FEBRUARY 14TH, 1931
FEBRUARY 14TH, 1931
MY DEAR BROTHER, — ... The Lord’s words in Matthew 18: 19, 20 abide, and will abide, in all their precious value so long as the assembly is here. They are, I trust, more cherished amongst us than ever, but even if we should give them up they would still remain true. They were a peculiar encouragement 100 years ago, as assuring those who were constrained to leave all that was approved in the religious world that the Lord would sanction by His presence even two or three who were gathered together unto His Name. They felt that they needed no other sanction. And all that the Lord’s words meant to faith and love then they mean to faith and love now.
But we are sorrowfully aware that those precious words of our Lord soon became in the minds of many the statement of a ground of gathering, as contrasted with meeting on sectarian ground, and many different companies now claim to be gathered unto His Name and to have His presence. I am afraid with many it is still a case of “supposing Him to be in the company” when He is not!
My impression is that the words of the Lord in Matthew 18: 17 - 20 stand in an administrative connection, such as we should expect in this gospel, rather than with assembly privilege. They can ever be counted upon when, assembly conditions being present, there is dependence upon God in relation to the interests of Christ. So verse 19 directly refers to agreement in prayer, and verse 20 widens out to embrace every occasion when “two or three” might be “gathered together unto my name”. For many years this precious word has been a comfort to me as assuring the Lord’s presence for support in relation to His interests, and particularly in relation to what partakes of administration of assembly character. 1 Corinthians 5: 4 would be a concrete example of this, and I have no doubt it [p. 190] could be counted upon in a care meeting of brothers. I am sure it helps to note the setting in which things stand in Scripture.
The Lord’s presence in the midst of the assembly according to Hebrews 2: 12 is clearly in another relation, viz. that of assembly privilege. Having declared God’s Name to His brethren, He has a company in the midst of whom He can sing God’s praise. This is the assembly viewed as in spiritual privilege God-ward, brethren of Christ and in concert with His singing. You would hardly suppose, I think, that this was known at Corinth, where they were carnal and ill-regulated even as to assembly order locally. The supper of which they partook was not allowed by the apostle to be the Lord’s supper. The presence of Christ in their midst as Head, according to Hebrews 2: 12, could not have been known under such conditions, nor is it once alluded to in the epistle.
In John 14: 18 the Lord promises, as I understand it, that His coming to the company of His lovers would be characteristic of the period during which the world sees Him no longer. He comes in the activity of His love to satisfy the love that would be inconsolable without Him. He manifests Himself to lovers.
We come together to eat the Lord’s supper in the place where He died, and from which He is absent. It has the character of a memorial, as J.N.D. says. We love the absent One, and remember Him; our affections and thoughts are unified by engagement with Him in the character in which the Supper presents Him. The Supper does not, in itself, suggest the thought of the Lord’s presence with us, but rather of how He would engage our hearts with Himself as remembered during His absence, and while we have to announce His death until He comes. It is a question of intelligently apprehending the spiritual setting of the precious institution. We may be quite sure that the Lord will verify His own words whenever suitable conditions are found with His saints, and that He will vouchsafe His presence in the manner that is suitable to each aspect of it that Scripture brings before us.
We do not, surely, forget, in coming together to eat the Lord’s supper, that He lives, or that we can know Him as near to us in His love, but at the moment we are engaged in responding to the presentation of the Lord which the Supper conveys to our hearts, the spiritual import of the one loaf and [p. 191] the one cup. He has, in the wisdom of His love, ordained that it should be so, and He knew best how to awaken response to Him in the hearts of His own. To thus respond to the love which instituted the Supper does not mean that we forget or ignore the precious scriptures which speak of His presence with His own. But it means that, at the moment, we give place in thought and affection to that which the Lord is Himself calling our attention to. Namely, that He is calling us to remember Him in the place where He has died, and that in the emblems before us He is bringing most touching impressions of Himself and His love to bear upon our hearts — impressions which, if yielded to, would put us all into heart-condition such as would attract Him to us according to John 14: 18, and such as would liberate us for that spiritual sphere of privilege where He can sing as Head in the midst of His brethren, the assembly.
To desire this, to look for it, to see how the Supper would spiritually prepare us in affection for it, is not to give anything up, but to add immensely to the range of our spiritual apprehensions. We get a sense of the holy conditions, and the affectionate conditions, which alone secure the Lord’s presence in any aspect. We estimate more fully the favour of that presence; we look more for the conscious realisation of it. Instead of assuming that we always have it — apart from conditions — we become more sensitive to its blessedness when granted, and to the deprivation when, either through company conditions, or our own individual condition, we fail to have it or to realise it.
There is nothing new in all this. It has been continually ministered for many years, and I believe it has helped the saints in their affections and spiritual apprehensions.
I hope you are better in health, and your family well.
With much love in the Lord,
February 14th, 1931.