+I. The goal of the Church's life+ (ver. 13).--The mark at which the
Church is to arrive is set forth in a two-fold way--_in its
collective and its individual aspects._ We must all unitedly attain
the oneness of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God; and we
must attain, each of us, a perfect manhood, the measure of the
stature of the fulness of Christ. All our defects are, at the bottom,
deficiencies of faith. We fail to apprehend and appropriate the
fulness of God in Christ. The goal of the regenerate life is never
absolutely won; it is hid with Christ in God. But there is to be a
constant approximation to it, both in the individual believer and in
the body of Christ's people. And a time is coming when that goal will
be practically attained, so far as earthly conditions allow. The
Church after long strife will be reunited, after long trial will be
perfected. Then this world will have had its use, and will give place
to the new heavens and earth.
+II. The malady which arrests its development+ (ver. 14).--The
childishness of so many Christian believers exposed them to the
seductions of error, and ready to be driven this way and that by the
evil influences active in the world of thought around them. So long
as the Church contains a number of unstable souls, so long she will
remain subject to strife and corruption. At every crisis in human
thought there emerges some prevailing method of truth, or of error,
the resultant of current tendencies, which unites the suffrages of a
large body of thinkers, and claims to embody the spirit of the age.
Such a method of error our own age has produced as the outcome of the
anti-Christian speculation of modern times, in the doctrines current
under the names of Positivism, Secularism, or Agnosticism. Modern
Agnosticism removes God farther from us, beyond the reach of thought,
and leaves us with material nature as the one positive and accessible
reality, as the basis of life and law. Faith and knowledge of the Son
of God it banishes as dreams of our childhood. This materialistic
philosophy gathers to a head the unbelief of the century. It is the
living antagonist of Divine revelation.
+III. The means and conditions of its growth+ (vers. 15, 16).--To the
craft of false teachers St. Paul would have his Churches oppose the
weapons only of truth and love. Sincere believers, heartily devoted
to Christ, will not fall into fatal error. A healthy life
instinctively repels disease. Next to the moral condition lies the
spiritual condition of advancement--the full recognition of the
supremacy and sufficiency of Christ. He is the perfect ideal for
each, the common source of life and progress for all. He is the Head
of the Church and the heart of the world. Another practical condition
of Church growth is organization--"all the body fitly framed and knit
together." A building or a machine is fitted together by the
adjustment of its parts. A body needs, besides this mechanical
construction, a pervasive life, a sympathetic force, knitting it
together. And so it is in love that this body of the Church builds up
itself. The perfect Christian and the perfect Church are taking shape
at once. Each of them requires the other for its due realisation. The
primary condition of Church health and progress is that there shall
be an unobstructed flow of the life of grace from point to point
through the tissues and substance of the entire frame.--_Findlay._