THERE are times in one’s Christian experience when some great truth of God comes home with irresistible power to the soul and leaves an impression there that can never be effaced. Such a time I recall in my experience in thinking afresh of these well-known words of the Lord.
I was a youth of eighteen at the time and an interest in the Lord’s things had begun to awaken in my life. With some other young Christians I was listening to a very gifted and well-instructed servant of the Lord who had had nearly sixty years’ knowledge of and practice of the truth. Suddenly he turned to where we were sitting and asked, “Would you young converts like to meet the Saviour?” And as he paused for a moment my heart answered, “Yes, nothing could please me better than that.” But he answered his own question for us and at the same time expressed our feelings exactly. He said, “I believe you would run fifty miles to meet your Saviour, but you have no need to do that, for He has said, ‘Where two or three are gathered tether in My name, there am I in the midst of them.’” Pausing again to let this great saying have its full effect upon us, he proceeded, “When I go to the Lord’s-day morning meeting I say to myself, ‘I’m going to meet the Son of God.’”
At that moment, and for the first time, the immensity of the privilege that lay with in my reach broke upon me. I saw that our absent Lord had appointed a place where He could and would meet with those whose love to Him was enough to make them desire to meet Him; and today, as then, I feel that nothing on earth can surpass this in blessedness. Things took on a new complexion for me from that hour.
I saw that there were two sides to my relationship with my Lord. There was first what He could do for me in His all-sufficient and ever-available grace. I had been learning a little of this, for He had saved me and was keeping me, and I know that He would hold me fast to the end, for so He had said, and He will never go back on His word; but now another side of things seized my attention. I saw that it was my privilege to be here for Him along with all who loved Him, and that I was to be gathered together with these unto His name. That the purpose of God was that those who love the Lord were, to be His representatives during His absence, to carry on His interests and to do it together, and as such; and when so gathered, He would meet them. His presence in the midst of them was to be their glory, and to give character to their gatherings; in them He was to be supreme. This declaration of the Lord became to me a command, a command such as only love could give, yet a command kingly in its character that could not be ignored nor neglected without great spiritual loss.
Consider the meaning of His words: the now absent Lord declares that He will come to His disciples, to commune with them as His representatives on earth, for “in His name” means that; that He, the great and eternal Lover, will keep tryst with the objects of His affection, and delight Himself in their responsive love, and receive their adoration. The Lord here presents the fact of His presence with His own in its most elementary form, yet He so states it as to leave room for the fullest expansion that may be required by the truth that was afterwards to be revealed by the Holy Ghost whom the Father sent in the name of the Lord Jesus. Could anything be more blessed, more inspiring, more comforting to the heart or strengthening to the faith than His presence in the midst? And if it is so much to us, what must it be to Him who has made the appointment because His love cannot be satisfied with anything less than the company of those He loves?
It is the Son of God who has said, “There am I.” Us, whom He has redeemed by His blood, He has chosen as His companions! Unspeakable grace this is; and His love that passes all knowledge casts out all fear from our hearts before Him. Yet with what reverence we should greet Him! How the great fact of His presence should affect us! What manner of persons ought we to be, who go to meet the Son of God!
Now all who know anything about it will acknowledge that He must give character to any company into the midst of which He comes. He could not surely give His presence where this were impossible. Where Christ is, there He must be everything. Who would dare to say, “Nay,” to that? Then this means that not all who claim to have His presence have it because they claim to have it; nor are all who claim to be gathered to His name necessarily gathered so in truth. There are certain indispensable conditions, and these His grace alone can produce; let us not forget that it must be all of grace, else there would be room for spiritual pride and boasting, which things are an abomination to Him.
J. T. Mawson.