Author: Cogdill, Roy

God has specified the organization of the church as definitely as he has specified the kind of music that we are to use in his praise and the elements of the Lord’s table. And for the church to build any other organization is to go beyond divine arrangements and divine authority.

We need again to say that when the energy, money, prayers, and abilities of the church in any community are given to do this work, God’s purposes are served. But when they are diverted to serve other purposes, the church of God, divine in design and purpose, is prostituted to serve human aims, and God cannot be pleased.

For the church to burden itself down with benevolences of every kind, much of which is the obligation of individuals or of the state, tax supported, so that it cannot preach the gospel, is to defeat its primary purpose. Hence, God placed around these works of benevolence the restrictions which we have already noted. It cannot be right to let the eternal souls of men go down to destruction because of the church being overburdened with caring for temporal wants and necessities.

Teaching, exhortation, admonition, and instruction in righteousness are all required. The word of God is designed to fill each one of these needs, and must only be taught to do so (2 Timothy 3:16, 17.) The church is designed to do the teaching; hence, all that is needed is for the church simply to carry out God’s plan, and do that which God designed it to do.