Fellowship - 1 John
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In our consideration of fellowship in John’s First Letter, we saw last time that the evidence of our being in true fellowship with God is seen in the way we live. Godly living will also have its effect on our fellowship with other Christians and on our testimony before those who are not believers. We discovered that for the true believer obeying the Lord’s commands is not a burden, but rather a joy.
So now we will look at 1 John chapter 3 and verses 1 to 10. In the first three verses we are shown just what it is that motivates the Christian to live a godly life, to delight in God’s commandments. John writes these wonderful words: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” This delight in God’s commandments arises, first of all, out of gratitude for God’s matchless love in making us his children. We want to please Him by obeying Him because He is our heavenly Father who has given us eternal life and brought us into his family.
Secondly, we are motivated to godly living because the day is coming when our Saviour will return and we do not want to be ashamed before Him at his appearing. John goes on to remind us that the Lord Jesus has died to pay for our sins, the One who had no sins of his own. If we truly love Him and are seeking to serve Him, we will not continue in sin as if we were still unconverted. To do that, John says, is to show that we have not seen Christ or known Him as Saviour.
Verses 9 and 10 teach us how to recognise those who truly do know Christ and are children of God, and they spur us on to godly living: “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.” What this means is this: Whoever is born of God does not go on habitually committing sin. The true child of God cannot practise sin as a lifestyle. Oh, a true believer may still fall into sin, but he cannot live comfortably with it or leave it unconfessed and unforgiven. The true child of God will live righteously because that is the new nature that God has planted within him and he will also love his fellow Christians. These are the evidences of the fellowship with God and Christ that John is teaching us in this letter.
So the Christian is someone who loves God for who He is as the great Creator, Ruler and Heavenly Father who has loved us enough to send his only begotten Son into the world to be our Saviour. The Christian is also someone who loves his fellow Christians because they too are loved by God. In addition to this, the true Christian will love all those whom God has loved and for whom He has also given his Son. The great love that God has lavished on us should be the motivating factor of our love for others.
In 1 John chapter 4 verses 7 to 11 John develops this theme. The very foundation for loving each other in Christian fellowship is found in the very nature of God. We read: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” If we are God’s children we should show that nature just as earthly children show the nature of a parent. This means that the very disposition or temperament of a child can reveal who is the parent. So it is in the spiritual realm. When we love we are showing the family likeness, that we are born of God.
In verse 10 John draws our attention to the wonder of God’s love: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” This is love unlike any other. Human love may find something attractive or desirable or pleasant in the one who is loved, but this love of God reaches out to the unlovely and to those who do not love Him. God loved us even when we were rebels, ungodly and his enemies. It was this love that sent his Son into the world to be the final, perfect sacrifice for sin. The only sacrifice that blots out transgressions and makes it possible for sinners to be brought into living fellowship with God through the Lord Jesus.
The conclusion that John draws from all this is that since God loved us in such an amazing way, then we ought to love one another. This is how true fellowship shows itself among people who have seen the wonderful love of God and know the debt of love they owe to their heavenly Father and so to other members of his family.
In the light of such wonderful love, John says in chapter 4 verses 10 and 11: “We love because He first loved us. If anyone says ‘I love God’, yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” Note that God loved us long before we loved Him. It was his love that sought us out and saved us. Here is the test of true love for God: it is that we also love our brothers. It is not possible to hate our brothers and to truly love God. To live like that is to live a lie. Such a person needs to remember the commandment given in our Lord’s teaching that we are to love God and our brother also. This is how true fellowship is worked out.
Our final passage sums up John’s teaching on this subject of loving one another and so experiencing true Christian fellowship. It is found in chapter 5 verses 1 and 2: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.” Again, we see that the secret is the linking of belief and behaviour. The one whose saving faith is in Jesus Christ will evidence that he has been born again of God by the way he lives his life in obedience to God’s commands and by the way he loves his fellow believers. One of the last commands of the Lord Jesus to his disciples was that they should love one another. He said to them that all men would know that they were his disciples if they had love one to another. Our loving fellowship together with our fellow Christians is a powerful witness to the power of God’s love to change lives.
So we have discovered in the First Letter of John that loving God, loving the children of God and keeping his commandments are all tied up together in this whole matter of true fellowship. Have you begun to live this new life of love and obedience in fellowship with God and his people? If not, respond today to the love of God and turn to Him in repentance for your sin, accept Christ as your Saviour and experience for yourself the joy and peace that this brings.