The Fellowship of the Body, Part 2
1 John 1:1-7
If you have your Bible's, you might look at 1 John for just a moment, Chapter 1. We are studying the fellowship of the body in connection with a series we're doing on the body of Christ. If you haven't gotten in on this series, I don't usually advocate these specifically, but I would encourage you to get the tapes of this series and become acquainted with this divine information, because it's really important to an understanding of your relationship to the rest of the body of Christ to Christians to Christ Himself.
But we come tonight to the subject of the fellowship of the body continuing where we began last time. I want to review for a moment. Last week we gave you some basic general principles regarding the fellowship of the body. We are all a body, Christ is the head, all of us are members, our resources are in Him, our strength is in Him, our wisdom is in Him, our life is in Him, and we minister and move and work together as a body.
We've talked about many of the ramifications of that. One of the aspects of our life as the body is fellowship. And fellowship is a very important thing, and as I said last week, we gave you some...some basic principles. Tonight, I want to just review them very quickly and then I want to move to some new areas.
First of all, we talked last time about point number one the basis of fellowship. And I'm reviewing for a minute. We talked about the basis of fellowship in 1 John 1 and verse 3. It says, "That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you," and that's John referring to Christ, he saw Christ, he saw His light, "that ye also may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ."
Now, there you have the basis of all fellowship which is a right relationship to Christ and God. There is no fellowship apart from that. The grounds of our fellowship then is salvation. That is, I'm talking about our fellowship both with God and with each other. Salvation is the grounds of our fellowship. And as I just said there are two facets to fellowship. There is my fellowship with God and my fellowship with other believers. And they are distinct in many ways.
But the basis of both is salvation. When you receive Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior, when you come to know this Christ who gave His life for you, you enter into fellowship with God. And then you are placed into the fellowship of believers. So both of them take place at salvation. Now, the fellowship we have with God, first of all, is different from the fellowship with each other.
The word fellowship is kiononia. Literally kiononia means partnership. When you receive Jesus Christ, now watch this, you went into an unbreakable partnership with God, an eternal fellowship. Now here's an important point, remember it. Our fellowship with God, now watch this, is basically non-experiential. Say it again, our fellowship with God is basically non-experiential.
It is a fact, we are in kiononia with God. That means we are in partnership with God. Now, I say that because I want you to understand this principle. No Christian at any time is ever out of fellowship with God. Now, that may violate some of the thoughts that you've had in the past. Hang on. We'll defend ourselves in a moment.
No Christian is ever out of fellowship with God. Kiononia means partnership, you can't severe that relationship. You are always in fellowship with God. Now you can have two people that can enter into a marriage, a partnership. Now, they may not talk to each other, but they are still in partnership. You can have two people in the same business, they own the same business, they're partners, they may not like each other, but they're still partners. Now, that's a very crude way of saying, that you and God are in an eternal partnership. You may not really be acting like a partner to God and you may be violating some of the partnership standards, but the partnership maintains itself.
Our fellowship with the Trinity is non-conditional. Once you're saved, you enter into permanent fellowship with God. It is non-experiential. We often say when everything is going great and everything is happy and we're kind of tuned into the Lord, I'm in fellowship. And when you're not plugged into the Lord and you're kind of sinning in your life and you're a little bit diffident about your Christian life you might say well, I'm out of fellowship. No, you're always in fellowship. You are a kiononias or kiononas, I mean. A partner of God.
Then you say, well, what about when we...when we're...you know, when we sin and it's just not like it should be. What does that mean? Well, that's verse 4, "And these write we unto you, that your joy may be," what, "full." It's the difference of a partnership where there is full joy and a partnership where there is not full joy. In other words, if you want to rightly evaluate your Christian life, say it this way. I am experiencing full joy in my fellowship with the Father. Or I am not experiencing the joy of my fellowship with God.
In other words, the issue is not whether you're in or out of fellowship. The issue is whether you're experiencing or not experiencing full joy in that fellowship. And that's true of marriage. You're not in or out of the fellowship, you're just either experiencing joy or not experiencing joy, right?
Our fellowship is eternal and it never ends. The joy of it is the key. And the joy of our fellowship with God is what is effected by sin. Now this is clearly taught here in Chapter 4. Full joy...pardon me in Chapter 1, verse 4. Full joy is the experience of fellowship, right? Fellowship exists, the experience of it is full joy or not full joy.
Now notice that mixture is...doesn't exist. There's no mixture of fellowship. You're either in the fellowship or out of the fellowship. Not in and out of it. You're not in and out of fellowship with God. You're either in fellowship or out of fellowship. And if you're out of fellowship, that means you're not saved. You have no partnership with God.
Now, notice how he begins to teach us in verse 5. "This then is the message which we have heard Him and declare unto you that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all." Notice there's no mixture. You're either in the light or you're out of the light. You're either in the light or in the dark, not both.
No Christian is ever in the dark. No Christian walks in the dark. We are in the light, walk in the light, and have continuous eternal fellowship with God. The only experiential aspect of it is joy, full joy, or no joy. Now, I'm reviewing some of the concepts from last week.
Now last week, we saw several cases in terms of these verses that we illustrated several times. How that some people counterfeit their experience and they feel that they're in the light, when in fact, they're not. You have a counterfeit fellowship. Some people think they're fellowshipping, but they're not.
Verse 6, here comes the counterfeits. "If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness," what, "we lie and do not the truth." That's a counterfeit believer. That's not even a Christian. That's somebody who comes along and says well, I have fellowship and you look at their life and say no, you're not in the fellowship because you're walking in darkness and believers are walking in light. That's the pattern of their life.
That in verse 6 is an unbeliever. And specifically John's writings of the Nostics who were a group of heretics who didn't believe they were sinful. And they were kind of infiltrating the church and saying we're in the fellowship. What do you mean, we're out of the fellowship. We're in the fellowship. And John is saying to them in effect, how can you be in the fellowship when the pattern of life is darkness. Your liars, you're not doing the truth.
All right, what did we learn then? We learned number one that one believer is ever out of fellowship. We learned number two, that all believers always walk in the light. Now if we do the deeds of the darkness, which we can do, we do them in the light, isn't that right?
If you as a Christian sin, you do it in full light of what you're doing don't you? You walk in the light and I walk in the light. We are children of the light. Remember how we talked about that. Children of the day, we have been translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His son. We are in the kingdom of light. We walk as children of light, we are not sons of the night, we are sons of the day, we walk in the light.
Now, if you sin and do the deeds of darkness you do them in full light. And they're obvious to you, to God, and to most people around you. And so it's an unbeliever in verse 6 who says he has fellowship, it's a counterfeit fellowship and the pattern of his life is darkness so he couldn't be a believer. Then he gives the principle of a true believer in verse 7. "But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship," now watch this, "one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ His son cleanses us from all sin."
Now there's the pattern of a believer who is a true believer, an honest legitimate believer. Now notice it very carefully, we walk in the light as He is in the light. Consequently, we have a fellowship, now watch this, with...one with another. Now, who is the another here? Not other Christians, God. How do you know that? Because later on it says "and the blood of Jesus Christ," what's the next word, "His."