In the church there is not only the matter of life but also the matter of authority. Some may ask where the matter of authority in the church is spoken of in the Bible. It would require much time and effort to list every reference in the Bible. Here we will use only Romans 12 as a proof. Romans 12:3 says, “I say,...to everyone who is among you, not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think so as to be sober-minded, as God has apportioned to each a measure of faith.” This means that one may receive grace to be a hand, someone else may receive grace to be a finger, yet another person may receive grace to be an arm, and some other person may receive grace to be a foot. Although every member is different in size, everyone is a member. We should not be proud and think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. If one is a hand and thinks more highly of himself by considering himself to be an arm, he will cause trouble. This is because the hand serves under the arm and also functions above the fingers. Thus, the arm is above the hand, and the hand is above the fingers; this is to be balanced and in order.
The more a church receives the Lord’s grace, the more she has the element of Christ within, and the greater is her stature of Christ; at the same time, more authority is manifested in that church. Today we live in an age of democracy, and people everywhere talk about democracy. However, there is neither a dictatorship nor a democracy in the church. In the church there is only the order of life and the authority of the Holy Spirit, because the church is not an organization; the church is an organism. Worldly society is a matter of organization; consequently, people either talk about autocracy or democracy. The church, however, is not an organization but an organism; therefore, the administration of the church is not a matter of organization but a matter of life.
In the Bible the church has a very good name: the Body of Christ (Eph. 1:23). It is very easy to understand the Body. Let us use the members of our body as an illustration. If all of our members want to hold a meeting to discuss equality, would they even have a way to be equal? The only way they can be equal is for the body to die and for all the bones to be detached and scattered.
We all know that a living body stands upright. When a person stands up to speak, his body must be upright. The stronger and more active a person is, the more upright his expression is. When a person becomes sick and lies down, he becomes flat. The members of his body are on the same level only when he is dead and his bones are detached.
Sometimes when we look at the condition of a so-called church, it seems like a bunch of scattered bones. The brothers speak about being equal among themselves, and the sisters do not submit to the brothers. Everyone talks about equality, but this is actually a situation of scattered bones. The church is the Body of Christ. On the surface the body seems to be organized, but in reality it is an organism. All the different members of the body cannot talk about being equal, and furthermore, they must stand upright. Once the members stand upright, however, there is surely a matter of order. There are some who are above and some who are below. Consequently, there is the matter of authority.
I hope that the saints who are responsible and serving in a locality could receive this word. This does not mean that a person who receives this word wants to be in control in the church. Anyone who wants to control others will assuredly not receive grace from the Lord. Everyone who has received grace and who knows God does not like to control others. When we first spoke of the matter of order and authority in life, an older sister asked, “Will the brother who ministers the word use this message to cause others to submit to his authority?” Actually, the person asking such a question may be the first not to submit to authority.
Those who want others to submit to them do not know grace. Those who truly know grace do not hope or desire that others would submit to them. In the church we should not have people who desire to control others, and we should not have people who do not have a heart to submit to authority. Both such people lack grace. The church is the organic Body of Christ, and it should not have people who want to control others.
Every person who has received grace and lives in the Spirit of life will find his place in the Body of Christ, and he will find his order among all the members. There is no hierarchy in the church, but there is an order; there is no control of others in the church, but there is submission to one another (5:21). Ephesians does not speak of the rank of each member, but it does speak of functioning according to the operation in the measure of each one part (4:16). How can we give our arm and wrist hierarchical names? There is no hierarchy with respect to the hand and the arm, but there is an order between them. If the hand could speak, it would say, “If I offended everyone in the world, I would not be afraid, but I am afraid of problems between my arm above and me. If there is a problem, I will be in trouble.” If we live in life, we will surely know our position.
The authority of the church that we speak of is entirely different from the authority of the pope in the Catholic Church. If someone asks who our authority is, we should reply that it is the brother next to us. The brothers who coordinate and serve with us are our authority; we do not have a leader among us like the pope who has authority over everyone. We have no such thing. Our only Head is Christ; He is our unique authority, and we are members one of another (Rom. 12:5; Eph. 4:25). The only difference among us relates to the matter of order and authority in the Body. We need to realize that the saint closest to us is our authority; he or she is our authority. Because the closest member to the fingers is the hand, the hand is the fingers’ authority.
If we come into a normal, living church that lives in the Spirit and has the full-grown stature of Christ, we can see immediately that the members have the expression of the Body. They are members one of another, they are joined to one another, and they know their own order. Everything is upright and full of life, not flat and weak.
When there are many opinions in the church, there is no solution other than to submit to the cross and receive its breaking; only then can we know whom we should listen to according to the authority and order in Christ. A proper church is an upright church, and the brothers and sisters serving there know their position and relationship to one another. When we go to some local churches, the elders are sitting in the business office like department or section heads in a government agency. When the deacons come to see the elders, they behave like subordinates coming to receive orders from superiors. This kind of situation makes us sad. Actually, this is the condition of degraded Christianity.
In the church there are elders and deacons, but the elders should not put on the airs of an elder, and the deacons should not consider themselves lowly and insignificant. My arm is higher than my hand, but my arm does not show off its strength, thinking that it is higher than my hand. Similarly, my hand does not think that it is smaller and without much use. Some deacons have this concept when they are with the elders; they think that they should simply take orders from the elders. This erroneous concept comes from Hades and the world.
If God appoints us as elders, we receive the eldership through His grace in life; therefore, we do not have anything to boast in or any reason to feel lowly. We should realize that we are people under the ordering of life in the church, the Body. This is what is spoken of in Romans 12:3, which says that we need “to think so as to be sober-minded, as God has apportioned to each a measure of faith.”
There is no dictatorship or autocracy in the church; neither are there democratic or hierarchical positions. In the church the brothers and sisters coordinate as one organic body. The church is not organized but organic. The proper church life is the move of an organic body. Apostles, elders, and serving ones are all members, and each functions according to his portion and stands in his position in one organic entity. They all know life and authority, and they all keep the order of life.
I hope that all the brothers would learn the lessons of knowing life, knowing our order in life, and knowing authority by learning this order. We do not have a centralized authority among us. Instead, the brothers around us are our authority; the members who serve the Lord with us are our authority.
If five brothers who coordinate together want to preach the gospel, do they need to hold an election to see who will be the director and leader? We may be concerned that if they do not have an election, there will be no one leading them and no one who will be responsible and give the message. So what should they do? They should submit to one another and work together. Activities in human society always require prior arrangements, such as voting for a president and a vice-president. However, it is not the same in the church life; all the brothers and sisters should live in life and allow the Holy Spirit to be the Ruler. Everyone should submit to the authority of the Holy Spirit and keep the order of life. If this is the case, each one will know his position and what to do.
If there are five brothers in a family, it is not necessary for them to come together and vote on who is first and who is second. The order among the five brothers in the family is determined by life. The first brother does not need to feel proud, and the youngest brother does not need to feel inferior. Their order is based on a natural course. The oldest brother is the oldest brother, and the youngest brother is the youngest brother. This is the order of life.
Similarly, when we are with the brothers, we immediately know our place. A sensible child obeys his father, mother, oldest brother, second oldest brother, third oldest brother, and so on. Marvelously, this is the way in every healthy and normal family. The oldest child knows that he is the oldest child and that he should have a certain responsibility and conduct; at the same time, when he gives a command, all the rest of the children obey him because they know their birth order. In a healthy family, not only is the father the authority, but the mother is an authority as well. Furthermore, the oldest brother is an authority over the second, the second brother is an authority over the third, the third brother is an authority over the fourth, and the fourth brother is an authority over the fifth. There is a certain order in the whole family.
Every authority is a protection, a support, and a supply. For example, when a family eats together, the youngest child typically gets the most food because everyone loves him. The older children often envy him and feel that he is the most privileged. Nonetheless, the youngest child may say, “I am not the most privileged, because everyone regulates me.” This illustration shows that there is an order of life among the members of the body. Although order comes with restrictions, it also comes with a supply. If we live in life, keep our position, and respect the position of others when we do anything in the church, we will be able to coordinate with one another in a proper way.
When the brothers and sisters take care of the cleaning service in the church life, we have discovered two kinds of situations. Some saints have truly made progress. When they clean, they have no ideas and opinions. They simply follow the responsible one who tells them how they should clean, what they should use, and what their responsibility is. This shows that they have truly learned some lessons. However, when other brothers and sisters clean, they do not fellowship even though they do not argue. When the responsible brothers try to tell them how they should do it, they may say, “I will do my part, and you should do your part. Please do not bother me.” Of course, some people may not say this, but they display this kind of attitude when they clean. This represents a lack in knowing the order of life and a lack of learning the lessons of life.
The more a person lives in the Holy Spirit and in life, the more he knows his position, the order of life, and the authority in life. Such brothers and sisters are a definite strengthening to the Body of Christ. If my little finger rebelled and refused to stay in its place, wanting instead to become a foot and to walk, what kind of situation would this be? The entire church often suffers loss when a small brother or sister refuses to keep his or her place in the church. On the contrary, if a person keeps his place, he will be a strengthening to the Body. In other words, the members who strengthen the Body are those who keep their place.
Ephesians 4:16 says, “All the Body, being joined together and being knit together through every joint of the rich supply and through the operation in the measure of each one part, causes the growth of the Body.” Every joint in the body has its own measure, which is developed through life, and it is able to supply all the members richly. When everyone functions according to his function, the body is built up. A church becomes strong and is built up when all the saints know the order of life and stay in their place.
Thus, the matter of the church involves strict requirements; it requires us to be separated from the world, to reject the self, to deal with the flesh, and to deny the natural life. It also requires us to be separated from independence and individualism. It is not sufficient for us to be separated from the world, the self, the flesh, and the natural life, because we may still live according to our independence and individualism. Independence and individualism are the main factors that cause the Body of Christ not to be built up. In order to have the church, we cannot have individualism, and in order to have the Body, we cannot have independence. In the Body there is no individualism, no individual idea, judgment, decision, inclination, choosing, or preference. Anything individual hinders the building up of the church and damages the Body of Christ.
Every believer has his own personality and characteristic; God’s salvation does not nullify our personality and characteristic. On the one hand, we have been shown mercy to be in God’s family. In a family an older brother may be bigger, but he is still a person, and a younger brother may be smaller, but he is also a person. This is the situation in a family. On the other hand, when we speak of the church as the Body of Christ and ourselves as the members in this Body, our person does not exist. In the Body we have only one person, and this is the person of Christ the Head. If all the members in our body were their own person, we would be in great trouble, and we would not be able to live.
Although a body has many members, there is only one person, the head. When our head feels tired and wants to sleep, all the members lie down together. If our head feels tired and wants to lie down to rest, but our hands do not want to rest and instead keep moving and working, our whole body will become sick.
There are always two sides to a truth. As far as being a brother in God’s family, every believer is a person; however, as far as the Body of Christ is concerned, his person does not exist because there is only one Body. Consequently, there can be only one person. Some brothers and sisters insist on being their own person in the Body, and as a result, they prevent the Body from making any move. They must realize that they are members in the Body. If they try to be an independent member, they will become the ugliest members in the Body, but if they remain in their proper order, they will be the most beautiful members.
The key to all these points depends on the level of life in us. If our life is sufficiently abundant, it will require us to give up our individual person and give up our individualism, independence, prejudice, and pride. This is the way for the church to reach the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, the way for the church to be strong, and the way for the church to express the fullness of Christ.