Without entering into the controversy, it may be agreed that our Lord was a member of the nation of Israel, and as such would be conversant with the prophetic doctrine that God’s purpose would be fulfilled through a faithful remnant.^[1]  When, in the Garden of Gethsemane, all the disciples ‘forsook Him and fled’,^[2] the faithful Remnant was narrowed down to one person, Himself.  He is the link between the Old Israel and the New, the Christian Church.

By His Resurrection He revitalized the faith and transformed the lives of His disciples,^[3] and restored them to union and fellowship with Himself.  The Church is a Divine Society, the ‘new creation’ of God in Christ.  Having commissioned the Apostles,^[4] our Lord gave the Spirit to the Church at Pentecost.  The ‘cloven tongues like as of fire sat upon each’^[5] but if each was separately visited, the outpouring was simultaneous and collective; the Spirit was given to the Church as a whole.  Thenceforth, ‘The Spirit was the corporate possession of the Body of Christ, and it became the property of the individual convert when he became a member of the Church.  No man could be Christ’s who had not Christ’s Spirit, and ordinarily no man could have Christ’s Spirit but by being “added” to the Church in Baptism.’^[6]

Christ – the Church – faithful individuals, is the right order of thinking.   ‘Men speak as if Christians came first and the Church after: as if the origin of the Church was in the wills of the individuals who composed it.  But, on the contrary, throughout the teaching of the Apostles, we see it is the Church that comes first, and the members of it afterwards. . . . In the New Testament . . . The Kingdom of Heaven is already in existence, and men are invited into it.  The Church takes its origin, not in the will of man, but in the will of the Lord Jesus Christ . . . . Everywhere men are called in: they do not come in and make the Church by coming.  They are called into that which already exists: they are recognized as members when they are within; but their membership depends on their admission, and not upon their constituting themselves into a body in the sight of the Lord.’^[7]  ‘Being the Body of Christ, it is no self‑constituted Society of like‑minded seekers after ideal truth or admirers of the prophet Jesus: it is a Society founded and constituted by a now Invisible Head, in whom resides all its vitality, and apart from whom it can do nothing.  The distinguishing and confessed characteristic of its being lies in GIVEN‑NESS.  “When He ascended up on high He gave gifts unto men.”’^[8]