“I had heard there was trouble in , but was greatly grieved when I read the cause in your letter, if I have rightly understood what you say, that some (— among them) cannot worship the Lord. There is nothing new in it; a case happened in but the person was refused communion. It is a deep grief to me; I have written to him, which I thought the best way. Anything that touches the glory of the Lord, and our heart-estimate of Him, is of the last moment, and must be near the heart of him who loves Him. The case I referred to soon showed other thoughts derogatory to the Lord.”
“Mr. — assures me, for I had written to him, that he is quite sure that he joins heartily in praise and worship to the Lord Jesus Christ. He has only wanted the full sense of worship to be known and of nearness to God in Christ. Now this is right and many fail in it, and have the feeling they can approach Christ, and trust in His love, but not God. The spirit of adoption is greatly wanting in many. When there was a man at—(I forget his name), with whom I also had to do, and who opposed prayer and praise to the Lord Jesus, had also a correspondence with him to show him he was wrong, but then both our efforts were useless.
“It is possible some may have objected to it really. If they will not worship a Man, the angels will, and, moreover, every knee bow to Him, of men and infernal beings. While scripture puts us into the glory with Christ and, like Christ, it carefully guards the personal glory and title of Christ.... It is He who came in in subjection by the door, the Shepherd who gave His life for the sheep, who says, ‘I and my Father are one.' If there is the divine and human nature in Him, there is only one Person.... He who has seen Him has seen the Father.... Authority is given to Him to judge ‘because He is the Son of Man'; but it is ‘that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father.' Is that refusing to worship Him? See John 5:1818Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God. (John 5:18): the Jews were more consistent.
“To separate the Son of man and Son of God is to dissolve Christ. See John 3:14, 1614And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: (John 3:14)
16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16). See again, 1 John 5:2020And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. (1 John 5:20).... There is a most striking passage in 1 John 2:2828And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming. (1 John 2:28) and 3:1, 2. The inseparableness of personality and the distinction of nature is very striking. ‘Before him at his coming,’ 'is born of him' in verse 29, so that we are ‘sons of God' (3:1), and yet the world ‘knew him not’ — ‘sons of God' (ver. 2), but we like Him when He shall appear. All this blessed truth is lost if we dissolve, as I have called it, Christ.... Speaking of worshipping a man is losing the Person of Christ. And if the angels are to worship Him [Heb. 1:66And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him. (Hebrews 1:6)], worship is a just service as to what is—for it is not our being exempt which is in question, but His being entitled to it. And there it is Christ, though His Godhead, is brought out, yet as incarnate; for it is said, ‘When he had by himself purged our sins,' and ‘He is the first begotten' (not the ‘only begotten'), and Psa. 2 is quoted where He is distinctly celebrated as Messiah-Christ, or, as in English, ‘His Anointed.'
... “Refusing to worship the Lord is a very serious error, but discussion about His Person seldom leads to much fruit.... It is not only in replying to me, but in his controversy with the man at—, that he rejected the thought of not worshipping the Lord— 'to whom every knee shall bow' (and that puts Him in the place of worship, as ‘have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal' shows). But his statement to me is quite clear. It is possible some, not inclined to worship Christ as is due, may have profited by expressions to support their false state of heart. Hasty conclusions are not always wise. Firmness against false doctrine is always right—But there are a great many who are in the Martha state 'What thou askest of God,' who, as not really free, cannot go directly to the Father, nor worship anybody rightly, and cannot worship under the conviction the Father Himself loveth them—not questioning God's love in sending His only begotten Son, but who do not enter into the present privilege of direct address to the Father as those who are in His presence and enjoy His love there—loved as Jesus Himself is loved, wonderful as such a word is, this love being in them.”
“I cannot doubt that— has made unadvised and undesirable statements, the effect certainly being to turn away from the worship of the Lord Jesus.... My present conviction is, that he did not deny worship to Christ, but that he did decline addressing himself to Christ at the Table, though leaving liberty to others.... There is a great difference between the worship there being addressed to Christ and to the Father; the whole tone of the meeting is changed by it; this I have long noticed. Though with no formal intention, I seldom give thanks without being led to both, but quite sensible of the difference; and worship, when met for it, is more suitably to the Father, if people are up to it. But if it was taken as objecting to addressing Christ I should resist that.”
“One would not accept a person who would not worship Christ.... There are certain vital truths connected with the Person of the Lord, which, when possessed, guard the soul from interpretations to which the soul who merely follows the words may be liable. Tell me I am not to worship Christ: you take away the only Christ I know. I have none other but One I do adore and worship with a thankful heart which owes all to Him.... All the angels of God are to worship Him, every knee to bow to Him. But more: calling on the name of the Lord is, so to speak, the definition of a Christian.... Christ is the Adonai of the Old Testament, as Isa. 6 and John 12 and indeed Psa. 110 and other places. The Sitter on the throne and the Lamb are associated in Rev. 5:1313And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. (Revelation 5:13); indeed, it is a question if chapter 4 be not the Son in His divine Person. You cannot separate the Ancient of days and Christ in Dan. 7, though as the Son of man, He is brought before Him; for in verse 22 the Ancient of days comes. And judgment is committed to the Son, because He is the Son of man 'yet that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father'...”
“One who refused to worship Christ, or who did not own His mediatorship and that in every aspect, I could not walk with. But I think that worship of the Father, and the worship of Christ as Mediator, has a different character. In worshipping the Father I go to One who in infinite, uncaused love (the form and glory of Godhead never left) has revealed Himself to me, brought me into the place of son, nor spared His own Son for me, reconciled me to Himself by Him, and given me His Spirit that I may have the consciousness of the place He has put me in, so that I cry, ‘Abba, Father.' It is all through Christ, but I know the Father and what He is through Him—alas! yet how imperfectly! yet so as to joy or glory in God. It is God, but God known as Father (John 4:2323But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. (John 4:23)); John always makes the difference. So Christ tells us He was going to His Father and our Father, and. His God and our God. It is what the Father is in Himself to whom we are brought, and as revealed in love in the Son, we being made sons, that is specially before us in worshipping Him, though all blessings flow from Him.
“Now, in the worship of Christ become Mediator, I own His divine title though He laid aside His glory—now taken again—but it is One who has come down to me, has lived and died for me, loved me, washed me from my sins in His own blood. He was slain and has redeemed to God those far from Him; has made Himself of no reputation; and in unutterable grace to me, has been in all points tempted like as we are, sin apart, can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Now, I quite admit a child owes worship to a loving Father—all right; but sorrows, exercises, thorns in the flesh, cases where I want sympathy, my wants, and then the administration of everything in the church, connect themselves with my looking to and worshipping Christ viewed as Mediator. It is not a person simply as made partaker of the divine nature, and through the Spirit knowing the Father through the revelation of the Son, who worships the Father as so knowing Him. I come more into the scene as knowing Christ a tempted Savior; as a Friend tried in the circumstances in which we are. Were He not God this would lose all its value; but it is of inestimable value to every exercised soul. But it is evident that it connects itself more with my state down here. It is just what is precious.
This is true, that the work of Christ has been so divine and glorious, God Himself glorified in it, that it lifts us up to worship Him in respect of the excellency of what He has shown Himself to be in that, and so we rise up to Godhead; for hereby know we love because He laid down His life for us. This it is important to lay fast hold of for His glory. We at once see the unity of thought, purpose, mind, nature, in the Son and in the Father. Still, it is practically true that souls are apt to rest in looking at Christ, however justly, in the mediatorial aspect which concerns themselves, and their worship descends to this. It is not the blessed nature of God in which they joy and glory, and that known in a Father's love as their Father, but in the grace and service and benefits of which they are the objects and recipients, found in Christ. Now, this cannot be separated when true from the source of love in Him as a divine Person, but is connected with our wants, infirmities, and failures, in a word—which, through divine grace, refer to self, and in which we ought to think of self, that the sense of it may be real, and we filled with divinely-given thankfulness. Both are right, both are sweet, and what we have to cultivate by grace, but different. One lifts us up simply to God for our new man to dwell in and delight in, and surely worship Him. The other brings down that love in sympathetic goodness to our state, though felt and estimated by the new man—God revealed, but as entering into all we are, and all we want, and that even to our sins. Now that the adoring recognition of this is true worship I fully admit, and the exclusion of it wholly wrong and deadening to the affections of the soul, but it is a different thing from the soul, by the Holy Ghost, being with and adoring the Father, to whom Christ has brought us, loved as He is loved. I apprehend there was the tendency in — ‘s teaching, desirous of reaching to the former, to set aside the latter, and that was all wrong; but I fear brethren active in the matter had not learned to appreciate the difference between the two....
“Take hymns, and see how many you have addressed to the Father, or which continue to have Him and not ourselves for their subject after the first verse. You may, perhaps, have hymns to the Father; but in revising the hymn book I found how grave a question the doing it had raised for me as to this: though our spiritual state affects everything we do, yet it requires a more spiritual state than hymns to Christ, though He be worthy of equal honor. But while I make this difference, you cannot separate them by a sharp mathematical line, so to speak. Affections do not flow in that way. And the love of the Father and the Son run into one another. If the Father did not spare His Son, the Son in the same divine love gave Himself. We have known the Father through His revelation of Him. ‘He that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.' The incarnation, and service which follows it in grace, have given a special character to our heart relationship with Christ, but after all, all is of the same divine source. Worshipping the Father as being in Christ has been spoken of, as substituting it for worshipping Christ; but I find no such thought in scripture. In Christ is our place and privilege; worship is a separate thing which springs through grace from our hearts individually, or, yet rather, collectively; but worshipping in Him. I find no trace of in scripture.” J. N. D.