ETERNAL LIFE AND FELLOWSHIP

This is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. - In. 17:3

The thesis of this short essay is that our fellowship with each other is predicated upon fellowship with the Father. If we know the Father we will be sisters and brothers to each other. Fellowship is first with God, then with one another. If we are not at peace with God, there is no way for us to be at peace with each other. It is therefore a matter of being right with God, which is what justification means, and not necessarily “right” by someone’s doctrinal standard. This essay also affirms that this fellowship with God is the meaning of eternal life. We are saying, then, that when we share this life together we are in the fellowship together, which means that fellowship is the sharing of eternal life. When we see this great truth we will no longer try to base fellowship upon “issues,” which only serves to proliferate sectarianism.

When we are believers we are caught up in a glorious mystery, that of being creatures of time and yet partakers of eternity. The meaning of time is itself a weighty question, one that baffles the wisest philosophers. We measure time by clocks and calendars, but what is it that is measured? The best answer I have found is that time is what one experiences. When an hour passes it is not the 60 minutes that is time, but what you have experienced. And yet our experiences sometime defy the clock, for when we are having a glorious experience, such as enjoying the presence of loved ones, “time” seems to stand still, and we find ourselves saying, “I can’t believe that three hours have passed.” But the time was not the three hours, for sand in a vial could have measured it just as well, but what happened to you.

This may help us to understand the meaning of eternity, which has no bearing upon “time” - that is, days, months and years - but upon experience and relationships. Eternity is quality of life rather than quantity. That the Father is eternal means far more than that He is everlasting. It means that He is spiritual and holy. So it is with us. We enter eternity when we are transformed into a new kind of life, and according to Scripture eternal life is ours now another “time” word which means that it can be a present experience as well as a future one or that it transcends what we call time.

The apostle John assures us that he wrote the Story so that we might believe that Jesus is the Son of God and “that believing you may have life in His name” (Jn. 20:31). He makes it clear that the life promised the believer is a present reality: “He who has the Son has the life, he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life” (I Jn. 5: 12). Notice the emphatic “the life,” which is the only real life there is, eternal life. He calls it that in Jn. 17:3: “This is eternal life” not this will be, but This is eternal life, that they know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” It is clear that this new quality of life begins here and now. Eternal life may take on a more glorious reality beyond the grave but there is no question but what the apostle saw it as a present reality.

And he is specific as to what eternal life is. It is knowing God and Jesus Christ. Knowing suggests intimacy, such as that experienced by Enoch who “walked with God.” It is fellowship with God, such as that enjoyed by Isaiah when he saw the glory of God in the temple. It is the relationship Paul describes in Gal. 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” The force of the Greek verb would indicate that eternal life is the experience of getting to know God - - a continuing, lifetime, everlasting experience.

While Jesus in this passage points to the Father as the only true God, the apostle John understands that Jesus is also God and that he reveals to us the nature of the Father, as in I Jn. 5:20: “We know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding, in order that we might know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. This is a good example of how Scripture interprets Scripture. I Jn. 5:20 enlarges upon John 17:3. John is saying that we know God only through Jesus, and we are in the Father (a living fellowship) by being in the Son, and this is eternal life.

Experience of God’s presence and grace come in everyday events more than on a Damascus road. True, we may have an occasional Damascus, or a Mt. Everest, to change the metaphor, but “getting to know God” and cultivating an intimate walk with Him comes through meditating upon what He has revealed in Scripture, praying in the Spirit, and worshipping (serving) him in scores of ways everyday. What God wants us to know about Him is what He has revealed, so the Bible is always foremost in this experience. And this is more than knowing about Him; it is knowing Him. We come to know Him by knowing Jesus, who promises to move inside our hearts and dwell with us through his Spirit.

The same apostle refers to Christ as the Word of Life, which refers not to Scripture but to a Person. He says this life was made manifest in the gospel - “what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you” (1 Jn. 1:1-3). Then he says “that you also may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” This shows the relationship between fellowship and eternal life. Christian fellowship is simply an expression of the fellowship we have with God and Christ, which is our life, eternal life.

Fellowship is sharing God together, knowing God together, loving God together, growing in God together, all in reference to the Christ, who comes to us in God’s image. All those who believe in Jesus and are baptized are in the fellowship. We all walk together when we walk with God. It is just that simple, and perhaps just that profound. The joy is not that we have the right church or even that we have found each other, but that we have found Him, and that together we can walk with Him.

The joy may be likened to what the great composer Mozart said he experienced in creating a symphony. He did not in his imagination “hear” the notes separately but the composition as a whole. It moved through his mind into a crescendo, thrilling his soul. Only later would he go through the ordeal of pointing up the notes, one by one. A Mozart composition is great in its wholeness, not so much the laborious parts that created it.

Fellowship with the Father and with the Son and with each other is like that. The joy of fellowship is eternal life as a whole, its relationships. It is not so much each prayer, each hymn, each Bible study, each labor of love, but the experience of knowing God. This is why fellowship can never be determined by a check-list of issues agreed upon. It is life, not an examination. Some prayers may seem off-track and sometimes Bible study never seems to jell, but the whole experience of loving God is of great joy.

So it is in our sharing the common life. We do not always get along perfectly, and we are now and again put out with each other. But still we are sisters and brothers, even when we disagree, and it is the symphony as a whole that counts, not an occasional stray note. Furthermore, to refer to Mozart again, who said that amidst a symphony he was lost to all time, we transcend time in Christian fellowship, for time is irrelevant. We have a new life that is lost to all time. -- the Editor

What is the union among Christians worth unless it be for the promotion of holiness and happiness among themselves, or for the conversion of the world.

He that stands up for his party seldom can stand before God with a good conscience.

-- Alexander Campbell, Mill. Harb., 1932, p. 194f