But let us bring our consideration of this so lofty theme right down to everyday life and consider it in its practical aspect. What is the usual concept of building the church? You open a place of worship, you introduce people to Christianity, you have them baptized, you arrange a variety of meetings, you get things organized a bit—and you have the church! I do not wish to enlarge on this line, but I long that the Lord's children might realize that what we have just described is not what the Bible means by building the church. The building of the church means first, the bringing of men under the authority of the church's Head. Before men are saved they are under the authority of Satan, and after they are saved they are delivered out of the authority of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the Son of His love (Col. 1:13). To be saved is to be delivered out of Satan's authority and to be placed under the authority of Christ. It is a great grief to me to hear people explaining salvation as a matter of being saved from hell to heaven. Of course salvation brings us to heaven, but heaven is not the goal of our salvation. Salvation is not merely a matter of God in His compassion for men translating them from hell to heaven, but of delivering them "out of the authority of darkness" and transferring them "into the kingdom of the Son of His love." The objective here is not heaven, but the kingdom. God saves us that we may come into subjection to the Son of His love. The building up of the church has its beginning here—the bringing of people under the sway of Christ who formerly had been under Satan's sway.

Oh, that you might realize that as soon as the question of church building arises, the question of the headship of Christ arises! When you meet that challenge, praise God! The building of the church begins in your life. If in any person, or in any company of believers, Christ is able to assert His authority, then He starts to build His church. That is why we have kept stressing the fact that there must be the sovereign rule of the kingdom if there is to be any building up of the church. Unless the kingdom is here, no church will be built up here.

If the mass of material that went into the building of a meeting hall were torn down until it all lay in a heap, what would be the good of it? It would be utterly useless. That all the material serves a purpose today, is because it has all been built up into an ordered structure. Brothers and sisters, there is an urgent need for the building up of believers! The need is not for the establishing of Christian groups, but for the building up of the church under the government of the church's Head. If you are to have a part in that, then you yourself will need to submit to the headship of Christ. When His authority becomes a settled issue in your life, an amazing thing will begin to take place—you will find yourself most naturally being built together with others who are also in subjection to His authority. Such a company of believers will be a strong church, able to do battle for the kingdom of God. In the face of such a church Satan will be impotent. But if such a church is to come into being—a church against which the gates of Hades cannot prevail—then a building up must take place; and that cannot take place apart from a recognition of the church's Head and subjection to His authority.

You may ask what this means in practical terms. Let me illustrate. Two strangers meet, both believers. With delight each recognizes the other as a brother. They praise the Lord and are thrilled that they have found one another. They decide to preach the gospel together, and soon a score of people are saved—twelve from the north and eight from the south. Those two brothers rejoice more heartily than ever. How they praise the Lord that they were able together to lead all those souls to Him! But this happy state of affairs does not last, for the northerners are rather strange characters, and the southerners too have their peculiar temperaments. At first praise is so easy, but soon it becomes hard work to produce a "Praise the Lord!" Before long criticisms begin to take the place of "hallelujahs," and discord increases, until one day the northerners and the southerners decide to part company and each rents a separate meeting place.