This is the 7th chapter from A. T. Jones’s book “Lessons on the Reformation”. An excellent study for one wanting to understand the difference between the visible and the invisible church, and Who is “Head” of the church.
THE REFORMATION HEAD of the CHURCH
Chapter Vll of the book Lessons on the Reformation
by
A. T. Jones
When the Reformers once saw The Church, it was easy for them to see The Head of The Church.
When Wicklif, Militz, Matthias, Huss, and Jerome, saw The Church of the Scriptures, it was not difficult for them to see that the Roman Church is the infinite imposture that she is.
Then also it was just as little difficult for them to see how infinitely impossible it is for anybody but the Divine Christ Himself in Person to be The Head of The Church. Therefore,
Wicklif said: “The Church stands in no need of a visible head.”
“So long as Christ is in heaven, The Church hath in Him the best pope. And that distance hindereth Him not in doing His deeds: as He promiseth that He is with His always to the end of the world.”
“We dare not put two heads, lest The Church be monstrous. Therefore the Head above is alone worthy of confidence.”
Huss said: “Christ is the all-sufficient Head of The Church: as He proved during three hundred years of the existence of The Church, and still longer, in which time The Church was most prosperous and happy.”
“Why should not Christ be more present to The Church, than the Pope, who, living at a distance of more than eight hundred miles from Bohemia, could not himself act directly on the feelings and movements of the faithful in Bohemia, as it is incumbent on The Head to do?”
“Christ, who is seated at the right hand of the Father, must necessarily govern the militant Church as its Head. Christ can better govern His Church . . . without such monsters of supreme heads.”
“He alone is the secure, unfailing, and all-sufficient refuge for His Church, to guide and enlighten it.”
“It injures not The Church, but benefits it, that Christ is no longer present to it after a visible manner: since He Himself says to His disciples, and therefore to all their successors (John 16 : 7), `It is good for you that I go away; for if I went not away the Comforter would not come to you; but if I go I will send Him unto you.’
“It is evident from this, as the truth itself testifies, that it was a salutary thing for the Church militant that Christ should ascend from it to heaven: that so His longer protracted bodily and visible presence on earth might not be prejudicial to her.
In the Leipsic disputation occurred the following: —
Dr. Eck. — “The Church militant is an image of The Church triumphant. But the latter is a monarchical hierarchy rising step by step up to the sole Head who is God.
“Accordingly Christ has established the same gradation on earth.
“What kind of a monster would The Church be if she were without a head?”
Luther. — “The doctor is correct in saying that the universal Church must have a Head. If there is any one here who maintains the contrary, let him stand up! The remark does not at all apply to me.”
Dr. Eck. — “If the church militant has never been without a monarch, I should like to know who that monarch is if he is not the pontiff of Rome?”
Luther. — “The Head of The Church militant is not a man, but Jesus Christ Himself. This I believe on the testimony of God. Christ must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet.
“We cannot, therefore, listen to those who would confine Christ to The Church triumphant in heaven. His reign is a reign of faith. We cannot see our Head, and yet we have Him.”
After His rising from the dead, the Lord Jesus was here on the earth forty days personally and bodily with His disciples, “seen of them.”
In these forty days He walked with His disciples, He ate with them, He talked with them. He talked with them “of the things concerning the kingdom of God”: that is the things concerning The Church.
Beyond all question then, during that period of forty days The Church as on earth had a “visible Head.” And that visible Head was her own, true, only, Head: visibly with her and in her, teaching and counselling.
Why did He not stay thus with His Church until now? Why did He not continue always as the visible Head of The Church?
If in any degree or under whatever plea a visible head could ever by any possibility be needed, then He should have continued as that visible Head while He was so: and not to do so would plainly be to deprive The Church of that which she needed.
As visible Head, could not He have guided The Church as in the world, in all her affairs? Could not He have done this from Jerusalem while Jerusalem was the religious centre of the world, and then from Rome when Rome became the religious centre?
And could not He have done this infinitely better than ever could any pope or king or president or committee or board that ever sat in Jerusalem, or Rome, or London, or Washington, or Salt Lake City, or Chicago?
Yet He did not stay in the world as visible Head of The Church here.
But did He leave, did He cease to be visible Head of The Church here, in order to give that place and opportunity to men, as popes or kings or presidents or superintendents or committees or boards, to do their worldly, political, fantastic, fiddling, sinful tricks?
Did He care so little as that for The Church which He had loved to the point of giving Himself for it?
Did He care so little as that for any solitary individual of The Church, when each of these individuals He had loved to the point of giving Himself for Him in the agonies of the Cross?
No, no, no. “Having loved His own, He loved them to the end.” “I have loved thee with an everlasting love,” “the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
In this love He had left heaven and all its glory and joy, to be with men on the earth because they needed Him.
In this love He had stayed with men on the earth, as long as they would allow Him to stay.
And when men would not let Him stay any longer, but crucified Him out of the world — after all that, in only three days He came back again: back to His own because they needed Him.
And He stayed there with them forty days, when any minute He might have gone straight to heaven and stayed there in all its beauty and glory and joy.
All this proves over and over that of His own free choice the Lord Jesus would rather be on earth with needy men than to be in heaven with the perfect God.
Yet against all this He went away from being visible Head of His Church here. And this proves beyond all possibility of question that however great may be the need of men — even His own men in His own Church — there never can be any need of Him as visible Head of His Church here.
And when there can be no need of Him as visible Head, then beyond all conception there can never be any need of any other.
And He did not go away to be away: for He said, “I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you.” John 14:18.
Therefore His going away from being visible Head of His Church here, was just because of the need of His people and Church here. This again certifies that instead of His people and Church ever needing Him to be visible Head, their constant need is precisely that He shall not be that.
And this need of The Church that He should not be visible Head was so great that it could overcome all His overwhelmingly demonstrated desire to be here with His people and Church.
He did not say, It is expedient for Me that I go away.
He did not say, It is expedient that I go away.
But He did say, “It is expedient for you that I go away.”
Therefore, His going away from being visible Head of His Church, or of any individual, was altogether on our behalf.
And so He said: “It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you. But if I depart, I will send Him unto you.” John 16 : 7.
And here is why that is: “I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever.
“Even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him.
“But ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you and shall be in you.
“I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.”
That is to say: When the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, comes to you, by Him I myself will come to you.
The Holy Spirit does not come, to be here apart from Christ; but to bring to us the personal presence of the living Christ Himself. As it is written —
“Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.”
And this is in order “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.”
And this in order “that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”
Thus the Holy Spirit comes, He is sent, not that He may be here of Himself; but that by Him both the Father and the Son may be with each believer and with The Church.
So completely is this so that the Spirit never speaks as of Himself, or from Himself, but only what He hears through Christ From God, As it is written: “He shall not speak of Himself; but what He shall hear, that shall He speak.”
“He shall glorify Me; for He shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine. Therefore said I that He shall take of Mine and shall show it unto you.” John 16:13-15.
When Jesus was in the world, He was not here to be in the place of God; but that God might be here Himself, in His own place.
Jesus emptied Himself, that God might appear to men. And so “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.” Phil. 2: 5-7; 2 Cor. 5:19.
Jesus emptied Himself and became in all things one of us, so that God with Him should be “God with us.” Heb. 2: 11, 14, 17; Matt. 1:23.
Accordingly, He said, “I came not to do mine own will; but the will of Him that sent me.” “The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself.”
“The Father which sent me, He gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. Whatsoever I speak, therefore, even as the Father said unto me so I speak.” John 6:38; 14:10; 12:49, 50.
Just so it is with the Spirit of Truth now. He is here not to do His own will; but the will of Him who sent Him. The words that He speaks are not His; but the words of Him who sent Him. In His teaching us all things, He does it only by bringing to our remembrance all things that Christ has said unto us. John 14:26.
As God was in Christ in the world, so Christ is in the Spirit in the world. As Christ came to us so that God with Him might be God with us, so the Spirit comes to us and is in us, in order that Christ may come to us and be in us, and in The Church.
And when, on Pentecost, Christ thus came to His disciples, and took up His abode with them, and in The Church, He was then the Head of The Church no less and no less personally than He was in the forty days when He was visibly with them. Yea, not merely no less, but much more.
And He was just so much the more the visible Head now than He was in those forty days.
It is only the fallacy of men spiritually blind to argue since Pentecost about the “visible” and the “invisible” Head of The Church, or about the “visible” and the “invisible” Church.
In that period of forty days He was visible Head of the Church, in the sense of His being visible to their natural eyes and discernible with their natural sensibilities.
And He was that only because that as yet they were unable to see with spiritual eyes and discern with the spiritual sensibilities.
But the Pentecostal baptism translated them out of the natural into the spiritual. And what before was invisible was now visible. Now they could see the invisible.
Thus to them Christ was now more visible, and more truly visible, than ever He was before. And they never talked about any “invisible” Head of The Church, nor any “invisible” Church. There was no such thing, to them. And now to those who know that baptism, and so know The Church, there is no such thing.
Jesus said that “the world cannot receive” the Spirit of Truth “because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him.” And the world knows Him not, because it sees Him not. “The world” must see — must see with the world’s eyes, and in the world’s way — or else it will not know.
And worldly men and the worldly church — the church of “the world” — must see something: must see a “visible church,” and a “visible head of a visible church”: or else they never can know anything of the church. And so they never do either see or know anything of The Church.
But thank the Lord, to all who are His, the Lord Jesus says, “But ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”
And by receiving Him, by His dwelling with us, and being in us, we see.
Therefore, to all people the gracious word is spoken, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” “Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
But whosoever receives the Holy Spirit in the heavenly baptism in the power that brings forth a new creature — he knows and sees.
He can see spiritual things. He can see The Church. He can see the Head of The Church. For the Head of The Church says plainly: “Yet a little while and the world seeth Me no more. But ye see Me.” John 14: 19.
To the Christian — the spiritual man — there is neither invisible Church, nor invisible Head of The Church: for he can see the invisible. To him the invisible is visible.
But to the natural man, to the man of “the world,” everything that is real and abiding is invisible, because he cannot see. To all these there must be a “visible church” and then a “visible head” of the “visible church” and then a “visible” representative of the “visible” head of that “visible” church. And in the dizzying whirl of this fallacious thing the church, the head, and all becomes invisible and he never sees anything.
For of all the dull tricks of the “sleight of men” in their “cunning craftiness,” this of a “visible” church is the dullest and the dumbest.
Nobody ever saw a “visible church.” Nobody ever saw the Roman church; nobody ever saw the Episcopal
church; nobody ever saw the Methodist church; not any other such thing that is called a church.
When brought down from etherialism to plain fact of sober inquiry and sound sense, the elusive thing is always invisible.
Any person can test this for himself any minute. There is not such a dearth of them that for that reason it should be difficult to see one. There are thirty-one of them in the Federal Council alone.
Let any person look for only one of these — largest or smallest. Let him ask the aid of some one who is of one of these “visible churches”: Please sir, I wish to see the “visible church.” Can you show it to me? or direct me to where I can see it?
He would not know what either to say or do.
Possibly he might tell you to wait till the meeting of the General Council or the General Synod, or the General Assembly, or the General Conference, or the General Convention. “Then the representatives of the church from all parts of the world will be assembled,” and you can see it.
You go to one of these assemblies of the “visible” church. You look it over. You ask: —
“Is this the____church?
“Oh! no. This is not the church itself; this is a very small part of the church. But this represents the church.
“I do not want to see a representative nor a representation of the church. I have seen that many times. What I want now is to see the____church itself.
“But, brother, you cannot do that. In that sense the church cannot be seen. It is all over the world.
“Is your church a visible church?
“W-e-l-l, why of course every denomination and `organized church’ is a visible church.
“But just now you told me that what is really your church cannot be seen. Is it visible, then? Is that visible that you confess cannot be seen?
“But the official, organized, representative body — that can be seen.
“But is that the real church? Is that the visible church?
“N — n — o — o — it is not really that.
“Then your church is not a visible church, is it?
“Well, it does seem so.”
And that is the truth of everything ever in the world that has been held or claimed to be a “visible church.”
There is no such thing. It is a sheer delusion.
But under cover of that deluding sleight of cunningly crafty ecclesiastics, the Roman church has rung in on men and the world that visible head that is the papacy in all that it ever was.
And under cover of that same sleight continued from the same source, every other denomination has been able to ring in on men in one from or another, the same thing in principle, of a visible head as nearly like the Romish original as it can be carried without general revolt.
There is no such thing as the “visible church.” Everything claiming to be the church, is invisible.
The Church in truth, is truly and properly invisible because it is wholly spiritual. It is Christ’s body and His body is invisible.
But this truly and rightly invisible Church is invisible only to those who are not spiritual, those who cannot see the invisible.
Yet the true and only possible Head of this truly and rightly invisible Church has freely poured out upon all flesh His Holy Spirit, and is ever graciously inviting all people to receive this Divine Spirit that
they may know the things of the Spirit, the things of God.
Thus every soul in the world is shut up to the one single alternative of —
The invisible church that is a delusion and an imposture, or
The truly and rightly invisible Church that is an eternal excellency, and whose glorious Head is He whose goings forth have been from the days of eternity and who bestows the inestimable gift of eternal life, and rewards with eternal glory the acceptance of the gift.