THE CHRISTIAN CIRCLE
A. McBride
Mark 3: 31–34; 1 John 2: 3–8; 3: 13–16, 24; 4: 9–14; 5: 6–9, 18–20
I had in mind to say a word about the Christian circle in the way that John presents it. It is a very great matter that there is such a thing as the Christian circle. It is not a term that is perhaps used a great deal among us in these days, but it had a great place in the opening up of the recovery, and those who are familiar with the ministry of the recovery will know it well.
We may ask then, What is the Christian circle? Well, as I would understand it is the place Christ has in the hearts of His own, who are united together in the power of the Spirit to one another, and to Him who is the Centre of the circle. We began on Lord’s day with the thought of Christ as the Centre; we sang that beautiful hymn (311), which speaks of Him as the
‘Centre of glory and love’; that is what He is up there—the ‘Centre of glory and love’. The brother who gave thanks for the loaf spoke very touchingly of when the Lord was here. He was the centre of the hatred of man energised by Satan. In Psalm 22, which speaks of His sufferings as no other one does, He says, “Many bulls have encompassed me; Bashan’s strong ones have beset me round” (Psalm 22: 12). The Lord Jesus went that way for you and me in order to meet the whole question of our guilt before a holy God; He met it entirely to God’s satisfaction. Through that, He has set us free, and He is now a risen and glorious Man, indeed the ‘Centre of glory and love’. He is the Centre of God’s moral universe. How great He is! The Christian circle down here is attached in the power of the Spirit to that blessed One where He is. I suppose Paul’s presentation of the body of Christ would, in a way, be a similar idea. The body consists of believers who are indwelt by the Spirit, who are united to one another and to Christ, their Head in heaven. The function of the body is to express Christ down here. Similarly, the Christian circle belongs down here, and its function, as I understand it, is that in it is God’s witness concerning His Son. That is, the Christian circle witnesses to Christ as the Son of God. Now it is a wonderful privilege to belong to such a circle. It is very wide of course in scope, as embracing the family of God, but in its actual, practical experience it may not be so wide. It would be a challenge to each one of us, and John would raise that challenge, I think, as to whether we know the elements of the Christian circle; whether in our localities we live in the atmosphere of that circle, because it has an atmosphere; its atmosphere is eternal life linked to a blessed Man in glory, the Son of God.
John in this epistle says, “this life is in his Son”, 1 John 5: 11. That is the life and atmosphere of the Christian circle.
I wanted to bring out from Mark how it is that we get into this Christian circle, because it is important that each one of us knows where we are in relation to this great and wondrous matter. It is substantial; it is real, it is not an empty circle by any means; you might put a pair of compasses to a piece of paper and draw a circle and you have an empty area between the circumference and the centre; the Christian circle is not like that, it is full of substance. I think we get an impression of it in Genesis 2, the great river out of Eden divided into four streams and it says, “The name of the one is Pison—that is it which surrounds the whole land of Havilah, where the gold is. And the gold of that land is good”, (Genesis 2: 11, 12). The river is a spiritual idea, it surrounds that which is most precious and substantial which the gold, bdellium and onyx would suggest. I would like to bring out that the Christian circle is full of what is substantial. So Mark brings out how we get into it. We were saying the other night in our local reading that the gospels were written largely in the light of the death and resurrection of Christ, and it helps to read them in that
light. This chapter of Mark makes it very easy for us to look at it from that point of view, because in verse 13 it says, “And he goes up into the mountain, and calls whom he himself would”, that is, it is a figure of Christ in glory attracting persons to Himself; then in the body of the chapter there is a reference to the Holy Spirit here (Mark 3: 29); and then where we read there are those who morally form part of this Christian circle. They do the will of God.
Mr. Raven used to speak about attraction, attachment and affection, in that order. The Lord Jesus would attract us to Himself and in doing so He would attach us to Himself, and that attachment is by the Holy Spirit. The reception of the Holy Spirit attaches us to Christ. He is the bond between Christ Jesus and His own—wonderful, blessed thing! If we have the Holy Spirit we are attached to Christ. That is how we come into the Christian circle, by way of attraction and attachment, and within that circle there is affection, wonderful divine affection, affection for one another.
So I thought we should see what John says about some elements of the Christian circle. He begins with what is substantial, presenting the Lord Jesus in the first few verses of his first epistle, largely speaking, I believe, of Christ as out of death, and during the forty days. He says, “That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes; that which we contemplated”. It is not ‘He’ exactly, it is Christ, it is the Lord Jesus he is speaking about, but he says, “That”. It is to strengthen the thought in our minds that he is speaking about the substantiality that was there in a blessed Man out of death, who gives character to the whole universe of God. He is the Centre of it. This circle is marked by wondrous elements that run right through the epistle—rule, atmosphere and light. We have been helped to understand that God works in an ordered way, and in order to understand the things of God and their relation to one another, we have to go by these great elements that belong to the Christian circle and to eternal life—rule, atmosphere and light. John brings these out in his epistle. He begins from the outside and works inwards. Where we read in chapter 2 we come under rule; we are governed by light and by the commandments. These are great matters of rule that govern us, that we walk in the light as God is in the light and have fellowship with one another. That is, the light of God revealed in Christ, we walk in that; it has its effect on every part of our lives, and therefore we have fellowship with one another; then it beautifully adds, “and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1: 7). How precious that is! Then there are His commandments. We know that we know Him if we keep His commandments, and are thus in Him so as to walk as He walked. We need the Spirit’s help to walk as Jesus walked.
What a test it is! What a perfect blessed example He is to us! Yet that is what it says, “He that says he abides in him ought, even as he walked, himself also so to walk”. Then there is the new commandment. The old commandment is the Lord’s commandment, “that ye love one another, as I have loved you”, John 15: 12. Then John says here, “I write a new commandment to you, which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light already shines”. That is, the saints, as making way for the Spirit of God, can work out this great matter of loving one another in the midst of a world that is marked by hatred and moral darkness. What shines are the features of Jesus, “true in him and in you”, coming out through loving one another. Darkness, which has no place in the Christian circle, is dispelled through loving one another so that the true light shines.
When we come to chapter 3 we come to atmosphere; we come to the love the Father has shown us—“See what love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God” (1 John 3: 1)—that is the atmosphere which the Christian breathes, the atmosphere of eternal life, the atmosphere of divine love. “For this reason the world knows us not, because it knew him not”, (verse 1). You will find as you go through this book that John constantly makes a difference between what is inside the Christian circle and what is in the world. The difference is clear, absolutely clear, and you cannot mix these two things. He says to the young men, “If any one love the world, the love of the Father is not in him”, (1
John 2: 15). That is, we know nothing of family affections if we love the world. That world crucified our Saviour and put Him to death. But inside this blessed circle there is love for Christ and love for one another. And he says, “Do not wonder, brethren, if the world hate you”. It has been said, that as sheep of the flock of Jesus the world despises us, but as children of God the world hates us, because there is a display in the children of God of the nature of God. The world is marked by darkness, the Christian circle is marked by light. The world is marked by hatred, the Christian circle is marked by love.
So he says, “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren”. What a beautiful expression that is, “love the brethren”. Who are the brethren? They are those who belong to Christ whom He has Himself dignified by that very word to Mary, “go to my brethren”, John 20: 17. It says, “We know that we have passed from death to live, because we love the brethren”. That is called ‘taking soundings’. John’s line is that we can test where we are at any time. An aged brother locally, who spent much of his life at sea, sometimes tells us about this verse. He says it is ‘dead reckoning’; that is, you can take a sounding from this verse and know you have passed from death to life if you love the brethren. Dead reckoning is a nautical expression for what they did in his younger days at sea when approaching land or harbour when visibility was poor. They would put a weighted line overboard to touch the bottom of the sea and could tell from marks on it how deep the water was beneath them. They were entirely dependent on this line and its markings. If it showed the water getting shallow there could be danger, but if they found the harbour channel they knew they
were nearly home. Now we are nearly home, dear brethren, all around is dark, so let us keep taking soundings and keep in the depths of the love of God.
Then he says some strong things, “Every one that hates his brother is a murderer”, what an awful thing that is. But then in verse 16, “Hereby we have known love, because he has laid down his life for us”. Love was never fully shown until Jesus died. There were suggestions and illustrations of it beginning from Genesis 22 where we have the first reference to it, but for love to be shown required the death of Christ. That was the supreme example of love when Jesus died. Every week as we see the loaf on the table, we are reminded of the supreme expression of love in that blessed Man who gave His life for us. He has laid down His life for us, and we ought for the brethren to lay down our lives. That means the principle of sacrifice enters into the Christian circle.
In 1 John 4 it is not exactly the Father, it is God, the greatness of the love of God, “Herein as to us has been manifested the love of God, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him”. O, let us be touched by divine affections seen in God sending His only begotten Son in view of our salvation. It says, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son a propitiation for our sins”. How wondrous that is! Let the love of God flood into our hearts; let us accept, appreciate and appropriate the greatness of such love that has reached out to all of us. So, “Beloved, if God has so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time—if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us”. These are very real and blessed things. The testimony to them is the Spirit of God, “Hereby we know that we abide in him and he in us, that he has given to us of his Spirit”. From that the testimony goes out. Another feature of the Christian circle is that there is here a witness to God and to his Son, as it says, “And we have seen, and testify, that the Father has sent the Son as Saviour of the world”. How blessed to go out with the gospel, as our young men do; they stand on the street corner, and preach Christ as the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. So there is a wonderful testimony going out from the Christian circle, going out in the richness and substantiality of what is inside. The conviction and the confirmation of these things is by the Spirit of God in our hearts.
All through this epistle John makes very beautiful references to the Spirit of God. Where we read in 1 John 2, “Again, I write a new commandment to you, which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light already shines”, involves that the Spirit of God is having His way with us, and we are being formed after Christ. Then he speaks to the little children too of the Spirit as the Unction, he says, “And ye have the unction from the holy one, and ye know all things”, 1 John 2: 20. Even the simplest believer can be proof against all that is in the world around us. The Unction would strengthen the young people against the power of what is antichristian and against God.
Then we have this beautiful word, “we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given to us”, 1 John 3: 24. Then in chapter 4 we have the Spirit of God which is able to discern the evil spirits. It says, “many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby ye know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ come in flesh is of God; and every spirit which does not confess Jesus Christ come in flesh is not of God” (1 John 4: 1–3). We are in a world where the power of Satan is known; we see it and we feel it, especially in these last days when men make bold statements about the Person of Christ. They make bold statements as to what they think about His birth, what they think about His death and what they think about His resurrection; the devil is in all that. The Spirit of God, who is greater than he that is in the world, would reinforce the mind of the believer against all these things. He would impress us with the substantiality of the Christian circle, because there, Jesus Christ and all that belongs to His holy Person is held and treasured in love and integrity. We have been having readings locally on the food of the offerings, and I think food, the right kind of food, has a direct bearing on our discernment of these evil things. Occupation with Christ, the blessedness of this One in the perfection of His offering would reinforce our minds and affections so that we may hold to the purity and absolute perfection of the humanity of our blessed Lord.
Then in 1 John 5 we come to another reference as to the Spirit who is the Witness, God’s Witness concerning His Son. It says, “This is he that came by water and blood, Jesus the Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that bears witness, for the Spirit is the truth”. That is an allusion, I believe, not only to the incoming of Jesus, but to His death. He came by water and by blood. Now that is light. We have had rule, atmosphere, and now we come to light. The light of God is His witness concerning His Son, and that comes from the source of where Christ is. A witness always carries us back to the source from which it comes. The water is for cleansing. How much it is needed! The blood is for reassurance, how much that is needed! The Spirit as the truth is to make it good in our hearts so that we are held in relation to Christ where He is. Now Christ where He is is the occupation of those in the Christian circle; He is the Centre of it and of their affections.
John starts from the outside and works inward. He begins at the outer limits of it when he speaks about walking in the light and having fellowship with one another. That is where the perimeter of this wonderful circle would be known in our localities, but he is bringing us in by way of rule, atmosphere and light into the very centre. We have a witness as to Christ, and that witness is God’s witness concerning His Son. How blessed that is. It brings us into the enjoyment and the reality of eternal life. Eternal life does not belong to this world which is a scene of death through which we pass. The Christian circle is an entirely different sphere from what the world is, entirely apart from it, although in it; but it has its own atmosphere and its own source of love, and its own quality of life. It is eternal life, because it is all in that blessed One of whom the witness is. So he says, “And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding that we should know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ”. How blessed to be at the very centre and to rest in the knowledge that we are in that One. How wonderful that is!
We are in Him; “in” is power, but it is also communion, it is also nearness, “we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ”. Then, “He is the true God and eternal life”. That is something else that marks the Christian circle, an appreciation of the Person of Christ, and a note of worship would arise in our hearts when we think of Him as the true God and eternal life. Hence John says, “Children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5: 21). Beloved brethren, let us finish with a note of worship in our hearts to Him who is the Centre of this wonderful circle, the circle of love and life.
May it be so for His name’s sake.
Address at Grangemouth
21 May 1994