T. Austin-Sparks · 1 of 3

The Basis and Values of Fellowship

Reading: John 17:20-23; Acts 2:42-47; 1 Cor. 9:10; 2 Cor. 13:14.

Fellowship is a matter about which the Lord has expressed a desire. We do not have far to go to know that this is the will of the Lord. But that is not all. The Lord very often presents a matter in apparently simple language, but we must never think that because He does that, the matter is a simple matter. We must remember that it depends entirely upon who it is who speaks as to the value of that which is said. There are those people whose words we do not take much account of, because we know the people; that is, we feel that we cannot take them very seriously, and therefore put down their utterances at a somewhat small value, or discount what they say. But when we are dealing with the Lord we can never put things too high. The danger is always of not recognising how great is the thing which the Lord says.

There is this one premise which we can establish once and for all in relation to anything which comes from the Lord, that is that it always carries a value and importance commensurate with such a One as He is. The Lord is never casual. The Lord is never merely sentimental. The Lord never says things for the sake of saying them, or for the time being. The Lord is eternal and infinite and universal, and everything which comes from the Lord takes its character from Him, and is therefore of eternal significance, of infinite value, of universal importance. We must adjust ourselves, therefore, to every matter with that in mind. And when we speak of fellowship we must never just feel that the Lord wants us to be on good terms with one another, to get along well together, and to have no friction because that is the nicest thing, the most pleasant thing, the happiest way of getting on. That is very small. It may be very good, but it is of dimensions much less than are worthy of God. When the Lord speaks about fellowship He has things of infinite meaning and value in His mind, in His thought, and in the background of His utterances. We should be learning to approach everything in the Word of God on that ground; that we never take anything just as it stands, but that we go behind the thing and see the vast range of Divine significance, value, and importance which lies behind what looks like the simplest thing, and until we do get behind things, we have not the adequate impact of that thing to realise all that God has in mind. And if that is true of anything, it is true of the matter of fellowship.

In the Gospels it is presented quite simply, because it was not the regime, the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, and therefore men were not yet prepared to inwardly apprehend the full thought of God. By the Holy Spirit's inward illumination they came to apprehend the far greater meaning of these things, so that in the epistles we have the deeper meaning of fellowship opened to us.

I want to remind you that associated with one compound word in the epistles, the greatest things with which we have to do are found. That is the word "together". The prefix σύν (Gk. "sun") is linked with all the most vital and far-reaching matters of our relationship with God. I just remind you of some of them, not to stay to study them, but by way of emphasising how important this matter of our relationship in Christ is. We are carried back into the before times eternal with this word, and we are told that we were chosen or elected together in Christ before the world was. That is stated definitely in Ephesians 1:4 and in 1 Peter 5:13, so that fellowship is no incidental thing. It is not something which has just come in time, that we get on well together in this life. It dates back to the timeless counsels of God in eternity, and there together in Christ in those eternal counsels, we were chosen. Get the force of this. It does not just say that we were chosen in Christ, and it does not say we were chosen together with Christ. It says that we were chosen together in Christ. That means that we were seen as one in Christ, we were together, not Jesus Christ and ourselves as individuals brought together, but brought together in Christ in the thought and intention of God from eternity. So that God's eternal thought before we came into being was a togetherness of His own. You can understand why the enemy takes such pains to destroy the fellowship of God's people if God has regarded this thing of such immense importance as to have it as a definite part of His plan, His thought-out intention, and purposed it from all eternity.