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As Scripture declares, we are to place our love to God above all others (Mat 10:37). There is the desirous love for God, and then there is the practical love for God—and our practical love for God is in accordance to our love for one another (1 Jhn 4:12, 20), esp. to those “who are of the household of faith,” which is “the household of God” (Gal 6:10; Eph 2:19).
As God gives us to increase our desirous love for Him, may He also give us to increase our practical love to all others, thereby increasing our practical love for Him!
True Fellowship
Fellowship is, in its very highest expression, having one common object with the Father, and taking part in the same portion; and that object, that portion, is the Lord Jesus Christ—known and enjoyed through the Holy Spirit. This is fellowship with the Father. What a privilege! What a dignity! What unspeakable blessedness! To be allowed to have a common object and a common portion with the Father Himself! To delight in the One in whom He delights! There can be nothing higher, nothing better, and nothing more valuable than this.
Not even in heaven itself shall we know aught beyond this. Our own condition will, thank God, be vastly different. We shall be done with our dying body, and be clothed with our body of glory. We shall be done with a sinful, sorrowful, distracting world, where all is directly opposed to our Father and to us, and we shall breathe the pure, invigorating atmosphere of that bright and blessed world of Eternity. For, in so far as our fellowship is real, it is now as it shall be then, “with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ”—“in the light,” and by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is much as to our fellowship with the Father.
As regards our fellowship one with another, it is simply as we walk in the light, as we read, “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jhn 1:7). We can only have fellowship one with another as we walk in the immediate presence of our Father. There may be a vast amount of mere interpersonal relationship without one particle of divine fellowship (union without fellowship—NC).
Alas! A great deal of what passes for Christian fellowship is nothing more than the merest religious gossip—the vapid, worthless, soul-withering chit-chat of the religious world, than which nothing can be more miserably unprofitable. True Christian fellowship can only be enjoyed in the light. It is when we are individually walking with the Father, in the power of personal fellowship, that we really have fellowship one with another, and this fellowship consists in real heart enjoyment of the Lord Jesus as our one Object, our common portion.
It is not heartless traffic in certain favorite doctrines which we receive to hold in common, blessed as they may be. It is something quite different from all this. It is delighting in the Lord Jesus Christ, in common with all those who are walking in the light. It is attachment to Him, to His Person, to His Name, His Word, His cause and His people.
It is joint consecration of heart and soul to that blessed One who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own Blood, and thereby brought us into the light of His Father’s presence, there to walk with Him and with one another. This, and nothing less, is Christian fellowship.
- C H Mackintosh
Excerpt from MJS devotional for March 22:
“We want fellowship with the Lord Jesus in His peace and joy, and naturally fear and seek to avoid suffering. However, it is in the fellowship of His sufferings that we partake of His peace and joy.”
None But The Hungry Heart
As God gives us to increase our desirous love for Him, may He also give us to increase our practical love to all others, thereby increasing our practical love for Him!
True Fellowship
Fellowship is, in its very highest expression, having one common object with the Father, and taking part in the same portion; and that object, that portion, is the Lord Jesus Christ—known and enjoyed through the Holy Spirit. This is fellowship with the Father. What a privilege! What a dignity! What unspeakable blessedness! To be allowed to have a common object and a common portion with the Father Himself! To delight in the One in whom He delights! There can be nothing higher, nothing better, and nothing more valuable than this.
Not even in heaven itself shall we know aught beyond this. Our own condition will, thank God, be vastly different. We shall be done with our dying body, and be clothed with our body of glory. We shall be done with a sinful, sorrowful, distracting world, where all is directly opposed to our Father and to us, and we shall breathe the pure, invigorating atmosphere of that bright and blessed world of Eternity. For, in so far as our fellowship is real, it is now as it shall be then, “with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ”—“in the light,” and by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is much as to our fellowship with the Father.
As regards our fellowship one with another, it is simply as we walk in the light, as we read, “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jhn 1:7). We can only have fellowship one with another as we walk in the immediate presence of our Father. There may be a vast amount of mere interpersonal relationship without one particle of divine fellowship (union without fellowship—NC).
Alas! A great deal of what passes for Christian fellowship is nothing more than the merest religious gossip—the vapid, worthless, soul-withering chit-chat of the religious world, than which nothing can be more miserably unprofitable. True Christian fellowship can only be enjoyed in the light. It is when we are individually walking with the Father, in the power of personal fellowship, that we really have fellowship one with another, and this fellowship consists in real heart enjoyment of the Lord Jesus as our one Object, our common portion.
It is not heartless traffic in certain favorite doctrines which we receive to hold in common, blessed as they may be. It is something quite different from all this. It is delighting in the Lord Jesus Christ, in common with all those who are walking in the light. It is attachment to Him, to His Person, to His Name, His Word, His cause and His people.
It is joint consecration of heart and soul to that blessed One who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own Blood, and thereby brought us into the light of His Father’s presence, there to walk with Him and with one another. This, and nothing less, is Christian fellowship.
- C H Mackintosh
Excerpt from MJS devotional for March 22:
“We want fellowship with the Lord Jesus in His peace and joy, and naturally fear and seek to avoid suffering. However, it is in the fellowship of His sufferings that we partake of His peace and joy.”
None But The Hungry Heart
