01.04. Chapter 04 - Holy and True

Chapter 04

Holy and True

“You have kept My Word” is the first commendation to Philadelphia. The people thus commended are first of all Philadelphians, so what God commends in them is all the more important. Let’s emphasize that, while God is speaking to a company of people who are characterized by love of the brethren, His praise is not that “you have loved the brethren.” This does not even form a part of the commendation, which is, rather, “You have kept My Word and not denied My Name … you have kept the word of My patience.” Yet, in the promise to the overcomer, God does refer to their Philadelphian name, for inscribed on the pillar which he who has only “a little strength” finally becomes, is not only “the name of my God” and “my new name,” but also, “the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem.” This city is the eternal home of the brethren (believers in Christ) and has, I believe, distinct reference to Philadelphian-character. However, in His approval of them, He says nothing of this character. Why? The title under which the Lord addresses them fully accounts for it. He is addressing Philadelphians. Thus, if people don’t have this character, He isn’t talking to them. He is speaking to those who seek the recovery of the true Church which should have been like “a city set on a hill (or) a light on a candlestick,” but which has dropped almost into the invisibility that men ascribe to it. God’s first words remind these seekers of Church-visibility of His holiness and truth: “These things says He who is holy, He who is true.” How much they will need to remember this!

Think of the Church that is so scattered and which we would so desire to see restored. What are we to do for its restoration? Shall we proclaim to all that it is God’s will that His people should be together? Shall we spread the Lord’s table, free from all denominational names and terms for communion, and invite all who love the Lord to come together? The one loaf on the table does witness that we are one bread, one body, and there is no body that faith can own, except the body of Christ. Why then should we not do this?

I answer, “Tell them that the Lord welcomes all His own, but also tell them that it is ’the Holy and True’ who welcomes them, and that He cannot give up His nature.” How has the true Church become the invisible Church? Is it her misfortune or her fault? Take these seven epistles of Rev 2:1-29; Rev 3:1-22 and trace the Church’s descent (as we did in Chapter one) from the loss of first love in Ephesus to the allowance of the woman Jezebel in Thyatira, and on through dead Sardis to the present time. Can we just ignore the past and simply, as if nothing had happened, begin again?

Suppose all Christians accepted your invitation and you were really able to assemble all the members of Christ at the Lord’s table with their jarring views, their various states of soul, their entanglements with the world and with their evil associations. Would the Lord’s table answer to the character implied in it being His table? Would He really be owned and honored as Lord (Master) in that coming together? With the causes of all the scattering not judged, your ’gathering’ would be a defiance of the holy discipline. It would be another Babel (confusion). Do you think that outward unity is so dear to Christ that He would desire it apart from true confession, cleansing and fellowship in the truth This address to Philadelphia intentionally opposes all such thoughts. Why doesn’t the Lord present Himself here, as He did to Sardis, as the One who “has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars” — fullness of spiritual power, with His people in His keeping? It may seem strange that dead Sardis is thus reminded but not Philadelphia. However, such a statement to Philadelphia would indicate the recovery of the Church by their own means. To Sardis, the statement is exhortation instead of assurance. Rather, Philadelphia needs the warning that they are living in the last days — days of apostasy (falling away) — and thus must guard against an outward unity that would set aside all the godly value of unity. How perfect, in its place, is every word of God!

Let’s notice again what the Lord commends. “You have a little power … have kept My word and not denied My Name, and … have kept the word of My patience.” Mark these ’My’s’ which occur eight times in this address. They show that the true Philadelphian clings to Christ, to His Word, to His Person, to His strangership in the present time, and to His certainty of the future. The work of a Philadelphia is to obey Christ, to hold fast the truth as to Him and to be waiting for His coming. The work of gathering will look after itself if the above is done. The Lord will see to that! Christ the Center is to unite us, not something that is external to Him. Thus alone will there be fruit for God and commendation from Him who here speaks to His people.

It is easy to see how the Philadelphian character may be lost by a false idea of it. Real true brotherly love is a precious thing, but see where the apostle Peter puts it: “Add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly love” (2Pe 1:5-7). In God’s order, many things need to come before brotherly love. No doubt, all of the above things are true of all Christians to some degree, but there is a relationship of these things one to another, shown in the order of appearance in this verse, and that is what is important here. There is no true love of the brethren — no Philadelphia — unless all these things are found in it. For it all, Christ must have the first place in our lives.

Philadelphian-gathering is to Christ, and it is Christ who gathers. A common faith, a common joy, a common occupation find their source in the outward sign of the spiritual bond that unites us. Those who know what gathering at the Lord’s table means, know that communion there can only be hindered by the presence of what is not communion. Harmony cannot be increased by discord. I’m not speaking of lack of understanding. Rather, I’m speaking of an unexercised conscience and of a heart not receptive to divine things (which means it is receptive to worldly, fleshly things). How must the power of the Holy Spirit be hindered by such! The Scriptural rule for times of decline is to gather “with those who call upon the Lord out of a pure heart” (2Ti 2:22) and the way to find those is not to advertise for them, but to “follow righteousness, faith, love, peace,” walking on the same road that they are on. The Lord will bring you together.

If we really seek the blessing of souls, we will guard carefully the entrance into fellowship (the breaking of bread). We are responsible to see that such an entrance (reception) is “holy and true.” Careless reception is the cause of much trouble and is part of the cause of the general decline in spiritual things. “Evil company corrupts good morals” (1Co 15:33). Men cannot walk together unless they are agreed. When trial comes, as it will, those who have never been firmly convinced of the divine reason for the position they have taken, will scatter and flee from it with reckless haste, carrying with them an evil report of what they have turned their backs on. Such persons usually are beyond recovery and often develop into bitter enemies of the truth.

We are taking a great responsibility on ourselves if we press people to take a position for which they are not ready; in which, therefore, they act without faith. The apostle Paul warns us of the danger of leading people who do not have an exercised conscience, to follow a faith that is not their own: “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Rom 14:23). No wonder that there are wrecks all along the road of a ’divine movement’ for which real, exercised, personal faith is so constantly required, and in which so many are trying to walk without it. We should remember that it is the Holy and the True who is seeking fellowship with us, and only that which answers to this holy and true character can survive the tests that surely will come.