IT is always deeply affecting to examine the closing chapters of the gospels, to ponder the sufferings, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Nothing tends more to draw out our affection, and bow our hearts in adoration before Him. He loved us and gave Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor, putting away, in that supreme moment, all our sins righteously from before God. John 20 shows Him as risen. Death could not hold Him in its grasp. His work was done, death was annulled, God was glorified—the answer for Him being resurrection on the third day with a view to glory at the Father's right hand.
After giving us the details of His rising, the Spirit presents us in John's Gospel with four striking and instructive pictures; first, we have Him showing Himself again to the then believing Jewish remnant in the person of Mary, leading their hearts away from earthly hopes into relationship with Himself to the Father in the place to which he was going; secondly we see Him manifesting Himself to the assembled disciples, picturing the Christian assembly as gathered around Himself; thirdly, He makes Himself known to Thomas, removing all his doubts, in token of what He will yet do for Thomas's nation in a day yet to come; and finally at the sea of Tiberias, in the remarkable draft of fishes, a millennial picture is furnished of the ingathering of the Gentile nations for blessing.
It is the second of these pictures that I desire to draw attention to at this time. “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and said unto them—Peace be unto you” (ver. 19). Here we have set forth in a remarkable manner the Christian assembly. But let not the reader misunderstand. However strikingly the assembled disciples, with the Lord in their midst, speak to us of the church, they were not the church of God at that time. The church had no existence as such, until Jesus was glorified and the Holy Ghost descended on the day of Pentecost. And even then the saved had no knowledge of it. Not until the apostle Paul was raised up, as one born out of due time, was the mystery of God unfolded. Therefore though these disciples in John 20 became the church of God, indeed its first members, they were not yet this in the day of which we speak. Still their position and privilege, especially the presence of the Lord in the midst, foreshadowed it in a very expressive way.
The Spirit is careful to tell us that it was the first day of the week when Jesus thus came and stood in the midst. The Lord thus puts His sanction, as it were, upon the assembly of His saints on that day. And what day more suitable? Of old it was the seventh day—the Sabbath—that was set apart for the worship of God. Let some suppose that the difference is but slight, but verbal, between the seventh day and the first. The difference is fundamentally important. The seventh day came in as the end of man's week of work; it was made an integral part of the law of Sinai, with solemn consequences attached to the breach of it. But the first of the week does not speak to us of man's work at all, but of a totally new order of things, brought in by God, founded upon the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. It speaks to us of flesh set aside as worthless, of redemption accomplished, of righteousness completed, of a new creation, where all things are of God. Hence, Christians meet together on that day with triumph in their souls, to remember the Lord and to show forth His death, in the breaking of bread until He come.
It is quite the fashion to confound the two days, as if they were substantially the same, but the difference is immense. The one is Judaism and the other is Christianity. Alas! the return to Judaism with its worldly elements and feast days and sabbaths came in very early. One has only to read the Epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians to see how earnestly the apostle resisted the working of this leaven. But as the heavenly calling faded more and more from the minds of men, bearing the Lord's name, and the sense of divine grace too, Judaism made rapid strides, with the result that, to the mass, even in this day, the Christianity of the scriptures sounds strange doctrine in their ears.
Well, the Lord thus came into the midst of His own, on the first day of the week, the very day of His resurrection. If the Acts of the apostles and the Epistles be studied, it will be seen that this became the formal meeting-day of the assembly of God, whatever other opportunities they may have had of meeting together for mutual edification and blessing. In Acts 20:7 we read, “Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, etc.” This was the custom. They were not together to hear Paul, even though he was to leave them finally on the morrow, but to break bread. This scripture is even more forcible when rightly read: “When we came together.” It was thus not a merely local custom at Troas, but the understood habit of the church of God in that day. It was on this day then that the Lord took His place in the midst of His own. What joy to them! Can we wonder that we read, “Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.” Is not His blessed presence heaven to our souls? What would the glory itself be apart from Christ? Suppose it were possible for us to be introduced even there and find no Christ, would it satisfy our hearts? Nay, better a hovel with Christ, than the very glory itself without Him. The renewed heart finds delight in Christ alone; our souls thrive in His blessed presence.
( To be continued, D.V.)