Trusting In The Goodness Of Fellowship (1 John 1:1-4)

Introduction

A. Preliminaries

Good Morning.

We continue our sermon series this morning in the Apostles’ Creed. And I would like to thank Neil for his sermon this past Sunday on our confession concerning the Holy Spirit.

By way of reminder, Martin Luther talked about how the Creed had three sections or he called them three articles.

The first article is belief in God the Father. The second article is belief in Jesus Christ, God’s Son, our Lord, and all his work. His life, death, resurrection, ascension, session, and work of judgement on the Last Day.

And the third article is belief in the Holy Spirit, and all his ongoing work in and through the body of Christ, the Church on Earth.

So we are now in the third article of the Creed. Which means that what we will be discussing for the next few Sundays is the work of the Holy Spirit, or a better way to understand it might be the work of the Father and Son which is applied by the work of the Holy Spirit.

And this morning we are talking about the Communion of the Saints.

Now, the sharpest among you might be wondering why I skipped a line. You might be thinking “Wait a minute. That’s not the next line of the Creed.” The Creed goes “I believe in the Holy Spirit, followed by the holy catholic Church or the holy Christian Church. What gives, Bryan?”

Well, what gives is that your Pastor is at the end of the day, a fallible human being. As it happens, he is also a fallible human being at the start of the day, and every millisecond between the start and the end of the day. And I misread my own sermon series outline, and set myself to writing the wrong sermon.

This is so gloriously and hilariously delightful because one of my points in this sermon (on the Communion of the Saints) was going to be on bearing with one another’s frailties and errors.

And suffice it to say (and, I admit, to my shame) I only realized my error once I was far along in the preparation of this sermon. Perhaps we can chalk it up to the busyness of the Advent and Christmas season, along with illness in my household, along with all the glories of preparing for yesterday’s wedding.

So I begin with an apology for this part of the series being out of order. I will preach next week on the holy catholic church, and it was always the design of the series that Neil and I arranged together that I would preach the next three clauses three-in-a-row. Holy Church, Communion of Saints, Forgiveness of Sins. So at least that has not been interfered with. My hope and prayer is that the Holy Spirit will work in spite of my error, and perhaps it is that this is what we needed to hear today and not next week. Let’s hope so, right?

So, with that clarified, I would invite you to turn now in your Bibles to the letter of First John. It’s easy to get the Gospel of John and First John confused. They are both written by the same apostle of Jesus. The Gospel of John is the fourth book of the New Testament.

First John is the 23rd book of the New Testament, so it is towards the back. Four books before the Revelation, which, as it happens, is also written by John.

And we will start at the beginning of First John and read the first four verses.

1 John 1:1–4 (ESV)

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— 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. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God!

Let’s Pray

God, Our Father, We confess that there is no ignorance as dark as what we think we know. We pray that your Spirit would banish any ignorance of this sort this morning, and that we would let go of it gladly, and without a fight. Teach us from your Word, and in Jesus’s name we pray, and Amen.

A Prayer by Douglas Wilson

B. Introduction: Communion Means Fellowship

So this morning we are talking about the Communion of the Saints. And immediately, I want to make some clarifications. Because the word Communion has distinct meaning in the Christian faith, such that when we use that word what we are often thinking of is the Lord’s Supper, which is also called Communion.

The reason it is called that is because the Lord’s Supper is communion with the Lord Jesus and with one another. That’s what we take of it together, and that’s why being seriously out of fellowship with each other and unrepentant about it is sufficient cause to abstain from the Sacrament. That’s why one of the Prayers in our Worship Guide for those who might be abstaining has to do with unresolved anger and bitterness.

So when we talk about the Communion of the Saints, we are talking about the Fellowship of the Saints, and all the goodness and glory that comes with fellowship. And you will hear me this morning use the terminology of Communion of the Saints and Fellowship almost interchangeably.

And what I have learned from living in Louisiana for nearly a decade and a half now is that there is a term we use for socializing that can be easily confused with fellowship and that term is “visiting.” Why don’t you come over and we’ll sit down, and visit.

And where I want to begin this morning is by saying that the Communion of the Saints is not the same as visiting.

Fellowship is not the same as visiting. It’s not less than visiting but it is so much more. Visiting is good. Visiting is basically catching up with each other. Laughing together. Sharing inside jokes. Enjoying presence and company. And Christian fellowship is not less than that. It is simply more than that.

The Communion of the Saints has at least three distinct qualities to it that I want to explore with you this morning.

A Resultant Fellowship A Commanded Fellowship A Weighty Fellowship A Glorious Fellowship

I. A Resultant Fellowship

That is, the Fellowship that we have in Christ is a result of fellowship with Christ first. It is a fellowship with one another that flows out of our fellowship with God the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. Let’s look at the text from 1 John again

1 John 1:1–4 (ESV)

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— 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. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

So notice how this starts. John begins by focusing on Christmas. On the reality of the Incarnation.

This Christ was eternal. From the beginning. This Christ was real and physical. Seen with eyes. Heard with ears. Touched with hands. This life was made manifest. And the work given to apostles is the same work given to us. To testify to it and to proclaim it. To proclaim the real and eternal life of Christ. Always with the Father, and given to us. Made manifest, that is, incarnated with us, walked among us. His flesh and blood was and is as real as yours. His voice as audible as yours and continues to echo through the Scriptures, empowered by the Spirit today. Seen today in the work of his body, and in the bread and wine of the Table.

And John says we proclaim this 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.

Notice what John is saying here. He is saying that fellowship with Jesus is what gives life and reality to fellowship with “us”—the apostles, the Christians.

So our Fellowship is a resultant fellowship. It flows out of a prior fellowship. Because we are in fellowship with Christ, we are in fellowship with each other.

This means that our connections with other believers is a unique and sacred kind of connection that bears more weight than connections we have outside of the body of Christ.

I’m not saying you don’t have friendships with unbelievers. I am saying that no small group of friends can replace the church. The Church is what God has given us as a result of his work for us in Christ. The Cross did not just make forgiveness of sins available, it gave birth to a people. A people we are called to be a part of.

And that’s the next point.

We have a Resultant fellowship, and next...

II. A Commanded Fellowship

1 Corinthians 1:4–9 (ESV)

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

So notice some things here.

Grace has been given to us in Christ. That means we need grace for this kind of fellowship, and it has been given to us. We’ve been enriched in every way—how we think, what we know, how we talk. You get the sense that our life together ought to look different and sound different from everything else in the world.

The testimony, the good news of the Gospel is confirmed among us so that the Church is not lacking in any gift, as wait for the revealing of Jesus Christ.

We read that he will sustain us to the end, guiltless on the last day. But don’t miss this. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son.

So here’s the reality that is often hard to comprehend in our radically selfish, radically isolated radically individualistic world.

If you’ve been called by Jesus, you’ve been called to be part of a fellowship. This is a commanded fellowship.

This is really important for us to learn because I think that we are often tempted to a romanticized idea of isolation—something like Robinson Crusoe.

Which is the story of an Englishman who ignored his father’s wish to become a minister, and instead, went for a life at sea. He ends up shipwrecked on a deserted island, with a few supplies. He manages to build a house and a boat and a life. But people who romanticize the story, really should read the story. Because he ends up being driven to horrible unhappiness by the solitude. It’s unbearable.

This should not surprise us. The first malediction or curse to fall upon a pre-fallen world was “It is not good for man to be alone.”

And as it happens, you cannot, anywhere in the New Testament, find an example of a Christian who was not meaningfully connected to a local body.

What we have done so often in American evangelicalism is that we have confused modern individualism with the Holy Spirit. Being filled with the Holy Spirit does not mean you don’t need the Communion of the Saints. Being filled with the Holy Spirit means you have a duty to that Communion.

Even Jesus was constantly in fellowship. The only times when Jesus was isolated is when he was finding a place to sleep or finding a place to pray. When Jesus was talking about the Scriptures, he was always conversant. He was talking to his disciples, talking to the teachers in the Temple, even talking to the Pharisees.

I don’t mind telling you that for a long time, I wanted to be an ivory tower theologian. I wanted to cloister myself away, and endlessly read books, and maybe come out once in awhile just to teach or otherwise show everyone how brilliant I was.

And it took a long while for the Lord to break me of that and teach me that ivory tower temptations are sinful. My desire to learn apart from conversant fellowship where there’s a giving and receiving, a learning and correcting—there is a word for that and it is pride. “Let me please just go read 37 books, watch 22 YouTube videos about the Gnostics, and think about it by myself for 2 years, then I’ll finally be confident and at peace about what I believe.” It’s utter nonsense. We are called into fellowship. It results from being in Christ. It is commanded. And third, it is weighty.

III. A Weighty Fellowship

To be a Christian is not only to believe in something. It is to be a part of something. And for many of us, meaningful fellowship is deeply threatening. We like to keep our sins secret. We like to keep our shame private. So I want to close by talking about the weight and glory of our fellowship and why it should not frighten us.

First, this is hard. To know others and to be known is hard. We have to fight for this. This takes work. We have to fight our own sin, and we have to fight the sin of fear—fear of man in our own hearts. And perhaps the sin of unforgiveness in our hearts. Nothing tears apart churches or families or friendships like unforgiveness. We have to fight our temptation to withhold and retreat. Usually, when some conflict or trouble or confusion becomes too difficult, we just flee. We run. We hide. It’s really easy to do, by the way. Our present system of a church on every corner makes it easy to flee fellowship.

Sometimes the way this takes shape is we hide behind our personalities. “Oh I’m really introverted, so I just don’t ever show up to be around people. I don’t like people.”

You don’t like people? That’s not introversion, that’s hatred of neighbor. God is the one who made you. He gets to decide what you’re made for. I’m a card carrying introvert, so what that means is that my temptation will be to isolate. If you are extroverted, you tend to have a temptation to attention seeking. It’s not sinful to be introverted or extroverted, but there are attendant temptations you have to be aware of.

We also hide behind our triggers. “Oh I’m easily triggered by this or that, so I just can’t be around others.” That’s not a statement of immovable reality. That’s a confession. Sounds like there’s work to do. Are you ready to do it? I’m not saying triggers aren’t real, but I am saying they can be put to death with work.

Some years ago, I remember teaching on Calvinism and the TULIP, and illustrating the work that Jesus does in salvation by saying “Some people like to say that Jesus rescues you by first knocking on the door of your heart.

And I pointed out that that’s a reference to Revelation 3:20, which is written not to unbelievers on the verge of conversion, but to believers who were failing to hear the word of Christ.

And I said “If we are honest, we always resist Jesus, in our sin. We would never open that door. We’re not saved when he knocks on the door of our heart, we’re saved when he kicks in the door and tackles us.”

And a woman came and spoke to me afterward and told me that she had been the victim of a home invasion. Where a wicked man had kicked in her door and assaulted her.

And she said “So that’s really hard for me to hear. It’s triggering for me. It’s hard for me to connect with language of Jesus kicking in the door.”

And then she thought for a moment and said, “But you know…it’s not wrong. It’s not wrong. If it was wrong I wouldn’t be saved. It’s hard for me to hear because of my experiences, but that’s a me-problem.”

God be praised for that kind of humility that when we clash with the work of Jesus, Jesus wins. When we clash with the Bible, the Bible wins. When our sensitivities get stirred up or if we’re trying to be more polite than God (which is its own temptation), it takes a work of the Spirit, often with the help of the Communion of the Saints for us to say “Maybe that’s a me thing. Maybe I have work to do here. Maybe it’ll take two years. But with God’s help I’m going to start today.”

Meaningful authentic fellowship takes work. We have to fight for unity with each other. Paul says in Ephesians 4,

Ephesians 4:1–3 (ESV)

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Bearing with one another.

Eager to maintain the unity.

Do you hear the work in those verbs? Our unity is something we have to fight for. This is so important—starting in February, I’ll be teaching a series on Wednesday Nights about Conflict Resolution. It’s something that most of us struggle to do well, and when it goes bad, it is where Satan’s best work is accomplished.

It takes work. We have to fight for this. We have to fight for our peace. Doesn’t that sound funny? We have to fight for our unity with each other. We have to fight our own sins, and we have to help each other fight each other’s sins. We have to fight for honesty with each other. We have to fight for courage to talk to each other. We have to fight for the honesty to say “I need help.” I need your prayers. I could use some help. I need some advice. I need some support. I could use some encouragement.

Being served and receiving grace from each other—that takes a lot of courage. But we need it. This is part of why we take membership vows. Because this work together is actually much more costly than we planned for.

In my opinion, few things have so poisoned the communion of the saints, and the faith of the next generation as our cowardice.

IV. A Glorious Fellowship

This fellowship, when rightly displayed is glorious and full of gladness. Here’s that text we started with today

1 John 1:1–4 (ESV)

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— 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. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

Did you catch that. That our joy may be complete. There’s rich joy in this fellowship. It’s rich, other-worldly joy. This is not just visiting. It’s not just friendship. It’s a foretaste of heaven. And frankly, if we were to really embrace all that Jesus means for us to be in fellowship together, we would probably get accused of being a bit cultish. It’s not true, and it had better not be true.

But this fellowship—this communion of the saints—that we are called to is so other-worldly, it will make the world a bit uncomfortable.

A great example of embracing the discomforts of fellowship is in the story of Rosaria Butterfield. Some of you have heard her story. She was a liberal, leftist lesbian professor of Feminist literature. And she made the mistake of having dinner in the home of a Presbyterian Pastor. And she realized something that most Christians have known for most of Christianity. That there is nothing quite as potent and powerful as a godly household for the spread of the Gospel. There is nothing quite as potent and powerful as a dining room table for evangelism.

And she came and sat at that dinning room table several times. And one evening, they sang a psalm together before dinner, as was their custom, and it was a psalm about wicked men. Who hate God. Enemies of God, who will be judged by God.

And she thought “Wait a minute. I think they’re singing about me!”

And that was when she repented. And fell on the mercy of the Lord Jesus. After we do the series on Conflict Resolution, I am planning to teach through her book The Gospel Comes with a House Key to talk about the glory of Christian Hospitality in the Communion of the Saints. Stay tuned for that.

So yes, this fellowship takes work. It takes showing up. It takes a conscious moving away from the question of “Does this gathering of the saints suit me and tickle all my fancies” to asking the question “How might God use this to bless me?”

We are—all of us—in various places with this. Some of us are great at it, some of us are terrible at it. All of us need growth in it. So let’s ask God to grow us and shape us for this glorious fellowship as we go to the Table together.

(Prayer)