01.08. Chapter 08 - Clerisy and Ecclesiasticism

Chapter 08 Clerisy and Ecclesiasticism

There is no position that we can take, however right it may be, that will free us from the dangers of Satan’s snares. We have no sooner escaped them in one direction, than we realize that we have come nearer to them in another direction. The Church truly is militant. To have learned our proper, God-given place in the ranks is a very different thing from withdrawing from the battle. In fact, Satan specially attacks those who are walking with God, God permits us to learn spiritual warfare so that every spiritual sense will be forced into activity, that we may “by reason of use, have our senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (Heb 5:14) and also to make us learn thereby, the value of what is our own, as men realize the value of what they are in danger of losing. In Israel’s wilderness journey, all the people were in the camp. The dangers that surrounded them were dangers for all alike. Further, in Christianity, the warfare comes nearer to us in proportion to how spiritual we are. And there is no non-combatant class. There are none, by sex or any other way, exempted from the drill, discipline and actual encounter. Just as every Christian is both a priest and a minister of Christ, so every Christian is a soldier of Christ, and to be a good one, he must have the knowledge of his spiritual weapons, the nerve and dexterity (only acquired by practice) to use them, and an understanding of the tactics of the enemy he faces.

There are leaders in this warfare. In Israel, every person was ranked under his captain. But, there is a great difference between fleshly and spiritual warfare. In man’s warfare, the responsibility assumed by the leader removes responsibility from those who follow him, and one may admire those who go at the will of another, knowing that, perhaps, someone has made a mistake.

However, in spiritual warfare, we may pity but not admire such followers. The responsibility of the leader removes none of the responsibility from the follower. If the follower is misled, he is guilty of being misled and has not only compromised himself, but the whole cause with which he is identified. He is guilty because there is only one infallible Leader for His people, whose voice is to be heard everywhere amid all the din of the battlefield. The responsibility of every lesser leader is to make men listen to that Voice: every one of these leaders has to say, “Be you followers (imitators) of me, even as I also follow Christ” (1Co 11:1).

If we value the welfare of God’s people we must press on them their personal responsibility to God, and that no one can save them from it in any part of Christian practice. Yet, the great mass of Christian men and women seek to escape from their responsibility. They believe in the practice of substitution — letting someone else do it — in almost every line of Christian activity. Specially in that which concerns the assembly, this principle of substitution so blinds the eyes and so leads God’s people astray that it calls for the strongest repudiation by each person to whom the Lord has given any ability to influence the minds of his fellows. This form of substitution proceeds from that state of spiritual sluggishness like that of Pro 6:10-11, “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep; so shall your poverty come as one who travels (a tramp) and your want as an armed man.” My Christian friend, allow no one to stand between you and Christ! Christ alone is your Master. You must give account to Him alone. The vigor, brightness and faithfulness of your life depends on how you abide (remain) in dependence on Him alone. Of course, you don’t refuse the help that He gives you through another: that would be pride and self-sufficiency. God has given us to each other for all the mutual help we can give. Don’t let that truth be weakened in the least. But we fall into one of Satan’s most subtle and successful traps when we allow the esteem (respect) we have for one another, the rightful confidence in someone’s genuineness, wisdom, godliness, etc., to make him the director of our consciences in the things of God. Such would be Romanism in principle, for Romanism gives Christ a human vicar (substitute) — the Pope — to whom people give Christ’s place, as if Christ was far away from His people.

We must seek no substitute for ourselves and have no substitute for Christ. We must not falsify our blessed relationship with Him, into which He has brought us. We must be completely with and for Him. We must have nothing worldly in our lives. Finally, we must not approve another to fill the offices that we have vacated.

Clerisy means the official taking up by a class (specialized group) among Christians of what the rest — the masses — have given up to them. It means the unspiritualizing of the masses, the laity, who resign the duties for which they are ’unfitted,’ into more capable hands. Of course, they are unfitted only because they give up so much of their relationship to Christ so they can be correspondingly freer for the demands and pleasures of the world. However, people don’t think of it in this way. Most Christians have grown up in a clergy-laity atmosphere and therefore don’t realize its sinfulness or how it cleaves to them. Even if we have escaped from clerisy to some degree, let our spiritual warmth be chilled a little, and almost insensibly and quite informally, we fall into it again.* As an example, doesn’t a person’s sex have something to do with our degree of conscience? Isn’t conscience considered more a masculine than a feminine characteristic? For instance, as to discipline in the assembly, are the women as much exercised about it as the men? Is it even admitted that they have as much right to be exercised? Yet the women are responsible for every act of discipline and if they take part in it with a bad conscience, it will affect their whole spiritual life. In fact, if they are unexercised, they make it a small matter whether they are pleasing God or not, and thus must have either a dull or bad conscience. Some women even have been taught that matters of this nature are outside their realm because they are not part of the assembly or that they are not moral beings.

Many women are inclined to take the place that is so often assigned to them. Whatever the motives, it is a serious mistake. It begins a habit that will cling to them in other things and spread among the men too, until a large part of the assembly simply confirm the judgment of their ’leaders’ and the reign of clerisy is, in practice, established. If serious questions now come before the assembly, the incapacity of the majority will become more apparent. Their habitually unexercised, now-dull consciences won’t have the ability for judgment. The merely human motives which always have swayed them, will sway them still. They will be swayed by arguments that derive their force mainly from the people who use them, or they will drift and perhaps break up under the influence of family and social ties.

Drifting is a serious matter: it always tends towards stranding and breaking up because there is no intelligent guidance of the vessel. This is truer in spiritual things than in natural things because divine wisdom does not govern. This wisdom is only given when formally sought after. In the divisions among the Lord’s people, drifting and the use of human wisdom have always intensified the evil. Christian men and women, really exercised before God, will necessarily walk and act together, but the unintelligent followers of leaders will fall apart with these leaders or break up into smaller fragments (groups) when God permits the inevitable collision to test their spiritual condition. A right spiritual state of the mass of Christians would, to a large extent, hold the leaders in check, who as leaders, naturally lead the divisions; who knowingly or not, have in fact formed divisions. The masses of Christians are responsible for that helpless leaning on their leaders, which leaning has helped the leaders to fall. The masses have lost the One Voice (which never can divide or contradict itself) amid the many, often-discordant voices of men. Thus clerisy — a state of spiritual decline away from Christ — can be remedied only by returning to the One who must be Master in every detail of individual and collective life. We must allow no substitute — no vicar.

We must look beyond the actors in the various divisions among the Lord’s people, for there was a state of things that necessitated the divisions. Wherever you find an unspiritual, unexercised mass that can be wheeled into line at the bidding of some trusted man or men, with at best, only slight knowledge of both the facts and the Scriptural principles connected with the problem, you have the state of things that is at the bottom of the trouble. It is clerisy and ecclesiasticism (devotion to a certain man-made church order). These two things are the complement of one another and they exist among even those who have a horror of them elsewhere, while they don’t realize that they are cherishing the very things that have produced them!

You will hear intelligent Christians say something like this, regarding things in which they have taken definite sides with their party: “Well, we personally didn’t know much about these things, but Mr. X looked into them and we all have confidence in him,” etc. (I leave the word party stand, offensive as it rightly is, because for those who can say the above, they have acted only with a party). Sometimes, even when widespread division has taken place among the Lord’s people, many who divided from each other have never known what was in question, and everything that would have enlightened them was kept from them! How can the commendation “You have kept My Word” apply to such, when they neither knew nor cared enough to find out, to what and how God’s Word applied?

Most assembly decisions involve practical local matters and must be reached on the spot and shouldn’t be spread around. I don’t speak of such things. These are not the matters that usually cause division. What does cause division is usually some question of truth or principle as to which the local assembly has no binding authority at all for others. Of course, if a teacher of error is in their midst and they are satisfied that he subverts the foundations of Christianity, their duty is simple: they must clear themselves. But their decision may be appealed to the Word of God and Christians everywhere are required to consider the appeal. The judgment by an assembly, in this case, has no force whatever unless the assembly can show the evidence of the evil that has necessitated their action. If the doctrine taught was Scriptural, such a decision has no power at all. The Word of God is the charter under which the assembly acts and thus is above all its actions. The Church does not teach or define doctrine! The very semblance of power in the hands of an assembly to set forth what Christians are to receive is to be refused by everyone who would be loyal to Christ. Thus, individual exercise is an absolute must. We cannot hide behind one another. “You have kept My Word” rings in our ears. The truth committed to Christians is the most important trust that they can have. If it could be said of Israel, “What advantage, then, has the Jew? … chiefly, because unto them were committed the oracles of God” (Rom 3:1-2), what then must be the value of our inheritance? God has allowed a few believers to return to something like the simplicity that prevailed at the beginning of the Church and to recognize the common relationship of Christians to one another. He has freed us in measure from the traditions of men and from human inventions in the things of God. He has done all this so we can enjoy and profit by the unadulterated Word of Christ! It is all that we have for blessing. The Holy Spirit, who has taught us both His presence with us and His authority in the Assembly, is the “Spirit of truth” (John 16:13). His great work on earth is to show us the things of Christ. He is the Holy Spirit — holiness is the holiness of truth, sanctification (being set apart to God) is by the truth. We are taught by God to love one another, and this Philadelphian spirit is shown us by the apostle of love (John) to be “love in the truth” and “for the truth’s sake” (2Jn 1:1-2).

Today, men are talking of the unity of Christendom (professing Christianity) and they are proving the practicality of bringing masses of Christians together for many good purposes. But who can expect anything beyond good ends when truth as a whole must be set aside to maintain good fellowship? Differences must be avoided, even gross error condoned, and since “evil company corrupts good morals” (1Co 15:33), what must be the end of such associations without even the guard imposed by discipline maintained in the churches? The Church can maintain the truth only by allowing full liberty for the truth to maintain itself, without sectarian (man-made) restriction of any kind. Where the “doctrine of Christ” is upheld, and thus the gathering to His Name is guarded, Scripture allows for no further restriction on the part of the assembly. The assembly may, of course, always refuse to listen to what is unprofitable and vain, but the truth only gains by being trusted as having full power to speak with its own authority to the believer. “Let the prophets speak … and let the others judge” (1Co 14:29). “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1Th 5:21). Thus, the exercise of conscience is for the blessing of all. Those who can go to sleep under a not-to-be-disputed creed, are wakened up by a lively (but godly) discussion of the Word. The relationship and consequences of truth are, in this manner, searched out and made known. Haven’t we been too afraid of such discussion which, while reverent and brotherly in character, tends to make the truth a present and living issue and therefore to give it power? If God had seen the creed to be the better way to maintain this, He would have given it.