FELLOWSHIP, PRIVILEGE AND TESTIMONY

^[p. 9] FELLOWSHIP, PRIVILEGE AND TESTIMONY

1 John The idea in Scripture connected with children seems to be always that of a company — ‘we’ and ‘us’. It is not the idea of the privilege of an individual; it is the common privilege of a company, because the Spirit that bears witness that we are children of God is one Spirit — the same Spirit in all, and the effect of it is this — it of necessity leads to the assembly. It compels saints to come together. I cannot understand a person choosing isolation and talking of what he gets from the Lord at home. I am certain that person never enters into the privilege of being a child, because if he did, the craving of his soul would be to get into the company of the children, for the children are all one band. It is “one flock, and one shepherd”. The children are one band, and stand thus in Christ. ‘In Him we stand, a heavenly band’. Therefore if you want to realise the privilege of the children of God, you must get into the circle of the children, you must really get into the assembly, for it is in the assembly that we realise the privileges that are proper to the children of God. They stand there on the ground of sovereign love as the children of God, and it is their privilege to worship the Father. You have got thus what failure cannot touch. You have the Father and the children (the Father has sought such to worship Him), and you have Christ in the midst leading their praises. I do not believe that anyone learns the truth of what belongs to the children of God except in the assembly. You are brought into it individually, but you can hardly individualise the children because it is one Spirit in them all, and that very fact arouses the craving for the assembly, because the assembly is the band. Now nothing can deprive ^[p. 10] us of this; even in the ruin of the church there is a fellowship (those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart). Whatever may be the ruin, you cannot displace the children. One may be very sorry that the whole company does not come together, and we ought to mourn for that more than we do; but still we can come together in assembly, and if we do, it is as children, nothing less, because that is the calling, the privilege that the Father has bestowed on us. I am sure we do not sufficiently see how the instinct of the scriptures which apply directly to Christians is unity. And though the structure, which Paul the architect raised, has broken down and is in ruin, John gives us what is essential, what is vital, and that is privilege, and the tendency of this must be toward the assembly.

The privilege belongs to every Christian, but it is one thing to have a privilege belonging to me, and another thing for me to have entered into the truth and reality of the privilege. It is in the realisation of our privilege that we more fully understand the true character of the assembly, and you can enter into that apart from any kind of ecclesiastical pretension. The point is to have the great reality of it in our souls, to accept the privilege, and to be in the light and joy of it, to be found in company with the other children, that is, in the assembly. If you do not understand the proper privilege of the assembly, and the great blessing which belongs to it, you will fail to present a testimony which is according to God. It is in the assembly that we properly learn our relationship with the Father and with one another. You may accept the light of it, but it is in the assembly that you enter into the reality of it. We all get set in our place in the assembly. The Lord’s supper is the beginning of it, it sets us in our souls rightly in relation toward all; to the Father, to Christ, and to one another. Then we come out of the assembly to be here as the vessel in which God is displayed in the world. You must apprehend things ^[p. 11] in the order in which they are unfolded in the epistle (John’s). Souls are bound to learn them in that order; first fellowship, then privilege, which places us in the Father and the Son, and then testimony. God is displayed in the heavenly band, which stands in Christ. That is the divine order. Precisely the same order is found in Paul. You could not enter into Colossians if you did not first understand Corinthians. In Corinthians you get fellowship and the privilege of the assembly, but in Colossians you get the other side of it, that is, the life of Christ coming out in the assembly; the divine nature as in Christ expressed in the Christian company.

All this is suitable to the day of ruin in which we are. I pray God to grant for myself and for us all that we may be more prepared in spirit to come under the sense of the ruin, and to take our share in it. May God keep us from attempting to construct anything, from setting up any kind of imitation of the church, but may we recognise that the church is still here, both vitally and responsibly; and though the house is in ruin, it ought to be a very great encouragement for us that all that is essential abides. There is a true bond of fellowship in which saints can be together here, and true privilege which belongs to them, and which none can deny them, which is made good to them vitally by the Spirit of God. And if we enter into our privilege, I believe that though the company may be very restricted, there will be a real expression of God in that little company, and thus a testimony for Him.