Fellowship: Fellowship with God is Experiencing Eternal Life Lesson # 5

When a believer is experiencing fellowship with God, they are experiencing eternal life.

Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom

Sunday July 23, 2017

www.wenstrom.org

Lesson # 5

When a believer is experiencing fellowship with God, they are experiencing eternal life.

They are one in the same.

If you are experiencing eternal life as a believer, then, you are experiencing fellowship with God and vice versa.

One must have the life of God in order to experience fellowship with Him.

The believer must share the eternal life of God in order to experience fellowship and intimacy with God.

This has been made possible through the incarnate Word of eternal life, the Lord Jesus Christ and His Finished Work on the Cross of Calvary 2000 years ago.

Eternal life is the very life of God has no beginning and no end and transcends time, matter and space.

God is an “ever present now” because He is by nature, eternal life.

It is received as a gift from God the moment you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (Author’s translation)

The Lord Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God and therefore He is also the incarnate eternal life of God and to reject that He is God is to reject eternal life.

“I am the bread of life.” (NASB95)

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NASB95)

Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. 3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. (NASB95)

The Lord Jesus Christ who is the incarnate eternal Word of life came into the world in order that He might give eternal life to sinners so that they could have fellowship with God.

teaches that the Lord Jesus Christ who is the incarnate eternal life of God came into the world in order that He might give eternal life to sinners and He did this so that sinners could enjoy and experience fellowship with God.

At the moment of conversion, through regeneration, the Holy Spirit creates a human spirit for the imputation of eternal life by God the Father, which makes the believer a new spiritual species meaning that they now possesses the divine nature.

“Regeneration” is a ministry performed by the Holy Spirit on behalf of a person the moment they believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior where He creates a human spirit for the person so that they might receive the imputation of eternal life.

He (God the Holy Spirit) saved us, not on the basis of deeds (human works) which we have done in (human power) righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit. (NASB95)

This human spirit with eternal life imputed to it composes the believer’s new nature, i.e. the new self and this new nature is the nature of Christ.

This act of regeneration makes the believer a new spiritual species, which is the nature of Christ that can never sin and that is described in Scripture by many phrases such as the “new self, new man, newness of life, new creation.”

For all of you who were identified with Christ have clothed yourselves with the nature of Christ. (NASB95)

So also it is written, “The first MAN, Adam, BECAME A LIVING SOUL.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. (NASB95)

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new spiritual species; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (NASB95)

For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. (NASB95)

No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. (NASB95)

In His Great High Priestly Prayer recorded in , the Lord states that eternal life is knowing the Father experientially.

Eternal life is knowing the Father and the Son experientially in the sense of personally encountering them through the process of fellowship as They are revealed in the pages of Scripture and prayer by God the Holy Spirit.

It also involves being affected by this encounter with the Father and the Son resulting in the gaining of practical spiritual wisdom and more of the character of Christ.

Eternal life gives the believer the capacity to experience fellowship with God after being delivered from eternal condemnation.

Experiencing eternal life after conversion is described by Paul in as walking “in newness of life.”

Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (NASB95)

Eternal life is appropriated after conversion by the believer who obeys the Spirit of life who reveals the will of the Father of life through the communication of the Word of life.

The believer who exercises faith in the teaching of the Word of God that they have been crucified, died, buried, raised and seated with Christ will experience eternal life in time.

Therefore, the believer experiences eternal life in time and thus experiences fellowship with God in time by obeying the will of the Father of life, which is revealed to the believer by the Spirit of life through the communication of the Word of life.

In , Paul teaches that those whose minds concentrate upon the things of the Spirit, which are heard through the Word of God, will experience eternal life and fellowship with God whereas those whose minds are set upon the lusts of the sin nature will not experience fellowship with God.

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (NASB95)

In , Paul describes setting the mind on the things of the flesh as “sowing to one’s flesh” and setting the mind of the things of the Spirit as “sowing to the Spirit.”

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. (NASB95)

In , Paul taught that the believer who obeys the flesh will result in temporal death meaning loss of fellowship whereas the one who obeys the Spirit will experience eternal life.

In , he teaches that because the Roman Christians have been freed from the sin nature and enslaved to God, the benefit that they now possess is that of being a servant of God rather than the sin nature, which results in sanctification and eternal life.

But now, at the present time, because all of you have been set free from the tyranny of the sin nature and because all of you have become slaves to God the Father all of you at the present time possess your benefit (of being a servant of God) resulting in sanctification and the result, eternal life. (Author’s translation)

In , Paul teaches that serving the sin nature results in spiritual death whereas in verse 22 he teaches that serving God results in eternal life.

Then, in verse 23 he explains why this is the case, namely that the wages of sin is spiritual death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

For you see the sin nature pays out spiritual death however God the Father graciously gives eternal life in the Person of Christ, who is Jesus, our Lord. (Author’s translation)

teaches that the wages of sin is spiritual death resulting in physical death and ultimately the second death in the eternal lake of fire but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.