The body of Christ, though set up manifestly and visibly on the earth, cannot have false members, because it is such by real union—by the Holy Ghost—with Christ its glorified Head. The baptism of the Holy Ghost formed it, not the baptism of water. It is the church which Christ loved, and for which He gave Himself to sanctify and cleanse with the word, and which He will present to Himself a glorious church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. He nourishes and cherishes it, as a man does his own body, for we are members of His body. But as this is by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, the assembly takes another character. It is the habitation of God through the Spirit—His house; in its origin identical in its extent with the body—the Lord adding daily those whom He was saving. This also will be an everlasting character of the assembly of God. Glory in the church, to all the generations of the age of ages, is the desire of the apostle, and in the new heavens and the new earth the tabernacle of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, will be with men. This Christ builds; it is formed of living stones, and grows into a holy temple; the workman is the Lord Himself in Uis grace. Nor can Satan prevail against it.
But, as man himself, the world under Noah, the law and priesthood in Israel, the kingdom in Solomon, and Gentile power in Nebuchadnezzar, it has, as to present administration and manifestation, been committed to man's responsibility, and man, as in each of the cases named, has signally failed, and failed the first thing. So it was with man, with Noah, with the law, with the priesthood, with the royalty, with the Gentile power. So it has been with the professing church. As to general decay, all sought their own, the last days had come, nor was there to be recovery. As a dispensation on earth, they did not continue in God's goodness! and would be cut off. Evil men and seducers would wax worse and worse; there would be a form of godliness, denying the power; and the evil that had come in by false brethren would grow to be the subject of judgment when the Lord came. History only confirms it.
Things were read in the churches forty years after John's death which would scarcely be received by an infidel now as doctrine, and contained practices as superior piety which would be scouted in decent society. I challenge anybody to deny it who has read the Shepherd of Hennas; it issued in the abominations of the middle ages and of Romanism, which truly made, as an infidel has said, the annals of the church the annals of hell. No heathenism was so systematically bad. Baptism does not make any one a member of Christ. The church was set up visibly, both as the body and the house. The body nothing can touch, because it exists by real union with Christ, the head. The house, according to the counsels of God, is built by Christ, and is not yet complete; but, as every system ordained of God, as formed down here, it has been committed to the responsibility of man, and man has failed. And not only will it be set aside, but it is there judgment begins. Corruption and apostasy mark its result, and it will be set aside, as Israel was. This, indeed, is a general truth, that everything has been first committed to man's responsibility when it was established, and man responsible has failed, and all is to be set up in power and perfectness in the Second man. 2 Timothy directs us how to act when the church has failed, as 1 Timothy gives us the order in which it was established. The attributing the blessings and promises given to the body and the house as built by Christ, to the house as carried out by responsible man and built of wood and hay and stubble, is the origin of popery and what is called Puseyism, leading men to trust in, and cling to, that which God is going to judge and cut off, instead of to the word of God, to which He has referred us in the perilous time of the last days. It is just this, with many false details, which the Church Services do, and Mr. Sadler seeks to justify.
I notice a few details. Regeneration is a falsely used word. But being horn again is not by union with Christ, but by His quickening power by the word; nor is baptism being born again. It is wholly false that the Galatians were children of God by faith, because, as Mr. Sadler says, as many of them as had been baptized to Christ had put on Christ. Indeed Mr. Sadler contradicts himself, for he says it is a needful supplement to faith, and if a supplement, it could not be because of baptism they were children by faith. The Galatians states they were children by faith, and faith only. That in baptism they had professedly put on Christ, in contrast with being Jews or Greeks or anything else, is true. But the epistle expressly speaks of the Spirit as that by which those who are sons by faith cry, Abba, Father. The doctrine that a child who has not committed sins receives remission of sins in baptism is a cruel mockery; that he is baptized to that which thus belongs to Christianity, as its leading privilege, may be true, & it be done intelligently.
Speaking of being baptized into anything is a mistake. It is to, as to Moses, to John's baptism. There is no Christian covenant. The kingdom of God is not the church, nor the body of Christ. That men enter into the kingdom by baptism may be all well, though entrance into the house seems to be more accurate. It is into the public company of God's professing people, but even so “house” is only a figurative word; but they do enter where God dwells in the person of the Holy Ghost.
I do not discuss the question of Calvinism. Mr. Sadler's statements as to the falling from grace are not sustained at all by the passages he quotes. That they may fall away after being baptized scripture plainly states. He cannot have a better human statement as to it than his Article XVII. Baptism is not the seal of any covenant. It is expressly declared that the Spirit is the seal of faith in the believer. The whole of this part of Mr. Sadler's book assumes as admitted truth what there is not the smallest warrant for in scripture (as p. 95). There is no admission into a Christian covenant. Regeneration is not grafting into Christ. Circumcision was not entering into the covenant, nor did it effect that infants should be children of God under the old dispensation. The whole statement is fancy. “Children of God” was not a title even of believers in the old dispensation. (See Gal. 4) This and the following pages are a congeries of unfounded assertions, but the general discussion of the subject in the previous pages suffices.
I will now take up Mr. Sadler's teaching on the Lord's supper, the precious and blessed memorial of the Lord Himself, who deigns to care that we should remember Him. If ever there was anything calculated to touch the heart of a Christian it is this, nor do I doubt that, as with all means of grace, so, especially with this, positive and direct blessing ensues to the believer. For my own part I know of nothing, of what I may call the institutions of Christianity, connected with so much joy and fruitful influence to my soul. No, Christian will despise preaching, teaching, exhortation, reading the word, or common praise and prayer, if he knows his need or his privileges, nor indeed other things less properly institutions; but in none are the affections, as formed by the Spirit of God, so fully and solemnly moved as in the Lord's supper. But I reject, and reject as indeed destructive of this, the view Mr. Sadler takes of it. Solemnity, seriousness, and self-judgment in going to it is every way to be cultivated. But superstition always cultivates mystery and fear in our nearest approaches to God; Christianity the contrary everywhere. We have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. We have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father. Fear hath torment, and he that feareth is not made perfect in love. God's perfect love—for it is God's love that is spoken of—casts out fear. (1 John 4)
He would not have us always in torment. And with striking beauty, when it speaks of our love to Him, it does not say we ought to love Him, but, in the sense of love fully displayed in what proceeds, we love Him because He first loved us. For in the case of a superior, even of a mother, or any one we look up to—and in this case it is infinitely so—the deep sense of their love to us is true love to them. In what precedes, God's love towards us as sinners, dead in sins and guilty, is shown (1 John 4:9, 109In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:9‑10)), in the Christian enjoyed in a new nature by the Holy Ghost (ver. 12), and then perfect with us—for there is no excuse for the translation, “our love” —giving us boldness for the day of judgment, because as Christ is, so are we in this world. The thought of God's love has reached from the condition of guilty dead sinners to the day of judgment; and this takes away fear, for we know Him, He has revealed Himself to us as the Father sending the Son, and bringing us, while once guilty sinners, far from Him, as sons into His presence, in Christ Himself; He fully revealed in Him, and we complete in Him, before Him; and hence, while redoubling our praise and adoration, taking away fear, save the blessed and most wholesome reverence which fears to offend. In this sense “blessed is he that feareth always;” it is the beginning of wisdom, and a beginning that is never lost, but increased in our fullest blessedness: indeed then we feel our own nothingness and forget ourselves, but never Him, when sensibly in His presence, as His fear makes us.
The whole spirit then of Mr. Sadler's system, though engaging to the natural man, the effort at mystery and fear, is contrary to the very character, and object, and nature of Christianity, as made known to us in the word. In it the veil is rent from top to bottom, free entrance into the holiest given, and that with boldness. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared God, and made Him known as He knew Him in His bosom. That the person of Christ is mysterious is most true, but this would go quite too far, for no one knows the Son but the Father; so it is absolutely because of the union of Godhead and manhood in one person. But in intercourse with men the Lord was openness and affability itself among them, as one that served, and just as free with His poor ignorant disciples as with Moses and Elias in glory, and speaking on the same subject. See the kind of intercourse of Ananias in Damascus (Acts 10:10-1610And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, 11And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: 12Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. 13And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. 14But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean. 15And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. 16This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven. (Acts 10:10‑16)), and of Paul (chap. 22:17-21), and how the Lord met them.
The truth is, it is just bringing us, as the whole system does, to Judaism. There the Holy Ghost signified by the veil that the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest. (Heb. 9) To us the word is boldness to enter in by the new and living way through the veil, that is to say, His flesh. And it is this Mr. Sadler wants to make a mystery and a veil of again; and the Christian may be assured that it is not God's presence known in the holiest that will give him levity or carelessness in his conscience; he wil1 be, as Paul expresses it, “manifested to God,” and he is speaking of manifestation as it will be in the day of judgment (2 Cor. 5), for God's holiness and judgment of evil never vary. But it is not fear, because we are before Him in Christ as sons, accepted in the Beloved—blessed, if I am to believe scripture, as men to whom the Lord imputes no sin. And of that state only the scripture says, “and in whose spirit there is no guile.” Why should there be, if we are as white as snow? and if we fail, have confidence in God to confess it, with a full and open though a broken heart, the Holy Ghost who dwells in us leading us, through the advocacy of Christ, to do so?
I have said thus much because of the importance of the truth of Christianity in itself, its true nature, and because it changes the whole aspect of the subject we are upon. But I will enter directly on the subject. And, first, it is difficult to acquit Mr. Sadler of a want of honesty. It is hardly conceivable that a person who seems to have studied the text of scripture on his subject should not know that eating “damnation” to themselves is exactly the opposite of what we mean now by damnation. Either the word was not used then as it is now, or the translators were not honest; for the damnation here spoken of is a chastisement sent that they might not be condemned. They eat and drink judgment to themselves; for if we judged ourselves we should not be judged, but when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. And the judgments are spoken of; sickness, which went on even to death, called sleep because it was that of Christians. Thus the speaking of damnation is in open contradiction of the passage, and subverts its whole purpose and object.
No true Christian doubts the divinity of the blessed Lord, but, solemn as was the institution of the Lord's supper, every word He spoke, and every act He did, was the expression of the same divine Person, so that the attempt to make anything especially mysterious on this account, in the Lord's supper, is utterly groundless; and, indeed, when He says, “in remembrance of me,” it is much more of Him viewed as man, conversant with them on earth, than as to His divine nature. “Remember me” suits His presence and love down here; and if we add His death, it is certain that, though the whole value of His divinity is attached to His death, and only as a divine person could He have done it, yet He died as man, not as to His divine nature. He was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death. And whilst holding fast the full Deity of the blessed Lord as a very foundation of Christianity, we must not forget there is one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. His person was no more mysterious in the Lord's supper, though the occasion was more solemn, than at any other time. If we speak of circumstances as especially mysterious, it was when a babe lying in the manger. But in truth it was always the same.
What we have to examine is what He said. But it may be well, in order to simplify this, to reply first to what is alleged of John 6 The Gospel of John has a peculiar character; it does not present Christ to be received, but, in chapter i., speaks of Christ as unknown by the world, and rejected by the Jews, save such as were born of God. Electing love is insisted on throughout, and the Jews treated as reprobates. Hence, in every chapter in this part, Christ is brought out in contrast with that people. Here the Passover is referred to, and what Christ was as Jehovah, manifested in feeding the multitude, according to Psa. 132 He is owned as prophet, will not be king in a carnal way, and then sends the disciples away to find their way alone on the sea, and having dismissed the Jewish multitude, He goes up on high to pray. He is Jehovah, Prophet, Priest on high, rejecting the royalty in a carnal way, then. He is on high, and the disciples alone. He then shows their true food while He was on high, and externally separated from Him. Is it Christ Himself, or the Lord's supper? I might say really, or exclusively the Lord's supper? For the Lord speaks of the eating of Him, whatever that is, as one thing, though in two aspects, but of that which is one, and which is in itself absolutely efficacious. Indeed, down to the end of verse 68, it is in Greek the aorist, an act which has happened; from verses 54 to 58 it is the present, characteristic of the person spoken of, the eater of my flesh.
Remark further, you have the incarnation, death, and re-ascension of the Lord Jesus closely connected one with another; in a word, His whole history, so to speak, as become man. But the middle and most important part is not Himself, but a rite! so they would tell us. Then the first part of which the eating is equally spoken, and closely connected with the second (ver. 51), is not in the Lord's supper at all; so that the doctrine does not fit at all as a whole. When we come to the substance of the chapter, the impossibility of its application, to the Eucharist stares you in the face. “This is the bread which came down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.” And it is well to begin before this. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me hath everlasting life.
I am that bread of life.....I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat [have eaten] of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.....Verily, I say unto you, except ye eat [have eaten] the flesh of the Son of man, and drink [have drunk] his blood, ye have no life in you [yourselves]. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.....He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him."
I ask if the Lord would say to a parcel of Jews surrounding Him that they had no hope of life but in the Eucharist, which they had never heard of, and knew nothing about; or did He speak of Himself, whom they were to receive, living and dying? Why, if they had not life by faith in Him, had not come to Him by faith, they had no place at His table at all. But I quote a few words more: “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me shall live by me. This is that bread that came down from heaven.... he that eateth of this bread shall live forever” Now mark, first, if a man has not eaten His flesh, and drunk His blood, he has no life in Him. The man begins all real living Christianity by receiving the Eucharist before he is one! Their own doctrine of receiving life by baptism is all a fable; or, if he has, he must make sure and die spiritually, or he is not in the case to participate in the Eucharist.
They talk of sustaining life by the Eucharist, as men by eating, but these men have life, and daily eat as living men, sustaining life by it, as God has ordered. But here they have no life in them at all unless they eat. If it be by receiving Christ into the heart, incarnate and dying, by the power of the Holy Ghost, that is intelligible enough, especially addressed to unbelievers; but to say, it of the Eucharist is alike false, absurd, and contradictory of its nature, for it is for Christians. According to Mr. Sadler's system, it is “received by the faithful;” they are to receive it with a true penitent heart and lively faith. Mr. Sadler has to admit that the Lord confers eternal life on the whole man by it; but then he also admits, no carnal wicked man can get any benefit by it; but if not outwardly wicked, it is a man who has not had eternal life conferred on him.
The language of the Lord, as to a person who has not eaten His flesh, nor drunk His blood, not having life, makes it perfectly impossible to apply it to the Eucharist, for the eating and drinking the Lord speaks of is the first receiving of life: till they ate and drank, they had no life in them. None but dead souls can partake of it, and so receive life. To talk of preserving or sustaining is in the teeth of the express terms of the passage.
But further he who did so eat was to live forever, and that, not hypothetically or conditionally, but live forever. The Lord repeats and insists on this, and carries it expressly on to final blessedness in the eternal state. “I will raise him up in the last day.” It applies, says Mr. Sadler of the Eucharist according to his system, to body as well as soul. That is easily slipping over what is said. The Lord, repeatedly and with emphasis, insists on eating being eternal life, living forever, never dying; and not content with this, goes on to make him who eats sure of final blessedness in resurrection.
Does that apply to the Eucharist? And let not any one come here and say it puts him in that state, and if he continue well. This is not what the Lord says. He declares that he who eats, according to this passage, “shall live forever;” and starting from the assertion, “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life."
The point of difference between the manna and this bread was, that they did die: with this kind of eating, “never die” is the very point of the passage. Whoso eats His flesh and drinks His blood has eternal life, and Christ will raise him up in the last day. It cannot be the Eucharist, for no believer can partake of it in that case; for the believer has everlasting life, as declared in this passage, but he who eats of this has no life in him till he has eaten of it. On the other side, he who partakes of the Eucharist has obtained (though there be, as being dead, “no life in him") eternal life, will live forever, and be raised by the Lord at the last day. They know, as well as I do, that this is in no way or aspect applicable to the Eucharist. The Eucharist refers symbolically to one of the three great events referred to in the chapter, as the chapter does in one part to the realities of which the Eucharist is a symbol. But the chapter in no part, and in no way, refers to the Eucharist. Not one word of it can be honestly applied to that rite, while every word fully and blessedly applies to that to which the rite itself refers.
This disposed of, I turn to the only real inquiry: What do the words of institution mean? I have already spoken of the value I attach to the right use of the Eucharist, and, so to speak, meeting Christ there; but we are now speaking of a particular view of it. Mr. Sadler tells us that taking it as a memorial is a rationalistic view of it. My answer is, Christ said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” He tells us it is not “doing” on our part, but Christ's giving and we receiving. (Page 122.) But Christ says, “Do this.” As to figure, Mr. Sadler recognizes that the bread and wine are still and ever bread and wine, and nothing else in themselves. They have therefore, if any value beyond bread and wine be in them, that value as figures.
And now note that there was not then any such Christ as is symbolized in the bread and wine, nor is there now. What is unquestionably symbolized is His body (given) for us, and His blood shed: that is, a Christ in death, and no way else. There is no such Christ now. And this the apostle expressly states: “We do show forth his death, until he come.” Whatever means of grace it may be, it is not an existing Christ as He is or was then. So He speaks of His shed blood. It is, in a word, a Christ on the cross, and His death, that is in view, though it be done in remembrance of Himself. To turn it away from this is to turn it away from Christ's institution, and the express declaration of scripture.
John 6 represents to us Christ as the Word made flesh in the incarnation, and then suffering on the cross, at the end hinting at His ascension as man to glory. But the subject of the chapter is a humbled and dying Christ, made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, and actually dying (though to take thereupon a glorious place as man, where He was with the Father before the worlds), in contrast with a reigning Messiah.
We have the same path of grace in Phil. 2, contrasted there with the first Adam. He made Himself of no reputation (ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσε), and took a servant's form; then, being found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself unto death, the death of the cross; then exalted of God. But He is fed upon as humbled and dead, His blood shed. Once exalted, both these things are passed and closed. He is the subject of eating only as bread come down, and dying, and shedding His blood.
In John 6 this is presented solely as the beginning of life to us. He gave His flesh for the life of the world. Till I eat it, I have no life in me. Feeding is more than simply believing, though inseparable from it. It is nourishing the soul with the object of faith. Though first φάγω, an act past and done, yet τρώγων, eating, characterizes the believer; but no such Christ as he feeds on is in existence now. It must be by remembrance. It is shed blood he drinks. If it be not shed and out of the body, there is no redemption, and so we must receive it peremptorily or not have life. Without shedding of blood there is no remission; and the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die, or it abides alone.
In the institution of the Eucharist, it is the same subject, only not here bread come down from heaven, a position just closing in John 6, nor an exalted Christ, but blood shed and the body dead, and only so. There is no such Christ in existence, as the one represented in the Eucharist; but it is Christ in that way in which He wrought redemption, obtained remission, and laid the foundation of the new covenant. It is Himself we remember in the infinite love of this, but His death we show forth. It was done once for all in the end of the world.
Mr. Sadler tells us that the slaying of the lamb and the passover was not a remembrance, but that Jehovah did pass over them. This is a great mistake. That answers to Christ's actual dying and shedding His blood, so that God should pass over; but the passover was to be kept yearly as a remembrance when there was no passing over, when they were in the land, as we are in heavenly places in Christ, and celebrate a deliverance and redemption accomplished long ago. “And it shall come to pass when ye be come to the land which Jehovah shall give you, according as he has promised, that ye shall keep this service. And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of Jehovah's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel, when he smote the Egyptians.” (Ex. 12:2525And it shall come to pass, when ye be come to the land which the Lord will give you, according as he hath promised, that ye shall keep this service. (Exodus 12:25).) It was (ver. 24) “an ordinance to thee and to thy sons forever.” And again, “Remember this day in which ye came out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.... there shall be no leavened bread be eaten.” (Ex. 13:88And thou shalt show thy son in that day, saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt. (Exodus 13:8).) “And thou shalt show thy son in that day, saying, This is done because of that which Jehovah did unto me when I came forth from Egypt. And it shall be unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes.... thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in his season from year to year.” It was a perpetual remembrance. It was at a season when they killed the passover. (Matt. 26:1717Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover? (Matthew 26:17) and following; Mark 14:1212And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the passover, his disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou that we go and prepare that thou mayest eat the passover? (Mark 14:12); Luke 22:77Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed. (Luke 22:7), 8.) At this season of the passover the remembrance of Israel's deliverance from Egypt, Jehovah institutes the remembrance of a better sacrifice and a better deliverance.
Mr. Sadler would think a slain lamb a better memorial. Thank God, the Lord did not think so. I pity Mr. Sadler. Would he (I am ashamed to speak of it) have drunk the blood of it, a most weighty and momentous part of it to us? Further, death was death, and could not be touched but as death and the wages of sin. Now death is life and gain; for Christ has in all the depth of it paid those wages, and we feed on it as life. And the memorial of what wrought this is sweet to our souls, as is His love who did it. The giving of the blessed Lord, celebrated in the Eucharist, is His giving Himself—His life on the cross for us in infinite love. We know Him as living now in glory, we feed on Him as once dead on the cross for us. He is in us as life now. We remember Him as once a sacrifice, whose value, and the sufferings and love in it, none can fathom. His love is divine and human and constant now; but He cares, though now in glory, that we should remember. Him as He was then, that time of love when He gave Himself for us. Mr. Sadler may think it rationalistic. We cherish the thought that He cares for our remembrance—did so when suffering, in our inmost soul. We feed on it. Hereby know we love, that He laid down His life for us. It is infinitely precious at all times; but the Lord's supper is a special occasion instituted by Himself, at the moment of His doing it, the same night in which He was betrayed, to recall and be a memorial of it. That He meets His gathered people there I do not doubt.