Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 839
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, November 1, 1868, by C. H. SPURGEON, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington..
“He is the head of the body, the church.” Colossians 1:18.
As if to show us that this title of “Head of the Church” is to be held in highest esteem, it is here placed in connection with the loftiest honors of our Lord Jesus. In the same breath the Son of God is styled “the image of the invisible God,” “the first-born of every creature,” the Creator of all existence, and then, “the head of the body, the church.” We dare not, therefore, think slightly of this title, nor do we hesitate to assert that any levity with regard to it would be as disgraceful as the profane use of any other name of our Divine Lord. For any mortal to assume it to himself, we conceive would be equal in blasphemy to the assumption of the mediatorial office—and we should be no more shocked to hear a man claim to be “the Creator of all things,” than we are now when a mortal is designated, “Head of the Church.”
What is the Church? The word signifies an assembly. The Church of Jesus Christ is an assembly of faithful men, the whole company of God’s chosen, His called out ones, the entire community of true followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Wherever true Believers are, there is a part of the Church. Wherever such men are not, whatever organization may be in existence, there is no Church of Jesus Christ. The Church is no corporation of priests, or confederacy of unconverted men—it is the assembly of those whose names are written in Heaven. Any assembly of faithful men is a Church.
The aggregate of all these assemblies of faithful men make up the one Church which Jesus Christ has redeemed with His most precious blood, and of which HE is the sole and only Head. Part of that Church is in Heaven, triumphant! Part on earth, militant—but these differences of place make no division as to real unity. There is but one Church above, beneath. Time creates no separation—the Church is always one—one Church of the Apostles, one Church of the Reformers, one Church of the first century, one church of the latter days, and of this one, only Church, and Jesus Christ is the one only Head.
I. WHAT IS MEANT BY OUR LORD’S HEADSHIP OF THE CHURCH? That shall be very briefly our first subject of thought. We understand this headship to be the representation of the Church as a body. We speak of counting heads, meaning thereby persons—the head represents the whole body. God has been pleased to deal with mankind as a community and His great Covenant transactions have been with men in a body—not with separate individuals. That is to say, at the first creation God did not so much deal with each particular person of the human race as with the whole race represented in one man, namely, the first Adam.
It was so ordained that the race should be bound up in his loins, to stand if he stood, to fall if he fell. Therefore, my Brethren, the Fall, hence original sin, hence the sorrows of this life. In order to salvation, which, perhaps, was only possible because we did not fall singly (for the devils falling singly and separately are reserved without hope of mercy unto everlasting fire), God instituted a second federation, of which Jesus Christ is the Head. The Apostle calls Him the second Adam. He is the Head of that company of mankind who are His chosen—His redeemed who are known in this world by being led to believe in Him, and are ultimately gathered into His rest.
Now, Jesus Christ stands to His Church in the same position as Adam stood to his posterity. They are chosen in Him, accepted in Him and preserved in Him—“Saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation.” As His own words declare it, “Because I live, you shall live also.” In the following chapters of the Epistle before us, the Apostle shows that the saints are buried with Jesus, risen with Him and quickened with Him. Even more explicit is he in the fifth of Romans, where the headship of Adam and of Jesus are compared and contrasted.
Our Lord is Head in a mystical sense, explained in Colossians 2:19: “The Head, from which all the body by joints and hands having nourishment ministered, and knit together increases with the increase of God.” The head is to the body indispensable to life—it is the seat of mental life, the temple of the soul. Even so Jesus Christ is the vitalizing Head of all His people. “He is our life.” “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” The life of every member of the mystical body depends upon the life of the mystical Head. Through Jesus Christ every living child of God derives his spiritual life. Not one true member of the Church lives by a life of his own. “For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” Separation from Christ is spiritual death, “If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered.”