The very word Christianity, enshrining the name of the Anointed of God, intimates surely that He is the only Mediator between God and men. Every blessing we enjoy comes through Him.
Thank God, it is not being merely saved from the consequences of our sins that will suit the heart of the blessed God, wonderful and necessary as that is, and we ought never to lose the wonder of it. But God desires our company, and to be consciously in His presence means worship. Worship is the highest exercise the creature is capable of. Not only are we saved, but we are brought to God, and “accepted in the Beloved”—sons before the Father’s face, priests in association with the Son of God, our great High Priest.
Perhaps we can best begin this subject by referring to John 10. There our Lord is not only the Good Shepherd, who gives His life for the sheep, ministering salvation and other blessings, but there is a Shepherd and—a flock—He is the Shepherd, and His own constitute His flock. it is not a question of walls, as in the fold—Judaism—but of the attraction of a Person.
Our Lord came to the Jewish fold, this system of law and ordinances, and called His sheep by name, and led them out. But He had other sheep, Gentile disciples, and these must be brought, and
“There shall be one flock, and one Shepherd” (John 10:16).
The flock of Christ is not national, but universal; it knows no frontiers, no social distinctions. The Church of God is not the Jewish Church nor the Gentile Church, but the Church of God. The Church of God is not the Church of England, nor the Church of Germany, nor the Church of Australia, but the Church of GOD.
We get in John 10 the first intimation of Jew and Gentile being brought together in Christ. It is brought out doctrinally in Ephesians 2:11-17, where we get the middle wall of partition—the barrier between Jew and Gentile—broken down, and one new man made, so making peace. It is a great truth, for we are apt to be independent in our thoughts, and forget that Jew and Gentile, French and German, Hottentot and Greenlander, if Christian, are one in Christ.
They may speak many tongues on earth, but they will sing the one new song in heaven. They may belong to many nations, but they have only one Lord.
Let us see how this fellowship was actually formed. We would link up John 10, just referred to, and 1 John 1:1-4. Our Lord did not go to Jerusalem, and find His first disciples among the religious elite of the Temple. He did not choose the scholarly, the educated, the philosophical. No, He went to the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and called fishermen, “ignorant and unlearned men” as they were in those days. He called Andrew and Peter, He called James and John. He called His sheep by name and led them out of the Jewish fold, and attached them to Himself.
In the companionship of the Lord with His disciples a fellowship was formed. Christ was the Centre and Power of it. They were in close association with Him as He moved about in His three-and-a-half years of public ministry. Little by little it was borne in upon them, who He was. What character it gave to His manhood when they realised He was God—“God … manifest in the flesh.” Did not Peter confess, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God?” (Matt. 16:16). What thoughts must have filled their hearts! Dimly perhaps all this was apprehended, but when the Holy Spirit indwelt them, consequent on our Lord’s ascension to glory, the power of these things laid hold of them.
The disciples could not fail to realise that He was the Son of the Father. Our Lord spoke much of the Father. “I and My Father are One” (John 10:30), He affirmed, He was ever in communion with the Father. The Father was not the Son. The Son was not the Father. Yet, with the Spirit, they are ONE God, one in purpose, counsel, will, knowledge, movement. It is no wonder that one of the disciples, writing for the rest, could say,
“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
No wonder the disciples were drawn to the Lord. He was the Source of all their understanding of divine things, the source of all their blessings. His life, His power, His grace, His love, His death, His glorious resurrection, the gift of the Holy Spirit, drew them to Him, and, in being drawn to Him, they were drawn to each other. The more they shared these feelings and thoughts as to Him, the more they were drawn to each other. It formed a fellowship the like of which had never been known before.
So precious was this fellowship, they could not keep it to themselves. That which they had seen and heard, they declared to their fellow-believers, in order that they might have fellowship with them, and that fellowship was with the Father and the Son. Wonderful inestimable blessing!
This fellowship is ours today, and the moral or spiritual power of it is found in a blessed Person—the Son of God—an attraction that binds believers together in one fellowship of life.
We turn now to 1 Corinthians 1:9,
“God is faithful, by whom ye were called to the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”
If l John 1:1-4 presents fellowship in its moral or spiritual power, which alone can maintain it in reality, 1 Corinthians 1:9, presents it on the side of our being called to it, our responsibility. So the apostle immediately begins to speak of divisions among them. The Corinthian assembly was highly blessed. They were enriched in all utterance and in all knowledge, and behind in no gift.
This should have kept them right in the assembly. Alas! it is not always so. The apostle does not disclose the names of the actual leaders around whom groups were being formed. He rebuked this tendency all the more effectually by denouncing it, and using his own name and those of Apollos and Cephas. The situation was serious, and we see the awful havoc such a tendency has made when we view the sects, denominations and divisions of Christendom.
It comes about through eyes getting off Christ. Eyes are fixed on individuals, instead of on Christ. Parties are formed, schisms are made, and that with disastrous consequences.
Taking up the apostle’s figure, those, who said they were of Paul, lost Apollos and Cephas. Those who said they were of Cephas, lost Paul and Apollos Why not benefit by all the gifts an ascended Lord has seen fit to give to His church? The church is a whole. Was Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for them? Nay all our blessings flow from Christ and Christ alone. And our eyes should be upon Him and Him alone.
In that case we should prize God’s servants, not less but more, and all of them as gifts from our Lord, the Head in heaven. In that way we shall hold the Head, and in holding the Head we shall hold each other.
May this be a voice to us today. We cannot put things right. We may surely be right ourselves. And a good deal of that lies in our SPIRIT—“Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3).