Principles of Unity and Fellowship . . .  

FELLOWSHIP IS LIFE WITH GOD 

Our fellowship is with the Father. 1 John 1:3

 

This is both the point and the definition of religion. Religion is that experience in which man is bound back (the Latin religio means "to bind back") to God. It means to be reconciled to God, to be at peace with God, to be a friend of God and to walk with Him. Fellowship, which implies a relationship, is all of this, and so it is the very object of religion. Religion could therefore by definition mean fellowship with God, and fellowship is life in and with God. If it is not this, then it has no real significance beyond the human dimension. Men can always talk of the fellowship of friends and family, of causes and institutions, but this means little apart from deity. If a man does not walk with God, it matters little with whom else he may walk or whether he walks at all.

 

Basic to religious faith is not only that there is a creator God to whom we are responsible, but that He has revealed himself to man. Moreover, every institution and ordinance He has given man is not only an expression of His love for man and for man's good, but a means of fellowship between God and man. Whether the sabbath or circumcision or fasts and feasts or baptism or commandments, these have all been given because God loves man and He wants man to walk with Him. The Westminster divines asked a thoughtful question when they included in the catechism, Why did God create man? Their answer could hardly have been better, we presume. To know God and to enjoy Him forever.

 

Again we have a definition of fellowship. It means to know God and to enjoy Him forever, both for now and for eternity. Gen. 5:24 is glorious revelation: "Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." We conclude that the old patriarch both knew and enjoyed God. Enoch's 365 years were few in comparison to the other patriarchs, but we presume that his fellowship with God on earth was deliberately interrupted — "He was not, for God took him" — so that he might be even closer to God in heaven and enjoy him all the more. Heb. 11:5 tells us that he did not see death, and was not to be found, for God translated him; and it adds: "before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God."

Enoch may not have had any more information about God (or any more opportunity to know about God) than the other patriarchs, but he was obviously more responsive, for it says only of him that he walked with God. We can see him sitting at the feet of the aged Adam, who was his father's great, great, great grandfather, and listening to the story of creation as only the first man would be able to tell it. That would be something, wouldn't it, hearing a man talk who had been especially created by the hand of God? We can believe that considerable information about God and morality had evolved back in those centuries, and one had the knowledge to walk in close fellowship with God if he chose to. And Enoch chose to, and it pleased God. This is the essence of being happy in this world. Any of us, like Enoch, can please God by walking with Him. And we can be assured that religion is meaningless if it does not mean this.

 

God has not given commands and ordinances arbitrarily or perfunctorily, but to draw man closer to Himself. He is for us, not against us. He wants us to love Him and to walk in fellowship with Him. It is the purpose of religion.

 

The story of the Bible is the story of God "stooping down" to show love and mercy. Whenever man responds to that condescension on God's part, fellowship is the result. Man walks with God by obeying Him, or he forfeits that fellowship by spurning God's overtures. The picture of this in Hosea is touching. "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt." In spite of this, Israel sacrificed to Baal and burned incense to graven images. The prophet goes on to picture God as the loving Father who teaches His son to walk, taking him us into His arms. He leads him with cords of love, as a mother holds her child in tow in a supermarket. But still His son backslides and spurns His love, and so he must be punished and banished. However, God's love overrules: "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver thee, Israel? My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger." The prophet depicts God as so eager for His people to respond to His love that He can't bring Himself to lay out the punishment that is just.

 

The God of the Old Testament is therefore as much a God of love and mercy as the God of the New Testament, notwithstanding some expert opinions to the contrary. Indeed, He is the same God and His purpose in looking with favor toward man is that man might walk with Him and enjoy His fellowship. In Psalms 51 David puts God's commands and purposes in right perspective, for he sees that it isn't sacrifices that God wants from man as much as "a broken and contrite heart." Realizing now, after his sin with Bathsheba, that God looks deeply within man's heart, he prays, "Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in in my secret heart." Further on he pleads, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me." David goes on to recognize that once God has man's heart, his broken heart, "then wilt thou delight in right sacrifices."

 

Various sacrifices God has related to fellowship, whether it be an offering in the temple or the Lord's Supper, but the sacrifice is always to be an expression of a devoted heart. If the devotion is not there, the sacrifice is in vain and there can be no real fellowship with God.

 

When dawn began to break upon a new age, "the sun of righteousness" rose with healing in its wings, as Malachi said it would. The Christ was called Emmanuel, which means God with us. This is the fulness of the fellowship between God and man. "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them." This is the difference that Jesus makes. God showed his mercy and love to David and Hosea, but He is actually with us in Jesus, and it is because of him that our sins are not counted against us. Emmanuel, God with us! How could any words be fraught with more meaning?

 

This is the sublimest principle of them all, God with us. God is with us in that special way when we are in Christ, walking in the light as he is in the light. If Enoch could walk with God by faith, with the limited revelation given to him, how much more glorious should our walk with God be when we walk in the rays of "the sun of righteousness." Jesus came to show us the Father, and only he could say, "If you have seen me you have seen the Father also." It is reassuring that when Jesus chose to describe the nature of God he did so by picturing God as Father rather than as Creator or Judge, concepts more familiar in Jewish teaching.

 

God is our Father and we are his children, this is what Jesus was saying. Why are we to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors? Because we have a Judge to face in judgment? No, but "so that you may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven." What a glorious motivation that is! Your Father sees in secret and rewards openly. Your Father knows what you need before you ever ask. Your Father forgives when you forgive. Your Father gives good things to those who ask him. That is the way Jesus taught about the Ruler of the universe.

 

And it would be taxing to our spirits to contemplate fellowship with the Ruler of the universe. But when that Ruler becomes our Father it is a different matter. Just as fellowship with a man appears oppressive if he be a boss, a governor, or even a salesman; but when the man is named a brother it is entirely different. And so brotherhood between men is based upon those men bearing a common relation to God as Father.

 

It was a great voice out of heaven that cried,. "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them" (Rev. 21:3). This is the New Jerusalem come down out of heaven. They shall be his people. God himself shall be with them. What promises these are! It is in Jesus that they become real, for in him and him alone the God is with us becomes intimately true for us.

And it is an intimate relationship in that it is a Father and son relationship. In Jesus God is no longer one who is far off. John speaks of hearing and seeing and touching and handling "the word of life" which was Jesus, and he is "the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us" — God with us! — "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." 1 Jn. 1:1‑4 

Paul emphasizes the intimacy in Gal. 4:6: "Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba! Father!"' Abba is the most intimate and endearing reference a Jewish child would make to his father, something like our Papa or Daddy. This is what it means for us to walk with God, to love him, to be devoted to Him, to have an endearing and intimate relation. This is the purpose of the gospel, God's love story, to draw men to Himself in a devoted relationship. When John says, as quoted above, ". . . so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ," he is showing that the purpose of the gospel is to make men happy, to bring them to God and to Christ in a joyous fellowship, for the next line reads: We are writing this that our (or your) joy may be complete. Joy and fellowship. We do not always tie these together as the apostle does here. If God is with us and if we be His children, and if He comes down out of heaven to be with us in the New Jerusalem as well as in Jesus, that, I say, is JOY. 

This is the fellowship that is life with God. If our relationship with Him is right, then our relationship with our brothers will be right. When we can't get along with each other and have to divide up into parties, it is probably because we are not truly in fellowship with God. The elder brother in Jesus' story of the prodigal son seems to have had that problem. He was "down" on his brother because he wasn't "up" on his father. He had to stay in the field and sulk because he had not learned the joy of his father's house. He could not relate to his brother, whether a prodigal or not, because he did not really know his father. One who is wound up tight with his own self‑interests does not know how to make merry over the good fortune of others. 

This may explain a lot of the problems in our fractured brotherhood. Enoch had no trouble getting along with his brothers, we can believe, for he had learned to walk with God. It was otherwise with Cain, who obviously did not walk with God, and so the only "walking" that interested him was out into the field to lay his brother low. If we would be less concerned about walking with only those with whom we agree and more concerned about a joyous walk with God, many of our "fellowship" problems would vanish. 

This lesson also moves us along in understanding the nature of fellowship. It has to do with sharing; it is communal. Fellowship with God is clearly a relationship. He does something for us and we respond, and so He makes the fellowship happen. It is not something we create. We rather walk into it, so to speak, as if into the sunlight. It is life with God.

 

So it is with the fellowship we enjoy with one another. It is based upon the life we share together in God. You are in God's fellowship when you are in His family, and it is that which makes you my brother or sister. You may have a lot of hangups, and I may have even more, and we might be wrong about some things. But the question remains: are we in the family of God; If so, then we are together in fellowship with Christ Jesus. We are stuck with each other, hangups or no. God has many retarded children and even "sons in error," which can only mean that I have "brothers in error," and perhaps there are no other kind. If I walk with God, I will walk with my brothers, however retarded or erroneous they may be. —Editor

 

 

 

 

Insecurity welcomes manacles to prevent its hands shaking. —Walter Lippmann