NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 49
NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 49
Here we have the first assembly meeting, and we get here the chief characteristics of the assembly. Personal attachment to Christ brought them together. Mary Magdalene describes to us the true heart for the assembly. She is inconsolable without Him. Neither angels nor disciples can make up to her for Him. Her tidings to the disciples had the effect of drawing them into the one place. I suppose they counted on His coming to them; He came and He said, “Peace be unto you”. He, risen from the dead, can declare to them that there is not an element of disturbance between God and them. It is not merely forgiveness of sins, but every element of disturbance is removed; as a soldier would say, We have crushed [p. 100] the foe! Then He showed them His hands and His side, and now the chief characteristic of the assembly is known: “Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord”. The more your heart is drawn to Him, the more you must desire to see Him. The more deeply you are affected by all He has suffered on your account, the more you desire to see Him on the other side of death. Now is fulfilled to them, “I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you”. (John 16: 22) This joy is ours only as we know Him risen from the dead. He has been rejected here by man. The desire in christendom is avowedly to build a house for Him; but they have no sense of the great fact that the world sees Him no more, yet that in His love He comes to His own, who have come to Him, the living Stone, and are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, etc. This is now the only spot on earth where He can be seen again. He said to them, “Peace be to you as the Father sent me forth, I also send you”; and then He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”. Surely they were conscious of receiving from Him a sense of His life which they had not experienced before. Romans 8:6 answers to this, for “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death”; you could not be with Christ risen but in His life. In Matthew 14 we see Peter leave the ship to join Him, supreme above all the power of evil here; we learn from John 6, which occurred at the same time, that as you feed on His death you are in His life. It is only by the Spirit that you can come into His presence. Are you conscious of the great change in you on entering His presence? No one can know it until he comes into His presence. In Romans 8: 6 we read that the carnal mind is death, but the Spirit’s mind is life and peace. In John 20 you have first peace and then life, the order in which [p. 101] they were brought to light, while in Romans they are in the order in which you enjoy them. If you are in Christ’s life His peace will rule in your hearts. May we have a deeper sense of the blessing and joy of being with the Lord in the assembly, where we are moulded by Himself into His own mind, so that we are the more enlightened by His word.