Fellowship - 1 John
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In this series looking at John’s First Letter we have been discovering the true meaning of Christian fellowship and how it is bound up with believing in Jesus as the Son of God. This time we will look at how the apostle John relates fellowship to the indwelling of every believer by the Holy Spirit. He it is who comes into the believer at the time of conversion bringing spiritual new birth. We are looking this time at 1 John chapter 2 verses 18 to 29.
Did you notice that I used the word ‘He’ in referring to God’s Spirit. This is because the Holy Spirit is God Himself, who is revealed to us in the Scriptures as ‘The Father’, ‘The Son’ and ‘The Holy Spirit’, but as one God. This means that the Father is God, and so also are the Son - our Lord Jesus Christ - and the Holy Spirit. A trinity and yet a mysterious unity. Whenever we speak of God and eternal things our human understanding has its severe limitations, but the Bible teaches this truth throughout its pages, although the word ‘Trinity’ does not occur in the Scriptures. So, to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit is to be indwelt by God Himself.
As we come now to look at John’s emphasis on fellowship through a real experience of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, we will be made aware that, sadly, the Spirit’s ministry is often neglected or even unknown among many Christians. With John’s help we want to correct that. It is not as if John is bringing us some new teaching here. After all, our Lord Himself promised the sending of the Holy Spirit to live with God’s people. You can read about that in John’s Gospel chapter 7 and verses 38 and 39, and in Acts chapter 1 verse 8 were we have the promise of the Holy Spirit coming upon the disciples to empower them for witness.
So, when John starts to teach about the Holy Spirit and His indwelling of the believer as a further basis of fellowship, he is dealing with something with which his readers are familiar. We, too, need to be familiar with this teaching. Here is what he writes in chapter 2 verse 20, “But you have received an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.” And in verse 27, “As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you…”
In the Old Testament we read that kings and high priests were anointed with holy oil to symbolise the power of God’s Spirit being given to them, marking them out for their particular office and duties. In these verses John is teaching that the Christian believer has also received an anointing, something special from God that marks him out as belonging to God and having a particular purpose. That anointing is the Holy Spirit Himself. John, in the preceding verses of this chapter, has been warning his readers about false teachers, antichrists he calls them, they were counterfeits seeking to lead them astray. Now, says John, the Holy Spirit, whom you have been given, is the One who enables you to understand that Christian teaching is the truth. He also helps you to recognise what is false teaching and a lie. That is a great spiritual blessing in our day when there is so much false doctrine around for it means that a prayerful, Bible-reading, child of God will not be led astray as they seek the Spirit’s guidance and understanding. It also serves to strengthen fellowship between believers as they hold on to and honour the same biblical truths.
Do you have this anointing, this indwelling of the Holy Spirit? For every true believer there is no need to be uncertain about these things. In 1 John 3 and verse twenty-four John writes this: “Those who obey his commands live in Him, and He in them. And this is how we know He lives in us: We know it by the Spirit He gave us.” There may be times when you wonder if you are a true Christian and if you are really experiencing true fellowship with other believers. Such feelings often come to Christians in times of testing, failure or disappointment. If this is your experience just now, go back to this verse and ask God to re-assure you by his Spirit who lives in you and who has anointed you as his child.
In his teaching John is only reinforcing something taught earlier by the apostle Paul in Romans 8 verse 9. Here he points out that if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, that is the Holy Spirit, he does not belong to Christ. That being so, the opposite is true: if you DO have the Spirit within you then you DO belong to Him. Paul goes on to encourage us in verse 16 of Romans 8 where he writes that the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. The Holy Spirit Himself gives us the assurance that we belong to God and that He lives within us. So we do not need to doubt if we continue in fellowship with the Lord and allow his Spirit to confirm our relationship with Him through prayer and the reading of his Word, the Bible. Take heart from this if you are struggling as a Christian and be confident of your safekeeping in God’s fatherly care.
This fellowship that is enjoyed through the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit will always show itself in a love of the truth and rejection of error. John has been speaking about the true Christian who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Such a belief is only possible by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit impressing this truth on the heart and mind of an individual person. John puts it this way in chapter 5 verse 6, “And it is the Spirit who testifies because the Spirit is truth.”
This truth that Jesus is the Son of God who has come into the world as God in human form to be our Saviour is foolishness to the unbeliever. He rejects and ridicules such teaching. He may find it offensive to his mental pride. But the believer, says John, recognises, embraces and loves this as truth because the Holy Spirit within bears witness to it and fixes it in the his understanding and affection. This ministry and work of the Holy Spirit should come as no surprise to us. After all, our Lord Jesus told his disciples that this is what the Spirit would do when He was sent to them from the Father. We read his words in John’s Gospel chapter 15 verse 26: “When the Counsellor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, He will testify about me.” In chapter 16 of John’s Gospel and verse 13, Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as ‘The Spirit of Truth’ who would lead or guide the disciples into all truth.
So we have discovered that the Holy Spirit is the great teacher and revealer of truth for those who are Christ’s followers. That is why we must always pray that we may be enlightened by the Spirit as we seek to understand God’s word and be kept from false teaching. We have learned that John’s message to us is that as believers we have true fellowship with one another through the Spirit who lives in us and identifies us as God’s children.
This same Spirit is the One who empowers us as God’s children to bear witness to the Lord Jesus and to the truth. May we in our churches allow Him to fill us and to awaken us to this great responsibility.