A true Christian’s first loyalty is to the Lord Jesus Christ. This stems from his being united to Christ by a living faith. Christ claims for Himself the first place and He will accept no other. To give Him this place is the Christian’s reasonable service. He is their Lord and they are to serve Him with unswerving loyalty and fidelity at all times and in all circumstances. They are ever to remember that they are not their own but are bought with a price and therefore they are Christ’s.
What discipleship involves is clearly seen from the Lord’s declaration: “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34). The true Christian’s loyalty to Christ will be tested in many ways. Peter could assert on one occasion: “Although all shall be offended, yet will not I.” He could declare also: “If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise” (Mark 14:29 and 31). Yet in the trial of his loyalty to Christ he was overcome. So may Christians expect their loyalty to Christ to be tried. They need not hope to cleave to Christ through good report and evil report in their own strength but only by relying upon the help of divine grace.
Necessarily bound up with loyalty to Christ is loyalty to His Word. “Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you” (John 15:4). “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him” (John 14:21). “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in His love” (John 15:10). Faithfulness to the Word of God is required of all who are the true people of God. His word must abide in us if we are to abide in His love. It is vain to plead that we are loyal to Christ if we are disloyal to his word. We must receive the word into our hearts for there can be no loyalty to the word apart from the word finding a place in our hearts. There are those who claim to be Christ’s and yet are very selective about what parts of the Word of God
they will receive. Those who are truly the Lord’s embrace the whole revelation of His grace; they receive the Word of God in its entirety as the very Word of God. The language of the true believer is: “Thy testimonies are wonderful: therefore doth my soul keep them” (Psalm 119:129). And again: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105).
Loyalty to the truth will mean loyalty to the doctrines of the Bible. Acceptance of the revealed doctrines of God’s Word is essential to living discipleship. Rejection of any of the cardinal doctrines of the truth must necessarily call in question our loyalty to Christ. If men reject such doctrines as the Fall of Man, the New Birth, the substitutionary death of Christ, the everlasting punishment of the wicked, etc., then what right have such to the name of Christians. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). The loyal disciple of Christ loves God’s Word and the glorious doctrines contained in it. We read that the angels desire to look into these things and so does the true disciple. It is upon Christ revealed in the Scriptures of truth that the believer desires to feed. The unveiling of the glory of Christ in the gospel of God’s grace is precious to all who believe. How glorious is the way of salvation through a crucified Saviour! How soul-satisfying is the revelation God has given of Himself in Jesus Christ. The doctrines of God’s Word are all bound up with God’s reconciling of sinners to Himself by Jesus Christ. Can the believer then reject what is bound up with his own eternal salvation? Surely not! Whoever, then, will deny the doctrines of God’s Word, the living believer will not.
Loyalty to God’s Word implies also loyalty to the worship which He has revealed. For the Old Testament saint to have discarded the ceremonial worship divinely given under the Old Testament dispensation would have meant disloyalty to the God of Israel. So, too, in New Testament times, the true believer is to be loyal to the worship of God divinely given for the more spiritual dispensation which Christ inaugurated. It is not now to the ritual of Old Testament forms and ceremonies, whether of the tabernacle or temple worship, that the Christian is to turn but to the pure spiritual worship laid down in the New Testament Scriptures. The other is done away in Christ, Christ Himself being the fulfilment of all that was set forth in those temporary forms and ceremonies. It is in the preaching of the Word, prayer and the singing of God’s praises with heart and lips that the believer now delights. Having this more spiritual form of worship the living soul does not hanker after
the other. Rather does he desire, through the media which God has appointed, to taste and see that God is good — and he is not disappointed for God makes His Word and worship to be spirit and life to him.
Loyalty to God’s Word also implies loyalty to the government and discipline of God’s house. God is a God of order and it is in such a God that the believer has come to trust. It would be incongruous then for God, who is a God of order, to be neglectful of the order of His own sanctuary. Christ has established a government in His Church and to the officers in His Church has committed the keys of the kingdom of heaven; so that whatever, in accordance with the Word of God, is bound on earth is bound in heaven, and whatever, in accordance with the Word of God, is by them loosed on earth is loosed also in heaven. Though it is commonplace to relegate the question of Church government and discipline to a minor place, yet surely if Christ, the Head of the Church, has revealed an order which is to be observed in His own Church, then this cannot be neglected or subverted without disloyalty to Christ and to His Word. The importance of proper Church government and discipline to the well-being of the Church of God is too often overlooked, yet if it was not highly beneficial to the advancement of Christ’s Cause the Lord would not have instituted it. That form of Church government which we hold to be the Scriptural one is the Presbyterian form. Therefore to that form we must hold if we are to be loyal to Christ and to His Word.
The real test, of course, of our loyalty to the government and discipline of the Church of God is when we are involved in discipline ourselves. It is comparatively easy to own Presbyterian government and discipline, and to concur in the disciplining of the erring brother, when it is another brother who is affected. It is not so easy when the brother to be corrected is ourself. We think it is a rare thing to see true Christian discipline exercised in the spirit of the Gospel in the Church of God today, and a still rarer thing to see that discipline accepted in a Gospel spirit. We have no reason to point the finger at any other. If we only look into our hearts and see the self-righteousness and rebellious spirit which lurks there we will have no grounds for boasting. When discipline then is wisely and lovingly administered and meekly, graciously and submissively accepted we ought to admire the rich grace of God which orders it so. In such a case it is of the Lord and will prove in the highest interest of the Church and of the individual believer. It is in this Scriptural order and discipline that the true believer delights and thereby shows loyalty to his Lord and Master.
The day has not yet come when the visible Church of God in the world
is accommodated within one body. All Christians have not the same measure of light and consequently we have a multiplicity of denominations within the Christian Church. So far as we ourselves are concerned, it has pleased the Lord to give us as a denomination a full-orbed testimony on the side of truth. We have no ground for boasting in this. “What hast thou that thou didst not receive?” It was to maintain inviolate the testimony of the Reformed Church of Scotland that those who formed the Free Presbyterian Church left the Disruption Free Church. Consequently if we hold that Separation to have been necessary and proper, then loyalty to Christ requires us to be loyal to that testimony and to the denomination maintaining it. The loyalty required is not a blind denominational loyalty such as the Roman Catholic Church requires of its adherents but a humble, gracious and enlightened loyalty — a loyalty that comes through testing the Scripturalness of the beliefs held and the practices adopted by the Church. So long as our Church maintains its witness on the side of truth, so long are we required by loyalty to Christ to be loyal to our Church. If our Church, on the other hand, were to forsake the truth as the Disruption Free Church did, we would then not only be justified in forsaking it but duty bound to forsake it, as the Fathers of our Church found themselves obliged to do with respect to the Disruption Free Church after the passing of the Declaratory Act. Do we not need to plead then, that our Church may be kept faithful to its testimony, and that we ourselves may be kept faithful to Christ, to His Word, and to His work.