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... If you weigh the Lord’s words in John 14 you will see that to make the Lord’s presence an abiding one rather than special visitations or manifestations is not in keeping with the tenor of the whole communication. All that the Lord said was occasioned by the fact that He was going to be absent. But there would be a circle to which He could come, not once for all, but a circle which would find its peculiar distinction and satisfaction of affection in being such that He could and would come to it. The form of the word implies that His coming to His own company would be characteristic of the period during which the world would see Him no more. Not His abiding presence, but the abiding preciousness of the fact that He would come to His own.

Then I do not think there is anything abstract about the company. The “you” was a very distinct and concrete company of persons who loved Him, and kept His commandments. And it is to such a company that He still delights to come. The assembly is not an abstraction. It is true that people speak of the “invisible church”, but this is a thought never contemplated in Scripture. The assembly is composed of persons who cannot but be found together because they love the Son of God, and, as keeping His commandment love one another. That most believers have drifted far from this is true, and humbling to us all, but the privilege attaching to it may be realised in measure by any “two or three” who are together in true assembly condition. I do not believe that anything abstract was in the Lord’s mind when He said, “I am coming to you”.