The Household Of God: Lectures on the Nature of Church

By Lesslie Newbigin Review by Kevin Jesmer 12/5/11

This book was written by Bishop Lesslie Newbigin. He served God as a bishop of the Church in South India. After serving as a Bishop he was the associate general secretary of the World Council of Churches. Later in his career he served as a bishop in Madras starting in 1965.

This book sets out to discuss the nature of the church itself. The first chapter discusses the biblical meaning of the word, “Church”, especially how the church’s foundation is faith in Jesus. Then there are three chapters that talk about church, touching upon what Catholic, Protestants and Pentecostals think about “church”. The last two chapters state that the church is must maintain it’s unity and it’s mission . (Info obtained from the back cover of the book.)

The first part of the author seemed to be talking about Faith and defining what Christian faith is and how the church is built on faith. Just as you can not separate the body from the soul, so too, you can not separate faith from the outer expression of faith, which is the church. Being in Christ necessarily means that a person should be part of a visible church. It is an inseperable relationship. It does not make sense otherwise.

The church should follow the Spirit of God. The movement of the church should be initiated and empowered by the Holy Spirit. The followers of Jesus should follow based on a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

Later he begins to talk about splinter groups in the church. He is not in favor of the formation of all kinds of small church groups. He states that schisms are a bi-product of protestant reformation theology. There should not be a separated church. The breach of unity is a violent contradiction to the gospel. Newbiggin refers to Genesis and the character of Christ and the Trinity to show that outer expressions of unity within the church are essential. After all, in the carrying out the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, there is one loaf, one cup and one undivided fellowship.

The chapter on the Holy Spirit is challenging. In the protestant tradition we tend to accept a person into the church if the believe a certain set of teachings or if the elders of the church laid hands on the person. But we do not take “receiving the Holy Spirit” into our considerations. Why? They sure considered this in the New Testament.

The Holy Spirit makes church possible. The Holy Spirit brings together many “clashing” wills. He makes our calling and election sure. He brings the joy of God and of salvation into our souls. The Holy Spirit is the source of our regeneration. By the help of the Holy Spirit we can develop the quality of Christian life and the spiritual life in the church.

The author goes on to expound on a good explanation of the Gospel and its inner mechanics. He explains the gospel as personal salvation experience. It is based on experiential knowledge. There is and overlapping of personal experiences with the Spirit over time that make up the church.
He talks about the double paradoxes of the gospel; life through death, having but not yet having, I live, but yet I don’t live for it Christ who lives in me, loss of self only for self to be found in the “beloved”, the church has a Sabbath rest and at the same time suffers in the present age, the church is both holy and sinful. Maybe he mentioned these things to reveal the mystery of Christ and his church and our need for the Holy Spirit to come to a personal experience with Christ.

The last 30 pages of the book were filled with some great quotes…

Concerning judging others….

“We ourselves should be castaways. The final judgment belongs to God alone on the last day. We are to judge nothing before the time. Every attempt to slacken the eschatological tension by supposing some true church within the church, involves a concealed-and sometimes open pharisaism. …’nominal Christians’ are always other people! When this attempt is allied with a distinction between the so-called spiritual church and the so-called material or institutional church, a distinction which violates the whole biblical doctrine of the unity of creation, then the way is opened wide for a profoundly unevangelical and un-Catholic sectarianism.” (p. 128)

“Final judgment belongs to God, and we have to be aware of judging before the time. I think that if we refuse fellowship in Christ to any body of men and women who accept Jesus as Lord and show the fruits of the spirit in their corporate life, we do so to our peril. With what judgment w judge we shall be judged. It behoves us to receive one another as a Christ received us.” (p. 133)

“To accept one another as we are does not mean leaving one another as we are. It is precisely the beginning of a process of mutual correction and of speaking the truth in love to one another in a way that is impossible so long as we do not treat one another as brethren.” (p. 134)

“We have too long devoted our strength to mutual accusation and self-defense, on the basis of what the churches are. Surely it is time for us to meet one another un penitent acknowledgement of our common failure to be what the church ought to be. On the basis of what we are, none of us can be said to possess the esse of the church.” (p. 134)

“None of us has any standing save in that mercy. The mark of our calling will surely be looking forward and hurrying forward which are a sort of echo of the grace of God who quickens the dead and calls the things that are not as through they were, a determination to cease judging one another for what we are, and to build one another up in faith and hope and love into what He has called us to be.” (p. 134)

Concerning the mission of the church…

(This is not a quote) Part of the identity of the church is found in fulfilling the mission of God to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth. The end is delayed for not other reason other than to make it so that all people may believe. (p. 139) The fulfillment of this mission is necessary for a church to maintain it’s “esse.” A church that has lost its sense of mission has lost its esse. It may still be a church, but not titles for the church, found in the New Testament may be laid upon it. Church and mission go together.

“Our missionary methods seem to suggest that we expect infinitude of time in which the Church on earth can gradually be extended until it covers the whole globe. But the conception of the Church which we tend to reproduce as the fruit of our missionary work is so much a replica of our own, so much that of a fundamentally settled body existing for the sake of its own members rather than of a body of strangers and pilgrims, the sign and the instrument of a supernatural and universal salvation to be revealed, that our missionary advance tends to follow the lines of cultural and political expansion, and to falter when the advance stops.” (p. 145)

“…the very general belief that the Church can exist without being a mission involves a radical contradiction of the truth of the Church’s being, and that no recovery of the true wholeness of the Church’s nature is possible without a recovery of its radically missionary character.” (p. 148)

I agree that we have to be a mission focused church. But how do we preach the Gospel in a “hands off” culture, where people don’t appear to want Biblical discipleship and seem too busy to slow down to consider the teachings of Jesus. Part of the mission of the church is to grow in unity so that we can be a better witness of the Gospel to the world.

Concerning our disunity…

“Unity is in order that the world may believe.” (p. 149)

“There is one Lord, one faith, one atoning act, and one baptism by which we are made participants in the atonement. In so far as we, who share that faith and that baptism, prove ourselves unwilling or unable to agree together in one fellowship, we publically proclaim our disbelief in the sufficiency of that atonement.” (p. 150)

“And therefore the world does not believe, because it does not see the signs of an atonement so profound and complete that all mankind in all its infinite variety and contrariety can find there its lost unity.” (p. 150)

“As we confront each other – divided by our sundered traditions of speech and practice, yet drawn together by the work of the living Holy Spirit so that we cannot recognize Christ in one another- we are forced through the crust of our traditions to a fresh contact with the living Christ.” (p. 150)

“…I do not think that the world will believe that Gospel until it sees more evidence of its power to make us one.” (p 152)

“Our task is, firstly, to call upon the whole Church to a new acceptance of the missionary obligation to bring the whole world to obedience to Christ; secondly to do everything in our power to extend the area of co-operation between all Christians in the fulfillment of that task, by seeking to draw into the fellowship of the ecumenical movement those who at present stand outside of it to the right and to the left; and thirdly, to press forward unwearyingly with the task of reunion in every place, until all who in every place call upon the name of Jesus very visibly united all in one fellowship, the sign and the instrument of God’s purpose to sum up all things in Christ, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be all the glory.” (p. 152)

We need to have spiritual unity. I was one of those who had a sense of mission, but judged what I thought were nominal Christians. I held onto my own stringent belief systems and rarely considered my relationship with the Holy Spirit and depended on the Holy Spirit. God is using my oldest daughter, and her growing independence, to help me to trust in the Holy Spirit. I thank God that we enter into greater unity with the DeKalb Christian Church and with other area churches.