Back to the
Spring
I have heard somewhere of a spring whose waters had certain medicinal properties so that those who drank from it were helped in the case of various infirmities. In the course of time, homes sprang up around the spring, then a hotel, stores, and eventually, a town that grew into a city. But there came a day when visitors would ask, ''By the way, where is the spring from which this grew?'' and dwellers in the city would rub their hands in embarrassment and say, ''I am sorry that I cannot tell you, but, somehow, in the midst of all our progress and improvement we lost the spring and no one knows now where it is.''
There is a sad application here for the church. Under all our ecclesiastical superstructure today we have lost the spring. We have been lost on the circumference and need to get back to the Center. We are out on the periphery and must needs find the Person by whom all things consist. We are majoring on the minor and minoring on the major. We need to relocate the Spring.
Paul stayed at the Spring, he never left the Center. There was plenty of sin in the New Testament days, but the early Christians did not busy themselves organizing
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anti-slavery societies and anti-Rome clubs. They glorified in Christ.
Jesus Christ is the issue. He always made Himself the issue. ''He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.'' It is Christ or Anti Christ. Theoretically, we all agree to that. Ask any comfortable Sunday morning congregation and they will nod approval. But it is not as simple as it looks. Break up that congregation into individuals and you will get a different story. Some are more interested in being vice-president of a club or circle than in all-out loyalty to Jesus Christ. They are interested in projects and preachers and movements, but their primary devotion is not to Jesus Christ. If He Himself were supreme our hearts and homes and churches would not be as they now are.
Our sole business is to glorify Jesus Christ. Someone has said, ''There is only one thing in which God is interested and that is the exaltation and glorification of His Son. He is not interested in glorifying any individual, group movement, or body of people, or ecclesiastical system apart from Christ. He is interested in these only to the extent they exalt and glorify His Christ.''
We agree to this theoretically, but actually our loyalty is to men and movements and systems, however loudly we may protest that such is not the case. Paul did not say, ''To me to live is Christ first.'' He said, ''To me to live is Christ.'' Christ was everything, first and last, Alpha and Omega.
The Christian experience may be set forth in four F's: Faith in Christ, Fellowship with Christ, Faithfulness to Christ, and Fruitfulness for Christ. Certainly it
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begins with Faith in Christ. ''Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.'' ''I know whom I have believed.'' Everything else grows out of relationship with Christ and identification with Him. Think of the thousands who are depending on church or creed or character to save them. Thousands of church members have never been saved. We are trying to win to fellowship with Christ and faithfulness to Him many who need first to come to faith in Him. We beg backsliders to dig up musty church letters from the bottoms of trunks, join the church and go to work, with the idea that it will straighten them out spiritually. But we have reversed God's order. A man in proper relationship and fellowship with the Lord will be both faithful and fruitful all along the line, self, service, substance; but to reverse the procedure will not bring him into proper relationship and fellowship. These grow out of identification with Christ, they do not produce it. Joining church, attending church, tithing, and all the rest of it will follow getting right with Christ.
''He that is not with me is against me''—there is position, relationship, identification: ''He that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad''—there is practise, faithfulness, fruitfulness. ''Lovest thou me? Feed my sheep''; ''He that abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit''—there is the proper order.
Americans are notorious joiners. Give them a red button and a certificate and they will join anything. But joining a church does not join them to Christ. We must begin with that personal faith in Him by which we become members of His body.
We need to get relocated these days. To use the story
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with which we began, we need to find the spring somewhere among the skyscrapers we have built over it. Every great revival has begun with someone rediscovering the spring. The Quakers, Moravians, and Methodists began with someone finding the spring. But, like Ephesus, we get away from it. The great campaigns of Moody, Torrey, Chapman, Gypsy Smith and Billy Sunday brought the saints together around the spring again. Now and then in church history the city becomes too big, the ecclesiastical superstructure too complicated, and God starts out another man looking for the spring—faith in and fellowship with the living Christ.
Dr. Torrey used to give as the first step toward a revival: ''Let a few members of any church get thoroughly right with God.'' Lenin said, ''It is better to have a hundred fanatics than a thousand placid followers.'' The children of this world are wiser on this point than the children of light. Let a nucleus of real Christians thoroughly right with God start from Center, start from the spring, and expand, winning lukewarm Christians into fellowship and unsaved sinners into relationship with the Living Christ.
In geometry we use a compass with one prong stationary while we describe our circle with the other. Christ is the fixed center: ''All power is given unto me''; our circumference is the world: ''Go ye into all the world.'' And if we do expand, the world, the flesh, and the devil will contract. If we do not push out, the devil will push in!
It is too late in the day for many of our vast projects and programs. There is time just to be Christians and to win others to be Christians. The issue is Jesus Christ,
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faith in and fellowship with the Living Christ that issues in faithfulness and fruitfulness.
Let us check ourselves on the four F's. Let us examine ourselves whether we be in faith. How about faith in Christ? Do we really believe, trusting Him with living faith to the saving of the soul?
What about fellowship with Christ? Is our fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ? (I John 1:3). Is it the fellowship of the Spirit? (Phil. 2:1). Is it fellowship in the Gospel? (Phil. 1:5). Are we walking in the light so that we have fellowship one with another? (I John 1:7). Do we know anything about the fellowship of His sufferings? (Phil. 3:10). Do we have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness? (Eph. 5:11). There can be no heavenly fellowship if there is a hindering fellowship.
Along with fellowship with Christ goes faithfulness to Christ. ''Is it required in stewards that a man be found faithful'' (I Cor. 4:2). Mind you, it is not optional, take-it-or-leave-it; it is required. We have been espoused to one husband and married to Christ, and unfaithfulness is adultery. John wrote to Gaius, ''Thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest.'' Do we work faithfully or is it flashily or fitfully? Shall we merit one day the final commendation, ''Well done, thou good and faithful servant?''
If we are in fellowship and faithful, we shall be fruitful. We are married to Another, even to Him who is raised from the dead that we should bring forth fruit unto God (Rom. 7:4). If we abide in Him we shall bring forth much fruit. There is the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness,
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faithfulness, meekness, self-control (Gal. 5:22,23). Pity the Christian who claims to be living in the land of Canaan, with its figs and pomegranates, if all he has to show is crab apples!
We are to be fruitful unto every good work (Col. 1:10). We are created in Christ Jesus unto good works. But good works will not create us in Christ Jesus. Going to church, singing in the choir, giving our tithe, witnessing for Christ, these issue from faith and fellowship. ''Lovest thou me? Feed my sheep''—that is the order.
There is another kind of fruit often overlooked. The fruit of marriage is children, and we may have children in the faith. Paul spoke of Timothy as his son. He spoke of Onesimus as one begotten in his bonds. To the Corinthians he wrote, ''In Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.'' One may be a spiritual father to the souls he wins to Christ. And a grandfather to many more! Think of the man who won Moody to the Saviour!
Faith in Christ, Fellowship with Christ, Faithfulness to Christ, Fruitfulness for Christ—here is the heart of the matter. In the midst of building the city let us take time out to relocate the spring!
