ATTACHMENT TO CHRIST AND THE ASSEMBLY

J. G. Wain

John 21: 15–18; Acts 3: 4–11; Ruth 1: 16, 17

I have read these scriptures with the desire to say a word as to being attached in affection to the Lord Jesus. I believe the verses in chapter 3 of Acts would bear on our being attached to the truth; and that remarkable committal of Ruth to Naomi in the scripture in Ruth, I believe, would bear on us as to our attachment to the assembly. I feel for myself the great need of being firmly attached to Christ. God says, through His prophet, of Ephraim, that he was joined to idols (see Hosea 4: 17). What a solemn thought it is that some of those who belong to the Lord Jesus have become attached to what could be called idols, and have become unserviceable. What a word for us, that we might be attached firmly to the Lord Jesus. I think that as the days are getting more difficult we need to see that we are firmly attached in affection to the blessed Saviour. Scripture says in the beginning of Hebrews, “For this reason we should give heed more abundantly to the things we have heard, lest in any way we should slip away” (Hebrews 2: 1). That is the solemn possibility! Just like a boat being loosed from its moorings, it slips away. Perhaps you had a love for Christ and you have slipped away; just loosed from the moorings, and the current, under the power of the devil, takes you away; hence the need to be firmly attached to the Lord Jesus.

I believe this section in John would illustrate the need to make sure that our links of attachment to Christ are maintained in freshness and reality. Let our links be not just in word but in inward conviction; the word translated ‘attached’ means intense affection, and it was there in Peter. Mr. Taylor says in one place that Peter is a sample man, a sample of us all.

Now in referring to Peter we are not thinking critically of that servant of God in any sense, but he just reflects what I am and what I am capable of. The scripture is given to us that we might be helped by examples; the Spirit of God shows here how the Lord is concerned that Peter’s attachment might be firm and real. I believe that is why He repeats the question three times; He emphasizes the urgent need that this should be maintained in reality. As we know. John writes his gospel for the last days; he writes after the breakdown publicly had come in, and when the truth had been distorted and misrepresented, and John is pointing out, in recording this in his gospel, not to expose Peter, but for our benefit, that we might see to it that our links with Christ are strong and real. As we think of Peter as a sample man it is encouraging to see that the Lord’s dealings with us are intensely personal. There is not a second you anywhere as far as the Lord is concerned. He knows all about us, and He is concerned about our links being fresh and real, and our being firmly attached to Him.

Remarkable circumstances surround this searching and this affectionate appeal to Peter’s affections. The Lord says, “lovest thou me more than these?”; Peter had inferred that he had more love than others. He said, “Even if all should be offended, yet not I”, Mark 14: 29. The Lord is tenderly helping Peter to see that his attachment is not just what he thought it was, and it needed to be revived in the freshness of love. All this transpired on the same sea shore where Peter was initially converted—surely it would come into Peter’s mind how the Lord had come into his boat, into his very circumstances, with that miraculous haul of fishes when he was converted. In the beginning of Luke 5 the Lord uses all these circumstances just to help us. He is not dependent upon what anyone may say. He has His own way in the arranging of things in our lives so that we know without a word what He means. The cock crew; most people would hear the cock crow, but it meant something to Peter that it meant to no one else. God is well able to dispense with every human agency and deal with us each one individually, and He is not dependent on the preacher, but in wondrous grace He uses the foolishness of the preaching to save men (1 Corinthians 1: 21). (I would not dare to use that word “foolishness” were it not in Scripture). Then there was the fire made with coals; there is only one other reference that I know in the New Testament to a fire of coals, and that is the fire by which Peter was warming himself in company with those hostile to Jesus, when he denied the Lord. In the Lord’s tender grace He uses such circumstances in our lives that we might know Him better, and that we might be divested of the confidence that we may have in ourselves, and so get down to the reality, to rock bottom.

So He probes Peter in this way in deep affection, that He might establish firmly, afresh, his attachment to Him. After the Lord Jesus had risen the message was, ‘Go, tell his disciples and Peter’ (Mark 16: 7)—I think that is lovely. It is as if the Lord would say, I have had personal dealings with you, and I may send a message, or I may arrange circumstances, that will just convey what is needed to the soul of the one in whom I am working. But all is in view of the strengthening of our attachment to Him. O, dear friends, we need to maintain a living attachment to the Lord Jesus. The only thing that will stand in the presence of the increasing darkness and apostasy is a committal of this kind. So Peter in the end says, “Thou knowest that I am attached to thee”. This underlies everything that is collective; this is the most vital thing in the history of any soul, that we are firmly attached to the Saviour.

And what reason we have to be attached to Him! Jesus here was out of death—O, beloved, He has borne our sins in His body on the tree. What we owe to Him we can never say; no one can fully understand the debt we owe to Jesus. Have we not reason to love Him? He took my place; He bore the judgment that I deserved. He went into the darkness and the distance, and endured the full wrath of God against sin, that the whole question of our history might be eternally settled to the glory of God. What that work involved we can never compass; it is beyond us to compass; the work itself was done in unparalleled darkness which no eye could penetrate. The weight of the judgment was more than we can understand as Jesus was forsaken on that cross; He was forsaken for you and for me. There He bore the full penalty for sin. Oh who could think, or who can find words to express, what was involved? But on the cross Jesus bore the full unmitigated fury of a holy God against sin, that we might be forgiven, and redeemed, and blessed. That judgment was exhausted—no other man could ever have borne that judgment. Jesus was the only One who could do it, because He was entirely apart from sin—the holy, sinless, spotless Saviour. No other man would have been seen again after that, judgment, but He sustained it in all its awfulness, and He exhausted it.

He could say, “It is finished”; the work was done. He could say, anticipating that moment, “I have completed the work which thou gavest me that I should do it”, John 17: 4. Glorious, victorious Saviour, He has been into death and the grave and been there vicariously to deliver us from that condition of man that has brought in such sorrow and disgrace. He is now alive, a living Saviour, and God is completely vindicated. The precious blood of Jesus flowed from His side, and the blood is the basis on which God can forgive the greatest sinner; that blood alone can atone for every sin. Oh thank God for such a work and for such a Saviour, and such a solid foundation on which to rest the faith of our souls! That precious blood which cleanses from every sin is available still for salvation. How much we owe Him; how much we should be attached to Him! We can never repay Him, of course, but I believe He would appeal to our affections that they might be firmly attached to Him—and make a further committal to Him, an irrevocable committal, one that we never go back on. Peter never went back to his fishing after this, he was secured wholly and solely for the work the Lord had given him to do. Oh may our attachment to Christ be steady, and firm, and living, and real, so that come what may we have an anchor for the soul that will hold in any storm.

Now I refer just briefly to Acts because there we have a man who was unable to do anything, brought into the greatest blessing in the power of the name of Jesus the Nazaraean; he is delivered from his condition and set free that he might walk, and leap, and praise God. I wanted to draw attention to what it says in verse 11, “And as he held Peter and John”. Peter had taken hold of him by the right hand and raised him up, but there is a movement on his part so that he held on to Peter and John, and I suggest that there is need that we hold on to the truth that has come to us, that we are attached to it, not loosely, but firmly. The Spirit of God speaks in Ephesians 4: 14 of persons being carried away—“In order that we may be no longer babes, tossed and carried about by every wind of that teaching which is in the sleight of men, in unprincipled cunning with a view to systematized error”. In the presence of the eternal weight of the truth, in the presence of the giving up of so much amongst many who may profess the name of Christ, I believe there is a need to be firmly attached to what has come to us through accredited means. He held on to Peter and John; it just suggests to me that there is a balanced holding on to the vital truth that has come through the apostles, delivered from novelties, delivered from modern theology and the thinking of men, but holding on to what God established so powerfully at the beginning of the dispensation, so that at the end, in spite of all the power of the enemy, we are not carried away. May we be holding tenaciously and firmly to the truth, not in desperation, but holding on to it as appreciating and valuing what has come to us at such cost.

This man held on to Peter and to John. Peter, no doubt, suggests to us the teaching of the kingdom, the need of recognising authority, and coming under the control of Christ; and John emphasizes the preciousness of those blessed family relations which he sets out in his ministry as the one who was in the bosom of Jesus. These two things are to go on together, and we need to hold on to them. What a need there is for irrevocable committal to the truth. There was such a committal with Elisha to Elijah. Three times Elisha says, “I will not leave thee!”, 2 Kings 2: 2–6. That is the sort of committal that is called for in the day in which we are. “I will not leave thee” means that I am going to hold on to the truth that has come at such cost, regardless of efforts to divert. I believe there is need for firm attachment to the truth that has been given us to value and enjoy.

Finally, in Ruth there is an outstanding committal on the part of a younger person to a widowed woman named Naomi. Naomi’s name means ‘pleasantness’, and I believe in Naomi the Spirit of God would point to the features of the assembly in our day. There is no conception in the universe like God’s conception of Christ and the assembly; it is outstanding; there is nothing that can compare with that glorious vessel that God has formed in this wonderful time. It will stand out in the world to come, and in eternity. As this dear woman returns she says, “Call me Mara”. She had known bitterness (Mara means bitterness).

She was bereft of all that nature could give, a widow, and both her sons had died in the land of Moab. It is not unlike the day in which we are. The prophet Isaiah refers to the howling of Moab (see Isaiah 16: 7). What sorrow we see here; Naomi is returning with all this on her spirit, a broken woman. And there is one person here in whom God had worked; Ruth really moves in faith. She had light from God in her soul, and when God works nothing can disturb it. Faith is a wonderful thing. You can read of persons, as at the time of the martyrs, who shone in their faith. What light shone in those persons!—men, women, young men, young women, their lives surrendered for the truth; perhaps not the full truth that we may know, through God’s grace, but they gave their lives for what they knew.

Now Ruth was one such person. There was Naomi returning to the land she had left, penitent, broken, conscious of failure. And the work of God comes out in Ruth in this wonderful committal. I believe it would be a word for us. She says, I will go—“whither thou goest I will go”—What a committal! No second thoughts with Ruth; there were with Orpah, but no second thoughts with Ruth. She says, “Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge—thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried”. What a committal! Her language is like that of Elisha when he said, “I will not leave thee”. I believe there is a need today of this kind of attachment, that whatever the circumstances may be, however weak the outward position may appear to human sight, we see beyond it to that work which God is doing which is going through, and which is going to shine eternally. It is God’s work; it is not our work, not man’s work. We like numbers perhaps, we like big companies, but God’s way is that there may be firm attachment, nothing loose that can slip away, but a committal and an attachment that will not be reversed. The Spirit delights to record Ruth’s committal. The end of the book shows in type the assembly for Christ’s glory. Now despised, it will end in glory. For myself I feel the need to be vitally attached to Christ; firmly attached to the truth, secured to us at such cost, and firmly attached to the assembly, which ministers to the affections of Him who died for us. May the Lord bless the word.

Preaching at Maidstone
10 October 1982