The Consequences of Biblical Fellowship

The Consequences of Biblical Fellowship
Msg 4
1 John 5: 1-21
by Cooper P Abrams III

INTRODUCTION:   As we have stated throughout this series of messages "Fellowship" is the key word of the Epistle of 1 John.

We have seen so far:

What is true biblical fellowship. What is the importance of true biblical fellowship. The result of true biblical fellowship.

           We have by now become familiar with the three tests which John applies to the professing Christian. What he diligently shows us is the essential unity of faith, love, and obedience.
           The previous paragraph, at the end of chapter 4, ended with a statement of our duty, if we love God, to love our brother also. John now elaborates the essential connection between these two loves and between them and both belief and obedience.
           The real link between the three tests is seen to be the new birth. Faith, love and obedience are natural result of salvation, of being born again.
           There are also some specific and practical spiritual blessings that result from our fellowship with the Lord after we are saved. This Chapter 5 is essentially a summary of the whole epistle and lists for us those spiritual blessings which are the consequences of genuine fellowship with our Lord Jesus.

I. LOVE FOR THE BRETHREN (V.1-3)

A. It is a common delusion of many who profess to be Christians, that they can stay in fellowship with God while they persist in staying out of fellowship with men.

Fellowship with God means that we are obeying or following the Lord's instructions about how we are to live our lives.
1 John 1:7 expresses this truth: ‘But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

ILLUS: Suppose you have for years had a brother or sister. You begin to ignore them. You stop talking with them or calling on the phone. You rarely eat together. You stop going to their house. You are not interested in their family or what they are doing. If they ask for help you ignore them. You rarely see them. You are still their brother or sister, but your fellowship with each other is broken. You cannot be a blessing or help to them; they have little or no part in your daily living.
Do you see the point? The Lord Jesus Christ is our Savior and with Him we have by accepting Him as our Savior established an eternal relationship with him. But if we turn away from him, live out lives apart from him, do not obey His simple instructions we are out of fellowship and as Ephesians 5:18 says are not filled with the Spirit....meaning directed by Him. An there can be no blessings in living like that.

B. The delusion that we can ignore God and be unfaithful and still be pleasing to Him is based upon the failure to recognize the essential "family element" in Christianity.

1. The supreme mission of the Christian revelation, the very essence of the work of Christ, is the full restoration of the family relation in which God designed to stand with His creatures, and still wishes to stand.
2. It was that family relationship which the willful sin of the children broke up. Men ceased to be "sons"; they persisted in being "men." God might be King, but they refused to recognized Him as the "eternal Father."

C. It is the fashion of our day to insist that all the social, and political, and national woes of humanity would be cured, if men would fully believe in, and heartily carry out, the "brotherhood of humanity."

1. They do not see that, standing by itself, with no common love, or common interest, beyond its own interest, human brotherhood never has been, and never can be, anything but selfish. And being selfish, it never can be a real brotherhood.
2. No brotherhood is possible save out of a common fatherhood. And so Christ brought men together, as nobody else has ever brought them, because He has revealed the Father-God, who is the Father of them all.
3. It is missing the point---- to say that the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God is "one" of the doctrines of the Christian faith.
It is in fact the first. . . it is the foundation. . . it is the essential doctrine. There is no use trying to get men right with each other without first of all getting them right with God and obeying his commandments.

It is further no use to try and get men to serve the Lord faithful and be a vital part of what their local church is doing without first they turning their lives over to the Lord.
Fellowship with Christ results in spiritual blessings.

II. VICTORY OVER THE WORLD (V.4-5)

A. If love for God and one's fellow Christians is at its core obedience to God's commands, how can these be carried out?

1. Are they beyond the capacity of a believer? In this section John pointed to faith as the secret of a victorious, obedient life. As a matter of fact, in Matt. 11:30, God said his commands are not burdensome. Yet, many who profess to be Christians look upon living for the Lord, giving, being faithful in service, and attendance a real burden. It interferes with the other things they are doing. And these "other things" are clearly more important because they put them first and God second.
2. Yet, the victory is possible and your preaching and other pastors who love the love and their congregation keep preaching that men ought to be faithful to the Lord. This is because the principle of victory resides in everyone born of God. Every such person has already technically overcome the world (1 John 4:4).
3. A true believer's faith in Christ, by which he was regenerated, constitutes a victory over the world system which is satanically blinded to the gospel (2 Cor. 4:3-4).
Colossians 1:9-10 express the urgency of this: "For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God." Colossians 2:6 says to the believer, "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him"
3. Who is it then that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. With these words, John affirmed that a believer is a world-conqueror by means of his faith in Christ.
4. This suggests that such faith is the secret of his continuing victory and, for that reason, obedience to God's commands need not be grievous. (John Walvoord).

B. Fellowship with Christ results in spiritual blessings.

III. THE WITNESS OF GOD (V.6-12)

A. The object of our faith must always be the One who came by water and blood--Jesus Christ.

1. It is simplest to take the term "water" as a reference to the baptism of Jesus by which His public ministry was begun (Mt. 3:13-17); Mark . 1:9-11; Luke. 3:21-22).
2. "Blood" would then refer to His death, by which His earthly work was ended.
John was refuting a false notion of the type held by man named Cer-in-thus who taught that the Divine Christ descended on the man Jesus at His baptism and left Him before His crucifixion. Thus he denied that one Person, Jesus Christ, came by both water and blood as testified by the Spirit, the water, and the blood (v8).

B. No one has a reason for not accepting God's testimony to the person of Christ. If man's testimony can be accepted when adequately attested (Deut. 19:15), God's testimony, being greater, ought also be accepted.

1. But before specifying the content of God's testimony (V.11-12), John paused parenthetically to remark that accepting this testimony internalizes it for the one who believes.

a. Each believer has God's truth in his heart. By contrast, anyone who disbelieves God has made Him out to be a liar (l:10).
b. For John there was no middle ground. Believe God and accept Him or believe not and thereby reject Him. Obey the Lord in faith, or not obey the Lord and show one has no true faith. True faith acts...there is no action where there is no faith.

C. Having said this, John returned to the content of the testimony, which is that God has directly affirmed that eternal life is precisely what He has given in His Son. If you have Christ, you have eternal life. If you do not have Christ, you do not have eternal life.
D. Fellowship with Christ results in spiritual blessings.

IV. ASSURANCE OF ETERNAL LIFE (v.13)

The arguments and persuasions of John were intended to bring a personal confidence and assurance to the believers. He wanted them to "know" that they had eternal life.
A. FULL ASSURANCE IS POSSIBLE

1. But too often it is assurance founded on mere feelings. John's assurance is founded on facts and truths. Emotional assurance is of but little value; it seldom does more than soothe the soul to a sleep of self-satisfaction and indifference.
2. It also has a strangely evil tendency to make men think themselves the special favorites of God, and to despise others.
3. Assurance founded on facts and truths has a graciously bracing influence; it ennobles a man, makes him feel like a co-worker with God, and want to be an active one.
4. And it brings the man nearer to his fellows, because, taking form as assurance of sonship, it cannot fail to bring on the responsibility of brotherhood.

B. FULL ASSURANCE IS TO BE PURSUED

1. It is not only a desirable attainment; it is a necessary one. Upon it the strength of the Christian life depends. But it is even more important to see that upon it the brightness and cheerfulness of the Christian life depend.
2. The uncertain man is depressed, and can put no joy into his work. No man should rest anywhere short of the "full assurance of faith."
C. Fellowship with Christ results in Spiritual blessings.

V. GUIDANCE IN PRAYER (V.14-17)

A. The one condition of all answered prayer is repeated again and again, as if John foresaw with the difficulty that Christians through all the ages would have in have with it.

1. All his effort was directed to persuading mean to believe fully in the "Sonship" of Christ. He says that he wrote to them precisely as those who "professed" to believe on the name of the "Son" of God.
2. He wrote to them in order that he might persuade them "really" to believe on the name of the "son" of God.

B. The life is in the "Son." It is not "he that hath Christ hath life." It is, "he that hath the SON hath life, and he that hath not the SON of God hath not life."

1. And this is the ground of our confidence in prayer—the true believer has the Son. And when a man has the Son, he has the sonship; and in the trust of his sonship, he is as sure that his heavenly Father hears and answers prayer, as any happy loving child is in an earthly father's home.
2. Does God answer prayer? That child, who is a child indeed, never asks the question, and never likes to have such questions asked. He says, with deepest feeling, "Don't ask. He is my Father."
"If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask Him?" (Matt. 7:11).
C. But if we love the brethren, we will also pray confidently on their behalf as well. The prayer of the brotherhood, of the family for one another is evidently in John's mind (V. .16-17). The Father will answer those prayers too.
D. Fellowship with Christ results in spiritual blessings.

VI. FELLOW WILL BRING FREEDOM FROM HABITUAL SIN. (V.18-21)

A. The expression "we know", as indicating something that is unquestionable, something that is settled and indisputable, something which has been so confirmed by evidence, observation, and experience, that it has become a persuasive power on our life, is applied to three things:

1. The children of God can and do sin willfully, but the statement here refers to the fact that our sins are forgiven. 1 John 1:7,9 state that believers do sin and should confess sin so they can get back in fellowship with the Lord.
2. The actual fact, is that those who do not have the new life in Christ can only sin because they do not have the Son in their lives. 3. The spiritual fact, is that in the new life we have a spiritual life communicated to us through faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God.

After Stating that we "know" he then concludes by saying, "Don't listen to the antichrists and their false doctrines." Listen to God.

Conclusion:

Look at the spiritual blessings that come from our fellowship with Christ. The loss of these blessings come, of course, when we forsake fellowship with the Lord. Walk with Him, talk with Him, abide in Him and enjoy the marvelous blessings of your sonship.
Why then would anyone not want to accept Christ as their Savior and why would not one who professes to be a Christian live like one being faithful to Him in their lives.