by the late W. Trew
(This is a copy of an address given in Shield’s Road,
Motherwell in 1954)
(Submitted by J. D. McColl, Australia)
Let us take one illustration of what is involved. Human ordination in ministry is a necessity in every sect of Christendom. I have a friend. He was a Baptist minister, in charge of one of the largest churches in his country. He became deeply exercised before God about his position, as he read and studied the Scriptures. At last convinced that denominationalism was unscriptural and a great evil and that his own position as belonging to a system of clerisy was condemned by the Word of God, he severed his connection with it at tremendous cost and he is now serving the Lord happily among the saints in assemblies and being greatly used of God.
Was he right or wrong? I hold that he was right. But if clerisy was a very wrong system for him, it is equally condemned by Scripture, for every child of God. “For any man or body of men, to assume to licence and so authorise the preacher of the Gospel, is, on their part, an intrusion upon the sovereign rights of Christ the only Head of the Church.” The fact of the matter is, that nothing other than the Church of God has a right in Scripture to exist. No child of God has Scriptural authority to be associated with anything else. A human system has no Scriptural authority for its existence, and it is certain that, if it has no Scriptural right to exist, it has no right at all.
That brings me directly to what I want to say: — “I cannot fulfil the terms of my commission as given me by my Master, and as illustrated in Paul’s service, in any denomination.”
A young lady came to us one evening in a town in which we were having tent services. She said, “Will you be happy to baptise me? I have learned from my reading of the Scriptures that I ought to be baptised. I cannot do that in the church to which I belong. But I have no intention of ever leaving my church. Under these conditions will you baptise me?” We said, “Yes, right gladly.” And we did.
She was a Sunday School teacher, and some of the girls in her class were saved. Then she realised that she was made responsible by the terms of the commission, to teach them what she had learned of the Lord’s Will concerning baptism. It came to the minister’s ears, and he came to her. “Iris, is it correct that you are teaching baptism by immersion to your girls?” “Yes,” said Iris. “Well, you know you cannot teach that here,” said the minister. “Not teach that here? Why not? It is clearly taught in the New Testament as the Will of the Lord for every believer,” said Iris. “That is not the point at all,” said the minister. “You cannot teach here what is contrary to our articles of association.” Said Iris, “well then, if there is no place here for God’s Word, there cannot be a place here for me.”
Cases like that I could multiply again and again. But in this case, notice two things:
(a) In order to obey what she had learned of the Lord’s Will, she had to step outside of her denomination, within the limits of which she had no liberty to obey the Will of the Lord. For in that system there was no place for the authority of the Word of God.
(b) She found it a practical impossibility to fulfil the terms of the Lord’s commission within the limits of her denomination. And that is always true. Which fact leads me to say two things: —
(a) I have no moral right to go into any denomination and preach what I know to be the truth of God, but which is contrary to their articles of association.
Here is a group of people. They subscribe a sum of money to erect a building in which to perpetuate a Methodist cause. They pay for heating and lighting. They have all the organisation of Methodism. They invite me to occupy their pulpit instead of their usual minister. Under their auspices, I go. At their invitation, I preach. They have not invited me to preach in order to smash their constitution; and if they had known that I intended preaching what, if believed, would smash their constitution, they never would have invited me. I say that I have no moral right to go to them at their invitation and under their auspices, to use the building their money has provided, the lighting and heating their money is paying for, and the congregation their industry has assembled, in order to teach truth that will smash what they are seeking to build. The minister who invited me to occupy his pulpit, is a gentleman, and he thinks that I am also a gentleman, and he has the right to expect me to behave as a gentleman. If I accept his invitation, the only honest thing to do is to draw a line beyond which I must not go in my ministry. But that is unfaithfulness to my Lord and to my hearers and to the terms of my commission.
A friend of mine is quite free to preach in any denomination to which he may be invited. We were talking together about it and I said to him, “If you were invited to preach to the Methodists next Lord’s Day, you would spend this week in deep exercise before God for your message. Let us suppose that God laid on your heart the story of the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch. You would do what the evangelist did on that occasion and preach Jesus unto them. When you came to where the eunuch said, ‘See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptised?’ “What would you do?’ I waited to hear his answer. He thought about it carefully, and then very honestly said, “Under the circumstances I would have to stop before I came to that.” Exactly so; for we have no moral right to preach there what is contrary to their articles of association, though we know it to be the truth of God. But to deliberately resolve to limit ourselves in our ministry and withhold God’s truth, is unfaithfulness to the Lord, and only proves my contention, that we cannot fulfil the terms of our commission in these places.
(b) Then again, I question, if I have the legal right to teach in any denomination what is contrary to their articles of association.
This hall in which we are gathered is governed by a Deed of Trust in the hands of Trustees, who are legally responsible to see to it that the hall is used only for the purposes for which it is intended. It would be illegal for a Christadelphian to preach his doctrine here, because it would be clearly contrary to the Deed of Trust. I take it that the same is true of the buildings owned by the denominational unions. So that, if my teaching of “All the counsel of God” in one of these systems became a matter of law, I would find myself in the wrong.
Therefore I have no moral right to preach in a denomination much that I know to be the truth of God; I have probably no legal right to preach there much that I know to be the truth of God; since I cannot preach there and fulfil the terms of my Master’s commission, I cannot preach there at all.
That seems to me to be clear and logical, and these considerations have made my path of service plain.
—to be continued (D.V.)