- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
The Spiritual Society (1 Peter 2. 4-10).
By J. H. Jowett.
“As you come to Him . . . you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.”
“As you come to Him!” The living stones are to find their bond of union in the living Christ. The alpha of all enduring communion is Christ. We cannot prepare the individual stones without Christ. We cannot build the individual stones into a house without Christ. He is the “corner stone” and the pervading strength of every enduring structure.
We may have connections, clubs, fleeting and superficial relationships, but the only enduring unity is that which is built on faith. Apart from Christ there can be no cohesion. The Word of God proclaims it and history confirms it. Every preposition seems to have been exhausted by the Word of God in emphasizing the necessity of a fundamental relationship with Christ, “in Christ”, “through Christ”, “by Christ”, “with Christ”, “unto Christ”. In every conceivable way Christ is proclaimed as the all-essential. We have to reckon with the Christ. We cannot ignore Him, He will not be ignored.
We either use Him or we fall over Him. We use Him and rise into strength, or we neglect Him and stumble into ruin. We either make Him the “head of the corner” or He becomes our “stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence”.
Societies, families and nations which are not built upon Christ fall to pieces, thrown into ruin by the very “law of the spirit of life”. But have not societies been built upon the Christ and yet been far from manifesting the glory of a radiant communion? It is when the different communities have got away from Christ that their communion has been destroyed. It is when the sects get away from the spirit of the Christ, when they become wranglers about a letter, when they are heated by the fever of personal vanity and lust for the spoils of sectarian triumph, it is then that the spiritual house collapses and lies scattered in a heap of inhospitable fragments. But when we build upon Him, when He, and He only, is precious, when all our personal aims are merged in line with His, when we have the Spirit of Christ, then are we bound into a gracious communion, into a vital and fundamental unity.
The Nature of the Society
He will build us into a “spiritual house”, a spacious home, enclosing but one tenant, the gracious Spirit of God. He will distinguish us as “an elect race”, moving in the world, yet not of it, standing out in strong relief from the discordant and fragmentary life by which it is surrounded. He will endow us with all the dignities of “a royal priesthood”, having kingly and priestly prerogatives, reigning with Christ in the realm of the spirit and exercising a powerful ministry of intercession in the most holy presence of God. He will constitute us “a holy nation”, a people whose policies shall be purities and whose statecraft shall be the enlightened administration of large and unselfish minds. This is what our God is prepared to make of us. It is a great ideal, but then we have a great Father and a wonderful Saviour and a mighty Spirit. It is a grand house which the Lord would build, and if only He had the stones the majestic edifice would speedily be reared.
The Mission of the Society
If even two or three are gathered together by common possession of the Spirit of Christ into a sanctified society, what purpose is to be achieved by their communion? They are to “declare the praises of Him who called them out of darkness into His wonderful light”. The “elect race” will be distinguished by its cheeriness, its geniality, its radiant sympathies, its abounding optimism. It will be of little use our professing that we are “called into wonderful light” if we are only the home of controversy, or of brooding melancholy and depression. The redeemed society is composed of “children of light”. We are to prove that “now we are the people of God”, that we have been brought into the kingdom of God, and we are to prove it by bringing into common affairs the air of a better country, a finer temper, a nobler spirit. “Our citizenship” is to be “in heaven”, and we are to “declare the praises of God”.
Such is to be the ministry of the spiritual society which our Father will create out of His reconciled and sanctified children. Such is to be the “spiritual house”, built up of “living stones”, and having as its one and only foundation - Jesus Christ, our Lord.
From: ‘The Redeemed Family of God’.