In
Israel’s wilderness journey, all the people were in the camp
together. The dangers by which they were surrounded were dangers for
all. In Christianity, there are dangers too, and these are also for
all. However, unlike in Israel, there is no one in the Church who
can be excused from joining in the battle. There is no non–combatant
class. There are none who by gender or age or anything else are
exempted from the drill, the discipline and actual encounter of
spiritual warfare. Just as every Christian is a priest, and every
Christian is a minister, so every Christian is a soldier of Jesus
Christ, and through practice must have the knowledge of his weapons,
and understand the tactics of the foe he faces.
There are leaders of course. In Israel everyone was ranged under his
standard and his captain. However, there is this great difference
between the fleshly warfare of Israel and the spiritual warfare of
the Church. In the former the responsibility assumed by the leader
is also the acquittal from responsibility of those that follow him.
Obedience is everything in the armies of this world. Who can help
but admire the unhesitating devotion of troops who go forward, even
to destruction, knowing full well perhaps that the leadership has
blundered? By contrast, in spiritual warfare one can have pity for
such but not admiration. The responsibility of the spiritual leader
removes not one atom of responsibility from the follower.
If the follower is misled he is guilty for being misled. Why?
Because he is responsible—individually responsible—to follow Christ.
His is the voice which must be heard amid all the din
of the battlefield. If there are lesser leaders, their task is only
to make men listen to that voice—to say, in effect,
“Be my imitators, even as I also [am] of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:
1).
If we value the welfare of God’s people, we must press their own
responsibility upon them to the full, and that none can excuse them
from it in any part of Christian practice. Reader, whoever you are,
allow no one to stand between your soul and Christ! He alone is your
Master, and to Him alone you must give account. The vigour,
brightness, and faithfulness of your life depend upon how you abide
in the place of dependence on Him alone. This does not mean of
course that you are to refuse the help that He would give you
through another, for God has set us in one body—given us to each
other to help each other. Let not that thought be weakened in the
least! Scripture even tells us to “Obey your leaders, and be
submissive; for they
watch over your souls” (Heb. 13: 17),
but it is a perversion of the truth to make this into an unqualified
and grovelling discipleship for “if blind lead blind, both will fall
into a ditch” (Matt. 15: 14). However good Christian leadership is,
(and it ought to be valued where it exists—see Heb. 13: 7), there
are no circumstances under which an individual saint can abdicate
his personal responsibility before the Lord. Let us remember that we
fall into one of the most subtle and successful snares of the enemy
when we make another person the director of our consciences in the
things of God, however much confidence we have in his genuineness,
wisdom, or piety. We may not be Romanists as such but this is
Romanism in principle, for Romanism all through is nothing less than
giving Christ a human vicar on earth, a substitute to whom we give
His place. Brethren, we must have no substitute for Christ and we
must seek no substitute for ourselves. We must not falsify the
blessed relationship into which we have been brought with Him, nor
must we consecrate another to fill the place we have vacated.
This
is what clerisy means—the taking up by a class among Christians of
what the rest have given up to them. It means the unspiritualizing
of the mass—the ‘laity’—who resign the duties for which they feel
they are unfitted into hands more capable. Thus I need not study the
Word for I have one who will study it for me. I trouble myself
little about worship for I have one who
approaches God on my behalf at the communion service. I
occupy myself wholly with secular and worldly things six days a week
because I have one who has devoted his life to things spiritual on
my behalf. Who is he? He is my vicar. I grant you that this picture
is not reflective of all, but if there are brighter examples it is
just as true that there are darker ones as well.
Furthermore, this abdication of individual responsibility is a real
thing among even those who have, supposedly, repudiated the
clergy–laity split altogether. Indeed, in some ways, because it is
covered up by a doctrinal veneer, it is worse. Take, as an example,
matters of discipline carried out in the assembly. Is it right that
a large part of an assembly merely confirm the judgment of their
leaders? Is this not clerisy in all but name? How often are people
carried by arguments which derive their force purely from
the people that make them? The success of real teachers is shown by
their ability to make others independent of them, but so many remain
in spiritual childhood never having their senses “exercised for
distinguishing both good and evil” (Heb. 5: 14). Carried along in
the wake of others, helped perhaps by family and social ties, they
may seem to make real progress, but then some disaster strikes and
it rapidly becomes clear that have no idea of ‘why they are where
they are’. Have not the many divisions among God’s people been
marked by this ready and helpless leaning by the mass on the
leaders? Has it not been because individuals have lost
the voice of the Shepherd (see John 10: 27), that one voice which,
amid the many voices so apt to be discordant, can never divide and
can never be in contradiction to itself?
Wherever you find a state of things in which there is an
unspiritual, unexercised mass who can be wheeled into line at the
bidding of some trusted man, or men—then there is clerisy. It need
not be official. Those who have a horror of the clerisy in the sects
around them often little realise that they may be cherishing the
very thing within their own circle. This is no imagination of my
own. Thus you will hear otherwise intelligent Christians who, taking
sides in some dispute, then come out with statements like: ‘Well we
did not ourselves know much about these things, Mr So–and–so looked
into them and we all had confidence in Mr So–and–so.’ Sometimes you
will even find that there are persons that have not known, even by
the representation of another, what the truth was that was in
question! How can the commendation “thou ... hast kept my word”
(Rev. 3: 8) apply to such when they neither knew, nor cared to know
to what or in what way his Word applied? Of course there are many
matters, local matters, which ought never to be carried around and
of such things I do not speak. But where there is some truth
or principle at stake then personal exercise is imperative.
We cannot hide from it behind another. We must allow
no
substitute—no vicar.
The vulnerable in
Israel’s army were
those at the rear—those only following—and the young and the weak
who were not soldiers (see Deut.
25: 17, 18). The lesson is plain: if we give abdicate personal
responsibility we leave ourselves wide open to the attacks of the
Enemy.
