The Real Presence - What Is It? # 3
(c) There is a real spiritual "presence" of Christ wherever His believing people meet together in His name. This is the plain meaning of His saying, "Wherever two or three are gathered together in My name - there I am in the midst of them" (Matt. 18:20). The smallest gathering of true Christians for the purposes of prayer or praise, or holy conference, or reading God's Word - is sanctified by the best of company! The great or rich or noble may not be there - but the King of kings Himself is present - and angels look on with reverence!
The grandest buildings that men have reared for religious uses, are often no better than whitened sepulchers - destitute of any holy influence - because they are given up to superstitious ceremonies, and filled to no purpose with crowds of formal worshipers, who come unfeeling, and go unfeeling away. No worship is of any use to souls - at which Christ is not present! Incense, banners, pictures, flowers, crucifixes, and long processions of richly dressed ecclesiastics - are a poor substitute for the great High Priest Himself!
The poorest room where a few penitent believers assemble in the name of Jesus - is a consecrated and most holy place in the sight of God! Those who worship God in spirit and truth - never draw near to Him in vain. Often they go home from such meetings warmed, cheered, established, strengthened, comforted, and refreshed! And what is the secret of their feelings? They have had with them the great Master of assemblies - Jesus Christ Himself!
(d) There is a real spiritual "presence" of Christ with the hearts of all true-hearted communicants in the Lord's Supper. Rejecting as I do, with all my heart, the baseless notion of any bodily presence of Christ in the Lord's table, I can never doubt that the great ordinance appointed by Christ has a special and peculiar blessing attached to it. That blessing, I believe, consists in a special and peculiar presence of Christ, given to the heart of every believing communicant. That truth appears to me to lie under those wonderful words of institution, "Take and eat it - for this is My body". Drink from it, all of you - for this is My blood." Those words were never meant to teach that the bread in the Lord's Supper was literally Christ's body, or the wine literally Christ's blood. But our Lord did mean to teach that every right-hearted believer, who ate that bread and drank that wine in remembrance of Christ, would in so doing - find a special presence of Christ in his heart, and a special revelation of Christ's sacrifice of His own body and blood to his soul.
Eating the bread with faith - he feels closer communion with the body of Christ. Drinking the wine with faith - he feels closer communion with the blood of Christ. He sees more clearly what is to him - and what he is to Christ. He understands more thoroughly what it is - to be one with Christ and Christ in him. He feels the roots of his spiritual life insensibly watered, and the work of grace within him insensibly built up and carried forward. He cannot explain it or define it. It is a matter of experience, which no one knows but he who feels it. Jesus meets with those who draw near to His table with a true heart - in a special and peculiar way!
(e) Last - but not least, there is a real spiritual "presence" of Christ, given to believers in special times of trouble and difficulty. This is the presence of which Paul received assurance on more than one occasion. At Corinth, it is written "Then the Lord said to Paul in a night vision - Don't be afraid, but keep on speaking and don't be silent. For I am with you, and no one will lay a hand on you to hurt you, because I have many people in this city" (Acts 18:9, 10). At Jerusalem, when the Apostle was in danger of his life, it is written, "The following night, the Lord stood by him and said - Have courage! For as you have testified about Me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome" (Acts 23:11). Paul also wrote, "At my first defense, no one came to my assistance, but everyone deserted me. May it not be counted against them. But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth" (2 Tim. 4:16, 17).
This special presence of Christ with His people - is the reason for the singular and miraculous courage which many of God's children have occasionally shown under circumstances of unusual trial, in every age of the church. When the three Hebrew children were cast into the fiery furnace and preferred to die, rather than commit idolatry, we are told that Nebuchadnezzar exclaimed; "Look! I see four men, not tied, walking around in the fire unharmed; and the fourth looks like a Son of God." (Dan. 3:25). When Stephen was beset by bloody-minded enemies on the very point of stoning him, we read that he said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God!" (Acts 7:56).
Nor ought we to doubt that this special presence was the secret of the fearlessness with which many early Christian martyrs met their deaths, and the marvelous courage which the Marian martyrs, such as Bradford, Latimer, and Rogers, displayed at the stake. A peculiar sense of Christ being with them, is the right explanation of all these cases. These men died as they did - because Christ was with them. Nor ought any believer to fear that the same helping presence will be with him - whenever his own time of special need arrives.
This branch of our subject deserves to be pondered well. This spiritual presence of Christ is a real and true thing, though a thing which the children of this world neither know - nor understand. I repeat emphatically, that the spiritual presence of Christ - His presence with the hearts and spirits of His own people - is a real and true thing. Let us not doubt it. Let us seek to feel it more and more. The man who feels nothing whatever of it in his own heart's experience, may depend on it that he is not yet in a right state of soul.
3. The last point which I propose to consider is the real BODILY presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. Where is it? What ought we to think about it? What ought we to reject, and what ought we to hold fast? This is a branch of my subject on which it is most important to have clear and well-defined views. There are rocks around it on which many are making shipwreck. Whatever the Bible teaches plainly about Christ's bodily presence - it is our duty to hold and believe. To shrink from holding it - because we cannot reconcile it with some human tradition, some minister's teaching, or some early prejudice imbibed in youth - is presumption, and not humility. To the law and to the testimony! What do the Scriptures say about Christ's bodily presence? Let us examine the matter step by step.
(a) There was a bodily presence of our Lord Jesus Christ during the time when He was upon EARTH at His first advent. For thirty-three years, between His birth and His ascension, He was present in a body in this world. In infinite mercy to our souls, the eternal Son of God was pleased to take our nature on Him, and to be miraculously born of a woman, with a body just like our own. Like us He ate, and drank, and slept, and hungered, and thirsted, and wept, and felt fatigue and pain. He had a body which was subject to all the conditions of a material body. He kept the law, and fulfilled all righteousness, and in a real, true human body He bore our sins on the Cross, and made satisfaction for us by His atoning blood. He who died for us on Calvary was perfect man, while at the same time He was perfect God.
The battle was fought for us, and the victory was won by the eternal Word made flesh - by the real bodily presence among us of Jesus Christ. Forever let us praise God that Christ did not remain in heaven - but came into the world and was made flesh to save sinners; that in the body, He was born for us, lived for us, died for us, and rose again. Whether men know it or not, our whole hope of eternal life hinges on the simple fact, that nineteen hundred years ago there was a real bodily presence of the Son of God for us on the earth.
~J. C. Ryle~
(continued with # 4)
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