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Fellowship

1 John chapter 1:1 to 7

This letter was written by the apostle John, probably at Ephesus, when he was in advanced age, to believers in general. Its purpose is to declare the Word of Life to them, in order that they might be united in fellowship with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.

Fellowship, meaning having in common, and sharing in a partnership or mutual relationship, is described as follows in the Scriptures:

• with God: consists in the knowledge of His will (Job 22:21; John 17:3); agreement with His designs (Amos 3:2); mutual affection (Romans 8:38, 39); enjoyment of His presence (Psalm 4:6); conformity to His image (1 John 1:6; 2:6); and participation of His joy and fulness (1 John 1:3, 4; Ephesians 3:14-21).

• of saints with one another: in duties (Romans 12:5; 1 Corinthians 12:1; 1 Thessalonians 5:17, 18); in ordinances (Hebrews 10:25; Acts 2:46); in grace, love, joy, etc. (Malachi 3:16; 2 Corinthians 8:4); in mutual interest, spiritual and temporal (Romans 12:4, 13; Hebrews 13:16); in sufferings (Romans 15:1, 2; Galatians 6:1, 2; Romans 12:15); and in glory (Revelation 7:9).

In this letter we learn that the only means of fellowship with God are:

• on the part of Christ, his atoning work (1:7; 2:2; 3:5; 4:10,14; 5:11,12) and his advocacy (2:1), thereby opening the only way to fellowship with the Father and with Himself for man, through faith in Him.

• on the part of man, holiness (1:6), obedience (2:3), purity (3:3), faith (3:23; 4:3; 5:5), and love (2:7,8; 3:14; 4:7; 5:1).

In the Scriptures we find three beginnings:

• “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1) This “beginning” was in eternity.

• “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). This was an undated beginning. We do not know when God created the heaven and the earth, but “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3), so it came after the first eternal beginning of the Word.

• “That which was from the beginning, we have heard, we have seen, we have looked upon, and our hands have handled”. This beginning was a little over two thousand years ago, when the Word was born into this world at Bethlehem, called Jesus, and whose physical humanhood was witnessed by John, and is contained in his Gospel to which he is referring here. Three senses are appealed to (hearing, sight, touch) as combining to show the reality of Christ’s humanity and the qualification of John by experience to speak. But he is also “the Word of life” from the first beginning, God Incarnate. 

Not only had the apostles heard Him speak, but they also had seen Him with their own eyes. In our day we cannot see Him with our physical eyes, but we can see Him with the eye of faith (1 Peter 1:8), and are blessed because of this (John 20:29).

In the first verse we find “we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon”: the word looked is from a Greek word from which we get our English word theatre, meaning to gaze intently upon, a steady gaze for a long time. For three years the apostles gazed upon Jesus, and John remembered the Lord’s words “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up” (John 3:14). As the people who had been bitten by serpents were to look for healing to that brass serpent which had been lifted up on a pole, we are to look to the Lord Jesus in faith for salvation. After that, we are to gaze upon Him, as we will do in this epistle. To look, saves; to gaze, sanctifies.

Fellowship for the believer with other believers means that we meet and share the things of Christ. We talk together about the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word. That is the kind of fellowship which is brought about through hearing and believing the testimony given by John. Such fellowship is impossible with unbelievers. Our joy is full when we have fellowship with one another as a consequence of having fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

God is light, which means that God is holy. He is also love and He is life, as we shall see further on in this letter. Light speaks of the glory, the radiance, the beauty, the purity and the wonders of God. Light is self-revealing, it can be seen, it diffuses itself, illuminates the darkness and reveals what is there. As it reveals flaws and impurity, our sins are exposed before Him, because God is light.

Spiritual darkness, the evil chaos of this world, sin, is more than just the absence of light. It is hostile to the light and holiness of God (Romans 8:7). The world in this sense is the organised system that is under the devil’s control and it not only leaves out God and Christ but is actively endeavouring to prevent the spreading of the true Gospel of Christ. In such darkness, for sinful man to have fellowship with a holy God, it is thought that he either can bring God down to his level, or take himself up to His level. Neither one of these things can be done, and yet men have tried them: in the first case they try to convince themselves that as mankind is God’s creation, He loves it, sin and all; in the second case, they act on the erroneous concept that they can become holy through good works and “holy sacraments”. In both cases they continue to walk in darkness, and they lie if they say they have fellowship with God.

We are living in a day when moral standards are dropping drastically, even being abandoned altogether by the establishment. People calling themselves “Christians,” and wishing to be regarded as such, rationalise their sinning and try to explain it away, but they cannot bring God down to their level. God will not have fellowship with them, and they are fooling themselves or using a psychological ploy to put up a good front. Many of our psychological hang-ups today centre around this very point. There are hypocrites in the church today, as there have always been in the past. They profess one thing, “I’m having fellowship with God,” and all the while they are walking in darkness. John says they are lying.

Only the blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God cleanses us from all sin, both sin in the nature and sin in the life (real blood and no mere phantom, it is the atoning blood of the sinless Son of God for our sins on the cross of Calvary). It cleanses the conscience and life and nothing else does (Hebrews 9:13,14; Titus 2:14).

To walk in the light is to live in fellowship with the Father and the Son, in the light of the Word of God. It does not say if we walk according to light, but if we walk in the light. The important thing is where we walk, not how we walk. We must come into the presence of God and allow the Word of God to shine upon our paths. It is possible to walk in the darkness of sin, and yet to believe we are all right because we have fulfilled our “religious” commandments and obligations as we understand them.

Sin interrupts the believer’s fellowship with the Father and the Son: salvation isn’t lost, but fellowship is until the sin is cleansed. It is necessary for the light of the Word of God to be allowed to reveal the sin; repentance and confession will restore the fellowship.

No one can have fellowship with the Lord’s people unless he has it first with God in Christ, and to do that he must be walking in the light with God.

 

R David Jones

1Jo 1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of Life,

1Jo 1:2 (for the Life was revealed, and we have seen it and bear witness, and show to you the everlasting Life, who was with the Father and was revealed to us),

1Jo 1:3 that which we have seen and heard we declare unto you, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

1Jo 1:4 And we write these things to you so that your joy may be full.

1Jo 1:5 And this is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

1Jo 1:6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

1Jo 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.