Which church is the true church?

The true church, that which the Lord spoke of in Matt. 16 as "My church," is not a great organization held together by human power and wisdom, but is made up of all who have in sincerity owned Jesus as their Lord and Saviour; all such have a vital link with Him as the Son of God, and are not Christians by profession only. They are united in one body to Christ, who is their Head in heaven. This is a unity that is of God, and it will abide for ever; the other is a unity that is of the devil and it will perish in the depths of perdition. The mystery of iniquity doth already work, and Rome is making rapid progress towards its desired end, clearly showing that we are in "the last days." The growing love of ritual and popish practices in the English and other state churches are an evidence of this, and of the power and influence that it already wields. Oh, Christians, let us be fully awake to the situation. There are two great unities in Christendom, and they are growing to completion. The Spirit of God is the power in one, and the spirit of evil works in the other. We must be wholeheartedly in that which is of God and separate from that which is corrupt and of the devil. "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing" (2 Cor. 6:1).

May God help us to remember that in His sight every true believer, no matter what his race, his language, his color: no matter whether Jew or Gentile: no matter to what sect or division of man he may be joined, in God's sight they all belong to the one body, the Church. This is the true Church of God, and every true believer throughout the whole world is part of it. The Scriptures do not speak of members of that church. We are members of His body, as my finger, my eye, my foot is a member of my body; but, the expression "members of a church" is unknown in the New Testament.

God’s Word only knows one church. This church consists of all believers. They have been joined together in one body, not through membership of an organisation but by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13 and Eph.1:23).

We are next told of the Fathers and of the unity of the church. Of the latter I have spoken already. It is natural that, when men are in possession of a wide field of power, they should not wish it to be broken up. We have already seen that the true church, the body of Christ, united livingly to Him by the power of the Holy Ghost, is, and must be, as seen of God, always one; and that it will shine forth as one in glory. And we have seen that what is called the church-Christendom — is divided; and that the boast of the Romish body of being one within itself proves nothing as to the unity of the whole church; while the truth is that nothing can be more evident than this, that it is not the true church at all but the most corrupt of any body that pretends to the name; its marks fallacious; while, as to truth and holiness and spiritual union with a heavenly Head, she avoids the test of truth, belies in practice the test of holiness, as every honest conscience knows and as I shall shew hereafter, and has another head of unity on earth in place of Christ.

What then is the “one body”? (Eph. 4:4.) The Church of Rome is not even the catholic church; much less can she be the “one body.” Catholic means universal, so that the millions of the Greek and Anglican and other churches are so many millions of living witnesses against the catholicity of the Romish church. It cannot be either the one church, or the one body, being but a division — and the same remarks apply to every other division.

But we must bear in mind that the apostle could not possibly address such words to any human organisation, ancient or modern. No; nor if all such organisations, call them what you please, were amalgamated into one, could he speak of it as "the body of Christ." That body, let it be distinctly understood, consists of all true believers on the face of the earth. That they are not gathered on that only divine ground, is their serious loss, and their Lord's dishonour. The precious truth holds good, all the same — "There is one body;" and this is the divine standard by which to measure every ecclesiastical association and every religious system under the sun.

152 The fact is, the Church is labouring under kingly prohibition to the Reformers to act upon the light which had opened upon their consciences. We have this statement in the homily for Whitsunday, "The true church is an universal congregation or fellowship of God's faithful and elect people, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. And it hath always three notes or marks whereby it is known: pure and sound doctrine; the sacraments ministered according to Christ's holy institution; and the right use of ecclesiastical discipline."

Will the editor say that there is the right use of ecclesiastical discipline in the Church of England? If not, it is not the Church of God at all; and for the plain reason that holiness ceases to be a characteristic of it. Truth, fellowship and holiness constitute the Church: take away either, and the Church is gone. The two latter the Church of England has not at all: the former, defectively.

The first epistle to Timothy furnishes us with some precious thoughts in a short sentence: "The house," it is said (chap. 3:15), "of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." Here we stand on ground more connected with the practical character of the Church upon earth. It is the house of God — it is there that truth is found and nowhere else; there alone is it maintained in the world. Let us understand this declaration. The Church does not create the truth, but has been created by it. It adds to it neither authority nor weight. The truth is of God before it is received by the Church; but the latter possesses it. It exists because it possesses the truth, and it alone possesses it. Where, besides in the Church, is the truth found? Nowhere. The supposition that the truth is anywhere else would be the denial of the truthfulness and ways of God. The truth can be nothing but what God has said; it is the truth, independently of all church authority; of any but that of God, who is the source of it. But where the truth is, supposing a body to be constituted by its means, there is the Church; and the Church which possesses it, and subsists by possessing it, thereby manifests it to the world. The authority of the Church cannot make that which it teaches to be truth. Truth alone does not constitute the Church; that is, the meaning of the word 'Church' embraces other ideas. A single man holding the truth is not the Church; but the assembly of God is distinguished by the possession of the truth. An assembly which has not the truth, as the condition of its existence, is not the assembly of God. The passage under consideration, and the importance of this point must be my excuse for this little digression, which is but indirectly connected with the subject of the Church.

The marks you give me make me a Greek when in Russia, and you at Rome condemn me for using them when I get there, and, if I were born in Russia, persuade me they are insufficient, and that I must leave what they prove to be the true church there, and join you. Yet there are these Greeks in spite of you. God has taken care by their existence to make all your pretensions and marks futile nonsense. They are proved to be worth nothing to secure a man's finding the true church; for some of them prove two or three to be such, while the existence of the two or three proves the essential ones to be false. God has taken care that the sober godly inquirer should have patent proof, if he take the pains, that your allegations of unity, universality, visibility, perpetuity, tradition, and all the rest, are just worth nothing; because, in the dreadful departure of the professing church from God, He has taken care that there should not be unity, and, consequently, no universality; while visibility, and tradition, and perpetuity, and antiquity are as strong for one as the other, and therefore prove nothing for either. Blessed be God, the spiritual man, who has his Bible and reads it, wants no such proof. He knows that the truth of God has been perverted, the forms of piety assumed, and the power gone, the headship of Christ abandoned (though Romanists alone have ventured to set up another head, and hence are worse than Greeks), and subjection to ordinances brought in. He sees the Spirit's words fulfilled — "In the last days perilous times shall come" — the form of piety, denying the substance. But of this a word at the close.

One little word in addition as to your definition. You tell us it is an assembly of Christians united by the profession of the same true faith. Hence, as there are millions in the Greek church who say they are the true church, and millions of Protestants who say they are, and millions of Catholics who say they are: and you tell me that their being united in the same true faith is part of the definition by which I shall know which is the true one, I must find out what the true faith is, before I know which Christ's church is, or if any of them are; for each of them tells me it is. Of course they honestly think themselves so; and you tell me that profession of the true faith marks the true church. Well then I must necessarily know what is the true faith, to know who professes it; that is, I find the true faith before I find the church. And so it always was; for it was on receiving the true faith from the apostles, or other servants of Christ, that people at the first became members of the church; and they did not, and could not, become so otherwise.

But, again, you give us the usual marks of unity — sanctity catholicity, apostolicity, and add infallibility, perpetual visibility. The first four are given in "Milner's End of Controversy"; indeed they are the well-known marks as given in the Catechism of the Council of Trent. Nowhere is the truth given as a mark of the true church. This is strange — still more strange, since in your definition of the church, the profession of the true faith is made essential to it.