Colossians 1:18

THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH

‘And He is the Head of the Body, the Church.’

Colossians 1:18

To St. Paul the Church was the Body of Christ. The Father, he says, ‘gave Christ to be Head over all things to the Church, which is His Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.’ St. Paul loved to contemplate Christ as the Head, and the Church as His Body.

I. The unity of the Church.—St. Paul loved the thought of unity. He saw with his mind’s eye one Body, but many members, the members different from each other, each having his own function, but joined together into a unity infinitely the grander because of the differences, through allegiance to the Head and harmony amongst themselves. But that, you would say, is an ideal figure; it describes what a Body, of head and members, would be in its perfection. That is so.

II. St. Paul was accustomed to contemplate the Church as it should be.—But this ideal was not an imaginary one, in the sense of being a fancy of his own; it had to him a reality transcending that of visible things, because he saw it in the mind and purpose of God, and was sure that God was actually working towards the fulfilment of it. That is the true Catholic or Universal Church; it is one Body, Christ the Head, men the members; real and living, because it is the creation of the living God, and is the heavenly pattern of all that is ecclesiastically right and good on the earth.

III. You may find it easier to know the Church as the ideal Body of Christ, if you compare with this view of the Church what St. John said of the individual Christian: ‘Whosoever is begotten of God … cannot sin, because he is begotten of God.’ This is from him who had said before: ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.’ What he means is that the true son of God in a man cannot sin. And he reconciles both his statements in the words, ‘Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God?… Beloved, now are we children of God.’

IV. The Church, then, in its fullest sense, is mankind seen in its true divinely appointed relation to Christ.—And that is the conception of it which we shall find to be truest, most in harmony with what has been revealed to us, and also with what life and history present to us.

V. The actual Church was no more ideal and perfect in St. Paul’s time than it is now.—The Apostle found his Christians very imperfect, distressingly imperfect. He pressed upon them the true character of the Church in order that they might strive to be more tolerably conformed to it. The Christian societies had to grow up, in knowledge and graces, into the perfect Body, the fulness of Christ, and agencies were given to help this growth. Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, and, above all, His inworking Spirit, for ‘the building up of the Body of Christ, till we all attain … unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.’

—Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies.

Illustration

‘Let us be thankful for all that the Church has done for the salvation of mankind, let us rejoice to make the most of it. It has been the office of the Church to bear witness to Christ, the Jesus Christ of the New Testament; to proclaim the Gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation; to beseech non-Christians to believe in the crucified Son of God, and to bid all Christians to be true to their calling, as children of the God of righteousness and love: and this glorious office it has with human imperfection more or less faithfully discharged.’