Well, good morning.
Sometimes we do not know all that is behind the hymns we sing. That hymn was written by, I believe, a Scottish brother. I may have this part wrong. He was in a small area where there were just a few saints, but they dearly loved the Lord. They had little to nothing; they were in real poverty.
Finally, he got his big break, so to speak, as the system sometimes likes to think about it. He was offered a huge church, I believe in England, and he was about to go. He was all packed up. He had the wagon packed. He and his wife were in the wagon, and those saints, one by one, came out to greet him, to hug him, and to show their love.
He was overwhelmed. He was overwhelmed. He could not believe there was this kind of fellowship—true fellowship. So he said to his wife, “What are we to do?” They got out of the wagon. They unpacked the wagon. He said, “This is fellowship divine,” and he went home and wrote that hymn. That is where it came from.
Well, sometimes it is good to know. There is real history; there is real flesh and blood behind some of these songs we sing—real stories, real glories, real triumphs.
What I would like to share with you today is this matter of ultimate fellowship. I have chosen that word in particular, and you may be sick of it by the end of our sharing, but ultimate fellowship—on purpose.
On purpose, I would like us to read just one verse: 1 Corinthians 1:9. Now, I know most of you know this verse, but if you do not, I will read it anyway. The Apostle Paul wrote this:
God is faithful,
through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now let us have a word of prayer.
Lord, we open Your Word together this morning, and we look away from everything else. We ask You to speak to us something that is real, something that will go to the heart, something that will make us really understand what this fellowship divine our brother wrote of, and what we have sung about.
Lord, we remind You again and again: You alone have the words of eternal life. To whom shall we go? Unless You speak, Lord, there is nothing—nothing of value. Speak, Lord. Thy servant heareth. As Samuel said, we repeat it, and we ask You to speak to us today something to increase our understanding of this ultimate fellowship.
We ask this together in the name of our blessed Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, this burden began a number of months ago when I spoke with the youth at the Willow Run Youth Conference. So this was a word to the youth originally. Then, you might remember, I shared an opening in our group on the Lord’s Day, and then I shared on fellowship at the Lord’s table. The burden continues to grow, and I would like to share just a little bit more with you over the next two Sundays.
This burden of fellowship—one thing that at first I thought about—is that we use this word all the time. It is a common word. It is part of our lingo. You know, we say, “We’re having fellowship.” “We’re being in fellowship.” We even refer to it as a place: “We’re going to fellowship,” or, “We went to fellowship yesterday.”
Now, we can do all those things. That is true. I hope we are having fellowship. I hope we are being in fellowship. I hope when we go to a place together as a corporate expression of Christ, the end result is fellowship—living fellowship.
But I do think sometimes we do not understand all that is in this word fellowship. I just have one burden. I will leave it with you, and maybe it will stick in these next two weeks.
First of all, I hope that we would more fully understand fellowship as it is outlined in the Word of God. I do not want to give you my opinions of what I think fellowship is. I do not want you to give me your opinions of what fellowship is. I would rather us look into the Word of God and see: What does the Word of God say fellowship is? That fellowship is what we ought to be in.
The second thing I hope we grasp in these next two weeks is that, after hearing a little bit about fellowship, it would not just be left in some registry, some paper trail, some notes, or some folder. It would not just be information. But, having heard about this ultimate fellowship, we would be able to more fully enter into the reality of it, and even more, we could together experience it.
That is the overall burden, in summary, if I can put it that way.
Now, fellowship is an enormous subject. I think you will agree with me on that. It is an enormous subject. In one sense, I think we can say it is the subject of the whole Word of God.
You might disagree with me. I have had plenty of people disagree with me, and plenty of people feel free to let me know they disagree with me. So, I know you might disagree with me. You might say, “Brother, the whole subject of the Word of God is love.” You would not get any argument from me over that.
Think of that verse in the New Testament. It goes to everything we are about, and we understand that:
For God so loved the world,
that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish,
but have eternal life.
Surely, from the beginning of the Word of God to the end of the Word of God, the subject is love. But I think we need to distinguish between the motive and the mission, if you will let me use those words. I think we need to distinguish between the Person and the purpose.
If you look at 1 John 4, twice it says—in verse 8 and in verse 16—“God is love.” That is a tremendous statement. God is love. That is His Person. That is His motive behind everything He did, behind everything He does, behind everything we know of Him. His motive is love.
But if you look further, if you look a little deeper, you begin to understand that He has a mission. He has a purpose. What He is, is love; but that purpose and that mission, in the end, is fellowship. It is bringing His creation into this divine fellowship—this ultimate fellowship, if you will—and allowing His creation to come into the very experience of that ultimate fellowship.
That is His mission, and that is His purpose. I think it is clear when you read the Word of God.
I was reading an old message by Brother T. Austin-Sparks. Some of you know Brother T. Austin-Sparks. Stephen literally knew T. Austin-Sparks. The rest of us may have seen him at one time or another. But I was reading an old word of his from 1964, The Call of Fellowship, and he reinforced this impression I had. The whole Word of God seems to be dealing with this global matter, this tremendous matter of fellowship.
He said this, and I will quote:
That is a deep and inexhaustible matter: fellowship with God. But it could be said that the whole Bible is God seeking to have man, His creation, on the basis of fellowship with Himself. The Bible is all about that.
And if Christianity is the spiritual sum of the Bible, as undoubtedly it is, then Christianity rests upon this one thing: fellowship with God.
Then he paused and said it again: “Fellowship with God.”
It is an enormous subject. It is the end of His thought and heart for His creation—this ultimate fellowship.
It is behind the creation. When man—when this corporate vessel, man and woman; do not ever forget, it was a corporate vessel—was created, man was created in love, but created for fellowship. Never forget it.
Then you remember, it was not long before that fellowship was broken because of sin. That is what grieved the Lord. It says that the Lord walked in the garden in the cool of the day, and after they sinned, they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord.
He only had one question at that moment. He said:
Where art thou?
Where art thou? What happened to this ultimate fellowship? Where has it gone? That is the result of sin: this fellowship with God is broken.
You can think of every move of God down through the Word of God. It could be Noah. It could be Abraham. They were all an attempt to restore that fellowship with man. That is what it was all about, all through.
Or you can think of the nation of Israel. The nation of Israel had a particular place in the economy of God. It was formed as a select people, a people of His own choosing—not a people greater than the nations, nor a people worthy—but a people in whom He would demonstrate how God is in fellowship with man, and have in them an expression of the testimony of God in the earth.
That was what Israel was supposed to be.
Or you can come to the New Testament. I think all of us know that is the heart of the New Testament. When you come to the New Testament, the Lord Jesus appears on the earth, and He is looking for fellowship. He is looking for His church. We have the called-out ones. They are called out to fellowship.
The Lord Jesus is looking ultimately that this church would be the expression of Himself in fellowship, the Body of Christ. And ultimately—ultimately, that word you will get sick of—the church will become His bride: that ultimate, intimate, everlasting, eternal fellowship.
That is the way the Bible ends. So it is fair to say the whole Bible is about this matter of fellowship. It is fair to say that the Bible begins with broken fellowship, and the Bible ends with fellowship restored. Is that not beautiful?
We see the New Jerusalem coming down as a bride prepared for a husband, and we read those glorious words:
Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,
and He shall dwell with them,
and they shall be His peoples,
and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God.
Unbroken, ultimate fellowship for all of eternity. That is the mission and the purpose.
Well, this verse we began with—this one and only verse we began with—has two ultimate truths. Two ultimate truths.
The first one is quite plain, but please do not gloss over it so quickly that you miss the heart of it. It simply says these words: God is faithful.
Is that not tremendous, brothers and sisters? Fellowship is based on this: God is faithful. It is not based on you being faithful. It is not based on me being faithful. The whole of fellowship begins and ends with this matter: God is faithful.
What a tremendous encouragement that is.
Now, you may think this introductory word about fellowship that the Apostle Paul brought into 1 Corinthians is misplaced. Why, after all, is it in the letter of 1 Corinthians? There cannot be a church more filled with problems, difficulties, division, and strife than the church at Corinth.
By and large—and I think you will agree with me—the letter of 1 Corinthians is a corrective letter. But it begins with this focus, not upon the problems, but clearly upon the purpose of God. That is the way it begins.
You know, too often, brothers and sisters—and Linda says I am just an optimist a lot of times—we often focus on the problems when we think of the church. Paul did not begin by focusing on the problem. Paul began this great letter, this corrective letter, this letter full of instruction, with this issue of fellowship.
The purpose was clear. He was to raise them out of their problems, not just to focus on their problems, but to focus on what was in the heart of God.
So this is the beginning: God is faithful—an ultimate truth. This is a truth you can rely on. This is a truth that is undeniably one of the greatest truths in the whole of the Bible.
God’s faithfulness runs throughout the Bible from the beginning to the end. It is because of God’s faithfulness, as you read the Word of God, that we are not consumed. If it were not for His faithfulness, where would we be?
There are people in this room who have gone through some very dark times. There are people in this room, by the way, who are going through some incredibly dark times. The one thing they can cleave to, the one thing they should know above everything else, is that God is faithful.
That is the most important thing. That is the beginning of fellowship. You cannot even begin to talk about fellowship until you talk about “God is faithful.” That is what the Apostle Paul said.
Now, Campbell Morgan said this, and I like what he said, so I will quote him. He said:
This is the fundamental affirmation. This is what fundamentally we, as believers, when we begin to take up this matter of fellowship, need to understand: that God alone is faithful. And out of that faithfulness, everything happens. He is the beginning, He is the end, and He is everything that is in between. God is faithful.
Now, I think that is a word we need to remember above everything else. He said, “It is the fundamental affirmation of the whole letter.” He was speaking of the whole verse, but then he said that statement could be left out—meaning this verse, 1 Corinthians 1:9—without seeming to interfere with the movement of the letter. You might agree with that.
Yet it is supreme. That was his word: supreme. All the letter, from the beginning to the end, is based upon the declarations therein made by the Apostle. All that he wrote afterwards, both in correction in the first eleven chapters and in construction in chapters 12 through 15, gathers its force from the stupendous facts contained in this great saying.
This is the fundamental affirmation. What a truth: God is faithful. This is our reference point. This is our beginning.
I call it undeviating faithfulness, because just as we wander back and forth, in and out of fellowship, in and out of faithfulness, God never wanders from the line. It is undeviating faithfulness throughout the Word of God.
This alone can carry us through the darkest of days and through the worst of days. This is the single and first ultimate truth that this verse on fellowship gives.
Lightfoot said this:
The fact that you have been called through God to a communion—that is, fellowship—with Christ is an earnest assurance to you that Christ will bring this good work to a favorable outcome; for reliance can be placed in God alone.
Another brother said it means God is utterly dependable. I do not know if you have found anything that is utterly dependable. Think about that one.
I remember when I was growing up, we used to work on our own cars. That was back when you could work on cars, by the way. I do not know if any of you remember those old days. John does.
I remember we used to be able to get inside the hood and work on old cars because there was so much room. Now you open a hood and you do not see anything but wall-to-wall electronics and computers.
I remember Dad was an old mechanic, and we worked and rebuilt engines. He told me, “Son”—the way Dad said it, it was a Dad voice; you have to get used to it if you are a kid—“Son, the only utterly dependable battery is a Sears DieHard.”
I remember that. I believed him. So I always bought this utterly dependable DieHard battery. Now, I did not say “die never,” by the way. I found that out.
I told people, “Yeah, it is the only utterly dependable thing, when you are talking about mechanical vehicles, a DieHard battery.” Then John burst my bubble. He told me, “You know, batteries are only made in a few places in the world. They make them for everybody.” Oh, that was terrible. What a terrible way to burst my bubble.
But, brothers and sisters, the only One who is utterly dependable is the Lord Himself. You can depend on Him. He never fails. He is always on time. It may not be your time, but He is always there. He is never absent.
As a matter of fact, the psalmist put it this way:
He that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, He that keepeth Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
Linda thinks I sleep a lot. Every time I hit my recliner, “There he goes again.” But this utterly dependable God never slumbers or sleeps.
God is faithful. Undeviating faithfulness.
You can look at it in the Old Testament. God says in Deuteronomy 7:9 that He is the faithful God. You can look at the New Testament, 1 Thessalonians 5:24:
Faithful is He that calleth you,
who also will do it.
You can hold on to that verse. He called you into this fellowship. He can perform it.
You could look, for the individual believer, at Philippians 1:6, those words the Apostle Paul said:
Having confidence of this very thing,
that He who began a good work in you
will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ.
Or you can think of the darkest of times. Let me read to you from Isaiah 43:2. I know you know these verses, but this passage has reminded people of the overwhelming faithfulness of God again and again:
When thou passest through the waters,
I will be with thee;
and through the rivers,
they shall not overflow thee:
when thou walkest through the fire,
thou shalt not be burned;
neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.
For I am the Lord thy God,
the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.
God is faithful. That is the ultimate truth. You can take it to the bank. He is faithful—so faithful, you can utterly depend upon Him.
You know that song we sing, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” Thomas Chisholm wrote that hymn. It is a hymn that has encouraged people down through the years: God is faithful in the best and the worst of times.
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
How that hymn—one word, a brother discovering this bedrock principle, this absolute truth, this ultimate fact—wrote a sure hymn. Through the years, we have feasted upon God’s faithfulness as a result. That is Who He is.
Finally, when you come to the end of the Bible, there is a scene—I think you know it; Jerry has been going through Revelation. This is Revelation 19:11:
And I saw the heaven opened;
and behold, a white horse,
and He that sat thereon called Faithful and True.
I get emotional about this. But there is a sister here among us who is greatly suffering. As I have prayed over and over for her, I had but one word. The Lord kept saying, “I am faithful.”
So, to that dear one, I have whispered in her ear, over and over again, “God is faithful.”
That is the beginning of fellowship. That is the ultimate truth. It is what we can live by. It is what you can count on.
Well, there is a second undeniable ultimate truth in this verse, and it is the second part:
We are called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
You have a great calling on your life. Some people somehow get the idea that they have a calling to preach, or a calling to serve—and you may. Some think their calling is to go to Africa, or their calling is to go here or there.
But first of all, the ultimate calling, the ultimate truth, is that you are called into the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Out of that calling, every service has to spring.
If it springs because you have a big heart, or you have an idea to serve in a certain way, or—as I often hear people say—“This is my gift,” then if you serve out of anything else, it will not be from the right perspective.
Everything comes from this: you are called into the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. That is the second ultimate truth.
This word fellowship, I think you know, is koinonia in Greek. It is translated a number of ways in English: fellowship, communion, and other ways. But it means having all things in common.
Now, can you imagine? First of all, God calling us into the fellowship of His Son so that we could have all things in common with Him. Can you imagine?
Now, if I did that to you, and I called you into my fellowship—whatever that would be; I am sure you are not lining up to join—and you had all things in common with me, it would not be very much.
But if you have all things in common with the living Christ, think of the abundance that you have. It is almost indescribable. It is almost indescribable.
One said, “God is faithful,” and this is the way he translated this verse:
God is faithful,
who has called you into a position
of having all things in common
with Jesus Christ our Lord.
Unbelievable. Can you get your head around this? Can you begin to take this ultimate truth into some sort of understanding: that God, in this great fellowship, has called us to such a place that we can have all things in common, in sharing with the Lord Jesus?
This seems almost too good to be true, but this is precisely the second truth that comes out of this verse. We are to have all things in common.
The nature of this calling is the sharing of all that Christ is. Can you imagine?
You think of verses like those in Colossians:
For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,
and in Him ye are made full.
Tremendous. There is absolutely no lack there. There is absolutely no want there. Everything is there. That is the calling you have been called to. That is the nature of our calling.
It says in Romans 8:28 that we are called according to purpose, and it says ultimately that purpose is that we are going to be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, Who will be the Firstborn among many brethren.
Can you imagine? Again, can you get your head around that? These ultimate truths seem so beyond anything. Is our God really like that? Yes, He is. That is what we see.
We have been called. We did not choose Him.
A lot of people say, “Did you choose the Lord?” I want to tell you a little secret: you did not choose the Lord. The Lord chose you, and the Lord called you.
You may have responded to the Lord in one moment, when the Holy Spirit was working on your heart. You may have responded to the Lord, and therefore you chose at that moment—but it was because He chose you.
You remember when He was with His disciples at the very end, sharing those dearest words? He said:
Ye did not choose Me,
but I chose you.
And He has called us into this fellowship.
Well, I think you get the point of how great this is. Let me tell you a few more things. That word ultimate—it is the ultimate privilege.
I do not know if there can be a higher privilege than being called into the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Now, you may be one of those select individuals who has been brought into some club, fellowship, association, or group that you consider the cat’s meow—the ultimate privilege.
Justin will know what I am talking about. Up at UVA, there is a group called the Seven Society. It is a very high honor to be a member of the Seven Society.
If you walk around the Grounds, you begin to see some odd symbolism, and you think it is sort of cult-looking, probably. There are sevens, and sometimes they write it going up the steps. It is a big old seven, with the infinity symbol above it and the Greek symbols Alpha and Omega on the other side.
It is the most exclusive, the most secret, and the most honored of every organization at the University of Virginia. I am not a member. I just want you to know that.
The funny thing is, nobody knows who the members are—nobody but the other Sevens. I cannot imagine what they do, what handshake they have, or what they talk about.
But it is actually a good society. Do not get all mystical and think I am being weird here. It is actually a philanthropic society that gives money to the university and helps out, but it is very secretive. Nobody but the other fellow Sevens knows who a Seven is. Nobody.
It is a high honor indeed to be a Seven. I do not even aspire to be a Seven. I would rather be called into the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
But it even gets funnier. The only way you know you are a Seven is when you die. Think of that. What a privilege! Everybody says, “Oh, he was a Seven.”
My oldest partner jokes all the time that he and a fellow who went to UVA had this little conspiracy going. They are going to put the Seven wreath of black magnolias on whichever one’s coffin comes first, so somebody will think they were a Seven.
Then the bells sound at the university chapel on the seventh, and then it might get put in the paper. This is the highest honor men can aspire to at UVA. Can you imagine? You are a dead Seven, and you get a black magnolia wreath in the shape of a seven, and somebody finally figures out you were a hoity-toity that was a Seven.
I would rather be called into the fellowship of God’s Son. Can you imagine? It is the ultimate privilege. It is the highest honor.
It is not just for the wealthy and well-placed, and it is not just for the highest of society. It is for all of us. Everyone who is born of the Spirit of God, everyone who is a child of God, has this ultimate privilege as one called into the fellowship of God’s Son.
It is the highest and the ultimate privilege.
I remember years ago our brother Stephen shared a series. I would encourage you to go back and read these. It was one message per book, both Old Testament and New Testament. Brothers and sisters, this laid the foundation for what we are today. It gave us an overview of each book.
I remember those books on the Old Testament to this day—the messages and things our brother spoke. Then, in the series Christ in the New Testament, when he spoke on 1 John, he said what that book is about is seeing Christ in Christian fellowship.
That is what 1 John is all about. John, the one who always went back to the beginnings; John, the one who always shared the ultimate; John, who always went back and said, “This is what is in God’s heart.” When he wrote one of his last letters, he wrote about Christian fellowship.
My brother said this, and I love the way he put it. Stephen, it would be easier if you were not here to say it, but he said, “God has extended this fellowship to us.”
What a good word. Think of that privilege. You can think of Esther and the king: he extended the golden sceptre to Esther, and she had the right to rise and stand before the king.
Or you can think of the Apostle Paul when he was speaking of himself and Barnabas in Galatians 2:9. What the Apostle Paul said is that those pillars of the church—James, Cephas, and John—extended to us the right hand of fellowship.
Brothers and sisters, God has extended to you the right hand of fellowship with His Son. Think of it. Higher than any privilege you will ever have, higher than any organization you can ever join, higher than any honor you will ever know, is this ultimate privilege.
It seems to me that is the heart of it.
Now let me go further, because I want to drive this home before we close. Fellowship—the word koinonia—means partnership.
Now, can you imagine? God has called us into partnership.
I will never forget the day in my business. It was 1983—it might begin to tell you how old I am—and the senior partner called me into his office to give me a bonus check. We actually got bonuses back then. We still do, thank God.
He gave me my raise and my bonus check, and he said, “Kenny, I want you to be brought into the partnership.” It was one of the biggest days of my life. I thought, “What a privilege.” He did not give me much, but I was in the partnership.
You are in partnership with God’s Son. Therefore, Corinthians says we are fellow workers. We are companions, if you look in Hebrews. If you look in Romans, it says we are heirs of Christ and joint heirs.
This partnership you have been brought into is not a human partnership. It is the partnership of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. He has brought you into His divine business.
You remember when the Lord Jesus was twelve years old, and He and His family went back and were going home, but He stayed back in the temple? You remember that? The Lord was in the temple asking and answering questions.
The frustrated parents came back—you can imagine—and I can imagine they had a few words with the Lord that time, a few pretty strong words. And He said, “Do you not understand?”
I must be about My Father’s business.
I mean, partnership with Him—that is what you have been called to. I think that is a tremendous and ultimate privilege.
There is a sobering thought about this ultimate privilege, and that is this: this ultimate privilege required the ultimate cost.
The Lord Jesus had never known broken fellowship until that moment on the cross when He uttered those words that passed His lips for the first time, and He said:
Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?
Being translated:
My God, My God,
why hast Thou forsaken Me?
Do you think you came about this ultimate privilege easily? It cost the Son of God, Who never once knew a break in that fellowship.
He declared, “I am in the bosom of the Father,” in John’s Gospel. He declared, “Whatever I see the Father doing, that I do. Whatever I hear the Father saying, that I speak.”
This One never knew broken fellowship.
Now, I know for me—I will speak for myself—that is not easy for me to take in, because much of my life is broken fellowship. You know, once in a while: “Oh yes, I need to pray to the Lord about this. I need to think with the Lord about this. I need to return to the Lord about this.”
I can go for hours absorbed in my own things, in my own life, and not have a single passing thought about the Lord Jesus. Then all of a sudden it dawns on me: I have been called to this ultimate fellowship.
But brothers and sisters, think about this. Meditate on this. It required the ultimate cost for you to come into this fellowship.
It says in 2 Corinthians 5:21:
Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf.
That was that moment of darkness when He uttered those unutterable words that He had never uttered before. That was the cost. Sin broke the fellowship of the Father and the Son at that moment.
What a cost. I think of that hymn, “How Great Thou Art.” We sing it a lot, but these words I have often uttered in prayer:
And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,
sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in.
I scarce can take it in. What a cost. This ultimate privilege comes with an ultimate cost.
Fellowship is also the ultimate provision. You know, the Lord made the provision for us to be in fellowship, to be called into fellowship, and to remain in fellowship. He made the provision.
It is not our strength. It is not our wisdom. It is not our toiling. It is not our effort. It is not us keeping a stiff upper lip, as the British like to say. It is all about the ultimate provision that the Lord Jesus has made.
Look with me at 2 Peter 1:4. Let us see if I can get to that. My Bible in Peter seems to be falling apart. First Peter, Second Peter, chapter one, verse four.
Whereby He hath granted unto us His precious and exceeding great promises;
that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust.
That word partakers is fellowship—the other word for fellowship. This is the ultimate provision.
It is first of all by His divine power. It is not your power. We do not live the Christian life by our own power. It would be impossible. It would be a wasted effort at best. We live the Christian life by His divine power.
Not only that, it says He has given us all things—not some things. You know, if you have a very benevolent friend, he may give you something. But this incredible word that Peter said is that He gave us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Everything.
There is no shortage. There is no lack of provision when it comes to us being called and kept in this fellowship. He goes on to say the most incredible thing: we have become partakers—fellowshippers—with the divine nature.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine a more ultimate provision than that?
I think the Bible can only be understood with this. Christianity can only be understood with this. It is not who you are, but Who Christ is. It is not only Christ for us, but Christ in us and us in Christ. That is what makes the Christian life possible. Otherwise, it is impossible.
This fellowship will be broken again and again without this secret: that we have become partakers of the divine nature, and now Christ is in us by the Holy Spirit.
Jerry was speaking about the “but life”—do not take that wrong, by the way—the other day when he shared. The first time I heard that was T. Austin-Sparks, who used to say, “Pay attention to the buts in Scripture.”
I think the greatest “but” in Scripture is Galatians 2:20:
Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
That is the secret. That is the provision.
He did not just give you some grace. He did not just give you some love. He did not just give you a dose of patience—most of us need more than a dose, by the way. He did not just give us a little bit of endurance, a little bit of hope, or a portion of this, as if it were some giant superstore where you go and get all these little things that you need, and therefore have the Christian life.
This ultimate provision, if you can take it in, if you can wrap your head around it, is that He gave Himself to live in us by His divine power. We have become partakers of His divine nature.
Is that not incredible? I think that is the most incredible thing. It gives me hope that we can stay in this fellowship, because those are the resources we have.
I remember taking Economics 101 and 102 in college. I know different people say it different ways. Linda will correct me, so I might as well say it: economics, or economics—you can actually look in the web, so you can say it either way. It is not a big deal.
I do not care if you ever take Economics 101 or 102. I learned very little from it—something about macroeconomics and microeconomics. The biggest surprise I ever got was when they told me that the unemployment number did not actually represent the people who were unemployed.
I was so shocked. I thought that was unemployment. But it is only the people who are wanting to be employed. Unemployment is a whole lot bigger. A little bit of a political drift there; forgive me.
But I remember in Economics 101, the professor said something that grabbed hold of me. I know I have said this before, but it means so much to me. He said, “Economics is the study of how nations deal with limited resources.”
You understand that? Now fellowship is just the opposite. It is not limited resources; it is unlimited resources. It is all that Christ is.
You have been brought into partnership with all that He is, and He is now sharing in common with you all of His resources. That is the incredible thing. That is the ultimate privilege that we have in Christ Jesus.
Campbell Morgan put it this way:
All His resources are at our disposal.
I think that is wonderful.
Well, the last thing I want to share with you is this ultimate purpose. We often talk about purpose. Some of you, I know, get sick of that word because you tell us.
But I think if you do not have purpose—let me just speak in general terms—if you do not have purpose, you do not have focus. Purpose is essential for your individual life to be purpose-centered, and it is much more important for your Christian life to understand what your calling and your purpose are, and what the purpose of God is.
It is absolutely essential. If you do not, you are a ship without a rudder. You are set sail upon the ocean, but you have no course to steer to. Purpose is absolutely one, if not the most important thing in the Scriptures.
Now turn to Ephesians 3:9-11. I want you to look at these verses. Some manuscripts use this word, and I will read it from the King James Version because the King James Version uses this word fellowship.
Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints,
was this grace given,
to preach unto the Gentiles
the unsearchable riches of Christ;
and to make all men see
what is the fellowship of the mystery,
which from all ages hath been hid in God
who created all things.
That is that word, koinonia. His one purpose, his single purpose, his overarching purpose, was to make all men understand this matter of fellowship.
Then he went on to say:
To the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places
might be made known through the church
the manifold wisdom of God,
according to the eternal purpose
which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In case you are wondering where we get this phrase from—the eternal purpose—there it is. This is the ultimate purpose. Fellowship, the fellowship of the mystery, is the ultimate purpose. It is what God had in mind.
When we read Romans 8, this “called according to purpose” is this purpose stated by the Apostle Paul. It is the ultimate purpose. It is the greatest purpose. It is the purpose we have been called to.
Brothers and sisters, there is no higher purpose than this. You may think you have a very high purpose, but there is no purpose higher than this.
So great is this purpose, the Holy Spirit moved the Apostle Paul to call it the eternal purpose. There may be many purposes, but there is one eternal purpose.
We can see it in this verse in 1 Corinthians 1:9: God is faithful, Who has called us into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. This is the ultimate purpose.
Brothers and sisters, let me conclude with this thought. This is what has always been in God’s heart: to extend this ultimate fellowship to His creation.
Now notice, if you read the book of Hebrews, He did not extend it to the fallen angels. Why has man had such a privilege?
We fell. We gave up that fellowship. Fellowship was broken by sin. But nevertheless, He determined it Himself: that those who have so little in common with Himself would ultimately share all things in common with Himself.
Can you take that in? That is ultimate fellowship.
God is faithful, Who has called you into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. It is the ultimate privilege. There is no higher honor.
To make fellowship possible, He made the ultimate provision. He is not expecting you to live the Christian life.
Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
He has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness, and we have become partakers—fellowshippers—with the divine nature. That is what makes fellowship real and possible.
Finally, it is His ultimate purpose. In the end, this is what He is after. At the close of the age, brothers and sisters, when we enter into the kingdom, that intended ultimate purpose will begin to be realized for a thousand years, and it will extend for eternity.
Every shadow, and everything that has made that fellowship vague and broken, will be gone forever. We will have unbroken, ultimate fellowship forever.
This—this is what we have been called to. I cannot think of a more glorious thing.
That one verse—I remember when I was a young believer and I first went to meet in the Millers’ home, and that verse was read. I thought, “This is it.”
God is faithful,
through whom ye were called into the fellowship
of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Let us pray.
Lord, we think, even after we have shared much, our understanding may still be little. So we ask You to really help us. It has to come by revelation.
Transform us, Lord, to allow us to begin to take in how enormous this thing is: our calling. Do not let us just be those, Lord, who focus on the problems, but let us be those who focus on the purpose.
Lord, help us to see what You have done to make this possible, what it cost You. Write it in our hearts, that we may have that adoration that that woman had who poured out that vial of costly perfume.
Lord, we are so thankful for that privilege. We are so thankful for that provision, and we are so thankful for Your purpose. May You enlighten us, and may we more fully enter into it by the grace of God. Amen.