JUNE, 1892
JUNE, 1892
I am glad you wrote to me on the points mentioned in your letter, because although I do not think they are my originating, I am probably more responsible with regard to them than . I cannot say that I regret so much as some do questions of this kind being [p. 65] raised, as any hard and fast system of interpreting Scripture is in my judgment undesirable, and if matters are freely talked over I am sure what is not of God will not stand.
I should not for one moment be inclined to contest the position that the word of Christ in Matthew 16: 18 refers to His assembly in its full extent. It is that which He, rejected of His people, would build on the revelation and confession of Himself as the Son of the living God. Hence it takes in all saints from Pentecost to the coming of the Lord — in other words, the whole period during which in our point of view the church has been on earth, and it will come out perfected in glory. But I cannot think that J.N.D. could have intended that we should find no present status for the assembly in Matthew 16. On the contrary, I have often heard him identify Matthew 16 with 1 Peter 2, and surely a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ, is true of the saints now. In the same way the whole building, fitly framed together, grows to an holy temple in the Lord; but saints are already God’s temple. They have that status and privilege. Though statements in Scripture may leave room for what may go on during an extended period, I doubt if it is the bearing in which truths are in general presented to us in the New Testament. I have heard it said that New Testament scriptures do not usually contemplate things beyond the lifetime of those addressed. The ten virgins who went forth to meet the Bridegroom are here when the Bridegroom comes. So the assembly that Christ builds would (as appears to me) have place here consequent on Christ’s rejection, and the gates of hell could not prevail against it. The gates of hell are hardly in heaven. So that I think we are justified in taking our thought of Christ’s assembly from Matthew 16.
As regards Matthew 18:20, I take the passage in [p. 66] its connection with the chapter, and the subject of the chapter seems to me the ordering of conduct in the kingdom of heaven. In the main the instruction in the chapter refers to individual conduct (see verse 35). The assembly, as having a voice, is brought in only incidentally in reference to a particular individual difficulty. The “again” of verse 19 seems to me to take up a point additional to the “moreover” of verse 15. It refers to two of them agreed as touching anything they should ask in Christ’s name, and on this follows the statement that where two or three are gathered together to My name, there am I in the midst. You may say, that is Christ’s assembly, and I should not dispute it, but it appears to me that verse 20 is given as encouragement for those agreed in verse 19, and that the two or three in the former refers to the two in the latter. I should not like to stereotype the two as the assembly, though surely they must be in the truth of it, for nothing else is really recognised; but I should be sorry for the simplicity of the passage to be marred. It is a matter of fact in your letter you apply the passage to two or three gathered to Christ’s name in a day of ruin, who certainly cannot be said to be the assembly, though acting in the truth of it, and this in principle is really all that is contended for. What is of value to us in a day of ruin had its value also when all was in order.