“The Lord Jesus, the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread: and when He had given thanks, He brake it, and this do in remembrance of Me. After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped saying, This cup is the new testament in My blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of Me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).

Here is the ordinance, set up by the Lord Himself, in remembrance of Him, to announce His death, till He come. Even as the Church was set up on the day of Pentecost and continues, maintained by the Lord, so is His table, which Himself did set up on the night of His betrayal, to continue “till He come.” And such power has it over the souls of His people that even during the fiery persecutions they jeopardized their lives to assemble in secret, in the depths of woods, anywhere, to remember thus their adorable and adored Saviour.

While the Church remains upon the earth, that holy eating and drinking shall not cease. It has never lapsed since our Lord set it up, and it shall not lapse “till He come.” Every man who enjoys the Saviour craves to sit at His table. Unfaithful disciples, as at Corinth, may corrupt it and reduce it to a carnal eating and drinking; or they may disfigure it and turn it into an idolatrous rite, as the church of Rome has done; or they may associate with it evil practices of various kinds, as many do; still it goes on, enjoyed and maintained by those who love our Lord Jesus Christ, in remembrance of Him “till He come,” announcing His death on the cross as their eternal salvation.

Yes, says one, But who among all the parties of Christians today has that table? Another question: Who among all the parties of Christians today is the Church of God—the body of Christ?

All must own that not one of them can lay exclusive claim to this; for the Church of God is composed of all throughout the world in whom the Spirit of Christ dwells, and these may be found in every one of the multitude of parties in Christendom. “There is one body” (Eph. 4:4), and only one, and that spite the multitude of parties of Christians, even as there is “one God,” one only, and that spite the multitude of gods existing.

There is only one Lord’s table too; the other is “the table of devils” (1 Cor. 10:21); and that one Lord’s table is with the Lord’s “one body.” He gave it to “the Church, which is His body;” and any part of that Church which would claim the exclusive possession of it would be as proud and arrogant as if claiming exclusively to be the body of Christ.

Since that night in which our Lord was betrayed and set up His holy Supper, the Church of the living God has uninterruptedly been eating it, is eating it week by week now, and will eat it “till He come.”

But again comes the question: I cannot be with every party of Christians; with many of them I could not possibly associate because of the evils going on there: where, then, am I to find the true Lord’s table at which I can sit?

Our answer is, Who has ever asked you to look for the true Lord’s table? There is no other but the true. What part of Scripture has set you looking for such a thing? You might as well seek for the true Church; or for a company of Christians where Christ is “in the midst” of them exclusively. If you are at such a task, it is not God who has set you at it, and the end of your search will be bitter disappointment of fanaticism.

The true Church, the true Lord’s table, the Lord’s presence among His own, are things which cannot be sectional. They cannot be appropriated by this or that section of the people of God exclusively with impunity. Pride alone does this, and “God resisteth the proud.”

When I saw my eternal redemption in the Cross of Christ my Substitute, my new place before God in resurrection, my union with Christ in glory, saw in an instant that Christendom was, like the churches of Galatia, “fallen from grace”—gone back to law. One could not preach the whole truth of God without rejection everywhere. It was great iniquity to forsake the grace which Christ had brought us through such untold suffering to Himself, and to return to a legal system which can only condemn man or make of him a Pharisee.

Then, in obedience to the Word of God which says, “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19), I departed, though the heart felt a pang at being thereby separated from such as truly loved the Lord. Did I then “leave the church,” as many said, or deny they had the Lord’s table or the Lord’s presence among them, as some would say? Not in the least. None of these questions were raised; nor does God ask us to raise them. To attempt to decide upon them can be but assumption. He who does it meddles with business not his own, and will prove in the end that he is “like one that taketh a dog by the ears” (Prov. 26:17). What God asks of us is to depart from what is evil—what can be clearly proved evil by His Word in the sight of all who are of the household of faith. The secret things are His, and His alone; only those things which require no assumption, but can be established without question by revelation, belong to man.

If a company of Christians, therefore, hold principles condemned by the Word of God, or commit unrighteousness and refuse to repent, in obedience to God, or depart from the iniquity, we do not pretend to say that they have no more the Lord’s presence or the Lord’s table among them. This is not our business. Our business is simply to obey God in what His Word enjoins.

A Diotrephes, who loved the preeminence, did, with the consent of the church, evil things. “Beloved, follow not that which is evil” writes the apostle to Gaius, whom he loved in the truth, and who resided there. How could Gaius obey the apostolic injunction and yet walk with those who did the evil? The only possible path for him was separation, after due waiting and laboring for repentance in those with Diotrephes. As we have already seen, no question as to the oneness of the body of Christ, or of the Lord’s table, or of the Lord’s presence continuing or discontinuing with Diotrephes’ company was in any wise involved or even relevant. They despised Christ by their evil action toward those who loved Christ by their evil actions toward those who loved Christ and did Him no wrong; and the righteous must not walk with unrighteousness. Thus is separation itself God’s remedy in a scene of evil, until the judgment-seat of Christ; and, blessed be God, when compelled to do this by obedience to God, not a question is raised as to membership in the one body of Christ, nor as to His presence among those from whom we part. Authorizing evil actions on the claim of the Lord’s presence, or having His table, is iniquity of no common kind; and yielding subjection to such pretended authority is a subjection which may look like Christian humility, but is not. In the end it enslaves the conscience to the Church instead of to the Lord. It deadens the soul, for it produces the fear of man rather than the fear of God.

We are living in “perilous times.” The Lord grant Hs beloved people, one and all, the hearing ear and the seeing eye to go through them with His approval.

—P.J.L.