The Threshold

It is one of the most astonishing sentences in all of Scripture, and we have hung it on so many walls that we no longer feel its weight. The Lord of glory, the risen Christ with eyes as a flame of fire, stands outside a door, and knocks, and waits. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock. He does not command the door thrown open. He does not break it down, though he could shatter it with a word. He stands, and he knocks, and he waits to be let in, like a traveler at nightfall hoping for welcome.

And we must not miss to whom this is spoken, for it makes the picture more astonishing still. It is spoken to a church, to Laodicea, to people who counted themselves his own. They said, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knew not that they were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. Here is the strangest sight of all, the Lord standing outside the door of his own church, knocking to be let into a house that bears his name and has quietly shut him out. The self-satisfied have no room for him, and so he stands at the threshold of his own people and knocks to come in.

THE DOOR WITH NO HANDLE WITHOUT

There is an old and true observation about this door, that it has no handle on the outside. Christ knocks, but he will not force the latch. The threshold of the heart is one that can be crossed only from within, opened only by the hand of the one inside. If any man hear my voice, and open the door, he says. The opening is left to us. This is the great dignity and the great peril of the human heart, that God himself, who could command the stars, will stand and knock at its door and not force his way across the threshold he has chosen to leave in our keeping.

This tells us something about the whole way God deals with the soul. He woos; he does not seize. He knocks; he does not batter. He respects the door he made, and waits on the turning of a latch that only we can turn. There is a violence he will not do to us, even to save us, and it is the violence of forcing a heart that will not open. He would rather stand outside and knock, for years if need be, than break in uninvited, because the communion he seeks cannot be taken by force. It must be opened to.

THE PATIENCE OF THE KNOCK

Consider, then, the patience of the knock. How long has he stood at some doors, knocking, while the one within went about the business of the house and would not come. He is not a visitor who knocks once and leaves in offense. The whole tone of the picture is patience, a standing and a knocking that does not give up, the long courtesy of a love that will not force and will not leave. The bride in the old song heard it and was slow. It is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, she said, saying, Open to me, and she delayed, and rose at last, and opened, and found he had withdrawn, and sought him through the night. The knock is patient, but it is not to be presumed upon forever. Open while he knocks.

For what keeps the door shut is rarely open rebellion. It is more often the Laodicean fullness, the sense of having need of nothing, the heart so occupied and so content that it does not feel any lack he might fill. And it is the noise. A house loud with its own business does not hear a knock at the door. This is much of why the knock goes unanswered, not that we have decided against him, but that we cannot hear him over the clamor we keep going from morning to night. The knock is quiet. It waits for a quiet enough house to be heard.

HEARING THE KNOCK

So the opening must be preceded by a hearing. If any man hear my voice, he says, and open. First the hearing, then the opening, and the hearing requires a stillness we are slow to keep. The knock comes in many forms, and we must learn to recognize it. It comes in the reading of the word, when a sentence strikes deeper than the others and will not let us go. It comes in the conscience, in the sudden sense of a duty neglected or a sin unconfessed. It comes in affliction, which has emptied more crowded houses than any sermon. And it comes, most quietly of all, in the ache of dissatisfaction, the restlessness that no plenty can cure, which is often the Lord knocking at a full house to say that it is emptier than it knows.

And the opening is seldom done all at once. A heart is a house of many rooms, and we are willing enough to open the front room to Christ, the public and presentable part, while the back rooms stay locked, the private chambers where the fond sins are kept, the closets of old grievance, the cellar of things we would rather he did not see. He stands at the door of each of them and knocks. He wants not the front room only but the whole house, every room thrown open, every closet unlocked, nothing kept back from the Guest who has come to stay. And he knocks at the inner doors as patiently as at the outer, waiting for us to open, room by room, the chambers we have kept from him.

SUPPING WITH HIM

And what does he come in for? Not to inspect the house, not to take an inventory of our failures, but to sup with us. I will come in to him, he says, and will sup with him, and he with me. It is a meal he wants, the shared table, the long and unhurried supper that in every age has been the sign of friendship and intimacy. He does not cross the threshold to stand in the hallway and reprove us. He comes in to sit down and eat, to keep company, to give himself and receive us in the nearness of a shared meal. The reward of opening the door is not merely his entrance but his companionship, and this is the same as the promise elsewhere, that he and the Father will come and make their abode with the one who loves him.

OPEN IMMEDIATELY

The bride in the old song is our warning here, for she heard the knock and did not rise at once. I have put off my coat, she said, how shall I put it on? and she lay in the small comfort of her bed while her beloved stood outside, and by the time she rose and opened, he had withdrawn himself and was gone, and she sought him through the streets and found him not until she had suffered for her delay. She did not refuse him. She merely postponed him, for the sake of a coat already off and a bed already warm, and the postponing cost her his presence.

This is how most doors stay shut, not by a firm refusal but by an endless postponing, a later that never comes. We mean to open, we intend to attend to him, but not now, not while this comfort holds and that business presses, and the later drifts on until the knock, unheeded long enough, is no longer even heard. The Lord’s own word is a solemn one. My spirit shall not always strive with man. The knock is patient, but it is not endless, and the heart that puts him off again and again grows at last unable to hear him at all, having taught itself, by long delay, to sleep through the knocking.

So the counsel of the Lord is immediacy. Blessed are those servants, he said, who wait for their lord, that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. Not after the coat is back on, not when the business is finished, not at a more convenient season, but immediately, the moment the knock is heard. To day if ye will hear his voice, the Scripture pleads, harden not your hearts. The opening is always for today, for the knock you hear now is the grace of now, and the small comforts you will not rise from are a poor trade for the Guest who is standing at the door.

So do not tell yourself you will open later, when it is easier. It will not be easier, and the later has a way of becoming never. Rise now, while you hear him, and open, and do not trade the presence of Christ for a warm bed and an unbroken hour. The knock you hear today is itself the mercy. Answer it today.

So take stock of the doors in your own house, and ask honestly which are still shut to him. Where has the noise of your life kept you from hearing the knock? Which back room have you never let him into, which closet stays locked, which cellar do you keep from the light? He is standing there, at each shut door, knocking, patient, refusing to force the latch, waiting on your hand. Grow quiet enough to hear him. Draw nigh to God, the apostle says, and he will draw nigh to you, and here he has already drawn as nigh as the outside of your door. Open to him, room by room, the whole house, and let him in to sup with you, for behold, he stands at the door, and knocks, and he has stood there longer than you know.