Fellowship in Life

Fellowship in Life

This is the most exalted state we can attain to with God and with each other. In these verses, the apostle John instructed us thoroughly and extremely seriously in this subject. It is absolutely exceptional.

Throughout the centuries, most believers have hardly paid attention to what is actually written in these amazing verses!

The world is full of all kinds of so-called fellowships that have nothing whatsoever to do with real life-fellowship.

There are many kinds of associations, but they are not life-associations. They associate around one thing or another—for example, around temperance or playing football [soccer], or around one or another kind of politics. However, the members barely agree about a single thing.

There are many different church fellowships that also do not have anything to do with life-fellowship. They go to the same church. The Methodists go to a Methodist church and the Baptists to a Baptist church, but they all live different lives, each according to their own will and taste. If they agree on one thing, though, it is that it is impossible to live according to the teaching of the Scriptures.

Let us now take a look at what John teaches. He was essentially a specialist in godly love and godly truth! Therefore we shall now get to know the truth concerning life-fellowship.

Real life, divine life, was manifested in and through Jesus Christ. The apostles both saw and heard and handled this life. And this is what they proclaimed: they proclaimed the life of which they had partaken so that others could partake of the same life and have fellowship with the apostles in this new life. In this way they would also have fellowship in life with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. Then they proclaimed that God is light and there is no darkness in Him.

Therefore it is also a lie if we say that we have fellowship with God and yet walk in darkness, that is, in conscious sin. V. 6.

Then we come to this extraordinary statement in verse 7: “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another . . . .” Not otherwise!!! What a divine light this is that surpasses all natural understanding! How many people have ever had such fellowship with one another???

Who has even paid attention to what is written in this verse? And if people haven’t even paid attention to what is written, how could they possibly believe it and pursue it in order to attain it? That automatically becomes impossible.

A few people have some kind of fellowship with one another, to a greater or lesser degree. However, it is extremely far from being this fellowship that John writes about here. Its rightful name is: fellowship in life, or expressed more explicitly: godly fellowship in life.

Imagine this: Walking in the light as He is in the light!!! Then you must have ceased to sin so that you live a constantly overcoming life in all areas, not giving in when you are tempted. Then you are walking in the Spirit, in God’s true light, so that you do not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Then you are always good, and never evil, not even in the least! Then you requite evil with good without ceasing, to God’s glory and praise!

When you faithfully walk in the light, you receive increasingly more light over your life and therefore see more for yourself to judge, something more from which to be cleansed. Therefore it says further that “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin,” namely, from unconscious sin about which we receive light with each new light of life.

This is our continuing sanctification, our growth and development. This pertains only to unconscious sin that we have and which is not reckoned to us because we are not aware of it. V. 8.

Life-fellowship is the same as being one with each other, with the Father, and with the Son. In this way Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21-23 is fulfilled, which almost all believers agree is impossible to fulfill, though it is quite correct that it is not possible for them for the simple reason that they do not fulfill the conditions as they are clearly and plainly described by Jesus Himself in Luke 14:26-27 and 33.

It should be obvious that Jesus did not pray for something that the Father could not or would not do!

In many countries all over the world, this is precisely what is being fulfilled in many people’s lives in our midst.

The Father and the Son be highly praised!