Revelation 21:13

Revelation 21:13

The Gates of the Church.

I. The Church stands in a very definite and imperative relation to the Churches and the whole community about it. There can be no more thorough reversal of the idea of the Church than that its life, and work, and relations are within itself. It is indeed right that a Church should be well knit together, a body fitly joined and compacted, every part working effectually, increasing its body, and edifying itself in love. It has a life of its own, a work within itself, a growth from within to secure, a witness to bear by its own harmonious and righteous order. But when this is done, the Church is simply on the threshold of its larger duties and relations; it has so far only made itself effective for that distinctively Christian work that belongs to it. For of all institutions in the world the Church is an institution that stands in vital and binding relations to what is outside of it. It may lie four-square and have all harmony of proportion within itself, but it must also have gates open on all sides, or it is no heavenly city.

II. The Church links the community to the nation. No Church fulfils its idea that does not do this. Every conception of the Church that can be drawn from Holy Scripture points to an identification of the Church and the nation. Such was the Church at the beginning, and such it will be in the end: a holy city, in whose light the nations of the saved shall walk, and into which they will bring their glory and honour. The relation may never again be formal, but more and more will it become real. The only reason why in the unfolding of society Church and State may be formally separate is because the State is becoming moral and is working out those principles of righteousness, and mercy, and humanity for which the Church stands, separate, but coming under the same eternal laws and labouring for the same ends.

III. The Church stands in a vital relation to the past of its own history.

IV. The Church stands in near and definite relation to the Church of all ages.

V. The Church is linked to the Christian ages, to the true line of progress and to the truth that is worked out by the ages.

VI. The Church has a still higher relation. It is linked to the Churches and the community about it, to the nation, to its own past history, to the Church in all ages, and to the whole course of human society behind and forward. The abiding and all-determining relation of the Church is its relation to God and eternity.

T. T. Munger, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxix., p. 1.

Reference: Revelation 21:14. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 534.