MONDAY 30th
1 John 1:3
‘. . . that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.’
As we commence this new week, I want to return in our devotion back to verse 3 of this opening section of John’s letter and to consider the word ‘fellowship’.
John says that as a result of what he and the disciples had witnessed, he wanted to proclaim it so that his readers may believe and as a result enter into fellowship with them (the disciples) and which would also include fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. Two-thousand years later as we come to respond and believe the testimony of the disciples and place our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ we too enter into this place of fellowship, fellowship with one another as the family of God and with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
Christian fellowship is the highest expression of fellowship that can be discovered and enjoyed in the world, for it is a fellowship that comes from out of the intimacy of a real, genuine relationship with the triune God, and involves all who have come into a real and personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
We can and should enjoy the company of other people in so many different ways, there is the uniqueness of an individual family, there can be the camaraderie that can form out of a relationship with others who are likeminded in support of a cause or out of a common goal such as the following of a particular football team or other sporting activity, but however strong the bond of fellowship may seem to be in any of these other causes, they will never be, nor should never be equal to the fellowship that should spring out of true believers being united together in Christ, for this as only come about at a great cost, the shed blood of our Saviour, for, through his death he has not only reconciled us to God, but he has enjoined us together to be his body, the Church.
Paul who spoke much of the Church and its uniqueness says that we as believer’s need each other, we need to be connected to one another. Listen to what Paul has written in his letter to the Corinthian Church, ‘For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit . . . as it is, there are many parts, yet one body . . . If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together . . . now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.’ (various verses from chapter 12)
We will consider this further in our next devotion.