Question: If gathered to the Lord’s name, on what principle in the present disorder and ruin of God’s house should we receive a Christian from a denomination or sect though he were desirous of abiding there? R.M.
Answer: The principle is, “as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.” If there be a known cause of sin and shame, we ought to refuse: not so did Christ receive us. Even when we had much to learn of the truth in detail, (50, 60 or more years ago), a firm stand was made by faithful men against such as trifled with fundamental truth. I remember in those days a fervent Wesleyan, who had learned “the blessed hope” and was morally driven out of that society by their opposition to that truth; yet was he rejected in his wish for communion in the Lord’s supper, because he denied the personality of the Holy Spirit, too common even then. But it is of comparatively late years that the fatal tidal wave of heterodoxy has been overflowing Christendom, as to Christ’s person on both sides, everlasting punishment of the lost, and God’s inspiration of scripture. This actual and growing condition compels all who fear God to reject such as either hold these grievous errors or, what is if possible worse, make light of these evils and insist on their title to go on where these destructive lies are taught. No matter what they plead, they disqualify themselves for true communion of saints, if they also claim indifference practically to such God-dishonoring errors. It is awful to think that some who were at least associated long with men faithful to Christ are now looser than the loose. For they faithlessly swamp the truth and holiness of God to receive Christians so called, no matter how defiled now. All of these may not be equally bold and careless; but there is no path so dangerous as, under heat for some and opposition to others, departing from known and cherished truth, and slighting those servants of God to whom they owe no small debt of love. Ere long, if grace do not deliver, they will hate their testimony more and more, and the light in them will become darkness; and then how great the darkness!
Where it is a known saint in an orthodox though sectarian position, yet in no way exercised about it, it appears to me still our privilege as of old to receive such an one in the Lord’s name, who desires to remember Him with us in the breaking of bread. But he needs adequate testimony and comes under discipline like others. Of course bargaining on either side would be intolerable. How many simple ones of spiritual feeling, though far from intelligent, having once enjoyed His presence thus, have inquired and learned His will, and never returned to man’s devices! The easygoing are such as retrograde, and so do the stiff and narrow; when they come to see that Christ is not therein, reaction may ensue.