The Seven
Churches - or four of them, anyway
From "Present Things"
F. W.
Grant.
EPHESUS
The ebb-tide of ruin can be stemmed by
no hand of ours, and this feebleness of ours may seem an available plea to
withdraw us from responsibility as to it. But not so teaches the word of the
Lord. Our associations are here distinctly recognized as part of our general
condition. We are to "depart from evil," not be unequally yoked with
unbelievers, purge ourselves from vessels to dishonour, and follow
righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those that call upon the Lord out of a
pure heart. For association with evil we are therefore ever responsible. It may
be said that such principles, carried fully out, would involve a very narrow
path and a wholesale giving up of spheres of usefulness. But be it so or be it
not so, it is not ours to choose. Our path is defined for us. "To obey is
better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams; for rebellion is as
the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as iniquity and idolatry." Yes,
"rebellion"! How gladly would we call an obedience limited by our own wills by
some lighter name than that! Yet what else, in truth, was that which brought
out Saul's true character, and lost the kingdom to him and to his seed forever?
What he left undone was a mere trifle to what he did. And the sheep and oxen
had been spared to sacrifice to the Lord. What fairer excuse have people now to
offer for much disobedience - evil plausibly intended to bring forth good? And
how hard is it to understand that which we may obey in much that in fact costs
us little, the true test of obedience is just in that in which we are called to
renounce our wills and our wisdom, perhaps to forfeit the esteem and
companionship of others, by doing what has only the Word of God to justify it
and must wait for eternity to find right appreciation! Patience, too, is apt to
degenerate into a toleration, more or less, of evil. Finding it on every hand,
and no where perfection, the very contact with it is apt to dull the spiritual
sense. Charity would fain put also the mildest construction upon every thing.
We are bidden to "take forth the precious from the vile," but we learn to
tolerate the vile because of the precious. We become liberal where we have no
right.
SMYRNA
The decline of the Church opens the way for
the power of the enemy to display itself; and the assault is a double one -
from without and within at the same moment. The result is, however - very
different in the two cases. The outside assault is failure, for it is
impossible that the Lord should leave His saints to be subdued by power beyond
their own; while the defeat of Satan's wiles is another matter. Here they must
put on the whole armour of God, that they may be able to stand in the evil day.
SARDIS
The fresh truth calls for fresh confession; costs,
and is meant to cost, something; brings its confessors into opposition to the
course around them and separates at once from those whose only desire is to go
with the stream, and with whom the profession of Christ and the cross are
widely separate.
Doubtless the division may separate between true
Christians themselves; and this is in itself an evil, that true Christians
should be separated; but the responsibility rests with those who are not
quick-eared enough to hear God's call when it comes, - not single eyed enough
to discern the path in which the Lord is leading his own. We are bound, by the
honour we owe to Him, to maintain that His own in contradictory paths - cannot
possibly refuse the needed light to walk aright, however simple or ignorant the
soul may be. No one strays and no one stumbles because God denies him light.
But "the light of the body" practically "is the eye" - the inlet of it, and
there the hinderance is. Thus a severance, sorrowfully enough, is made between
real Christians; but the sin of it is not with those who separate from that
which God has shown them to be evil, but that with those who remain associated
with the evil which is forcing out the true in heart. Separation from evil, so
far from being a principle of division, would, if honestly followed, make for
unity and peace, as leading upon a path where God's Spirit, ungrieved, could
really unite and strengthen His people. With evil He cannot unite; and this,
indeed, therefore, wherever admitted, is a principle of division.
It
is not schism, this separate path, when not my own will leads me, but His Word
and Spirit! It is not separation in heart from brethren, if Christ be dearer to
me still than they. Nay, love to them approves itself only thus, as the apostle
teaches us, "when we love God and keep His commandments." (I Jno. v. 2.)
Faith's victories are not in applause wrung from a multitude, but in
the path of One, true Joseph, separated from His brethren; and God has
overruled the presence of evil (which, I need not say, He has not caused) to
the giving us a path at least in its circumstances, the more Christlike. We are
not left to the subjection to evil: He calls us to rise above it. The
difficulties of the path are only to carry us through them all. Every
encouragement throughout these epistles is held out simply to the overcomer.
The Lord gives us only the needed energy. The time is short: the end is at
hand.
PHILADELPHIA
It is the voice and Person of Christ,
which are here controlling, and he who is thus controlled is upon a path of
unlimited progress and unspeakable blessing. The clue-line is in his hand,
which will lead him out of all entanglements, from truth to truth, from
strength to strength. There is but one condition here, and that Is, manifestly,
that he "holds fast" the clue-line. If he drops this, progress is at an end,
his path becomes devious. Alas, it is a rare thing for those who have begun in
the Spirit to be made perfect by the flesh?
And the character in which
he displays Himself is that of holiness and truth; for there is no way of
nearness to Him but by separation from the evil that He hates, and being formed
by the truth which He reveals. The Word is separative and formative. The mark
of its reception is, the abandonment of all iniquity, marked as such, not by
the common conscience of men, but by the Word itself. This is the sign of
entrance into the sanctuary - of the presence of the Lord realized, when in His
light we see light.
Absolute truthfulness is rare indeed. The
penalties attending it are so many, often to be escaped by so slight a swerving
from the strict path, - a path often so lonely and without sympathy, and so
barren as it might seem in its isolation. Even to Christians, Christ often
appears to have deserted it. And then after all to break down there! and what
so likely as to break down? In this way we may connive at self-deception; for
what do all these reasonings amount to, but that the path is to be a path of
faith to us now as it ever was, and difficulties are to be as ever the test of
faith?
Our eyes must be upon the path and the Leader. Success, where
it seems fullest, must be tested rather by the future than the present - rather
by eternity than time; and he who follows it most will be most distracted by
other voices than His who speaks here. What tempter lures indeed the servants
of Christ like this? For how many does success, rather than the Word of God,
sanction their measures, while alluring them into direct opposition to the
Word! If even gained in true obedience, how often does the flattery of great
achievement unbalance a soul which adversity could only school to more
endurance! These things are but common-places of experience; and in view of
them, we need not wonder if God has, in general, been sparing in measuring out
to His people great success.
A little strength He marks and approves;
yet it is but a little. No Pentecostal energy revived, no faith that can move
mountains, shall we find here. The "day of small things," in the Christian as
in the Jewish history, is not at its beginning, but at its close. It is a great
mistake to confound the day of Ezra with the day of David. And although it may
be said, and truly, that eternal life and the power of the Spirit know no
decrepitude, yet our day and generation leave their imprint on us. They should
not; we are not blameless in it; yet they do. Still "a little strength" is here
approval.
And how is this marked? Surely in what follows, -- "Thou
hast kept My word, and not denied My name." It is not in gifts restored to the
Church, as some claim now; it is not in ecclesiastical position, nor in
numbers, nor in place among men; -- In none of these things is there strength
before God, but in obedience and devotedness.
An immense thing it is,
in a day like this, to be keeping, with an exercised heart, the word of Christ!
Not a word here and there; not following it until the cost may be too much; but
through honour and dishonour, through evil report and good report. For is there
right obedience any where, when there is not in our purpose obedience every
where? Can He whom we serve accept a compromise to His own dishonour, when we
really tell Him we will do this, but not that, at His bidding? Solemn questions
these, which may His grace keep ringing in our ears, until they wake up only
harmonies of joy and peace within our souls, and not self-accusation.
Let us understand that keeping Christ's word means, if it means any thing,
honest subjection to the whole of it: to that of which we may not even perceive
the importance, as if we did; calling nothing little which He enjoins - of what
has equal authority with the weightiest to emphasize it for us. Herein is often
the truest test of a right spirit in us, when we obey not in uncertainty, but
in darkness; and go out upon His leading, not knowing where.
We have
need to remember, too, that our own contrary wills are often the most effectual
hinderances to receiving what is really Christ's word. How solemn it is to
think that of the mass of things in which we differ from each other as
Christians, this contrariety must needs account for very much the larger part.
The Lord's words are plain enough, and universally applicable, that "if any one
will do God's will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." It is
due to Him to own that as the blessed Spirit of God could not lead into
contradictory beliefs, these differences must be of us, and not of Him. But
then, found as they are in so many whom we must esteem as godly men, what a
warning they give us of how much that is not of God, - of real insubjection -
may be found even in such. So far as we have indeed whole-heartedly followed
Him, who can doubt that He has led us right? But then how little really
unreserved following of Him there must be after all!
And who can
measure the loss even now and who then can measure the eternal loss, when we
thus let slip communion with Himself? And how many are trying to win it back,
or make up for its absence by filling their hands with work for Him, as if they
were almost persuaded that "to obey is" not "better than sacrifice, and to
hearken than the fat of rams."
How plainly perceptible it is when a
soul reaches the barrier line beyond which he will not go! Activities may go
on, and the whole outward man be no other than it was, yet there is something
gone from the soul which at once one with God will discern as hindering
fellowship. How sorrowful to lose one another's company this way, while yet
perhaps the feet go on together! But if we lose Christ's companionship, what
shall replace it?
Alas! in our day it is not "union is obedience" that
is the motto, but "union is strength;" and for whatever purpose men may have,
they combine. Strength of a certain sort is found, no doubt; but it is not
where he found it who says, "When I am weak, then am I strong;" "I can do all
things through Christ, who strengtheneth me."
Let us take heed, then,
that we be true Philadelphians. Tested we shall be assuredly all round, and in
different forms if the spirit be not different. The Word here is the assurance,
is it not? For the faith that might quail and question as the results of the
trial become apparent. Not now, but by and by, things shall be manifested, and
where Christ's heart is shall come out openly.
More decisively now He
announces, "I come quickly." The day of grace is running out with the day of
patience. Soon it shall be Christ's presence and glory. The centuries of delay
have come to years, the years are soon to be months, the months days, the days
moments. "I come quickly:" this is to be shown in its power for the soul by its
keeping the exhortation, "hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy
crown."
But all shows it to be a time of drift, - a time of
declensions as well as revivals: overcomer is he only who holds fast. The
Spirit of God moving, the Word manifesting its power, conscience responding;
yet every where the ebb after the flow, the trial which sifts, separates,
individualizes. By and by comes the terrible back-flow of Laodicea. Think not
Philadelphia is a haven of refuge where we may lie at anchor and never feel it.
Not so, - oh, not so: this is the fatal delusion of Laodicea itself: "Hold that
fast which thou hast!" The tug, if it has not come, is coming: hold thou fast!
But to what? - hold what fast? The word, and the name, and the
patience of Christ. Not the word of even the leaders of God's raising up. The
truth must ever commend the man, never the man the truth. One great danger is,
lest, having begun with the former principle, we slip into the latter. Even the
truth they teach is not truth received till it has been gotten at the Master's
feet and in communion with Himself, - till you can hold it, not with the eyes
shut, but with eyes open, - till you can maintain it for truth against the very
instrument used of God to give it to you. if need be. "If WE, or an angel from
heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be
accursed."
Then, HOLD FAST! When it is no longer a question if it be
the truth, but only of its consequences. Hold fast: though those who have held
it with you, or before you give it up; though it separate you from all else
whomsoever; though it be worse dishonoured by the evil of those who profess it;
though it seem utterly useless to hope of any good from it: in the face of the
world, in the face of the devil, in the face of the saints, -"hold fast that
which thou hast, that no man take thy crown!
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