COMMUNION

COMMUNION

It is evident that you must be with Christ in His place before you can have communion with Him, and many miss the blessing because they are looking for it apart from being with Him where He is.

If we realise that He is not here, in no way could we reach Him now, but by the Spirit, leaving this place and going to His place. This is where the defect in saints is. People are ready to change from one place to another in this world if they can secure an improvement, but there is a great reluctance, even in saints, to leave it altogether for another region. The idea in christendom, founded on the supposition that Christ is here, is, that in going from one chapel or place of worship to another, you can get nearer to Him, whereas the fact is that He is not here, and you can only get to Him by the Spirit of God. It is on the principle of “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink”. (John 7: 37) This is not going from meeting to meeting, but going to Him in the place where He is, to which the Spirit of God always leads you. It is only where He is that you can behold His personal glory, and it is there you are transformed into the same image. There you have communion with Him. It is easy to see what a change it would make to us all if we realised that we can only reach Him in His own place by the Spirit. When He comes into our midst it is from His own place to administer to us, not to remain in this place with us. It is a great thing to ascertain what is before the heart. Is it the desire to find something, or is it simply the desire to reach the Person from whom everything comes? It is a new day to your soul when you realise that Christ is the source of everything, and that it is from Himself you must draw, and not from ministry about Him. Many can explain Scripture and even apply it, who are not under the power of it themselves. They have not ^[p. 247] come from Him, and are not themselves imbued with that which they are trying to convey. There is much wise counsel and good teaching which is not applicable to the moment. It does not effect what is the Lord’s desire as the end of ministry, which is to lead the soul to Himself, because it is not spoken in communion with Himself. You must first get to where He is, and then you are brought into concert with the scene where He is.

The first thought of every true heart ought to be that Christ is not here, and no record of what He has said satisfies the one who wants to be in possession of His mind at this moment. We hear varied opinions about a given matter. If you really felt that the Lord is not here you would not venture to give an opinion until you had gone to Him. You might look at the Bible or go to the Synopsis to see how a thing ought to be done, but that is not getting under the influence and impress of His own presence. Doubtless He would send you to the scripture. You might go to it without His sending you, but then you would not be under the same impression, and you would miss the vigour and fervour of His presence. This is an immense cheer to me. In general we read Scripture, not looking for communion with Him, but looking to understand what He communicates. We are not looking to see how He entered on what He communicates, and what it was to Himself.

After this preface we may look at the subject as a whole. There are two kinds of communion; the one has to do with the circumstances in which Christ is, and the other with what His mind is in those circumstances. One is of Him, the other with Him.

Now there are three distinct orders of communion - the individual, the personal, and the general. I mean by individual, having Christ the centre of everything, His own individual connection with any given thing. We understand individual communion with the Lord ^[p. 248] when we are occupied with Him in some individual work. Moses is an example of it, when he was forty days with Him getting the pattern of the tabernacle. Secondly, communion is personal when Himself is the great object. It is all Himself - what He personally is when He comes to me, as in John 13 and 14; and the general is, what is open to the whole company, open to all through eternal life. It is evident the third includes the first two, and you could not know His mind fully unless you know the whole three.

We will now look at communion with God in His works from the beginning. The more anyone contemplates the Lord’s mind at the beginning in the garden of Eden, and the final issue of it all, the more fully will he apprehend the greatness of God’s counsel at the commencement. It would not be only taking a superficial glance at the great intention at Eden, but if he apprehended the greatness of God’s counsel, he would be a living exponent of the solemnity of it. If a person were able to impart to another his acquaintance with realities which are beyond human vision, what a wonderful effect it would have! It would impart a weight which no human learning could supply.

Now, if we go on from Eden to the deluge, we are introduced to another range of thought. Man had become so intolerably bad that there was no remedy for him. How little a passing reader, however minutely he reads and studies it, can conceive the immense range that is opened out before the soul in the history of the deluge! Man made in the image of God is become so corrupt that there is no remedy for him, so God removes him, and then He brings in One who is able to bear the judgment resting on man and to rise out of it, so that God can not only remove the judgment resting on man, but He supplants him by Another! In removing the man that has offended, God substitutes the Man who has done His pleasure in every thing.

^[p. 249] If one thinks of what it is for a man to be made in the image of God, it is no wonder that he should be elated at the greatness of his origin; and therefore, man’s intense unwillingness to part with the man of the first order. No one heartily parts with the first man - with himself, until he makes the painful discovery that in his flesh dwells no good thing; and that the Man who died for him is the One who has borne the judgment for him, and is the spotless Son of God. So that not only is the offending man brought to an end in the cross, but every believer has a new beginning of the order of Him who is risen from among the dead, and who is the Man of God’s pleasure. “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”. (1 Corinthians 15: 22) After man is typically removed in the deluge, Noah is set up in favour and in power (in consequence of the offering up of the burnt-offering) on the same earth, where after the old order man is intolerable. Who can take in, or be in company in any measure with the mind of the Lord in this great work, and not take his place here on earth as one so deeply affected by it, that he looks at and regards everything in a divine light? He cannot be thoughtless or trivial in his connection with this world. No one could be in communion with God as to the scene of man’s fall, and the greatness of his redemption out of it, who would not be affected in his life and conversation beyond what any learning could give. To be in communion with Him would give a light and intelligence beyond all creative knowledge, for it would be divine. We see in the final issue that those who are not redeemed will endeavour to seize upon the earth in simple usurpation, just as it was after the deluge, when Noah’s descendants began to build a tower which was to reach to heaven, hoping to be in pure independence of God.

Up to this we have only looked at the effect of being in company with the Lord in the greatness of His ^[p. 250] works. We have not spoken yet of being in communion with His mind. When we come to see the work, fulfilled on the cross where our old man is crucified with Christ, and we, being born of God, live in the Spirit, and not in the flesh, we are conducted into the circle of His mind and purpose which affects ourselves. We have received the Holy Spirit and are united to Him who has effected this redemption. The more we are in communion with the Lord touching these infinities, the more we are absorbed with Him, and no exposition of the truth could have the same effect. When I am listening to the exposition of my part in this great purpose, I am occupied with the part, instead of with the whole range in the new creation, where all is of God, and where Christ’s great activity is displayed in life - eternal life, which is knowing the Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent; John 17: 3. That is eternal life. Christ’s authority is displayed in giving it. When you get into the element of life you get into a region in which there never was any corruption. It is almost too wonderful to take in, that none of the old order is even to be feared when there. It is an element where not a shadow of impurity could enter; and therefore it is a contrast between one receiving the grace of life here, and being in the element of life - knowing the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. Life is in its proper function as it were, and thoroughly exclusive. It is not only that we are saved and are happy, but we have eternal life in its proper activity - to “know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent”. (John 17: 3) And this in the sphere of the most profound holiness. No extent of intimacy or sense of affection could awaken a shade of natural feeling; for we are in the divine element where we are above anything natural, or morally selfish. We are in the element where “of” and “with” are both fulfilled, and where there can be no departure from the purity of love.

^[p. 251] Once we get to understand the nature of communion, how it expresses the mind of the Lord, we see what an immense gain it is to us spiritually. The greatest thing is to have communion with the Father. The Son is always in communion with the Father, and as we get into communion with Him, we then share in His communion with the Father. We learn communion with the Father through the Son. Consequently we rise from our own distance to His height, and are not in communion until we are at that height. It is not a work, but the happy outflow of nearness. We may know many fine things, but we are not in communion with the Father until then.

If I were near you, and we had a subject of common interest, I should soon know if we had communion one with another, but in divine communion Christ is the centre. He is always in communion with the Father, and as we get into communion with Him, we advance into communion with the Father. It is not so much the greatness of the things we know in communion, as the fact that we are in concert with Him. It is this, and not the knowledge that is prominent with us. Not seeing this is the beginning of the mistakes so often made about communion. “These things write we unto you, that your joy may be full”. (1 John 1: 4)