One has the advantage in these morning services,
you all know where the text is going
to be, so we turn directly to it.
We turn to 1 John chapter 1, and
we shall read this morning verses 2 to
4.
That which we have seen and heard, we
proclaim also to you, so that you may
have fellowship with us, and our fellowship is
with the Father and with his Son, Jesus
Christ.
Since the eternal life which was with the
Father has been historically manifested, that is manifested
in the first place to the apostles of
our Lord, certain things become possible, many things
become possible.
That eternal life as embodied and expressed in
Christ is, according to this apostle, the gift
of God to man.
Now, you may have wondered why John is
making so much of this right at the
beginning of his epistle, the eternal life which
was with the Father being manifested.
Well, in the body of the epistle he
says more than that it has been simply
manifested.
The life has not only been revealed in
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, so
that we know its kind and its texture,
but in Jesus Christ, by his death upon
the cross, and his resurrection, and the coming
of the Holy Spirit to complete what he
began, Jesus Christ becomes the donor of that
everlasting, that eternal life to men and women
who repent and believe.
The eternal life then that was manifested in
the Lord Jesus Christ becomes the gift of
God to men in Jesus Christ.
Listen to what John will say later on
in chapter 5 verses 11 and 12.
And this is the testimony, he says, that
God gave us eternal life.
This life is in his Son.
He who has the Son has life, the
life.
He who has not the Son has not
the life.
Now, here then is the thread linking us
with what we were discussing last Sunday morning.
The life has been manifested.
We know what God's life is like because
we have seen it through the eyes of
the apostles in the first and in the
ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But now, God offers us that eternal life
as a gift from him.
He has made it possible by the death
and resurrection of his Son and the gift
of the Holy Spirit that that eternal life
which dwelled in himself eternally was shown in
Jesus Christ should be given to us.
Now you may ask, what is the import
of that?
This.
If we can possess eternal life then we
can have fellowship with God.
In the possession of eternal life we have
in our hearts the life of God that
is capable of communicating with the God of
life.
Without this there is no fellowship with God.
The beast of the field cannot have fellowship
with God.
An unregenerate man cannot have fellowship with God.
He may know the mercies of God.
He may even see the fingerprints of God
evident in the course of history and in
nature around.
And he may know the workings of God
upon his conscience, and he may even reason
certain things concerning God.
But fellowship with God, touching the reality who
is God, is only possible when we have
come to Jesus Christ and have received the
gift of eternal life.
That life within us enables us to communicate
with the God of life in glory through
Jesus Christ.
Now, one word of explanation.
John does not imply by what he says
here or anywhere else that we possess eternal
life simply because of our Lord's incarnation.
This is part of the difficulty of working
through a book of the Bible little by
little.
We dwell upon one facet of the truth
today, another facet of the truth next time,
and so on, and it takes a long
time to get through.
Last time we were concentrating our thoughts upon
the incarnation.
But John does not suggest for one moment
that we can be saved simply because God
became man.
Indeed, in this very context, in chapter 1,
he tells us, it is the blood of
Christ that cleanses our sin, not the birth
of Christ.
And if you go on to chapter 2,
he tells us that Christ, by his death
and his blood, is the propitiation for our
sin, not by his incarnation.
But, of course, the point is this.
There could have been no death of Christ
without the birth of Christ.
There could have been no life of Christ
without the birth of Christ.
There could have been no teaching coming from
his holy lips without his first having come
into human life, so that the incarnation of
the Son of God is absolutely basic to
everything else.
Not, however, apart from what he said and
taught and what he did in his death
and resurrection and ascension.
Now, our theme this morning, then, is the
enriching fellowship.
Notice John's word, that you may have fellowship
with us.
Now, this word, fellowship, is so absolutely strategic
to John's exposition of the truth in this
epistle.
We've got to dwell upon it for a
little while.
We have to dwell upon it because it
doesn't mean very much to the ordinary man
or woman today.
Use this word, fellowship, and what do people
think about?
Well, a social intercourse with people, good neighborliness,
or the kind of comradeship that people had
during the Second World War, or any other
war, for that matter, when they're fighting on
the same side, a commodore of soldiers.
Or, if you like, people playing football or
ice hockey or what have you in the
same team, and they live together and train
together and they fight together, in another sense.
I wish they didn't fight quite so much
now, from time to time.
But people in the same team, living together,
working together, toiling together, whatever they're doing together,
this togetherness of men.
Now, that's not what the word means in
Scripture.
The word has a depth of meaning and
a breadth of significance that those associations are
completely short of the goal.
As a matter of fact, the term fellowship
involves almost everything within itself that is implied
in the experience of being served.
Whether you think of your salvation as something
that happened in the past, as something that
is ongoing through the present, or as something
that is to be consummated in the future.
Everything from the past through the present into
the future.
It is all involved here in fellowship.
Fellowship is the outworking of God.
Fellowship implies, first of all, our reconciliation with
God through the death of his Son.
There is no fellowship with God until we
receive the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ.
The barrier of sin is torn away and
the Savior brings us to God and hands
us over as one of his.
It not only involves reconciliation, it involves adoption
into the family of God.
It involves the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
It involves our union with God as the
branch is united to the vine, as the
limb is united to the body of Christ,
and our communion.
The word stands for the togetherness of God
and his people in all the circumstances of
life and of death and of glory to
come.
Now, one contemporary scholar divides it up in
this way.
Now, this is not infallible.
You don't need to do this, but it
may be helpful.
We're simply thinking now of fellowship as such.
What does it mean?
This particular scholar says that there are three
aspects to it, but the three make one.
Not three separate things, the three make one
whole.
The first aspect he speaks of is having
a share along with others.
Having a share along with others.
Now, what he has in mind is this.
Every Christian man or woman is sharing eternal
life, but not alone.
You can't share eternal life alone.
You share it along with others.
We are fellow citizens with all the saints
and of the household of God.
We have come into an inheritance, but along
with others.
God mentioned me in his will, but he
mentioned me along with all the saints of
all the ages.
And fellowship is this.
It is seeing that I enter into my
inheritance, covenanted by God in his Son, but
along with others.
Men and women of every kindred and tribe
and people and nation and tongue.
Isn't it wonderful?
Oh, this is thrilling.
It doesn't matter what the color of your
skin is.
How often I say that.
It needs to be said over and over
and over and over and over again.
It doesn't matter what your background is.
We share together.
And no one person has the preeminence.
We have a togetherness in our sharing.
We were all mentioned in Christ, in the
divine covenant and will, sharing together.
Now, if you want to pursue this, we
are told in Scripture that we are joint
sharers of Christ, Hebrews 3, 14.
We are joint sharers of the Holy Spirit,
Hebrews 6 and 4.
Our salvation, says Jude, is a common salvation.
And Paul says in Titus 1, 4, ours
is a common face.
You cannot go to your little corner and
be aside and apart from the Lord.
You come to your inheritance with all the
saints.
Now, this is very awkward for people that
are very individualistic and have always perhaps had
their own way.
Spoiled children.
In the enjoyment of Christian fellowship, my friend,
you've got to see yourself as belonging to
the universal church of Jesus Christ.
You stand with every other believer because you've
come to your inheritance, you've come into your
inheritance along with.
When you find Christ, you find his people.
When you find God, you find his children.
They're always together.
And you can never find Jesus Christ without
his people.
You can never find God without his children.
Finding God means finding his people.
We share together with God's people.
A second thought involved in fellowship is this.
We share with others.
Now, this is part and parcel of fellowship.
Not only do we come to our inheritance
along with others, but we share our inheritance
with others.
Now, let me just mention two or three
scriptures which bring this out.
Let me quote.
This is especially, of course, especially spoken of
in the New Testament.
Of Christian people sharing their material resources with
others, but not exclusively.
Sharing our spiritual experience and our spiritual capital
with others, too.
But it particularly has reference to Christians sharing
whatever they've got when they see other folk
in need.
Now, let me just quote one or two
passages.
I quote first of all from 2 Corinthians
9.13 in the New International Version.
Because of the service by which you have
proved yourselves, men will praise God for the
obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel
of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing
with them and with everyone else.
Did you get that word sharing?
It's the same word as we have for
fellowship in John.
Fellowship means sharing.
Not that I have my own, I call.
I hold it for the giver.
You have the same thing again in Romans
15 and 26.
A very similar thought.
For Macedonia, says Paul, and Achaia, have been
pleased to make some contribution.
Now, that word contribution is the word kynonia,
some contribution for the poor among the saints
of Jerusalem.
Kynonia means this sharing.
And if I have and my brother there
is need, kynonia means sharing with him.
The King James Version.
Let us say a good word for the
King James Version.
It's not as read as widely as it
used to be.
Let me say a good word for it
here.
In Galatians 6 and verse 6, I think
it has the most beautiful rendering of a
statement when it says, Let him that is
taught in the word communicate.
Now, the Greek word is kynonia, the word
for communion, the word for fellowship.
This is a beautiful rendering.
Let him that is taught in the word
communicate unto him that teaches, and communicate in
all things.
What Paul is saying there, of course, to
the Galatians is this.
If there is a teacher or an evangelist
that is teaching you spiritual things, you communicate
with him to enable him to continue his
work.
If you can't communicate spiritually, communicate materially.
This is fellowship.
Sharing with others, what we've got.
Now, the third notion is this.
It's the actual experience of all this.
Not just knowing that we share or have
fellowship or enter into our inheritance along with
other people, not just knowing that, not just
knowing that we are expected to share with
other folk, but sharing and sharing alike.
Going into it, the actual experience, living in
the experience of sharing.
You know, it's a delightful thing when Christian
people have come to the point where they
call nothing exclusively their own, but all is
for the household of faith and for the
purpose of God, whatever it is, material and
spiritual.
The whole of life is for God.
Now, you have this coming out in passages
such as follows.
Acts 2.42, and they devoted themselves to
the apostles' teaching and fellowship and the breaking
of bread and of prayers.
What does that word fellowship mean?
Well, you read through the context and you
will find it meant at least this.
Not one of them had any need.
Not one of them had need.
Now, let me repeat, not one of them
had need.
Why?
For the simple reason they were enjoying fellowship,
and those that had made theirs available to
those that needed so that no one had
too much and no one had too little.
This is fellowship.
It's the experience of sharing, really sharing, living
by sharing.
Now, this, of course, is what is meant
when Paul says in Galatians 2.9, for
example, that James and Cephas and John, the
pillars of the church, gave to him and
Barnabas the right hand of fellowship.
From that moment on, they looked upon each
other as equals in Christ, and they began
to share life together.
Up until that point, James and John and
Peter were a little bit suspicious of Paul.
Just that little bit, but no longer.
They now live with an open heart toward
one another, and open hands toward one another.
This is a wonderful experience, when the saints
have open hearts for one another, and open
hands to one another, and open homes for
one another, and everything is open.
But when the shutters are up, or our
hands are closed, or our hearts are cold,
you don't have fellowship.
You know, my friends, it's a condemnation of
any church that we have to organize fellowship.
Now, don't be cross with me for saying
that.
I don't mean to chide.
This is the last thing in the world
that we should need to organize, because it
should be the spontaneous expression of the eternal
life which was in God, now enjoyed by
us.
You see, God has always been a sharing
God.
The Bible speaks of a triune God, of
a trinity, of the love of the Father
for the Son.
You know, the writers of the New Testament
go so far as to describe the experience
of, or rather the relationship of the Father
and of the Son as looking over against
one another.
And some commentators have interpreted that as the
Father and the Son looking into each other's
faces.
I know I'm speaking pictorially, but it describes
a fellowship.
God has always been a God sharing within
the trinity, sharing thought and love and so
forth.
So must His people be.
Now then, having said that, let me come
to mention what John does here.
First of all, the Apostles claim.
Our fellowship, says John, is with the Father
and with His Son, Jesus Christ.
Our fellowship is with the Father and with
His Son, Jesus Christ.
Now mark the privilege that he claims.
He says we have fellowship with God the
Father and with His Son.
In the light of what we have said
about the meaning of the term fellowship, the
immensity of the Apostles' claim will be at
once evident.
He's claiming to be a sharer in the
saving benefits brought about by the Son of
God in such a manner that he has
also come to know God the Father.
Indeed, he is claiming to be sharing some
things directly with the Father and with the
Son.
It's a life of sharing.
Now isn't this exactly what we see in
the book of the Acts of the Apostles?
I don't propose to take this too far
this morning, but let me throw it out.
My friends, isn't this self-evident?
When did you read the book of the
Acts last?
These simple men, and women too in some
cases, these simple folk in the book of
the Acts of the Apostles are living on
a supernatural plane.
How comes it?
Well, they're sharing life with the deity.
They're sharing with God, and God is sharing
with them.
They're sharing.
The resources of heaven are made available to
them.
The presence of God is with them.
The power of God is given to them.
The will of God is made known to
them.
The love of God is shed abroad in
their hearts.
God is with his people, and it's a
life of sharing.
God is sharing.
But who is John referring to here?
Who are the participants?
He says our fellowship is with the Father
and with his Son.
Who comes within the scope of that our?
Is it a kind of royal we?
I believe that what John is claiming is
first of all for himself and for his
fellow apostles, though of course he's the only
survivor of the apostles now, but I think
he is also claiming that all those who
have come to Christ and have known fellowship
with the apostles as the followers of Christ
and believers in him, they too share this,
because this is the privilege of every Christian.
Our fellowship is with the Father and with
his Son, Jesus Christ.
It wasn't exclusively an apostolic experience, though it
was basically.
Now there's the apostle's claim.
Now notice his concern.
What's he writing for?
Well, first of all he says, verse three,
that you may have fellowship with us.
Now will you notice the picture, the metaphor
here?
We have fellowship with the Father and with
the Son.
That you may have fellowship with us.
I'll be coming back to that in a
few moments.
These words do not simply reflect John's allegiance
to the terms of our Lord's commission, nor
even to his sense of a moral compulsion
to write.
John is here writing as a pastor.
He has a concern.
Something of this came out last Lord's Day
morning.
There are heresies abroad.
Satan has his agencies.
Should we call them angels?
Perhaps not.
Though there are angels of darkness, Satan has
his agencies everywhere.
And what John is afraid of, you see,
is this, that some people who have almost
come to the birth, spiritual birth, should be
diverted from coming into the swim of eternal
life, into the fullness of it, and that
the devil should lead them up a kind
of dead-end alley, into a cul-de
-sac where they get stuck in the mud
forever and ever and never know the kind
of fellowship that he and his brethren know
with God the Father and with his Son.
Now down the centuries of time there have
been men and women who have been up
that dead-end street, who've never really known
the quality of intimacy with God that John
and his fellow apostles and fellow Christians knew.
His sense of urgency and pastoral concern is
this, that you, right down to this century,
and every believer, particularly those that he addressed
in the first verse, I believe that God
at any rate if not the apostle would
have us take this as seriously as the
first readers of the epistle, that you may
have fellowship with us.
You with us Now that's the pattern that
is laid down.
You with us.
As to the reality and the depth of
the apostles' fellowship with God, there can be
no doubt.
We've referred to that in the miraculous expansion
of the early church and its message, the
message of a crucified Christ into a Roman
world that was drunk on concepts of power
and into a Greek world that was equally
drunk on concepts of intellectualism of one kind
or another.
Into such a pagan world, the gospel of
a crucified criminal was proclaimed and taken.
And in every place, by the power of
the Spirit and the presence of God, groups
of believers emerged.
In other words, the fellowship of the apostles
with God is a self-evident thing to
those who read the scriptures.
Now, it's the pattern that John lays down
that I want you to notice.
You with us.
The pattern is that each successive influx or
ingathering of converts should share in the apostles'
own heritage.
Can I put it like this?
John doesn't suggest for one single moment that
the apostles had a kind of experience of
God on the spiritual plane, that they had
a kind of experience which is substantially different
from that of other Christians.
On the contrary, what he's saying is this.
We share with the Father and the Son.
We have fellowship with God the Father.
We have fellowship with God the Son.
Now, he says, I'm writing to you that
you may have fellowship with us and therefore
that you may join the group concerning which
I may say at a later date.
Our fellowship, including you, is with the Father
and with the Son.
That's the logic.
That's the nature.
In other words, the pattern is this.
John is wanting to get every Christian, man
and woman, into the enjoyment of the kind
of fellowship with God and his Son that
he and his fellows will here enjoy.
Oh, this is so important.
Can you see your Christian calling this morning,
my friend, as not simply a calling to
believe certain things, though you are someone to
believe.
Not simply a calling to do certain things
on the human plane, though we are called
to do much on the human plane.
But a call to fellowship with God and
with his Son and with his people.
To share with God our daily lives.
To drink of his cup.
To feed from his hand.
To rest in his love.
To share with God.
John would have the Christians here at rest
recognize their privilege as having been called into
fellowship with that redeemed community founded by God
through his incarnate Son and headed in the
world by those whom he called to himself
as its first members and with whom he
shared the spoils of his triumph in the
first place and upon whom he breathed forth
his Holy Spirit.
All successive generations of Christians need to have
that sense of belonging to the apostles' fellowship.
Now, this is a principle, and I guess
I will have to draw to a close
with this this morning, but we'll take up
the threads next time.
This is an important principle.
You see, this establishes or guarantees at least
three things.
The church's purity, the church's unity, and the
church's ministry.
What do we mean by the purity of
the church?
This, that we can share life with God
the Father and with the apostles.
If you, when you read the Gospels, when
you read the Scriptures, if you feel that
you're at loggerheads with the apostles of our
Lord, the probability is that you're at loggerheads
with the God of the apostles, because they
were appointed to be the exponents of the
truth.
And if you are not in fellowship of
mind and of heart with the apostles of
our Lord, it is impossible to be at
fellowship with the Lord himself.
Can I move on to the question of
unity?
It arises from what I've said.
Now, we hear a lot, we have heard
a lot in the 20th century about the
unity of the church and the ecumenical movement
and so forth.
Now, have you noticed the emphasis is upon,
essentially so, though it should never be exclusively.
That is the point I want to make.
The emphasis is upon gathering together of professing
Christians in a given age and trying somehow
or other to give them a semblance of
being together, of unity.
But I'll tell you something which is much
more important than that.
It is this.
It is making sure that in coming together
in any given age, we still maintain our
fellowship with the apostles, because they were the
bedrock of the Christian church.
They were the first members.
They were the authorized exponents of the truth.
And it was so evident that they were
a true church of Jesus Christ.
Therefore, the church of the 20th century must
know something of the communion of the saints
in that they think with the apostles and
feel with the apostles and serve to the
same end and with the same motives in
view as the apostles did.
In other words, Christian unity is not just
a unity among people that live in the
20th century or in any decade in the
20th century.
Christian unity is a unity of a man
in the body of Christ.
And the body goes back to the beginning
and right on to the end.
You see, one of the things that the
leaders of the ecumenical movement have almost forgotten
is this, that the test of our real
Christian unity is the measure in which we
have received the word and the life of
God as it was manifested in Christ to
the apostles and experienced by them first.
The apostles are absolutely strategic to the whole
Christian case and the whole Christian message and
the continuity of the Christian church.
I close with this.
We see here emerging a picture of the
Christian fellowship which is triangular.
I'm not sure that that word triangular is
the best.
You can think of a better one.
Come and let me know.
I couldn't think of another.
What I mean is this.
There are three sides to a triangle and
there are always three sides to Christian fellowship.
Now the base of the triangle is God
the Father, God the Son, and God the
Holy Ghost.
It's the deity.
That's the static.
That's the standard.
That's the base.
One side of the triangle is, it comprises
the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.
They were linked with God the Father, with
His Son, and with the Spirit.
Linked by faith, linked in life, linked in
the enjoyment of the life of God in
their own circle, in their own hearts, within
the company.
But now, here comes the other side of
the triangle.
You with us, says John.
You with us.
And this is what makes the fellowship complete.
This is what makes the triangle complete.
That I can have fellowship with God the
Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit,
and of course, essentially so, with the apostles
of our Lord and with all who are
apostolic in doctrine and experience.
My friends, where are we this morning?
What is the church to you?
What is God to you?
Are we really, are we really, beyond the
threshold of the Christian experience where we've believed
John 3.16 and a few other texts?
Oh, if the apostle John were here this
morning, he would say, these things I'm telling
you, that you good people in the transepts,
on the sides, in the center, on the
gallery, in the pulpit.
Pardon me for putting it like that.
I believe John would have to say that
he doesn't want anybody left out.
That you may have fellowship with us, and
our fellowship is with the Father and with
the Son.
In other words, we want you to come
into the triangle.
We want you to make the thing complete.
We want you to be inside, not outside,
that the life of God may throb in
you and express itself through you, and the
purpose of God be fulfilled through you, even
as it was in us and through us.
Isn't it a great gospel?
You know, it's wonderful as mere teaching.
But it is no mere teaching, this.
The apostle bids us into fellowship.
May the Spirit of God help us and
bring us in.
Let us pray.
O Lord, our God, when we meditate upon
these things, thou knowest the almost instinctive reaction
of our hearts.
We sense such a chasm between this kind
and quality of experience of fellowship with thyself
and that which is commonly known among men
and women today.
Forgive us if there is anything in us
which is hard and unyielding.
Rock has no fellowship with rock.
Briar has no fellowship with briar.
And if our hearts are stony and briary,
O come, thou mighty God, and fit us
into the body where we can share along
with others, and share with others, and share
in the life of God and the resources
of heaven, and serve the purposes of thine
eternal wisdom.
Bless us now, one and all, and at
the close of this morning hour we offer
a special prayer for one person.
Thou knowest that lady who was picked up
by two of thy children coming here on
the Lord's Day morning, and this morning she
was not in her apartment.
Wherever she is, O Lord, we pray that
thou will care for her.
In Jesus' name, Amen.