FELLOWSHIP AS JOHN PRESENTS IT
[p. 357] FELLOWSHIP AS JOHN PRESENTS IT
1 John 1: 1 - 10; 1 John 2: 1, 2
Some of us were looking together the other evening at the truth of christian fellowship as Paul speaks of it. I thought it might be spiritually helpful to us tonight to look at fellowship as John presents it, because our happiness before God and our taking up our right relations with our brethren depend upon our understanding the character of the fellowship in which we are called to walk. There is nothing narrower in Scripture than the fellowship belonging to all the children of God, all saints. We can see that John was a happy man — the apostles were happy men. It is our privilege to be in fellowship with the apostles, for they had no desire to keep their happiness to themselves. The great desire of John in writing his epistle is that all those who read it may be brought into the joy that he and all the apostles had, that we might have fellowship with men who had the most profound joy possible for creatures to have, that we might have fellowship with them and thus have fulness of joy. If we have not fulness of joy, we do not know the fellowship that belongs to us and we to it. There are many who ought to enjoy the fellowship who do not; it is a wonderful partnership. It is connected in John with the family of God. All the children are entitled to be partakers in this fellowship.
It is important to see how John begins to write. He does not write to any particular assembly or individual but in a style calculated to arrest the attention of certain persons. Certain kinds of fish are attracted by certain kinds of bait. Here, it is persons who are intensely interested in the subject of life. If a person is not interested in that subject, he will not care for nor understand John’s writings. Life cannot be found in this world at all; it was not found here for four thousand years. All that we find in ourselves (in the world too) is morally death, man away from God and out of [p. 358] harmony with everything delightful to God. When God effects new birth in a soul, the intense hunger and thirst in that soul come to be for life; there is a craving for it, not in ourselves or in the world. All that is in ourselves and in the world tends to intense thirst, and if we have a thirst for life, we shall be interested in John. John and the apostles had found life and that was the secret of their happiness. There is a blessed Person who says by the prophetic spirit, “Whoso findeth me findeth life” (Proverbs 8: 35). You might be a believer and not have found life, nor have fulness of joy. Many have found Jesus as Saviour, Shepherd, Friend, but do not have fulness of joy (”and your joy be full”, John 15: 11), they have not found life — we know the kind of ministry that John had heard, for he would have heard John the baptist and would have learnt the necessity for repentance. “And already the axe is applied to the root of the trees; every tree therefore not producing good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire” (Matthew 3: 10). John’s disciples never found life under that ministry. But one day a Person rose upon their vision, the like of whom they had never seen before, and they heard their master say, in hushed and reverent accents, “Behold the Lamb of God”! They saw Jesus walking and followed Jesus. Jesus says to them, “What seek ye?” They said, “Where abidest thou? He says to them, Come and see. They went therefore, and saw where he abode; and they abode with him that day” (John 1: 38, 39). That was the start of this wonderful hearing, seeing, contemplating and handling; they found life!
You cannot find life in the world and you cannot find it in yourself, you must find it in Another, where the apostles found it. A soul born again craves for life, and to touch life as before God. Where do we really find life? John is speaking to us here about “the word of life” and “the eternal life”; is there any flaw there? We cannot possibly have fulness of joy until we find life. Where did John and the other disciples find life? They found it, enjoyed it, and lived upon it in Christ, and they had fulness of joy. John’s object in writing [p. 359] is that we may have fellowship with them. We have found life in Christ; God has brought in the perfect expression of all that life is in His thoughts; all was there, in this world, in Christ! A perfect answer to God, in every moral perfection, was contemplated and handled in Him. You can only get life there and find it there. The apostle had an intense interest in life, what life is for God. There is no life in this world, there is self-gratification, natural amiability and so on. If I were left to myself I should never know life, but I have found life in the blessed Son of God.
The first section of our chapter is on the line of our joy being full, which is dependent on our having found life. There has been such a thing in this world as the full expression of life. The word of life is that life has been expressed in a divine Person become Man in this world.
The apostles heard, saw, contemplated and handled all that came in that Flesh — it was life. If I have not that, as the satisfaction and eternal rest of my heart, I have not life — ‘A life divine below’, perfectly delightful to God. He was “with the Father”. The apostles found life, they found it there.
The second section of our chapter is connected with God as light. What John presses is that the life has been manifested It has really shone forth in this world in Jesus: “Which was with the Father, and has been manifested to us”, John says. They had actually seen and contemplated it, and it had made them perfectly happy, completely outside themselves. They found it in the Son of God; and if our fellowship is with the apostles, it is in the profound delight they found in the Son of God. Absolute perfection! If you have not got perfection, you are not a Christian — I have found perfection, but I have found it in Another, and that gives fulness of joy.
‘The heart is satisfied, can ask no more;
All thought of self is now for ever o’er!’ (247:3)
And the Father has found it!
[p. 360] If there is the revelation of God (as there is in the Father), the more we know it, the more we desire to know God’s thought for man. The springs of my joy lie entirely outside myself, it is altogether in Christ; nothing else will satisfy me. It is a question the Spirit of God raises with every one born again. Satisfaction for every craving is found in Christ.
If that does not give me fulness of joy, there is something terribly wrong with me. “The message” comes in now, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”. It is something we have to be apprised of and we must allow it to have its full weight with us. God in His character and Being is exactly the opposite of all in the world and in ourselves. This becomes a test — are we walking in darkness, the walk of men in the world who do not know God at all? The light of God does not illuminate them at all, they walk in darkness. “But if we walk in the light as he is in the light”; how beautiful!
As Christians we walk in the light; it is the character of christian walk — we walk in the light as God is in the light. God is in the light, He has come out in all the blessed light of revelation. The whole truth of God is out. God is in the light and that is the light in which we Christians walk. It is the light of God fully revealed; there is no other light in which to walk. As we walk in the light we have fellowship one with another. The light in which I walk is a light entirely outside myself and I can only walk there in the consciousness of the cleansing power of the blood. It always abides; it abides eternally. It is the power of the blood here. If you are not walking in the light, you are not walking as a Christian. The Christian walks in the light of God fully revealed in Christ. You cannot add another ray to that light, and we could not be there for a moment except in the cleansing power of the blood. ‘That precious blood shall never lose its power’. The apostle wants to occupy us with Christ. If I look at Christ, I find all the light of God there. Christians do not say that they have no sin (verse 8), “If we confess our sins” (verse 9). There are no pretences with the Christian;
[p. 361] he confesses his sins, does not cover them up as the worldling does. Scripture does not suppose that a child of God sins wilfully (Hebrews 10: 26). To “sin wilfully” means to turn away from God revealed in Christ, and there is no recovery for that. The blood cleanses from all sin; for the relief of the conscience a believer confesses his sins, and God “is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins”. All the value of Christ’s propitiatory work is before the Father. If I sin, I think of Christ, “Jesus Christ the righteous”, “a patron”. It is not christianity to sin, but John says, ‘If you sin, I want you to think of Christ’. Before there is repentance, I believe the “Patron” moves; He moves first and starts repentance in my heart down here. All these things affect the character of our fellowship. We can afford to be quite open and above board with God and with one another, and that is the character of our fellowship. I have found death in myself but life in Christ. Romans 7 is not true Christian experience. It is bondage, not christianity; but in Romans 8: 2, I am free! “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and of death”. There is liberty in Romans 8. Romans 8, as has often been said, is the Christian’s ‘Magna Carta’ through the power of the Spirit of life. Christian liberty is occupation with divine Persons. When divine Persons are before me, at that particular moment I am holy. The more occupied we are with divine Persons, the more holy we shall be.