CHAPTER 7
Knowing God
“That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.”
(1 John 1:3 KJV)
I am ready to admit that I approach a statement like this with fear and trembling. It is one of those statements concerning which a man feels that the injunction given to Moses of old at the burning bush is highly appropriate: “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5 KJV).
Here we are given, without any hesitation, a description, the summum bonum, of the Christian life; here, indeed, is the whole object, the ultimate, the goal of all Christian experience and all Christian endeavor. This, beyond any question, is the central message of the Christian gospel and of the Christian faith.
The Apostle reminds us of that by this emphatic and vital word truly—certainly, beyond a doubt. The word means that, but also something else; it carries in it a suggestion of astonishment. There is no doubt about it and yet the more we realize how true it is, the more amazed we become.
It is an amazement of incredulity, one borne of a realization of something which is a fact certainly, yet astoundingly; to the natural man, incredible, but to the Christian true, yet amazing. ‘Truly, our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.’
Here, let me repeat, is the very acme of Christian experience and at the same time it is a goal; it is the whole object of Christian experience and of Christian faith and teaching.
Now I am tempted to put this matter in the form of a question. I wonder, as we examine ourselves and our experience, whether we all can say honestly that this is our central conception of the Christian life; whether this is our habitual way of thinking of it and of all that it means and all it represents.
Surely as we read a statement like this we must be conscious of utter unworthiness and of failure. However far we may have advanced in the Christian life and experience, as we meet this statement, which John thus introduces without any preamble, do we not find that we are in danger of dwelling on the lower level and of failing to avail ourselves of that which is offered to us in this wondrous faith about which we are concerned?
Let me put it negatively like this: Christians are not simply people who are primarily concerned about the application of Christian principles and Christian teaching in all their relationships and departments of life. They are concerned about that, but that is not the thing that truly makes them Christian. How easy it is today to think of Christianity like that, and how many people do so.
Take a popular classification of a Christian and a non-Christian. Christian people are those who are concerned with the ethics and the teaching of the New Testament and who see the desperate need of applying them to the world today.
Now I grant that that is part of the Christian life, but if our conception of it stops at that, we have not, in a sense, got anywhere near the definition given by the Apostle here. No, the Christian life is not essentially an application of teaching; it is a fellowship, a communion with God Himself and nothing less.
No, the Christian life is not essentially an application of teaching; it is a fellowship, a communion with God Himself and nothing less.
Or let me even put it like this: To be a Christian does not merely mean that you hold orthodox opinions on Christian teaching. I put it like that because I think that this is another important emphasis.
Perhaps to some of us, and particularly perhaps to those of us who are more evangelical than others, this is the greatest danger of all. We recognize at once that there are certain people who call themselves Christian who hold views that are the antithesis of the Christian faith.
There are people calling themselves Christian who deny the unique deity of Christ; to us they cannot be Christian. There are certain things, we say, which are absolutely essential and there can be no parleying or discussion about them. They are essential to the faith, there is an irreducible minimum, but there are people calling themselves Christian who deny some of these things, indeed perhaps all of them together.
They may even hold office in the Christian Church and yet be uncertain about the person of the Lord, denying his miracles, denying the fact of his resurrection, denying the atoning value of his death.
Now to us that is quite clear. We see that someone like that, whatever he may call himself, cannot, according to the New Testament, be a Christian; there are certain things which Christians must believe; there are certain tenets to which they must subscribe; there are certain definitions which they must make their own and about which they say, ‘I am certain.’
We see that orthodoxy is essential, but my point here, and I am anxious to impress and stress this, is that to hold the right views, to subscribe to the right doctrine, even to be defenders of the right doctrine, does not of necessity make people Christians.
No, while the Christian must hold right views and doctrines, that is not the essence of the Christian life and Christian position. Rather, it is to have fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
Let me even put it like this: To believe that your sins are forgiven by the death of Christ is not enough. Even to be sound on the whole doctrine of justification by faith only—the great watchword of the Protestant Reformation—that is not enough. That can be held as an intellectual opinion, and if people merely hold on to a number of orthodox opinions, they are not, I repeat, in the truly Christian position.
The essence of the Christian position and of the Christian life is that we should be able to say, ‘Truly my fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.’
That, therefore, is why we should always approach a statement like this with fear and trembling. There have been people in the Church, alas, many times in the past, who have fought for orthodoxy and who have been defenders of the faith and yet they have sometimes found themselves on their deathbeds coming to the realization that they have never known God.
They have only held opinions; they have only fought for certain articles of creed or faith. The things they fought for were right, but, alas, it is possible to stop at that negative position and to fail to realize that the whole object of all the things they claim to believe is to bring them to this central position.
This, let me emphasize again, is the essence, the summum bonum, of the Christian life; it is the theme, the objective of everything that has been done by the Lord Jesus Christ, who did not come to earth merely to give us an exalted teaching which we can apply to human relationships, though that is there and it follows; he did not come merely to save us from hell; he came to bring us into fellowship with the Father and with Himself.