A Thought on a Quote from Ignatius of Antioch on the Church
"Wherever the bishop appears, let the congregation also be present; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church." -Ignatius to the Smyrneans ~AD 110 (citation below). The man wrote this on the way to his execution.
The word “bishop” here simply means “pastor” or “overseer.” Long before there were Protestants, the Constantinoplian Orthodox, or the Roman Catholics, men could understand that the church, wherever it was found, was wherever there was the truth of God’s New Testament (NT). Where the Spirit himself was worshiped in his truth, there was God nurturing the elect by himself in the means ordained. We even see this first among Christ and the Apostles in many places in the Gospels and Acts. From the very start when sent out, wherever the disciples were received, their peace went upon a place. Luke 10:5, etc. After the Ascension, all things proper flowed out in the NT from the proofs that it was in the homes, staircases, riversides, prison cells, or street corner shops that it was not from any mountain top (see John 4:21 in context) that Jesus would be found, but from redeemed people wherever God placed them. In God’s providences this was also then wherever qualified men pastored formal churches as we generally think of them today with Christ as their only head. The Spirit in his laborers was powerfully preached by those with the keys of the kingdom going out to the world’s harvest with the message that saved and the truths that sanctified the saved. This is just as we Baptists (and many others) still practice righteousness today where there are pastor/teachers/elders and deacons at work among all the saints...just as reflected in Ignatius' early day. From Jerusalem (not Geneva, Wittenberg, Rome, or Constantinople) the people went out to the world with no headquarters but heaven. It was merely upheld at times, though always imperfectly, in all true churches from Geneva, Wittenberg, Rome, or Constantinople, etc.
The church still exists upon the truth. If you're in a good Bible believing church (today it will be called Protestant) you're potentially a part of the best of nearly two thousand years of the catholic (worldwide) church. We are all of us like a vessel (with a feasting and singing crew) sailing ever downstream to the warm gulf of eternal life. Our history as Christians includes many bumps with the shoreline. Shoot, we’ve needed emergency patchwork below the water line at times, but through every watch the vessel has only one wise and vigilant captain who values the training in his sovereignty and so the indestructible vessel continues to sail downstream without the possibility of total shipwreck. Many have taken lifeboats off to their death, but the vessel can’t crash. Christians today, just as always, base their faith in Christ and are afloat. They base their trust fully upon the supernatural (hands off to all others) Resurrection of one Godman, not upon any subsequent sacraments or mega churches, but upon the head, heart, and soul of the church- our triune God who is found only in Christ. Christ did not just do ‘more of the same’ from the Old Testament (OT) to the NT, as men falsely believe(d) the OT to have been. The OT was as much a faith by grace alone as the NT. God gave the promise to Abraham by faith, not by Law. (See Galatians 3:18 and connect Hebrews 6:13 in their respective contexts.) In Christ, faith by promise alone, with the Law now added for the forensic clarity of grace alone to the whole of the church, is made crystal clear in the NT. See Romans 4:23-25 in context. We needed Jesus. Romans 8:1-4 alone makes an “other gospel” idea of a sacramental salvation as pathetic as one by circumcision. (And yes, I’ve read Peter’s epistles). Salvation by water should be as condemned as imagining that circumcision is what saves. May the reader understand that the Christ came to do for the church what no works from it could do or even share in doing. See Romans 8:1-4 again. He came to secure his own grace over his own judgment. It is not “we” but “he” who is our Savior and he will not share his glory with another, not even those who are or just falsely claim to be in his church. Isaiah 45:21; Jude 25; et al. The demanded work stoppage of a Sabbath in Christ (see John 6:29) is foolishness both to the world and also at times even to men thinking carnally in a church. God can use confusion, but the Lord has shown us why we must strive to protect the Gospel both from the world and from the church at times. We must keep it shut up entirely in Christ alone because we are all sinners. We are sheep prone to wander and we will deny him his glory. We want to trust in us and in our works. We’ll call grace what he calls self-righteousness. We want to lean upon what we have done. This is like a warm blanket to fallen or weak man. We cannot touch, taste, or see Christ with our natural selves, but we do so by the miracle of union with him even more powerfully. We need a miracle for this. He then transforms us by grace and by grace in our works. Paul reminds the sheep to rest in Christ. Here’s what that looks like: “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” Titus 3:5-7. Note: we have done the works. We are running our race! We are to seek caloric deficit in the race! But that’s not why he saved anyone ever or how. We cannot pretend to schedule God’s redeeming grace. John 3:8. Men always resist the Lord…naturally. In short, we always want to pretend we can be made perfect by the flesh. See again Romans 8:1-4. Christians must war against trusting in themselves. They must put the sin of synergistic self-sufficiency to death at every possible level along with all the others Christ came to deliver his laborers (not a slip) from. It is always carnal man’s religion to buy a god’s graces. But those who understand Calvary weep at the idea of no one being able to loose the scrolls…while then and only then being placed to receive the Gospel of the only one who could and did. Revelation 5:2-5. He is risen! Jesus has loosed the scrolls! Stop weeping and rejoice, oh church, and proclaim him! God has said he will not justify wage workers, Romans 4:1-8, but trusters only. It takes a miracle and sanctification in the same to trust in Christ and to lean upon the justification of faith. It takes a miracle to taste this. Christ, in his life, fulfilled the Law’s requirements…in us…and thus there is no condemnation…now…in all those in him. I could never trust this unless the greatest of miracles took place in my stoney heart. John 5:24. Who believes in what he hasn’t seen? Answer: every believer. Friend, reader, I would not believe and taste this life without a new supernatural sort of a heart or tongue. I invite you to the truth that hands them out. Christ died for sinners in his love. Now repent or your sin and believe the good news. I could not believe that I have eternal life with the Lord Jesus Christ without the life of Christ. And I am a Protestant because I believe that the Gospel never changes. I neither add nor subtract anything to the truth Christ gave the world in Scripture. God’s churches have been teaching this message since the start…wherever the truth has gone, just as Ignatius said.
And war has sharpened the church’s senses.
-----------------
Ignatius quote: Derek S. Dodson and Katherine E. Smith, eds., Exploring Biblical Backgrounds: A Reader in Historical and Literary Contexts (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018), 235.
The word “bishop” here simply means “pastor” or “overseer.” Long before there were Protestants, the Constantinoplian Orthodox, or the Roman Catholics, men could understand that the church, wherever it was found, was wherever there was the truth of God’s New Testament (NT). Where the Spirit himself was worshiped in his truth, there was God nurturing the elect by himself in the means ordained. We even see this first among Christ and the Apostles in many places in the Gospels and Acts. From the very start when sent out, wherever the disciples were received, their peace went upon a place. Luke 10:5, etc. After the Ascension, all things proper flowed out in the NT from the proofs that it was in the homes, staircases, riversides, prison cells, or street corner shops that it was not from any mountain top (see John 4:21 in context) that Jesus would be found, but from redeemed people wherever God placed them. In God’s providences this was also then wherever qualified men pastored formal churches as we generally think of them today with Christ as their only head. The Spirit in his laborers was powerfully preached by those with the keys of the kingdom going out to the world’s harvest with the message that saved and the truths that sanctified the saved. This is just as we Baptists (and many others) still practice righteousness today where there are pastor/teachers/elders and deacons at work among all the saints...just as reflected in Ignatius' early day. From Jerusalem (not Geneva, Wittenberg, Rome, or Constantinople) the people went out to the world with no headquarters but heaven. It was merely upheld at times, though always imperfectly, in all true churches from Geneva, Wittenberg, Rome, or Constantinople, etc.
The church still exists upon the truth. If you're in a good Bible believing church (today it will be called Protestant) you're potentially a part of the best of nearly two thousand years of the catholic (worldwide) church. We are all of us like a vessel (with a feasting and singing crew) sailing ever downstream to the warm gulf of eternal life. Our history as Christians includes many bumps with the shoreline. Shoot, we’ve needed emergency patchwork below the water line at times, but through every watch the vessel has only one wise and vigilant captain who values the training in his sovereignty and so the indestructible vessel continues to sail downstream without the possibility of total shipwreck. Many have taken lifeboats off to their death, but the vessel can’t crash. Christians today, just as always, base their faith in Christ and are afloat. They base their trust fully upon the supernatural (hands off to all others) Resurrection of one Godman, not upon any subsequent sacraments or mega churches, but upon the head, heart, and soul of the church- our triune God who is found only in Christ. Christ did not just do ‘more of the same’ from the Old Testament (OT) to the NT, as men falsely believe(d) the OT to have been. The OT was as much a faith by grace alone as the NT. God gave the promise to Abraham by faith, not by Law. (See Galatians 3:18 and connect Hebrews 6:13 in their respective contexts.) In Christ, faith by promise alone, with the Law now added for the forensic clarity of grace alone to the whole of the church, is made crystal clear in the NT. See Romans 4:23-25 in context. We needed Jesus. Romans 8:1-4 alone makes an “other gospel” idea of a sacramental salvation as pathetic as one by circumcision. (And yes, I’ve read Peter’s epistles). Salvation by water should be as condemned as imagining that circumcision is what saves. May the reader understand that the Christ came to do for the church what no works from it could do or even share in doing. See Romans 8:1-4 again. He came to secure his own grace over his own judgment. It is not “we” but “he” who is our Savior and he will not share his glory with another, not even those who are or just falsely claim to be in his church. Isaiah 45:21; Jude 25; et al. The demanded work stoppage of a Sabbath in Christ (see John 6:29) is foolishness both to the world and also at times even to men thinking carnally in a church. God can use confusion, but the Lord has shown us why we must strive to protect the Gospel both from the world and from the church at times. We must keep it shut up entirely in Christ alone because we are all sinners. We are sheep prone to wander and we will deny him his glory. We want to trust in us and in our works. We’ll call grace what he calls self-righteousness. We want to lean upon what we have done. This is like a warm blanket to fallen or weak man. We cannot touch, taste, or see Christ with our natural selves, but we do so by the miracle of union with him even more powerfully. We need a miracle for this. He then transforms us by grace and by grace in our works. Paul reminds the sheep to rest in Christ. Here’s what that looks like: “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” Titus 3:5-7. Note: we have done the works. We are running our race! We are to seek caloric deficit in the race! But that’s not why he saved anyone ever or how. We cannot pretend to schedule God’s redeeming grace. John 3:8. Men always resist the Lord…naturally. In short, we always want to pretend we can be made perfect by the flesh. See again Romans 8:1-4. Christians must war against trusting in themselves. They must put the sin of synergistic self-sufficiency to death at every possible level along with all the others Christ came to deliver his laborers (not a slip) from. It is always carnal man’s religion to buy a god’s graces. But those who understand Calvary weep at the idea of no one being able to loose the scrolls…while then and only then being placed to receive the Gospel of the only one who could and did. Revelation 5:2-5. He is risen! Jesus has loosed the scrolls! Stop weeping and rejoice, oh church, and proclaim him! God has said he will not justify wage workers, Romans 4:1-8, but trusters only. It takes a miracle and sanctification in the same to trust in Christ and to lean upon the justification of faith. It takes a miracle to taste this. Christ, in his life, fulfilled the Law’s requirements…in us…and thus there is no condemnation…now…in all those in him. I could never trust this unless the greatest of miracles took place in my stoney heart. John 5:24. Who believes in what he hasn’t seen? Answer: every believer. Friend, reader, I would not believe and taste this life without a new supernatural sort of a heart or tongue. I invite you to the truth that hands them out. Christ died for sinners in his love. Now repent or your sin and believe the good news. I could not believe that I have eternal life with the Lord Jesus Christ without the life of Christ. And I am a Protestant because I believe that the Gospel never changes. I neither add nor subtract anything to the truth Christ gave the world in Scripture. God’s churches have been teaching this message since the start…wherever the truth has gone, just as Ignatius said.
And war has sharpened the church’s senses.
-----------------
Ignatius quote: Derek S. Dodson and Katherine E. Smith, eds., Exploring Biblical Backgrounds: A Reader in Historical and Literary Contexts (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018), 235.
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