In the New Testament the church is mentioned again and again from the first book, Matthew, to the last book, Revelation. In these messages on the conclusion of the New Testament, we are collecting the various verses regarding the church and arranging them so that we may see a clear picture of the church as a great, corporate person, the new man.
We have seen that the church was a good pleasure in God’s heart and that, based upon this good pleasure, God has purposed a will to obtain the church. The church was a mystery hidden in God for centuries. In the four Gospels Christ revealed the church to the first group of His apostles. He revealed the church to them both in the universal sense and the local sense. However, at that time He did not reveal the church mainly in an intrinsic way. Later, in the Epistles the intrinsic constituent of the church was revealed. Paul saw this revelation and wrote about it in his fourteen Epistles. In these Epistles we have a full picture of the intrinsic nature, essence, and element of the church.
We have also seen that Christ, as the resurrected and ascended One, has formed the church with Himself as the embodiment of the processed Triune God becoming the life-giving Spirit breathed into His believers. This is typified in Leviticus 2 by the oil formed with fine flour to make a cake. Furthermore, Christ poured Himself as the consummated, all-inclusive, compound Spirit upon His believers. This is typified by the oil poured upon the cake. In this way the church has been formed once for all. After forming the church, the Lord Jesus sent out His believers to go into every part of the earth to plant the churches, that is, to set up, to establish, the local churches for His expression.
The church has two aspects: the universal aspect and the local aspect. The universal aspect is mainly for the expression of the wonderful, all-inclusive Christ, whereas the local aspect is for administration to carry out this marvelous mystery in the universe. Now in this message we shall go on to see something further concerning the church-the offices in the church.
In the church there are both offices and gifts. In this message we shall consider the offices in the church, and in the following message we shall cover the relationship between the four special gifts and the church.
With the offices in the church there is a position. This means that the office has the right to do certain things. We may use the office of President of the United States as an illustration. This office gives the President the position and the right to do certain things to carry out his presidency. According to the New Testament, there are offices in the church. As we shall see, there is one office in the universal church, and there are two offices in the local church.
In the universal church there is only one office-the apostleship. Paul refers to this office in Romans 1:5, where he says that he had received “grace and apostleship unto obedience of faith among all the nations on behalf of His name.”
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