see the real nature of the church which is Christ's Body. Something else has become so deeply entrenched in their mentality, having existed for so many centuries, that immediately you touch that thing, question it, doubt it, you meet something that, but for the power of His resurrection, will smash you. What I have said is this: that the whole established, man-made system of the church, so widespread, so deeply rooted, so firmly grounded, so universally accepted, is a thing which you touch at your peril. And you will find that it is there that you meet one of your main antagonisms.

Let me put it this way. You stand with every bit of your being for the true church, the Body of Christ, as a heavenly thing and not an earthly thing - as a spiritual thing and not a thing of man - and you seek to have that true heavenly, spiritual thing made known and expressed among the people of God. And you run counter to something which will rise up against you in the organised system of the church today, which will, as far as it possibly can, break you. I do not mean that it will come out in open persecution, but you will be conscious that you have roused something and that an issue has been raised. Well, that is what is here. The scribes and the pharisees, the elders, represent the church as it was; the accepted order of things, and they were going to put the Christ to death. And He recognises that as one of the things to be reckoned with, and over against that, the worst that they can do, He said: "I will build My church." Now, it is true that that is one of the things that has got to be met in building the true spiritual church of a resurrection order. I could stay with that much longer and make it much clearer, but I think you see through what I am saying. It is more deeply true than you recognise. Try it, and you will know that what I have said is true. If the Lord has revealed to you the true nature of the church which is His Body, and you minister concerning that, you know quite well you meet something else which is called "the church", and that very thing is out against you, but it is still held to be the church. That is in the beginning of the Corinthian letter.

2. The Activity of Satan Through the Carnal Nature of Man

You move into the second challenge as you go on: the activity of Satan through the carnal nature of man. This is a terrific thing that the Lord Jesus says to Simon Peter: "Get behind Me, Satan: you are a stumbling block unto Me." The word there is 'skandalon', a stumbling-block in the way of that object to come into being through that cross, out on the other side, and that has got to be put behind. You come into the Corinthian letter and you find the next thing you meet is that very carnal nature in the disciples. You know what the apostle says here about the natural man, and then he goes on to say: "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal..." (1 Cor. 3:1), and he said: 'You speak and act as men,' the things of men and man, natural and carnal man. And the conditions at Corinth which represent anything but the true resurrection nature of the church, are resultant from that introduction of natural and carnal elements into the church through these Christians.

Well, we can hurry to our conclusion without going very fully into that for it is true that that church which Christ builds on resurrection ground can never be realized only as every natural and carnal element in believers is ruled out and put behind. The cross of the Lord Jesus represents that. The church which He is building is a testimony to the fact that, in the first place He has triumphed, and gloriously triumphed, over all the antagonism of something which claims to be His and is not; and in the next place, it is the testimony to the fact that He has triumphed gloriously over all the power of carnality and the natural man. And if we are being built in this church of the resurrection, we know quite well that our spiritual progress and development runs parallel with, and proportionately with, the setting aside of that which is of nature, and that which is carnal in us.

3. The Positive Power of the House of Death

And then the third thing: the positive power of the house of death, the gates of Hades; death itself. Turn to 1 Corinthians 15, and there you meet it. The whole chapter deals with the matter of resurrection. The words themselves, 'resurrection' and 'raised' occur twenty-two times in this one chapter, so you can see what the chapter is about.

Now, the striking thing about this chapter is the way in which it begins. Of course when Paul wrote it he did not write it in chapters, and did not say: "Now I come to chapter fifteen"! His is a continual narrative, but at this point he breaks in with: "Now I make known unto you, brethren...". Get the force of that. In all that has been said he comes to the point where he says: "Now... brethren...". I want you to get right into the spirit of that, the atmosphere of that. He has been saying something about a good many things which have arisen, questions which have been asked, things which have been troubling this assembly. He has given an answer to them, has dealt with them, and steadily worked his way through that mass as though he were eager to get to something else. These are serious and important things, but they are by the way. They have arisen and they have to be dealt with, but they are by the way. These are not things in the direct line of the church. This represents a detour, and when he gets to chapter 15 it is as though he has now reached the point he has been longing to reach all the way, and he says: "Now brethren we have got that all off, let us get right back to the beginning of things". "Now I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you received...". That is the main thing. All these other things are touched by the main thing; and what is the main thing? "The gospel which I preached unto you wherein also ye stand... For I delivered unto you... first of all that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that He was buried; and that He has been raised on the third day according to the scriptures; and that He appeared to Cephas... and last of all... He appeared to me also. Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?"