THEME: REAL FELLOWSHIP
Text: 1 John 1: 1-7
By: Adeoye, Emmanuel (Evangelist)
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FIVE REASONS 1 JOHN WAS WRITTEN
- That we may have Fellowship (v. 3).
- That we may have Joy (v. 4)
- That we may not Sin (2:1).
- That we may not be Deceived (2:26).
- That we may know we are Saved (5:13)
Jesus is Real, Jesus is the bases of our Fellowship, Historical, Eternal Remarkable Experientially (John 1:1-4)
JOHN STOTT
The Common Participation In The Grace Of God, The Salvation Of Christ And The Indwelling Spirit Which is The Spiritual Birthright Of All Christian believers.
It Is Their Common Possession Of God The Father, Son And Holy Spirit Which, make Them One.
I John 1:7
John is saying that Jesus is the source of his message. John did not use the word Gospel rather he uses witness, testimony, truth, message (That God is LIGHT).
- RELATIONSHIP AND FELLOWSHIP
Sin separate us from God but doesn’t change our relationship but changes our fellowship.
Christians has Three enemies
The world
The flesh
The devil
Christians have Three champions
The Father
The Son
The Holy spirit
Vs 5 of chapter one to vs 6 of chapter 2 SIN is mentioned 9 times.
Fellowship is change of Information and Affection.
We are traders to darkness Col 1:13, 1Peter 2:9 He didn’t ask us to bring the darkness with us. I cannot love God and remain in darkness; it means something is wrong
“Koinonia” is our share life in Christ. Seeing and doing mentioned 4times, if we say
As you read John’s letter, you will discover that he enjoys using certain words, and that the word “manifest” is one of them. “And life was manifested” (1 John 1:2), he says. This life was not hidden so that we have to search for it and find it. No, it was manifested-revealed openly! God has revealed Himself in creation (Rom 1:20), but creation alone could never tell us the story of God’s love.
God has also revealed Himself much more fully in His Word, the Bible. But God’s final and most complete revelation is in His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). Because Jesus is God’s revelation of Himself, He has a very special name: “The Word of Life” (1 John 1:1). This same title opens John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
Why Does Jesus Christ Have This Name? Because Christ Is To Us What Our Words Are To Others. Our Words Reveal To Others Just What We Think And How We Feel. Christ Reveals To Us The Mind And Heart Of God. He Is The Living Means Of Communication Between God And Men. To Know Jesus Christ Is To Know God!
John Makes No Mistake In His Identification Of Jesus Christ. Jesus Is The Son Of The Father – The Son Of God (1 John 1:3). John Warns Us Several Times In His Letter Not To Listen To The False Teachers Who do not Tell us About Jesus Christ. “Who Is A Liar But He That Denieth That Jesus Is The Christ?” (1 John 2:22)”.
Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God” (1 John 4:2-3). If a man is wrong about Jesus Christ, he is wrong about God, because Jesus Christ is the final and complete revelation of God to men.
For example, there are those who tell us that Jesus was a man but was not God.
John has no place for such teachers! One of the last things he writes in this letter is, “We are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life” (1 John 5:20).
False teaching is so serious a matter that John wrote about it in his second letter too, warning believers not to invite false teachers into their homes (2 John 9-10). And he makes it plain that to deny that Jesus is God is to follow the Res of Antichrist (1 John 2:22-23).
Christians do not believe that there are three gods. They believe that one God exists in three Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Nor do Christians believe merely that one God reveals Himself in three different ways, much as one man may be a husband, a father, and a son. No, the Bible teaches that God is one but that He exists in three Persons.
One teacher of doctrine used to say, “Try to explain the Trinity and you may lose your mind!
As you read the Gospel records of the life of Jesus, you see the wonderful kind of life God wants us to enjoy. But it is not by imitating Jesus, our Example, that we may share in this life. No, there is a far better way.
But this is where our student is wrong! It was not the Apostles’ physical nearness to Jesus Christ that made them what they were. It was their spiritual nearness. They had committed themselves to Him as their Saviour and their Lord. Jesus Christ was real and exciting to John and his colleagues because they had trusted Him. By trusting Christ, they had experienced eternal life!
Six times in this letter John uses the phrase “born of God.” This was not an idea John had invented; he had heard Jesus use these words. “Except a man be born again,” Jesus had said, “he cannot see the kingdom of God…. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ‘Ye must be born again'” (John 3:3,6-7). We can experience this “real life” only after we have believed the Gospel, put our trust in Christ, and been “born of God.”
“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God” (1 John 5:1). Eternal life is not something we earn by good works or deserve because of good character. Eternal life, the life that is real, is a gift from God to those who trust His Son as their Saviour.
John wrote his Gospel to tell people how to receive this wonderful life (John 20:31).
He wrote his first letter to tell people how to be sure they have really been born of God (1 John 5:9-13).
A college student returned to the campus after going home for a family funeral, and almost at once his grades began to go down. His counselor thought that the death of his grandmother had affected the boy, and that time would heal the wound, but the grades only became worse.
Finally, the boy confessed the real problem. While he was home, he happened to look into his grandmother’s old Bible, and there he discovered in the family record that he was an adopted son.
“I don’t know who I belong to,” he told his counselor. “I don’t know where I came from!”
The assurance that we are in God’s family – that we have been “born of God” – is vitally important to all of us.
Certain characteristics are true of all God’s children. A person who is born of God lives a righteous life (1 John 2:29). A child of God does not practice sin (which is the meaning of the King James word “commit,” 1 John 3:9). A believer will occasionally commit sin (cf. 1 John 1:8-2:2), but he will not make it a habit to sin.
God’s children also love each other and their Heavenly Father (cf. 1 John 4:7; 5:1). They have no love for the world system around them (1 John 2:15-17), and because of this the world hates them (1 John 3:13). Instead of being overcome by the pressures of this world, and swept off balance, the children of God overcome the world (1 John 5:4). This is another mark of true children of God.
Why is it so important that we know that we have been born of God? John gives us the answer if you are not a child of God, you a “child of wrath” (Eph 2:1-3) and may become a “child of the devil” (1 John 3:10; and see Matt:13:24-30, 36-43). A “child of the devil” is a counterfeit Christian who acts “saved” but has not been born again. Jesus called the Pharisees “children of the devil” (John 8:44) and they were very religious.
So with a counterfeit Christian. He may do many good things in this life, but when he faces the final judgment he will be rejected. “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And in Thy name have cast out demons? And in Thy name done many wonderful works?’ And then will I profess unto them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, ye that work iniquity’ (Matt 7:22-23,).
Each of us must ask himself honestly, “Am I a true child of God or am I a counterfeit Christian? Have I truly been born of God?“
If you have not experienced eternal life, this real life, you can experience it right now! Read 1 John 5:9-15 carefully.
God has “gone on record” in His Word. He offers you the gift of eternal life. Believe His promise and ask Him for His gift. “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom 10:13).
We have discovered two important facts about “the life that is real”: it is revealed in Jesus Christ and it is experienced when we put our trust in Him as our Saviour. But John does not stop here!
That we may have fellowship (v. 3). This word fellowship is an important one in the vocabulary of a Christian. It simply means “to have in common. “As sinners, men have nothing in common with the holy God. But God in His grace sent Christ to have something in common with men. Christ took on Himself a human body and became a man. Then He went to the cross and took on that body the sins of the world (1 Peter 2:24).
Because He paid the price for our sins, the way is open for God to forgive us and take us into His family. When we trust Christ, we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). The term translated “partakers” in Peter’s epistle is from the same Greek root that is translated “fellowship” in 1 John 1:3.
The life that is real helps to solve the basic problem of loneliness, for Christians have genuine fellowship with God and with one another. Jesus promised, “Lo, I am with you always” (Matt 28:20). In his letter, John explains the secret of fellowship with God and with other Christians. This is the first purpose John mentions for the writing of his letter the sharing of his experience of eternal life.
That we may have joy (v. 4). Fellowship is Christ’s answer to the loneliness of life. Joy is His answer to the emptiness, the hollowness of life.
John, in his epistle, uses the word “joy” only once, but the idea of joy runs through the entire letter. Joy is not something that we manufacture for ourselves; joy is a wonderful by-product of our fellowship with God. David knew the joy which John mentions; he said, “In Thy presence is fullness of joy” (Ps 16:11).
Basically, sin is the cause of the unhappiness that overwhelms our world today. Sin promises joy but it always produces sorrow. The pleasures of sin are temporary – they are only for a season (Heb 11:25). God’s pleasures last eternally – they are forevermore (Ps 16:11).
The life that is real produces a joy that is real – not some limp substitute.
Jesus said, the night before He was crucified, “Your joy no man taketh from you” (John 16:22). “These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full” (John 15:11).
CONCLUSION
Karl Marx wrote, “The first requisite for the people’s happiness is the abolition of religion.” But the Apostle John writes, in effect, “Faith in Jesus Christ gives you a joy that can never be duplicated by the world. I have experienced this joy myself, and I want to share it with you.”
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