Fellowship: Fellowship is Based Upon the Merits of the Person and Work of Jesus Christ

Fellowship with God is made possible through the unique theanthropic Person of history, the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-Man.

It is made possible because of His substitutionary spiritual and physical deaths on the cross, which reconciled all of sinful humanity to a holy God, propitiated the holy demands of the Father that sin and sinners be judged and redeemed every member of the human race out of the slave market of sin.

We have access to God in fellowship because of the Lord Jesus Christ’s merits and finished work on the Cross.

Ephesians 2:18 for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the incarnate Word of eternal life and it is His eternal life that He gives at the moment of justification through regeneration that provides the believer with the capacity to enjoy and experience fellowship with God.

The apostle John teaches in 1 John 1:1-3 that a believer is not experiencing fellowship with God if they reject the incarnation and subsequent hypostatic union of the Son of God who is Jesus Christ.

If a believer rejects that Jesus is both God and man, then they will not experience fellowship with God since the hypostatic union is the basis for fellowship with the triune God.

If the Son did not become a human being, then there would be no possible way for sinners to experience fellowship with a holy God since His death as a human being provides sinners the forgiveness of sins.

His death and resurrection as a human being provided sinners deliverance from eternal condemnation, enslavement to the devil and the sin nature, personal sins, physical and spiritual death, and condemnation from the Law.

It also provided the opportunity to experience an eternal relationship and fellowship with a holy God.

None of this would be possible if the Son did not become a human being and die on the cross and rise from the dead three days later.

Furthermore, to deny that Jesus of Nazareth is both God and man is to deny the resurrection since the resurrection demonstrates that Jesus is God (cf. Rom. 1:1-4).

To deny the deity of Christ is to deny the doctrine of the Trinity.

1 John 1:1 We are now proclaiming to each of you what has always existed from eternity past, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we observed for ourselves, even what we touched with our hands concerning the Word which is truly life. 2 In other words, this life was revealed. As noted previously, we have seen so therefore we are now proclaiming by testifying to each of you this life, which is eternal, which because of its eternal nature has always existed face to face with the Father. Indeed, it was revealed to each one of us. 3 What we have seen as well as heard, we are now proclaiming to each of you in order that each of you would also continue to regularly experience fellowship with each of us. Also, our fellowship is in fact, as an eternal spiritual truth existing in the state of being with the Father as well as with His Son, who is Jesus, who is the Christ. (My translation)

In 1 John 1:3, John asserts that the purpose of this proclamation was so that the recipients of this epistle would continue to regularly experience fellowship with himself and the other surviving disciples of Jesus Christ and those who adhere to his apostolic teaching concerning the person of Jesus Christ.

The Scriptural evidence is overwhelming that Jesus of Nazareth who is the Christ is both God and man forever.

The two distinct natures, which as to their attributes differ significantly, were brought together into personal union, which will continue forever.

In theology or specifically Christology (the study of Christ), the term “hypostatic union” is used by theologians to describe the teaching of the Scriptures that Jesus Christ is undiminished deity and true sinless humanity in one person forever.

The term “hypostatic union” means that deity and true humanity are combined in one personality, forever and that personality is Jesus Christ.

He did not have two personalities because He had two natures and because He is a man does not make our Lord less than God, nor, does His being God prevent Him from being truly a man.

The integrity of the attributes of His divine nature, was not corrupted or compromised by the fact that His divine nature was united permanently with a human nature, nor was the integrity of the attributes of His human nature corrupted or compromised by the fact that He was God.

His two natures, though united, retain their separate identities.

There was no mixture of His divine nature with that of His human nature.

His divine attributes are always united to His divine nature and His human attributes are always united to His human nature.

Deity remains deity and humanity remains humanity since the infinite cannot become finite and the immutable cannot be changed.

No attribute of deity was altered when our Lord became a man through the incarnation and the same holds true when He died on the cross since to take away a single attribute from His divine nature would destroy His deity and to take away from His perfect human nature a single attribute would destroy His humanity.

The two natures of Christ are not only united without affecting the attributes of the two natures but they are also combined in one person.

Christian fellowship is not only based upon the person of Jesus Christ but also His finished work on the cross.

There are many reasons why Jesus Christ had to suffer crucifixion and spiritual and physical death on the cross.

He had to suffer because the entire human race was in desperate need of deliverance from eternal condemnation, condemnation from the Law, spiritual and physical death, the sin nature, personal sins and enslavement to Satan and his cosmic system.

The Lord Jesus Christ, through His human nature, suffered a spiritual and physical death on the cross, as a substitute for each and every member of the human race-past, present and future.

These substitutionary deaths dealt with all these problems facing sinful humanity.

Sinners appropriate this deliverance by exercising faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.

Through the function of human volition, the sin nature produces personal sin, mental, verbal and overt acts of sin.

Spiritual death is the direct result of Adam’s original sin in the Garden of Eden and his progeny, namely the human race are now sinners by nature because of his disobedience.

His sin not only plunged him into spiritual death but also his progeny which results in physical death and ultimately eternal condemnation.

Therefore, in order to solve these problems of the human race, our Lord had to suffer these deaths as a substitute for sinful humanity.

Therefore, the Last Adam, Jesus Christ had to die spiritually first and then physically to negate the fall of Adam and to reconcile the first Adam and his progeny, i.e. the human race to a holy God.

Our Lord’s spiritual death is recorded in Matthew 27:46 and records Him crying out “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? which manifested the fact that He was experiencing spiritual death meaning that in His human nature he was separated from His Father.

The physical death of our Lord was of His own volition (cf. John 10:18) and is recorded in the Gospels (Matthew 27:47-50; Mark 15:22-40; Luke 23:33-49; John 19:16-30).

Jesus Christ’s substitutionary spiritual and physical deaths on the cross redeemed out the entire human race out of the slave market of sin (Mark 10:45; Rom. 3:24; 1 Cor. 1:30; 6:20; 7:23; Gal. 3:13-14; 4:4-5; Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:13; 1 Tim. 2:1-6; Tit. 2:11-13; 1 Pet. 1:17-18; Rev. 5:9).

Jesus Christ’s substitutionary spiritual and physical deaths on the cross also reconciled the entire human race to a holy God (Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:18-21; Eph. 2:14-16; Col. 1:20-22).

Jesus Christ’s substitutionary spiritual and physical deaths on the cross also propitiated a holy God (Rom. 3:21-26; Heb. 2:17; 1 John 2:2; 4:10).

In Romans 4:25, Paul declares that the Lord Jesus Christ died because of the Christian’s sins and was raised from the dead because of the Christian’s justification.

Christ was raised for the Christian’s justification in the sense that the resurrection of Christ demonstrated that God the Father had accepted His Son’s spiritual and physical deaths on the cross to resolve the problem of personal sin and the sin nature in the human race.

In Romans 6:4-5, Paul taught that just as the Christ was raised through the glory of the Father so in the same way the Christian would be as well since the Christian has been identified with Christ in His physical death and resurrection.

This passage also teaches that this identification with Christ in His resurrection enables the believer to experience eternal life which constitutes experiencing fellowship with God.

In Romans 6:5, the apostle teaches that the justified sinner is identified with Christ in His resurrection in order that the believer might receive a resurrection body like the last Adam, Christ so as to replace his sinful body.