“And hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.” Ephesians 1:22-23 Every word in this text is the subject of controversy. There are those who challenge the existence of Deity; there are those who dispute the Divinity of our Lord; there are those who deny the personality and presence of the Holy Spirit; and there are those who deny the reality of revealed religion altogether, however, as we come to this subject of “the Church”, we enter a debate among even those who claim to be Christians!!
Of all the wars, the most bitter and disastrous are civil wars. “The Church” is an occasion of civil war among the folds called Christians that stir up the most intense strife; splits up Christian people into antagonistic and hostile camps. Right away even you, the reader have begun to bristle. This atheistic Christianity, called denominationalism, which denies the oneness of the Body of Christ has inflicted upon Christ’s cause more damage than all the attacks of critics and skeptics from the beginning of revelation until now!! The weakening effect employed in fighting the world, the flesh and the devil, has emptied and scattered the resources of the Church. The swords we turn upon a common enemy we turn against one another. Look at the religious people in America today, rent and torn, divided and hostile, suspicious of one another and often fiercely hostile to one another. Think of this miserable controversy which has been, for all these years, denied when the Holy Book is SO plain on the subject. If these so-called Christian(?) people would only compose their differences by reading and believing what is read in that grand ole’ Book, differences would be settled in a week; but the quarrel drags its ugly head in the mire of religious instruction(?) by those who do not believe the VERY WORDS THEY ARE READING!! This bitter strife, these fierce and incessant quarrels give the devil his opportunity, but also must make the angels weep!!
Unity will never be secured by banishing the question of there being ONE CHURCH AND BUT ONE. Church, it will be gained by arriving at the right views taught in the scriptures!! If there is a difference of view that keeps us apart; it is only a true understanding of WHY there is one Church and but one that will answer!! Behind all division that man and his creeds have devised there still stands the one, pure, sublime, and glorious TRUTH!! The doctrine of the ONENESS of the Church finds its completest statement in the Epistle to the Ephesians, and perhaps the words of the text sum up all the Holy Spirit’s teaching. Christianity was then a very small thing in the world; it had behind it no famous history, rich in heroic memories; it had not expressed itself in a vast literature; it did not preside over the world’s proudest civilization. When uttered by the pen of the greatest of apostles by the direction of the Holy Spirit, Christianity was the creed of a few, obscure communities scattered thinly over the Roman Empire, and composed mostly of the humblest members of that society—slaves, freed-men, and women. The apostle could not be under any false delusion about the Church; and, as a matter of fact, he was now in prison at Rome, in a position well calculated to dampen any enthusiasm about its greatness and singularity; and it was because of the Church he was there!! Paul saw the Church inspired with Divine energies, commissioned for eternal destinies, crowned with heavenly beauty, as the compliment our eternal Lord God, Jesus Christ, the saviour of all who would obey HIM!! All history is petty in comparison with the Church, all history leads to IT, and in its fortunes lie the welfare and purpose of ALL MANKIND AND CHRIST HAD ONLY ONE AND BUT ONE, CHURCH 1Cor 12:20
