3. Love and Communion
James Buchanan
- The spirit of adoption implies a warm brotherly love towards all who are members of God’s family. This new affection corresponds to the new relation into which they have been introduced, and bears some proportion to the sacred, endearing ties by which, as Christians, they are connected with one another. The spirit of adoption points directly to God and consists in supreme love to Him; but it necessarily implies also love to the brethren, for John says, “Every one that loveth Him that beget loveth him also that is begotten of Him”. And: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.”
The intimate connection between the two – I mean between love to God as one’s Father and to one another as brethren – is abundantly proved by the experience of believers, as well as by the express testimony of the Word. If, on the one hand, they experience at any time an enlargement of affection towards God; if they taste most sweetly and see most clearly that the Lord is gracious and have much liberty and comfort in crying to Him, “Abba, Father”, then they shall also feel a corresponding love to all His people, a disposition to forgive as they hope to be forgiven, and a desire to do good unto all men as they have opportunity, but especially unto them that are of the household of faith.
If, on the other hand, they allow their spirits at any time to be ruffled by strife and contention; if, in the heat of undue excitement, they begin to think or speak harshly of one another, and allow the sun to go down upon their wrath, they will feel in the hour of prayer how fatal this unhallowed spirit is to enjoying fellowship with God, how it fetters their freedom and embitters their feelings; and even when they seek to cry, “Abba, Father,” in the spirit of adoption, it infuses into their souls all the discomfort and anxiety of the old spirit of bondage. Hence our Lord’s command to His disciples: “If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift”; and Paul’s exhortation, “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice; and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake, hath forgiven you. Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children, and walk in love.”
- The spirit of adoption implies a disposition to hold communion with God as Father and with His children as brethren in Christ. The spirit of adoption prompts the believer to hold communion with God, for it is by this spirit that he cries, “Abba, Father”. As it leads him to be much engaged in prayer, so it gives a new character to his devotions; they are no longer the expression of an anxious and fearful heart, but the outpourings of a spirit confiding in a father’s wisdom, rejoicing in a father’s love, and committing itself to a father’s care. So long as he was under the spirit of bondage, prayer was felt to be a task, or used only as a form, instead of being a sweet, refreshing privilege; his petitions were dictated by fear more than by faith, and he felt rather as a criminal speaking to his judge, or as a slave to his angry master, than as a child communing with his father.
But now, adopted into God’s family and reconciled through the blood of Christ, he feels a confidence in drawing near to God, such as a child has in speaking to a wise and affectionate parent – a confidence which is only the more tender and deeply rooted in his heart because he has been a rebellious child and is now forgiven. The very recollection of his sins, when combined with a sense of God’s pardoning mercy, will fill his heart to overflowing with love, gratitude and joy. While he is deeply humbled, and ready to acknowledge that he is “no more worthy to be called a son”, he knows that his adoption was an act of sovereign grace – that it was granted, not on account of his own righteousness, but solely through the righteousness of Christ and the redemption of His cross. Thus he can “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that [he] may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need”.
In doing so, he is encouraged by the relation in which God stands to him as his Father in heaven; and by the recollection of those gracious assurances in the Word which are founded on this relation; he remembers the words of Christ Himself: “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly”; “Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him”; and, “If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?”
There is a rich fountain of encouragement to pray in the idea that God is the Father of His people, for if that is so, it assures them that even their weakness and infirmities – indeed, their sins and shortcomings – will not stop Him paying attention to them. On the contrary, “as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him;” and this is His own promise: “I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him”. If this is the relation in which believers stand to God, and these are the feelings with which He regards them when they draw near to Him in the spirit of adoption, they need not be cast down or discouraged by a sense of their weakness and infirmities.
Consider how a father’s heart is touched by the weakness of his child, so that he never deals more tenderly with the child than when he is sick and faint;2 consider how a father is all the more ready to stretch forth his arm to support his child when it is conscious of its weakness and clings to him for fear it should fall; and consider how a father’s sympathy and love are sure to be called forth when an obedient son seeks to serve him and grieves that he cannot serve him better, and the sympathy and love are never more sincerely or deeply felt than when, in the exercise of a wise discipline, he chastens and rebukes the child he loves. Just so God, as the Father in heaven – or rather much more, seeing His love is infinite and unchangeable – will regard the weaknesses and needs, the infirmities and imperfections of His children.
Hear His own gracious words, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.” “Is Ephraim My dear son? Is he a pleasant child? For since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him: I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.” With such views of God, and of his relation to Him as a Father, the believer’s communion with Him is sweet; he feels in prayer very much as a child does when he speaks to a father who is both able and willing to help him. Having liberty of access to God at all times, and frequent occasion as well as the richest encouragement to pour out his heart and to spread out his case before Him, he acquires a growing desire for His fellowship, and prayer comes to be his constant habit and his sweetest privilege. He is careful for nothing, but in every thing by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, he makes his requests known unto God; and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep his heart and mind through Christ Jesus.
And just as the filial love which the believer bears to God as his Father is associated with a brotherly love to all His people, so the communion which he enjoys with God will ever be accompanied with the desire to hold communion also with all in every place who belong to the same family, who share in his privileges and partake of his spirit and cherish his hopes, as children of the same Father, who expect the same inheritance. It is the counsel of God to all His children, “See that ye fall not out by the way”, “Love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous”.
In token of their common relation and their mutual love, God is pleased to make them sit down at the same table, and to unite in commemorating the riches of redeeming grace. By partaking of the sacred symbols, they profess the same faith and are fed with the “children’s bread”. It is in “the spirit of adoption” that every communicant should approach the table; not in the spirit of bondage, as if it were a task, or a gloomy and uncomfortable service, but in the spirit of adoption, crying, “Abba, Father”. For the sacred symbols represent the broken body and the shed blood of the Saviour, through which we obtain liberty of access and may come boldly to the throne of grace. They point to the “new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh”.
Those who are called to partake of these symbols together, in an act of solemn worship together, should look on each other as brethren – as children of the same Father – seated around the same table, all sharing more or less in the infirmities and weaknesses which still cleave to His children on earth. But they should also remember that they share in the same precious privileges, partake of the same spiritual food and cherish the same everlasting hopes.
1Another extract from a chapter entitled, “The Work of the Spirit as the Spirit of Adoption”, in Buchanan’s book, The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit. Last month’s section dealt with two points: The spirit of adoption implies (1) reverence and godly fear and (2) a lively sense of gratitude and a principle of supreme love to God.
2Buchanan indicates that he had taken this idea from Robert Bolton, an English Puritan.