Devotional 136: The Invisibility of the True Church: Wheat and Tares Together

The Confession Read

This catholic church hath been sometimes more, sometimes less visible. And particular churches, which are members thereof, are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 25, Section 4

Introduction

The moon hangs in the heavens every night, and yet no two nights ever show the same moon. Sometimes she rides full and silver, flooding the fields with a light a man might almost read by; sometimes she is a thin crescent, a bent wire of brightness on the edge of the dark; and sometimes she is gone altogether, and the eye that searches the sky finds only the black heaven and the scattered stars. Yet it is the same moon through it all, the same round world, unchanged in her own substance. It is not the moon that waxes and wanes, but the measure of her light, as the earth's shadow falls across her face and screens her from the sun. The church of Jesus Christ is not unlike this. She is one, and she is permanent, and not one of her elect members has ever been lost; but her light upon the earth waxes and wanes, and no two ages have beheld her alike. In one century she is a great and visible company, filling the councils and crowning the kings of the earth; in another she is a handful of believers gathered in a cave, or a remnant fled into the wilderness, and the world is hard put to find her at all. The Westminster Divines, having taught us in the earlier sections of this chapter what the church is, invisible in her electing essence, visible in her professing company, furnished with the ministry, the oracles, and the ordinances of God, now turn to the honest and searching question that every believer sooner or later must ask: how are we to judge the church we actually see? For the church we see is never the same church twice. She is sometimes more, sometimes less visible; and her particular congregations are more or less pure. This is a section about degrees, and degrees are among the hardest things for the human heart to hold in balance. We are tempted, on the one hand, to demand a perfect church, and to leave in disgust every assembly that falls short of the ideal; this was the error of the ancient Donatists, and it is the perennial temptation of every earnest soul. We are tempted, on the other hand, to give up the very idea of purity altogether, and to conclude that, since no church is perfectly pure, one church is as good as another, and it matters not at all where a man worships or what is preached from the pulpit; this is the error of the indifferent, and it is the prevailing temptation of our own easy-going age. The Divines steer between both errors with a sentence of remarkable precision. The church, they teach, is one and indefectible; yet her visibility rises and falls with the ages, and her particular assemblies are more or less pure, and the measure of that purity is not left to private fancy but is plainly stated: the doctrine of the gospel taught and embraced, the ordinances administered, and public worship performed, more or less purely. Let us take this doctrine in hand, for it will teach us at once to be patient with the church's imperfection and to be earnest for the church's purity.

Scripture Foundation

The doctrine rests first upon the most searching portrait of the church's varying purity that the New Testament contains, the seven letters which the risen Christ sent to the churches of Asia. Revelation 2:4-5: "Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent." And to Sardis he speaks in Revelation 3:1: "I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead." And to Laodicea, in Revelation 3:15-16: "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." In the last book of the Bible the Lord himself walks among the candlesticks and speaks to his churches, and what strikes every reader is that no two of the seven are alike. Ephesus is a church of toil and patience and orthodox discernment, which cannot bear them that are evil and has tried the false apostles and found them liars; and yet Christ has this against her, that she has left her first love. Sardis has a name that she liveth, a reputation for life and vigour, and yet is dead. Laodicea is neither cold nor hot, and the Lord is ready to spue her out of his mouth. Here is the doctrine of this section set down in living colour: particular churches are more or less pure, and the Lord, who holds the seven stars in his right hand, discerns and judges the degrees with a precision no man can counterfeit. He does not cast off the church of Ephesus because she has fallen; he summons her to remember, to repent, and to do the first works. But neither does he flatter Sardis or Laodicea; he warns them with a sharpness that should make every easy conscience tremble. The candlestick, the visible witness, can be removed out of its place. A church may keep her lamps burning long after the oil is spent, and the Lord of the church is not deceived by the empty light. The second foundation explains why the church is never perfectly pure in this world, and it is our Lord's own parable of the wheat and the tares. Matthew 13:24-30: "Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn." The word our Lord uses for the tares is zizania, the darnel, a weed so like the wheat in its early growth that only the practised eye can tell them apart; and the householder's counsel is not to root the one out of the field but to let both grow together until the harvest. The field is the world, and the good seed and the tares are mingled in it, and they will be mingled until the reapers come and the bundles are bound. This is why the visible church upon earth is never the pure church of the elect, and never can be. Mixture is not an accident that has befallen the church but a condition appointed for this age. And note the reason the householder forbids the weeding: lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. The perfectionist who would have a church without any mixture would, in his zeal, root up the wheat along with the tares, for no man can read the heart, and many a blade that looks like darnel to the censorious eye is good wheat in the sight of God. The church must be patient with herself, and must leave the final separation to the Lord of the harvest. The third foundation is the great comfort and the great warning of the whole subject, and it is the case of the church at Corinth. 1 Corinthians 1:2: "Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours." And yet to this same church Paul writes, in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3: "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?" The church to which Paul writes as "the church of God," "sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints," is the same church that is torn by envying, strife, and divisions, a church of carnality and childishness, a church that tolerated a scandal which even the heathen would blush at, a church that corrupted the Lord's Supper itself. Paul does not deny that it is a church; he addresses it as the church of God, and writes to its members as brethren. But neither does he flatter it; he calls them carnal, and babes, and men who walk as men. A true church, then, may be a very impure church. The presence of corruption does not un-church a people, but it does grieve the Spirit, rob them of their fruitfulness, and expose them to the judgment of their Lord. This is the double truth the Confession holds in a single breath, and Corinth is its standing proof. The fourth foundation touches the first clause of the section, the rising and falling of the church's visibility, and it is the vision of the woman in the wilderness. Revelation 12:6: "And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days." And again, Revelation 12:14: "And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent." The ancient type of it stands in the days of Elijah, in 1 Kings 19:18: "Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him." The church has had her seasons in the sun and her seasons in the wilderness. When Elijah despaired that he alone was left of the faithful, the Lord answered that he had reserved to himself seven thousand men who had not bowed the knee to Baal; and the seer on Patmos beheld the woman, the church, carried on the wings of a great eagle into the wilderness, where God had prepared her a place and fed her, hidden from the face of the serpent. Here is the promise that sustains the believer in every dark age: the church may be less visible, but she is never less dear to God, and the remnant is preserved by his power even when the world cannot find her. The light may sink to a thin crescent, but the moon is not lost, and the hand that holds the seven stars is the hand that will yet set them burning bright again.

What the Divines Meant

To understand what the Divines meant, begin with the careful two-fold structure of the sentence, for it makes a distinction that is the key to the whole doctrine. The first clause speaks of the catholic church, and says that she has been sometimes more, sometimes less visible; the second clause speaks of particular churches, and says that they are more or less pure. Visibility and purity are not the same thing, and the Divines are at pains not to confuse them. The catholic church, the whole company of those who profess the true religion throughout the world, may be more or less visible: in the days of Constantine she stepped out of the shadows into the full light of empire, and in the days of the persecutions she was driven into catacombs and deserts, yet she was the same church in both. But purity attaches, not to the catholic church considered as a whole, but to the particular congregations of which she is composed, and it is measured, not by numbers or outward glory, but by three plain marks: the doctrine of the gospel, the administration of the ordinances, and the performance of public worship. Consider the three marks one by one, for each is weighed. The first and chief is "the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced." The phrase is finely weighed, for it joins together what is too often torn apart. A church is pure, not merely where the truth is preached, but where it is received; not merely where the gospel is taught from the pulpit, but where it is embraced in the pew. The Divines knew that a congregation may sit for a lifetime under a sound ministry and yet be as worldly as Corinth, for doctrine that is taught but never embraced leaves a people sound in creed and dead in heart. Purity is not a property of the preacher alone but of the whole body, and it consists in the truth living in the hearts and lives of the people as well as sounding in the ears of the assembly. This is why the mark is stated as "taught and embraced": the one word guards the pulpit, the other guards the heart. The second mark is the administration of the ordinances, by which the Divines mean chiefly the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, together with the whole order of the church's appointed ministry. A church is more or less pure as her sacraments are administered more or less purely, that is, according to Christ's institution and not according to human invention. Where the sacraments are multiplied, corrupted, or made the engines of superstition, the church is defiled; where they are kept simple and scriptural, administered to the right subjects and in the right manner, the church is cleansed. The ordinances are the seals of the covenant, and a church that handles them carelessly has already begun to lose the covenant itself. The third mark is the performance of public worship, which the Divines name last but set in the same rank. A church is more or less pure as her worship is performed more or less purely, that is, as it conforms to the word of God and is offered in spirit and in truth. This is the test that reaches into the very sanctuary, weighing what is believed, what is administered, and how God is worshipped, whether with reverence and simplicity according to his appointment, or with the will-worship and vain ceremonies that his word condemns. The three marks together are the Reformation's answer to the question, "where is the true church?" The church is to be found wherever the gospel is truly preached, the sacraments rightly administered, and the worship of God purely performed; and a church is more or less pure precisely as it possesses these marks more or less fully. The section also has its opponents in view, for it, like every section of this chapter, was framed in the heat of controversy. On one side stood the Roman claim, which so identified the church with a particular visible hierarchy that purity was made to consist in subjection to a see rather than in conformity to the gospel; against this the Divines set their three scriptural marks. On another side stood the Anabaptists and separatists, who so despaired of any church's purity that they fled from the visible church altogether, and demanded a gathered company of the spotless which no man on earth could ever find; against these the Divines insisted that purity is a matter of degree, and that the tares will be mingled with the wheat until the harvest. And behind both stood the shadow of the Donatists, the ancient rigorists who had insisted that the church must be kept free of every unworthy member, and who in their zeal had rent the body of Christ asunder. The Divines' sentence is the mature Protestant answer to all three: the church is one, she is indefectible, her visibility varies with the ages, and her purity is measured by her conformity to the gospel, more or less, and never perfectly, this side of glory.

Theological Depth

The doctrine of the varying visibility and purity of the church summoned some of the surest reflection in the Reformed tradition, and the theologians who expounded it knew that here, as in few other places, the believer's patience and the believer's earnestness must be kept in harness together. Calvin's treatment of the marks of the church, in the fourth book of the Institutes, is the fountain from which the tradition drinks, and its keynote is his insistence that the true church is to be known, not by outward succession or by a spotless membership, but by the preaching of the word and the right administration of the sacraments. Wherever these marks appear, however imperfectly, there the church is; and the believer is not at liberty to leave her merely because her members are flawed. Calvin had read his Augustine, and he knew the danger of the Donatist temper, which in demanding a perfect church destroys the church it would purify. He will not hear of a man separating from a congregation because there are tares in it, for so long as the word is preached and the sacraments administered, the church of Christ is there, and he who abandons her abandons the ordinary means of his own salvation. Yet Calvin is no indifferentist. He insists with equal force that the marks are real, and that where the preaching of the gospel is corrupted and the sacraments are defaced, the outward shell that remains is no longer a church of Christ in any saving sense. Purity matters to Calvin because Christ matters, and the church that will not be conformed to her Head has begun to cease to be his body. Turretin takes up the same doctrine with his characteristic precision and presses it to a distinction that has never been bettered. He distinguishes between the essence and the well-being of the church, between what makes a society a true church at all and what makes it a pure and flourishing one. A church may be a true church, possessed of the essential marks, the word preached and the sacraments administered, and yet be a very impure church, corrupt in doctrine, negligent in worship, and cold in heart, as Corinth was. Turretin will not confound the two. To deny that an impure church is a church at all is the error of the separatists and the Donatists; to deny that purity is to be sought and prized is the error of the indifferent. The marks, he teaches, are the tests by which the church's purity is measured, and the believer is bound to prefer the purer church and to labour for the reformation of his own, even while he refuses to unchurch the impure. It is a doctrine that keeps the church from both the despair of the perfectionist and the sloth of the easy-going, and it is Turretin's enduring gift to this section. Watson, whose gift was always to turn the driest doctrine into devotion, takes up the theme of purity and presses it toward the heart with the fire of Malachi. He loves to speak of God's people as gold in the furnace, and of the Lord as the refiner who sits over the fire until he can see his own image in the metal. The Hebrew word behind the prophet's figure is tsaraph, to smelt and test and purify, and Watson would have the believer see in every affliction, every exposure of the church's shame, the hand of the Refiner purging away the dross that his church may shine. He is jealous for the purity of the church because he is jealous for the honour of her Lord: a church that is indifferent to its own defilement is a church that has forgotten whose name it bears. Yet Watson, too, is patient, for the refiner does not cast the metal away because it is impure; he keeps it in the fire until it is pure. Watson makes us ashamed of our cold contentment with a spotted church, and yet holds us back from the despair that would throw away the gold because it is not yet refined. A. A. Hodge, in his commentary on the Confession, supplies the analytic backbone the subject requires. He observes that the section states two distinct propositions: that the catholic church has been sometimes more and sometimes less visible, and that particular churches are more or less pure according to the three marks. The first proposition, he notes, is a matter of history and providence: the church's outward condition has varied, from the obscurity of the persecutions to the glory of the age of Constantine and back again, and the believer is not to mistake the church's visibility for her reality, nor her obscurity for her death. The second proposition is a matter of the church's conformity to the gospel: the three marks are the standard by which every particular church is to be judged, and the degree of a church's purity is the degree to which it teaches and embraces the truth, administers the ordinances rightly, and worships God purely. Hodge is careful to insist that these are marks of purity, not of the bare existence of a church, and that a church may fall far short of purity and yet remain a church, even as a sick man is still a man. It is a commentary that keeps the reader's feet on the ground. Robert Shaw, in his Exposition of the Confession of Faith, compresses the whole into a paragraph that has worn well. The catholic church, he writes, is sometimes more and sometimes less visible; like the moon she waxes and wanes, and at times she has been so reduced in numbers and so driven into hiding that the most discerning eye could scarcely perceive the form of a visible church. Particular churches, for their part, are more or less pure as they hold, in greater or less purity, the doctrine of the gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the ordinances of public worship. Shaw would have the believer hold two truths in unbreakable tension: the church of Christ can never perish from the earth, and yet a particular church can decay so far in doctrine and worship that it ceases to deserve the name of a church of Christ. The one truth forbids despair, the other forbids presumption, and between them the believer walks safely. Shaw states the balance with a brevity that fixes it in the memory. To these voices we may add the later Princeton witness of B. B. Warfield, who saw that the doctrine of the church's varying purity is but the doctrine of her gradual sanctification written large. The church, he insisted, is an organism before she is an organisation, a body Christ indwells before she is a society men administer, and therefore her purity is a growth, not a possession; it is something toward which she is being led, not something she has already attained. Warfield traced with learning how the Reformers, in recovering the marks of the church, recovered at the same time the liberty of the believer to test the church by the word of God rather than by the claims of any hierarchy; and he saw that this liberty carries with it a solemn duty, to prize and pursue the purity of the church for which Christ gave himself, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. The church's present impurity is not her final state, and the believer who is patient with it today must be earnest for its removal tomorrow, until the Lord of the harvest makes all things clean.

Puritan Application

First, judge every church by her marks, and not by her numbers, her antiquity, her eloquence, or her outward show. The Confession has given you a plain standard: the doctrine of the gospel taught and embraced, the ordinances administered, and public worship performed purely. Weigh every congregation you encounter by these three, and do not be moved by what the world calls success. A church may be large, wealthy, and respectable, and yet be dead as Sardis; a church may be small, poor, and despised, and yet be as precious to Christ as Smyrna, to whom he said, "I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, but thou art rich." Let the word of God, and not the applause of men, be your touchstone, and be not ashamed to ask of any church the question that alone matters: is the gospel truly preached here, are the sacraments rightly kept, and is God worshipped according to his word? Second, do not leave an imperfect church out of a false quest for a perfect one. It is the besetting sin of the earnest to grow impatient with every assembly that falls short of the ideal, and to wander from church to church, or to forsake the visible church altogether, in search of a company of the spotless which this side of heaven does not exist. Remember Corinth. Remember that the tares are to grow with the wheat until the harvest, and that he who would root them out now will root up the wheat with them. If the gospel is preached and the sacraments administered where you are, you have no warrant to despise that church, however many imperfections you can number in her. Bear with her as a son bears with a frail mother, and labour for her healing rather than abandoning her to her wounds. The church that has no faults is not to be found on earth; the church whose faults you are called to mend is the one God has set before you. Third, and yet be earnest for the purity of your own congregation, for patience with the church's imperfection is not the same thing as contentment with it. The Confession would have you neither despairing nor indifferent, and the second is the subtler sin. Pray for the purity of your church; long for it; labour for it. Set your own heart to embrace the doctrine that is taught, and not merely to hear it, for the mark is "taught and embraced," and a congregation of hearers who never become doers is a congregation only half clean. Value the ordinances, and come to the Lord's Table with reverence and self-examination, that the sacred seals may not be profaned among you. And order your part in the public worship with godly fear, for the worship of the church is not a spectacle to be enjoyed but an offering to be presented. A church is made pure, under God, by the earnestness of its members, and your own zeal for purity is a stone in her walls. Fourth, be encouraged when the church seems faint and her visibility is low, for the church of Christ has never perished from the earth, and never will. When you read that the faith is in retreat in this land or that, when the visible church seems reduced to a remnant and her enemies triumphant, remember the seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal, and the woman carried on eagle's wings into the wilderness, where God had prepared her a place. The moon that is now a thin crescent was full not long ago and will be full again; the church that is now hidden is not lost, but kept. Despair is as much a sin as presumption, and it dishonours the Head who said that the gates of hell shall not prevail against his church. Take heart: the church is sometimes less visible, but she is always in the hand of him who holds the seven stars. Fifth, and finally, let the distinction between visibility and purity teach you to set your hope, not on the church's outward estate, but on her Head. The church may be great and glorious in the eyes of the world and yet be poor and blind and naked in the eyes of her Lord; and she may be small and despised and yet be rich. Your comfort must not rest on the visibility of the church, which ebbs and flows with the ages, nor even on the purity of the church, which is never perfect here below, but on Christ, who is the same yesterday, and today, and for ever, and who has promised to build his church, and to cleanse her, and to present her at last to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. Until that day, walk patiently and earnestly, judging by the marks, bearing with the tares, and labouring for the purity of the bride, as one who knows that the Bridegroom is coming, and that he will not leave his bride defiled.

Prayer

Almighty and everlasting God, who hast loved Thine elect with an everlasting love, and hast gathered them into one catholic church which the gates of hell shall never prevail against, we bless Thee that, though her visibility upon earth wax and wane, and though her particular congregations be more or less pure, she is ever Thine, and ever safe in the hand of her Head. Forgive us, we pray Thee, our impatience with her imperfections, our cold contentment with her spots, and our proud measuring of her by the numbers and shows of the world rather than by the marks of Thy gospel. O Lord Jesus Christ, who walkest among the candlesticks and holdest the seven stars in Thy right hand, restore unto Thy church the purity she has lost, and keep her from the decay that Thou dost discern and judge. Where the gospel is taught but not embraced, grant, we beseech Thee, hearts to receive it; where the ordinances are administered, grant reverence and faith; and where public worship is offered, grant that it may ascend to Thee in spirit and in truth. Do not remove our candlestick out of its place, but trim the lamp and renew the oil, that the light may burn bright and pure before Thee. O Lord, who sittest as a refiner and purifier of silver, purge away our dross, and make Thine image to shine in us, until we are conformed to the likeness of Thy Son. Be patient with us as we are patient with one another, and make us at once tender toward the church's weakness and jealous for her holiness. And when the harvest is come, and the tares are gathered and the wheat is brought into the barn, present us, with the whole church of the firstborn, a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but holy and without blemish before Thee. We ask it in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ, our only Head and our coming Bridegroom. Amen.