Reading 3
A.J.G. We come in this chapter to the central point of the gospel with this allusion by the Lord as to His assembly, not simply the assembly, but “my assembly”, the Lord holding it as belonging to Himself, not exactly from the view point of the response that she gives to His love, although that is found at the foundation, but what He has here in the presence of evil, so as to maintain by this means a true testimony to God. When the Lord was down here, He always had in His mind that God should be glorified in everything. At the end of His path, He could say, “I have glorified thee on the earth”, and He considers His assembly in this light in some way. In writing to the Corinthians, the apostle addresses himself to them as being the assembly of God which was in Corinth, that is to say that there was a vessel in that place to which God could attach His Name, and the Lord holds this vessel jealously having that in view. He considers it here in this scene in the presence of the opposition of Satan. In the gospel of Matthew, we constantly have the opposition to the Lord and to the truth, in particular in this passage here. Chapter 14, as we have remarked yesterday, begins with Herod who beheaded the Lord’s forerunner; chapter 15 begins with the Pharisees and scribes introducing tradition to set aside the commandments of the Lord, and chapter 16 begins with the Pharisees and Sadducees introducing the religious element again but attaching to it the element of unbelief, for the Sadducees were unbelievers. So it is in this section that the Lord brings in the thought of “my assembly”. All the instruction of chapters 14 and 15 has in view that we should be established in the feeling that in Christ we possess all that we have need of to render us entirely independent of what Herod represents, that is the civil or secular power, and also to make us independent of the religious man. It is also important to see that the religious man always makes a lot of the first man. So they were occupied with the washing of hands and what was outward, while in chapter 14 the Lord exposes what man is, in showing that what goes out of his mouth and what comes into his heart are what defiles him. He brings out what man is, and that introduces the necessity of the cross and of another Man, this other Man is the Christ of God. In the first part of chapter 16, the Lord reminds the disciples of the two occasions when He had fed the crowds, asking them if they had truly understood their bearing. In the Reformation, those whom God used in such a powerful way to overthrow the power of Rome lost sight of the teaching of these two occasions of feeding, so that they were turned toward the secular power for support; they were never free of the principle of clericalism, and it is impossible that the true thoughts of God as to the assembly should be known as a result of their ministry. So God has had to undertake a new movement in the last century of which the very essence was that the assembly had a living Head in heaven, and the Holy Spirit down here. Thus furnished, the church is entirely independent of what belongs to man. The disciples did not understand what the Lord had in mind when He said, “See and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees”, so that He had to present clearly what He had in mind, that is to say, that they had not to bring in the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees, putting before them that it is possible to occupy a position outwardly of separation from what is of man and yet to have the principles of the man that God has set aside. When the disciples have come to the other side, in chapter 16: 5, the Lord brings in this warning as if to say: it could indeed be that you have taken a good position and nevertheless you may bring in the principles of the position that you have left.
P.G.B. Is there a difference between the leaven of the Pharisees and that of the Sadducees?
A.J.G. The Pharisee is the religious man who likes ceremonies, while the Sadducee is the intellectual man; the Sadducees denied the resurrection; they denied the existence of angels and spirits; they could not accept what the natural mind could not understand. So, as to divine things, they were unbelieving. These two elements are in the professing church today.
A.R. It is remarkable to see that this doctrine is brought in as leaven.
A.J.G. It is leaven. We have seen yesterday that leaven in the Scriptures is always evil; it is never presented as a figure of what is good. It is important to see that, because in professing Christendom, it is applied to something which can be used as being good, but the Scripture is always explained in the same way, and in seeing in this section where the thing is used, we can well understand that it always refers to what is bad. The apostle Paul uses this expression in the epistle to the Corinthians and the epistle to the Galatians, in speaking of bad conduct and of bad doctrine, and in the Old Testament it is especially said that there must be no leaven in the offerings.
E.J.S. Leaven has an inflating effect, priding oneself, and robbing Christ of His true place in our hearts.
A.J.G. So the central point in the teaching here refers to the appreciation that we have of Christ. What is it?
The Lord asks the question, “Who do men say that I the Son of man am?” And after having heard various appreciations of men, the Lord says, “But ye, who do ye say that I am?”. This manifests what was in the heart of Peter: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”.
P.P. Having developed this thought a little would you say something on the first paragraph, especially the signs of which the Lord speaks: “ye cannot the signs of the times”?
A.J.G. I believe that it is a question of discerning what God is doing in whatever time it is. Have you something else in mind?
P.P. I simply asked the question. We often here the signs of the times spoken about.
A.J.G. It is important that the saints should discern what God is doing at whatever time it may be. That is seen with those who persevere with the truth. The Lord exposes the moral character of the Pharisees and Sadducees; He says, “A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign”. It was a wicked and adulterous generation. If we fail to discern what God is doing, there is no doubt a moral reason underlying that. The generation is exposed by the Lord as being wicked and adulterous; it was opposed to God’s will, iniquitous, and attached to the world.
P.P. Why does the Lord bring in the sign of Jonas here?
A.J.G. He makes reference to His death, I suppose, but also to His resurrection. The ministry of Jonas was the ministry of a man who had come to life out of death. Every other man must disappear in death so that Christ should have the place that God gives Him.
P.P. So we need to understand this sign to find our place in the assembly?
A.J.G. I think so. Peter’s confession signifies that every other man is excluded, because there is only one, Christ; there are many antichrists, but only one Christ; He is the One by whom God effects all His thoughts and all must derive from Him. He has gone above all the heavens that He might fill all things, and the assembly is His body here. It is a vessel that is down here and which has as object to manifest the features of the life of Christ. On the one hand, what God is has been fully revealed in Christ; but on the other, God expects that man, in response to the revelation, will manifest what is in Christ; and the assembly must fill out these two sides.
E.J.S. It is one thing to seek to occupy this new position, but it is another thing to be fed on the food needed so that we should be free of what is of the religious flesh, and that a spiritual constitution should be developed in us, to have this light of the Person of Christ on the one hand manifesting God, and on the other as being the Man after God’s heart.
A.J.G. So Peter had this distinct light in his soul; he says: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”, that is to say that he did not simply know Him as being the Christ, One who excludes every other man, but he grasped Him as the Centre of a system of affections. God is known in this remarkable way as having a Son.
P.A.N. Is Peter in this passage the direct object of God’s work, because “No one can come to me except the Father who has sent me draw him”?
A.J.G. Yes. So the Father had worked in Peter, and although that was entirely special to that moment, I believe that Peter also represents persons in whom God has worked, and as a result of such work, they have an appreciation of Christ.
P.A.N. So we have the Father who works, and the Son who works: “I will build my assembly”.
A.J.G. That is indeed so. First of all, the Father had made a revelation to Peter, and the Lord says to him, “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona”. He gives him his ordinary name, as he is known among men; He does not address him by his spiritual name, as Peter, but he calls him by the name which he has among men, and He says, “Blessed art thou”! Each of us indeed has the right to consider himself in this same light. If we have the light in our souls as to Christ, it is what the Father has given us, and we are in consequence blessed of God. We can well ask ourselves, each in particular: how is it that we have this light in our souls as to Christ and our neighbour does not? Why has God worked like this with us? It is because He secures stones for the building according to His sovereign choice. All those who have this light as to Christ must be living stones. Each believer must indeed ask themselves this question: why has the Father given such light? What is in view in that?
P.A.N. Would it be possible to have such light and not enter into the blessing of being a living stone?
A.J.G. That is just the important point. The Lord goes on to say something more to Peter: “And I also, I say unto thee”. Peter must come to the exact thought as to himself. He has a right thought as to Christ, and then it is as if the Lord said to him: now you need to have a right thought as to yourself. He says, Peter thou art a stone.
A.R. Why does the Lord say to Peter, “flesh and blood has not revealed it to thee”?
A.J.G. Just to emphasise that it is the Father’s sovereign action. That must underline the question, Why has the Father given us such light as to Christ? Nobody among men could give us this light. It is of the highest importance that each brother and each sister, even the young, should understand that you are a living stone by reason of the light that God has given them as to Christ.
E.J.S. It relates here to the revelation of the Father as to Christ, but in John the Lord had said, “thou shalt be called Cephas (which interpreted is stone)”. There it relates to the Spirit’s work in his heart.
A.J.G. Peter is led by the Father, and the Lord could receive him as being a person that the Father had given Him. “No one can come to me except the Father who has sent me draw him”. So the Lord names him: “thou shalt be called Cephas”. It is like Adam who named all the living creatures that were led to him. The Lord gives his name to Peter, without giving an explanation of what it signifies at that moment. Here the Lord is concerned not only that Peter should know what his name signifies but what his name was, what he was himself, a stone.
P.S.C. Do you think that to have an understanding of this first part of verse 18, we need to have the light of the second part? The two are inseparable.
A.J.G. It is good that we should seek to emphasise that. When we come to the epistle of Peter, it is a question of living stones, it is a matter of persons who have living affections for Christ and for God. The assembly that Christ is building is composed of people, each having an appreciation of Himself not simply as being his Saviour, but as being the Christ, that is to say, One by whom God is effectuating all His precious thoughts. He is the Son of the Father’s love, the Son of the living God.
E.J.S. Peter in his ministry has often spoken of Christ; he makes mention of the Son of God only once. It is more the apostle Paul and the apostle John who speak to us of the Son of God.
P.P. Would we have the same thought with the rock and the corner stone in Peter’s epistle?
A.J.G. The rock would be the appreciation of Christ in Peter’s soul. From a certain point of view, it is Christ Himself, it is certainly not Peter; Peter is a stone but it is Christ appreciated in the hearts of the saints; the assembly is not edified by man but it is what Christ has in those who appreciate Himself as being One in whom the true light of God shines. The reason for which the martyrs died at the stake in past centuries is that they had Christ in their hearts and they would not at all abandon the truth they possessed; in refusing to abandon the truth, the enemy was defeated. The gates of hades do not prevail against the assembly. The enemy has tried by violence but he has not prevailed and now in recent years he tries by means of corruption in introducing teaching and means that are not of Christ, and it is against that that we have to be on our guard to understand that the assembly deriving from Christ has a heavenly character that must be maintained.
P.G.B. Is it this feature of corruption that is presented in a special way in the epistles of John?
A.J.G. Yes. The apostle warns the young men as to the world and the things that are in the world; he warns the little children on the subject of false teaching, but the most dangerous things are the things of the world, not the world itself as a system, but the things of the world introduced in the Christian company.
P.G.B. I thought of all the false teaching mentioned in the first epistle of John.
A.J.G. There are a lot of false teachings that are presented in the world, but what keeps us in the face of all that is the unction, the Holy Spirit, giving us discernment, particularly as to all that is contrary to the truth.
P.A.N. Before introducing the thought as to the assembly, the Lord puts His own on guard as to the Pharisees and Sadducees, and before introducing the idea of the house, Peter introduces the pure mental milk.
A.J.G. That is very important. We are exhorted in the first epistle of Peter to desire earnestly the pure mental milk so that we should grow up by it to salvation; and he goes on “if indeed ye have tasted that the Lord is good”. There must be movement towards Him: “To whom coming, a living stone, cast away indeed as worthless by men, but with God chosen, precious”. It is important to see that this implies certain movement to go out of the world, taking a position with God as to Christ, and recognising that Christ has been rejected as worthless by men. It is not a question of a historical matter, as happening nineteen hundred years ago, but the order of Man which Jesus is cannot suit the system of men; it can no more suit it today than when He was rejected. The Man who only sought the will of God and the thoughts of God, and never sought His own glory, who has never done His own will; such a Man cannot find a place in the world of men.
P.A.N. In Matthew 16, it is not a question of the living stone, but of a stone, while in the first epistle of Peter, it is a matter of the living stone. Do we have some danger of conceiving the thought of the stone in a theoretical way, without having contact with the corner stone?
A.J.G. That is indeed so. The Lord is the corner stone and all the other stones are set in relation with Him. Peter manifests that we are all living stones, that is to say that the spiritual house is built and composed of persons having affection for Christ and some appreciation of Him as being the Christ, the Son of the living God.
E.J.S. It is not so much what the Father has done in giving us light and drawing us to Christ, but we ourselves coming to Him on the principle of attraction, and He becomes so precious that we are ready to share in His reproach.
A.J.G. That is how things develop practically, but it is a matter of coming to Him and then being built up together, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices, so that each brother must be concerned with the importance of the liberty that he should have in the service of God, and each sister should also be concerned to have very clear thoughts as to Christ and affections ready to be set in movement by the Holy Spirit. That is what constitutes the substance that is found in the body; the Lord will use it and the Spirit will use it in the service of God. Sisters are living stones just as much as brothers. The assembly is a vessel, or a spiritual building of which each part is a living stone.
P.P. So we must keep in mind consideration of the assembly as being an entity, “my assembly”, and as being composed of persons, living stones built together.
A.J.G. Quite so. We must understand that Satan is constantly opposed to it. He will always seek to bring in what is contrary to the truth, and he can use one among us or even more than one to that end, leading thoughts opposed and destructive. Each one among us must therefore watch himself in this regard because Satan is always ready to try to overcome me, as an individual saint, and if he does it, he brings in something detrimental in the assembly, trying thus by this means to deprive God of what is His part.
P.S.C. Is there a difference between “being built” in Peter, and “I will build” in Matthew?
A.J.G. The Lord is constructing the building, but this building takes the form of which Peter speaks, that is to say, that first of all we set certain things aside, we reject all malice and all guile, hypocrisy, envy, and then we are built up as experiencing that the Lord is good. The more we go on with the Lord, the more we have experience that He is good. But it is important to see that this chapter begins with certain things that must be rejected, in particular all guile and hypocrisy, because the tendency is that hypocrisy is much nearer to us than we think; the tendency we have is to appear what we are not. The Lord could say that He was exactly what He said: there was no difference between what He was and what He appeared to be. This must be a constant exercise for us all, in walking before God, to be really what we appear to be.
P.P. Paul exhorts the Corinthians to take away the leaven and to celebrate the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
A.J.G. That is what it means, the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
P.A.N. Hypocrisy is an essentially Pharisaic element?
A.R. Hence the importance of being newborn babes.
A.J.G. That does not mean that we stay in the state of little children, that would be a shame, but the desire for the pure mental milk is that of a newborn babe. A newborn babe wants nothing except milk. That represents a simple desire on our part.
P.A.N. Do you think that the key to the whole passage in the epistle of Peter is found in this expression: “if indeed ye have tasted that the Lord is good”?
A.J.G. It is a question of experience; this is not the thought of coming to the Lord once for all, but the thought of coming characteristically.
P.A.N. I thought of one who said to the Lord, “Good teacher”, and what the Lord replied: “There is none good but one, God”. This man had no deep experience.
A.J.G. In speaking like that, he seemed to be saying that there was good in man; he considered the Lord as a good man; he did not recognise that the Lord was God. He was simply on this line of thought that there was good in man and that the Lord was an exceptionally good man. The Lord says to him, “There is none good but one, God”. So in coming to the Lord characteristically, in definitely leaving all that is of the world with its features, one tastes more and more that the Lord is good, and one is found to be built up in a greater and greater liberty towards God. There is nothing greater than to find one’s part in the service of God in an active way, even in the presence of Satan’s opposition. I believe that each brother and each sister must consider seriously the reason for which we have this light as to Christ, so as to have each his part in a vital way in the service of God now, and in each locality where the saints are set together in the presence of all that is contrary to the truth.
E.J.S. Is this principle of coming something that continues so that we should grow and that we should have our part in what is vital? In Hebrews 12, it says, “ye have come to mount Zion”.
A.J.G. That is indeed the idea.
P.G.B. What is the exact significance of the expression, “the gates of hades”?
A.J.G. It is the power of evil that would take counsel, so to say. It is like a deliberate counsel on the part of the wicked one against what is of God. One can see evidence of it from time to time, and the present development of it among men in the unions and such organisations, which may be quite natural from a human point of view, but if a believer finds himself held there, he loses his liberty and God loses His part; something corrupt is brought into the assembly. That kind of thing is against the truth, they are not gross things as such, but subtle things.
E.C. Why does the Lord give such authority to Peter in verse 19?
A.J.G. Here Peter no longer represents one of us. It is simply a matter of the Lord’s sovereignty; He could have given this sovereignly to another, but He is pleased to give it to Peter. It may be that it leaves an impression on him of what grace is, because He knew that Peter was going to deny Him. He may have wanted to give this impression of grace in introducing Christianity to a person who was going to deny Him so terribly, and who would then be used on the day of Pentecost to open the door to the Jews, and then to use the keys with Cornelius to open the door to the Gentiles. Rome makes a great thing of Peter, but Peter did not think as much as that of himself. Cornelius prostrated himself before him, but Peter raised him up, saying, “Rise up: I myself also am a man”. I am sure that Peter would keep in mind the feeling of having denied the Lord and all that in which the Lord served him; he would be kept in a humble mind. So it is that he says that the younger should submit to the older, and he adds, “and all of you bind on humility towards one another”.
L.P.N. Peter gave way to the apostle Paul.
A.J.G. Yes, he speaks of “our beloved brother Paul”. But it is very remarkable to see that to refuse everything false that has been brought in by man, in particular relative to one who is considered as successor to the apostles, provision is already made in this respect in the Scriptures.
P.P. So Peter does not have the key to heaven, as Rome teaches, but the keys to the kingdom of the heavens, that is to say to what is of heaven administered on earth.
A.J.G. It is a sphere on earth under the authority of Christ in heaven.
P.P. And heaven will be in accord with Peter’s movements: “whatsoever thou mayest loose on the earth shall be loosed in the heavens”.
A.J.G. That is apostolic as being given to Peter. When we come to John 20, we find that the Lord gives a certain similar authority to His own; this authority is found now in the assembly. The Lord breathed into them and gave them the Holy Spirit, in saying to them, “whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained”, that is to say that Lord has confidence in those who have the Holy Spirit that they will act faithfully and suitably, and what is done in this way is confirmed in heaven.
H.R. Is that the thought that we have in Matthew 18: 18?
A.J.G. Yes, the Lord has confidence in the assembly.
P.P. What is in chapter 16: 19 would be more particularly what was entrusted to Peter and to the apostles?
A.J.G. It is to Peter that that is entrusted.
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