The words, “our fellowship,” are found in 1 John, but as they have been used by some with a very different meaning from that which the Spirit of God gives them there, I would like to say a word on the subject.
The basis of fellowship among the men of this world is extremely simple. It is because the world “loves its own,” and “as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man” (Prov. 27:1919As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man. (Proverbs 27:19)).
But there is another fellowship referred to by John, and it is equally simple. Scripture gives us the true witness as to this other fellowship, as it does also of the first, but the light of the Spirit is needed to understand both.
The Origin of Fellowship
The origin and present basis of the fellowship which is according to God is found in God Himself—hence its stability. God has been pleased in Christianity fully to reveal Himself. Christianity has displaced Judaism on the earth, wherein He could not be fully known, since He had not revealed Himself in it. Now He has, and He has revealed Himself to man. The man who does not know God needs to be brought into the fellowship, because outside it is the sphere where God is not known. This comes before us most clearly in the First Epistle of John, which is the epistle of fellowship. It is the epistle of fellowship because it insists on the fact that God will have sharers now in His own joy and in what suits Him, and that, too, outside of all that is in this world. Outside this fellowship is “the world,” the whole moral scene which is opposed to God. “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:1616And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise. (John 2:16)). It is very important to keep these distinct. “We know that the Son of God is come” —this is Christian knowledge. Having spoken in times past to the fathers by the prophets, He has in these last days spoken to us “in [the person of the] Son.”
The basis and constitution of the fellowship is in God Himself. There is progress in the understanding of what it is by those who are brought into it. There are in it babes, young men, and fathers, but these are all brought into it (and once for all) by the one reception of the truth of the gospel. God is made known, and the fellowship being thus introduced, they grow in the knowledge of God.
The Epistle of Fellowship
The First Epistle of John is the “epistle of fellowship.” Notice a few points which will make this clear. The Spirit in the gospel leads men to Christ, and Christ is the revealer of and the conductor to the Father. I believe that it is thus that God is known and that we are brought into this fellowship.
John writes his epistle that we may have fellowship with him, and this fellowship of the apostles was “with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” What do we get, then, in this fellowship?
1. The Father and the Son are known in the power of the Spirit. “Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.”
2. Light is walked in and enjoyed, in contrast to the moral darkness which exists all around us.
3. Righteousness is practiced in the midst of a scene of unrighteousness (ch. 2:29-3:12).
4. Love, the display of God’s nature, is delighted in and enjoyed (ch. 3:14-5:3).
5. Finally, this fellowship on earth is where eternal life is known and enjoyed (ch. 5:6 to the end of the epistle).
I add one word more. The fellowship which exists among men in the world is fully recognized by the Apostle. “The whole world lieth in wickedness.” John wrote his epistles later than Paul, and he has in view the fellowship which came into what we call Christianity, and which no breakdown of the church (as set here in responsibility) can touch. Paul gives us, in 2 Timothy 2, the way in which the breakdown is met by individuals, who, notwithstanding, remain in the good of what John sets forth later as the fellowship which existed in “the beginning.”
The Second Epistle of John is written to warn saints about those with whom they are not to have fellowship and the Third is written to exhort them as to those with whom they are to have fellowship.
I do not know any portion of the Word so occupied with the question of what I may call divine fellowship, and with what belongs to and is found in it, as the three epistles of John. God is seen there coming forth to establish what suits Him. He is the originator of it in the making known of Himself in Christ. He forms a sphere for man, which suits Himself, and two things characterize this sphere. It is exclusive of everyone and of everything that is contrary to Him who is revealed in it; it is inclusive of all that are born of Him, and of everything, therefore, in this world which is agreeable to Him. It is a condition of blessing for the earth with God as its center, wherein all is in moral conformity to Him from whom all in it is derived. The first in it being the apostles, they make it known. Thus it is called “our fellowship.”
May the Lord lead us so into the reality of this holy fellowship to which we are called that as saints we may be helpers of one another in it.
H. C. Anstey, adapted