All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore, as you go,
disciple people in all nations.
(Matthew 28:18,19 ISV)
But who is to go? It is the Church, and His
irreducible nucleus of the Church is two. It is a corporate thing, the bringing
of the significance of the Body into view. When there is a functioning in the
Spirit, it is nothing less than Christ risen, ascended and exalted, going on
with His work through His Body, with all those limitations dismissed. That is
tremendous! It is either true, or it is not true. If it is true, it is an
immense thing. If it is not, well, what fools we are! But here it is, and, oh!
that the Church might learn more of what it means to be in living union with a
risen Christ! That there should be a company, two or three or more, though
limited physically here on this earth by time and space, yet really functioning
in the Holy Spirit, so that the universal Christ – all that it means that He is
there at God’s right hand – is having some expression! I would to God that
this could come home to you by the Spirit and that you could grasp it, for
what differences it would make! We have a long way to go yet before this is
appreciated adequately. But it is true!
When you touch these things, human language
is a vain instrument for expression. “The exceeding greatness of His power” – the
superlatives in this realm! Oh, for this enlargement by a new apprehension of
the greatness of Christ in His Person, in His death, in His resurrection! Well,
then, the supreme thing the New Testament shows is that the Church on its true,
spiritual basis corresponds to Christ risen. Not "the Church" that we know here
on earth, for it does not. But God’s thought about the Church is not an
impossible and merely idealistic one. It is a practical thing. Two saints,
simple, humble and unimportant in this world, but really meeting together in the
Spirit, can be a functioning instrument of Him to whom has been committed all
authority in heaven and on earth. With them all these old limitations can be
dismissed and they can at one moment touch all the ends of the earth. Do you
believe that? That is really the meaning of our glorying in Christ risen. It
has to be something more than emotion, and more than glorious doctrine; yes,
more than a truth to which we give some assent.... If it is true
that we are one with a risen, enthroned Lord, it ought to have tremendous
repercussions. May it be so!