“Thou hast kept my word” is the first matter of distinct commendation as to Philadelphia which we can lay hold of as shoving what is in the Lord's mind as to them; and I do not ignore in this that the people thus commended are, first of all, Philadelphians. All the more striking on this account is what He commends in them. It is of great import and worthy of fullest emphasis that, while it is to a company of people who are characterized by “love of brethren” He is speaking, His praise is not that “thou hast loved the brethren.” This does not even form part of it. His thoughts seem elsewhere: the commendation is, “Thou hast kept my Word, and not denied my Name.” Again, “thou hast kept the word of my patience.” Yet in the promise to the overcomer He does not omit what has reference to the name they bear: for on the “pillar,” which he who has here but “a little strength” finally becomes, is inscribed not only “the name of my God,” and “my new name,” but also “the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem.” This is the home of the “brethren,” and has, I believe, distinct reference to “Philadelphian” character. Yet, I repeat, in His commendation of them, He says nothing of this. Is it not right to ask ourselves the reason of what is at first sight so strange? Now the title under which the Lord addresses them fully accounts for it. They are Philadelphians whom he is addressing: it is thus plain that if people have not this character He has nothing here to say to them. It is to those He is speaking whose hearts would seek, if it were possible, the recovery of this “church,” which should have been like “a city set on a hill,” or “a light upon a candlestick,” but has dropped, alas, into the invisibility which men ascribe to it, as if it were the necessary and normal state. Yes, it is to these that the Lord is speaking; and the first words He utters remind these, the seekers of church visibility, of His own essential holiness and truth: “These things saith he that is holy, he that is true.” How much need will they have to remember this! Think of the church that is scattered, and which we would so desire to see restored: what are we to do for its restoration? Shall we proclaim to them all, that it is the will of God that His people should be together? Shall we spread the Lord's table, free from all sectarian names and terms of communion, and fling wide open our doors, and invite all that truly love the Lord to come together? For in fact the “one loaf” upon the table does bear witness that we are ''one bread, one body"; and there is no other body that faith can own, but the “body of Christ.” Why should we not then do this?
I answer: “Tell them by all means that the Lord has welcome for all His own: that is right; but tell them it is the 'Holy and True' who welcomes, and that He cannot give up His nature.” How has the true church become the invisible church? Has it been without sin on her part? is it her misfortune, and not her fault? Take the guidance of these seven epistles in the book of Revelation, and trace the descent from the loss of first love in Ephesus to the sufferance of the woman Jezebel in Thyatira, and on through dead Sardis to the present time: can we just ignore the past, and simply, as if nothing had happened, begin again? What would it be but mere hardness of heart to say so?
Suppose your invitation of “all Christians” accepted, and that in the place in which you give out your notice, you are able really to assemble all the members of Christ at the table of the Lord—bring them together with their jarring views, their various states of soul, their entanglements with the world, their evil associations—how far do you suppose, would the Lord's table answer to the character implied in its being the table of the Lord? How far would He be indeed owned and honored in your thus coming together? With the causes of all the scattering not searched out and judged, what would your gathering be but a defiance of the holy discipline by which the church was scattered? what would it be but another Babel?
Can you think that visible unity is so dear to Christ, so that He should desire it apart from true cleansing and fellowship in the truth?
F. W. G.
(To be continued)