ASSEMBLY LETTERS
Letter Three
My Dear Brother
Having taken up in some
measure the subject of the Lord's Table, it is natural to go on to think a
little of the Lord's Supper - that solemn and precious remembrance of Christ
Himself which puts us in the right attitude, if it be real with us, for looking
at other things. It thus, as you will probably have noticed, precedes, in the
epistle to the Corinthians, the whole question of gifts and of their exercise,
and even of membership in the body of Christ. With our eyes really on Him, we
are in communion, and competent to entertain these questions.
And
therefore the great importance of seeing clearly, in the first place, the
object and character of that great central meeting which gives its character to
all other meetings. It is described for us in simple and familiar style in the
Acts, but so as to show us what, in the mind of Christians, was its primary
object: "On the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to
break bread." As the Passover had changed for Israel the order of the months,
and the year must begin with the sign of accomplished redemption, so, for
Christians, time must begin its reckoning with the joyful celebration of the
love that has visited them. On the first day, therefore, they came together to
"break bread." It does not say, as we sometimes hear, "to a worship meeting."
Worship, no doubt, they would; but that was not what was present to their
minds. It was their Lord who was before them - Him of Whom that bread spoke. So
in 1 Cor. 11; "When ye come together into one place, this is not" - it was a
rebuke because of their way of doing it destroyed its meaning - "this is not to
eat the Lord's Supper."
The purpose of coming together should be
distinctly before our minds. We must be simple in it. In two opposite ways this
simplicity may be destroyed, and the character of the meeting be lowered and
souls suffer. Let us spend a little time in the consideration of
this.
In the first place, when we come together, after six days of
warfare in the world (would that were always spiritual warfare, and that we
realized the world as an enemy's country simply), we are apt to come full of
our spiritual needs, to be recruited and refreshed. We may not use the term,
but still the idea in the Lord's Supper to us thus will be that it is a "means
of grace." We bring jaded spirits and unstrung energies to a meeting where we
trust the weariness will be dispelled and the lassitude recovered from. We come
to be ministered to and helped. We require the character of it to be soothing
and comforting, speaking much of grace and quieting our overdone nerves for
another week before us, in which we know too surely that we shall go through
the same course exactly, and come back next Lord's Day as weary as before, with
the same need and thought of refreshment, with the same self, in fact, as an
object, and scarcely Christ at all, or Christ very much as a means to an end,
and not Himself the end.
This is the evil of this state of things -
Christ is not in any due sense before our soul, but our need, which He is to be
the means of supplying. No doubt there is a measure of truth in this view of
the Lord's Supper. Can we come ever to Him without finding refreshment from the
coming? Does He not, blessed Lord, delight to serve us? Do not the bread and
wine speak of refreshment ministered - "wine that maketh glad the heart of man
- and bread which strengtheneth man's heart"? Has He not spread us here a table
in the wilderness? A table in the very presence of our enemies? Is not His
language still, "Eat O friends; drink, yea drink abundantly, O
beloved"?
Surely all this is true. But true as it is, it is not this
that gathers us. "To show the Lord's death" - has not this deeper meaning? Are
not His own words, "Do this" - not for the satisfaction of our own need, not
for the recruiting of your own strength, but - "in remembrance of Me"? Thus
this sacramental use of Christ, as I may term it (common as it really is, alas,
among those who think that they have outgrown sacraments) essientially lowers
the whole thought of the Lord's Supper. The remembrance of Christ is something
more and other than what I get by the remembrance; something more than "the
strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the body and blood of Christ,"
although in this secondary way indeed His body and blood may be remembered in
the sacrament.
The purposed end is not, moreover, attained in this way.
Of course, I do not mean to deny that Christ is gracious, and meets us
oftentimes in unexpected ways. Sovereign He is, and beyond expression gracious.
Still, if our blessing flows from the apprehension of Christ, how will such
apprehension of Him as this ensure a blessing? If we make ourselves our object,
will that be a blessing? What honour has Christ, and what place, in all this?
And what must be the character of meetings to which languid and wayworn souls
come, seeking a stimulating cordial to return to what seems only too sadly
indicated to be the main business of their lives?
We may have to
approach this subject from another side. Let us look now, however, at the other
way in which our souls may be tempted from the simplicity of the remembrance of
Christ.
Scripture does not speak of a "worship meeting": it does not, of
course then, style the meeting to break bread this. The term may be used very
innocently, I do not doubt at all; nor do I in the least oppose the thought
that the atmosphere, so to speak, of the Lord's Table will be "worship." "In
His temple doth every one speak of His glory." But we have need to guard
against an abuse of this also - no imaginary, but a frequent one.
When
we look at the worship of heaven, in that picture which so often tempts our
eyes in Rev. 5, it is the simple presence of the Lamb slain that calls out the
adoration of those elders, in whom some of us have learned to recognize our
representatives. Worship, with them, was no arranged, premeditated thing, but
the pouring out of hearts that could not be restrained in the presence of Him
who had redeemed them to God by His blood. And here is the mistake on our
parts, when we think we can make worship a matter of pre-arrangement, while it
is, in fact, a thing dependent upon another thing, and that the true
remembrance of the Lord.
We can recognize the fact that in this thought
we have a very different and a much truer one than in that which makes the
motive to come to the Lord's table a motive of mere self-interest. Still, the
mistake often leads to a similar result - that the very thing we are seeking
becomes an impossibility. Worship itself becomes a legal claim, which, as such,
we cannot render. We are in the presence of ourselves, not of the Lord, and the
result is a strained and artificial service, painfully reaching out after an
ideal which is quite beyond it, and robbed of power and
naturalness.
Thus there will be blessing on the one hand and worship on
the other in proportion as our eyes are taken off ourselves and fixed upon the
object which both ministers the one and calls forth the other. Blessing there
will be; for how can the sight of Him do otherwise than bless? And worship
there will be; for this is the true and spontaneous response of heart to the
sight of One who, being the Son of God, yet loved us, and gave Himself for us.
The great point pressed, therefore, in Scripture, is discernment - remembrance
- "This do in remembrance of Me." "Ye do show the Lord's death." "He that
eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not
discerning the Lord's body." Earnestly, affectionately, solemnly, is this
pressed, as the pith and essence of the whole matter.
Of course, we are
not to forget that while our eyes look back upon the Lamb slain, it is from the
hither side of His resurrection that we contemplate this. "The first day of the
week" speaks of resurrection out of death, and gives Him back to us in all the
reality of a living person. While we remember His death, we do it in the glad
knowledge of His resurrection, and with the Lord Himself in our midst. Who
could celebrate the Lord's death but for this? Who could sound a note of praise
did He not Himself first raise it? As He says, "In the midst of the Church will
I give praise unto Thee." No spectre - as the astonished disciples thought -
not conquered of the grave, but Conqueror, Himself with us - this alone turns
the most calamitous sorrow into exulting joy. Death, but death passed, do we
celebrate; death which, thus seen, is only the depths of a living love which we
carry with us, unexhausted, inexhaustible, unfathomed and
unfathomable.
"Lo! the tokens of His passion,
Though in glory, still
He bears;
Cause of endless exultation
To His ransomed
worshippers."
"A Lamb as it had been slain" is the object of the elders'
worship. The Living One bears with Him forever the memorials of His blessed
death. The Cross is not only atonement effected for us, but the bright and
blessed display of God manifest in Christ, and for us, in every attribute
displayed.
Fourth Letter
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