“Indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”
1 John 1:3b ESV
In his first epistle, John writes to his audience about having fellowship with our heavenly Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Fellowship is an interesting and important word. Fellowship is about sharing true and meaningful relationship with another person. Having fellowship with another person is to be near them in such a way that they know you and you know the other person. Fellowship relates to caring for another person, as that person cares about you. Fellowship goes well beyond just knowing things about another person, it’s about sharing life with another person.
The Christian life is ultimately about entering into fellowship with God. The Christian life begins with learning true knowledge about God and about understanding the moral will of God for our lives. But this is the beginning not the end of the Christian life. What we learn of God teaches us that He is a person, and that His will is both right and good for our lives. As we believe truth about God, and turn away from our sins, we enter into relationship with God. The highest good of the Christian life is to glorify God by enjoying relationship with Him. We learn to believe in Jesus, obey His will, and live in relationship to Him.
The question I would like to consider today is, “How do we know God?” If fellowship with God relates to knowing God, then how do we know God? I believe people who call themselves Christians answer this question in at least two basic ways. The first way is wrong and the second way is right. The first way people seek to know God is through religious experience. In the past this way was called Christian mysticism. Christian mysticism seeks a direct experience with God apart from God’s word in Scripture. This is a problem as we are not in the place of the Old Testament prophets or the Apostles of Jesus. We should not expect a direct word from the Lord since the standard of Scripture has been given.
In the past, Christian mysticism grew during times when the Scriptures were minimized or neglected. People felt distant from God and longed for fellowship with Him. The idea was that a person could turn their attention toward God individually in such a focused way that it would produce a direct experience with God. In the Middle Ages this particularly related to monks and monasteries. The idea was that long periods of personal introspection, humility, and ascetic deprivation would bring a person mystically closer to God. Perhaps God would draw close and produce some mystical vision or experience that would encourage the soul.
In our day you seldom meet a monk, and deep personal introspection is uncommon, but people still readily seek God through personal religious experience. The most common modern western version of this is through the religious experience of musical worship. In our day, well-funded churches go to great lengths and great expense to produce ecstatic religious experiences every Sunday morning. Through carefully choreographed lights, perfectly mixed and broadcast sound, songs chosen for their lifting and then soothing effect cause large audiences to have religious experiences week after week. Millions of people go to church each week and “have a religious experience.” These people will tell you that they have been near to God, and that their hearts were moved. They long to go back and experience that same feeling again, but those same people cannot tell you about fellowship with God. These same people may not be able to explain the gospel to you or have any true love for God’s word.
We can be moved in our heart by music and lighting and have no true experience with the living God. This modern evangelical experience is not altogether different than the ancient religious experience of massive cathedrals, the light of stained glass, ethereal chanting, burning incense, and priests in elaborate costumes. All this leads the participant to think, “Surely there must be something of God here, since this is outside my normal daily experience and it moves my heart!”
The trouble with seeking God through religious experience is that the experience must continue to enhance to produce the same emotional effect. If the same “show” is put on each week, the experience will soon grow repetitive and less mystical. The person may begin to see the production more than feel the intended effect of the religious emotional event. To keep the religious effect at its height, there are expensive workshops and seminars to train staff in the use of technology, light, and sound to maximize the effect of a weekly religious experience.
I do not believe this is what John was talking about when He urged us to have fellowship with God. The apostle John had fellowship with Jesus through a personal relationship with Him, and so can you. The opposite of seeking fellowship with God through mystical emotional experiences, is seeking God through His word. Words are how people communicate with each other. God has spoken to us in His word that we might know who He is. One of the many problems with mystical religious experience is that it has no standard. What is of God? What is contrived? What is of your own mind or imagination?
Scripture is the unchanging truth about God. Scripture is illumined by the Holy Spirit to help us understand who God is and what His purposes are in the world. Scripture teaches us of the atoning work of Jesus Christ and of His great and precious promises to us. We cannot come into fellowship with God apart from a clear knowledge of Jesus, “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). As we study Scripture, God does speak to our heart through specific and clear words. We learn the way of salvation and the way of holy living.
As Martyn Lloyd-Jones states so well, “The way of fellowship with God, therefore, is to come straight to the Word, to know its truth, to believe it and accept it – to pray on this basis and to exert our whole being in an effort and an endeavor to live it and to practice it. ‘Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled’; filled with the fullness of God, with the knowledge of God and such blessings as God alone can give.”
The seeking of religious experience apart from Scripture is based on feelings and feelings waver all about. Seeking fellowship with God based on Scripture truth gives a clear foundation for setting both our feet on the solid ground of hope. Fellowship with God based on truth will continue to grow and grow, as one grows to know the infinite personal God. No earnest Christian will ever tire of studying the Bible and encountering God therein.
Let us have fellowship with God by Holy Scripture,
Pastor Vic