Church Organization

Benjamin B. Warfield:

“To imagine that it is of little importance how the Church shall be organized and ordered, then, is manifestly to contradict the Apostle. To contend that no organization is prescribed for it is to deny the total validity of the minute directions laid down in these epistles. Nay, this whole point of view is as irrational as it is unbiblical. One might as well say that it makes no difference how a machine is put together—how, for example, a typewriter is disposed in its several parts,—because, forsooth, the typewriter does not exist for itself, but for the manuscript which is produced by or rather through it. Of course the Church does not exist for itself—that is, for the beauty of its organization, the symmetry of its parts, the majesty of its services; it exists for its “product” and for the “truth” which has been committed to it and of which it is the support and stay in the world. But just on that account, not less but more, is it necessary that it be properly organized and equipped and administered—that it may function properly. Beware how you tamper with any machine, lest you mar or destroy its product; beware how you tamper with or are indifferent to the Divine organization and ordering of the Church, lest you thereby mar its efficiency or destroy its power, as the pillar and ground of the truth. Surely you can trust God to know how it is best to organize His Church so that it may perform its functions in the world. And surely you must assert that His ordering of the Church, which is His, is necessary if not for the “esse,” certainly for the “bene esse” of the Church.” (The Mystery of Godliness, in Faith and Life (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1916), 377–78)

The Giver of All Things

Ralph Erskine explains below how it is that all things given by God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit still belong to God:

“The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.” (John 3:35)

[God] is the giver of all things, and the possessor of all things; insomuch that, when he gives all things, he cannot lose thereby the possession of any thing he gives; for, the Father’s giving all things into Christ’s hand doth not imply that he alienates his own right. It is true, when we give a thing to another, we lose a right to it; but it is not so with God; for when he gives all things to Christ, and when he gives Christ, and all things in him to us, he still keeps his right to all that he gives; “All things are yours, and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s,” 1 Cor. 3:22, 23. Thus, what the Father gives into Christ’s hand, remains still in the Father’s hand; “And I give unto them eternal life, and none shall pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than all, and none is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one,” John 10:28. . . .

This donative (gifting) right that he hath, as Mediator, as it is well adapted to him, who, as God, hath the same essential right and title to all things with the Father and the Holy Ghost. For, as to his eternal Godhead, he is the everlasting Father, Isaiah 9:6, whose goings forth have been of old, from everlasting, Micah 5:2. “By whom are all things, and we by him,” 1 Cor. 8:6. And, as Mediator, his donative right is attended with an acquisitive right, by his purchase, by which he hath merited and obtained a name above every name, and a being head over all things to the church, Phil. 2:97 Eph. 5:23. A bellical [martial] right, by conquest, making the people to fall under him, Psalm 110:4; making them willing in a day of his power, Psalm 110:3; and overcoming those that make war with him, Rev. 17:14. He is able to subdue all things to himself,” Heb. 2:8. An hereditary right, being the heir of all things, Heb. 1:2, and being the first-born, higher than the kings of the earth, Psalm 89:27; the first born from the dead, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence, Col. 1:18. (Heaven’s Grand Repository)