In Matthew 18, verses 19 and 20, the Lord brings things down to the smallest possible plurality, showing that the potency of prayer and of church action does not depend upon numbers but upon His Name. In the case of the little child and the kingdom, the important point was “in My name” (v. 5). In the case of the brother and the church, again, “in [or, unto] My name” is the decisive thing. The whole weight of authority lies there.

Verse 20 is sometimes quoted as though it described a certain basis of fellowship, true at all times for those in the fellowship. But the Lord spoke not of being gathered simply, but of being “gathered together”; that is, He spoke of an actual meeting. His Name is of such value that, if only two or three are gathered together to it, He is there in the midst, and this gives power to their requests and authority to their acts. He is spiritually present, not visibly: this is a wonderful and gracious provision for these days when the church cannot be brought together as a whole, owing to its broken and divided state. We may be very thankful for it, but let us beware how we use it.

There has been such a tendency to make this gathering together to His Name just a matter of a certain church position, eliminating from it all thought of moral condition. Then we may be tempted to argue this or that must be ratified in heaven, or granted by heaven, because we acted or asked in His Name. We would be much wiser if we trod more softly, and, when we saw no signs of heaven either ratifying or granting, we would humble ourselves and search our hearts and ways to discover wherein we had missed a true gathering together in His Name—whether all the time we really had ourselves before us, and our moral state was wrong.