In the foregoing message we covered the meaning of fellowship, a life of fellowship, and fellowship with God. Now we come to the effect, time, place, and procedures of fellowship with God.
What is the effect of our fellowship with God? According to the evidence in the Bible and our experience, the effect of fellowship has a negative and a positive aspect. On the negative side, fellowship with God continually removes the undesirable elements within us. One effect of our fellowship with God is the constant removal of things that should not be within us.
Every believer realizes that he is sinful. This is obvious, and many items are included in sin. All transgressions, unclean things, and unrighteous matters are sins. Besides sins, there are other less obvious things that should not be within us, such as the world. There are also other things that are less related to sins and the world within us. These are elements of the old creation, that is, the things of the flesh and the things of the self. The old creation, the flesh, and the self are of the same category. We may say that they are different expressions for saying the same thing. We can identify at least three categories of things that should not be in us—sins, the world, and the self.
Our fellowship with God has the function of gradually removing these three things from within us. The more we fellowship with God, the more they are exposed within us. This exposure requires us to deal with them. If our fellowship with God is deep and thorough, something will be constantly removed from us. Fellowship removes negative things from within us. Whether or not we have genuine fellowship with God can be seen by whether this function of removal is manifested in us. If it has been a long time since something has been removed from us, our fellowship with God has diminished or ceased. If we have fellowship with God, we can be certain that this fellowship will function to continually remove negative things from within us.
Being a Christian is absolutely not a matter of keeping regulations. We do not deal with certain matters because there are regulations that say, “This is a sin, so you must remove it”; “this is the world, so you need to remove it”; or “this is the self, so it must be removed.” Dealing with sins, the world, and the self is not a matter of keeping regulations. It is impossible to deal with these by regulations. Although the principle of sin is defined, and the Bible explicitly says that all unrighteousness is sin (1 John 5:17), there is no rule for dealing with sins. At what point are dealings between human beings unrighteous? No one can set a standard for us. It all depends on the inner sense from our fellowship with God. Hence, there is no regulation related to our dealing with things; rather, this is an effect produced spontaneously through fellowship.
Any dealing produced through fellowship is not accomplished once for all. When we were newly saved, our fellowship with God caused us to sense that a few things within us were improper, and we confessed and dealt with these things before Him. Gradually, as we progressed, our fellowship with God increased, deepened, and strengthened. We began to realize that some things, which we had previously not considered as sinful, were sins, and we had further dealings. For example, a new brother feels that lying is a sin, and thus he deals with it. However, he may still gossip, spreading the affairs of others, without any feeling of being wrong. After six months or a year of deeper fellowship with God, he will realize that gossiping is also a sin in need of dealing. I believe that the saints have had this kind of experience. This gradual deepening of our fellowship is the way to thoroughly deal with the problem of sin. This process takes many years. It is not possible to thoroughly deal with the problem of sins in six months to a year after being saved. This is because our knowledge, condemnation, and dealing with sins absolutely depend on the deepening of our fellowship with God.
New believers may not have much feeling concerning these matters, but gradually they will realize that the intensified sense of the fellowship of life is restricting them. They might not have had the sense that something is sin, but after a period of fellowship, they will realize that this matter is sin and must be condemned. They may not have had the sense that gossiping and judging others are sinful, but gradually, as their fellowship with God deepens, they will sense through this fellowship that all their gossiping and judging should be condemned. The more they advance and grow in life, the more they will realize that there is a restraining function in their fellowship that rescues them from improper things.
A believer’s strictness in dealing with sins to a large extent can be seen in his speaking. The more a brother or sister is restricted by fellowship with God, the stricter his speaking will be. It is easy for us to know if we have done something wrong in other matters, but it is not so easy to detect faults in our speaking and motives. These are exposed through the sense that comes from fellowship. Therefore, we always need to bring our motives and speaking into fellowship with God so that we can be examined. When we see that our motive is impure and our speaking is improper, we need to deal with them by the Lord. If we always have this kind of dealing in our fellowship with God, our intentions, motives, and speaking will increasingly be restricted by Him. This shows that the effect of fellowship, in the aspect of removing sins, is manifest in us.
The principle is the same concerning dealing with the world. It is even more difficult to define the world. Something that is not the world to one person may be the world to another, or it may not be the world to others, but it is to us. However, the more we live in fellowship, the more the fellowship will restrict us and require us to have deeper dealings, and the function of this fellowship will remove aspects of the world from us.
The same applies to dealing with the self. As we progress in the Lord, we will gradually see that a certain matter may be right and good and neither sinful nor of the world; however, it is full of the self. Our being right and good may not have God in it because it is of the self. This situation can be made known only through fellowship. It is difficult for us to know, let alone deal with, the self if we are not in fellowship with God. The deeper we fellowship with God and enter into Him, the more the things of the self can be gradually exposed. The self is in our contact with the brothers and sisters, in our spiritual preferences, in our desire to glorify ourselves, and even in our desire to be blameless. Only when we see the self through fellowship can we have proper dealings.
In conclusion, the more we live in fellowship, the more this fellowship will function to remove things from within us. There are many things that need to be removed from within us, not only sins, the world, and the self. Even things given to us by God must be removed. Just as God wanted Abraham to offer up the Isaac whom he had received from God, He will require us at a certain point to offer to Him all our spiritual experiences, our spiritual gifts, and the fruit of our work, that is, what we have received from Him. God requires that we let go of the things that we treasure from the past. Sometimes God will tear down those things that are perfect and praiseworthy. God’s removing and stripping of us in our fellowshipping with Him are often quite detailed. After experiencing some dealing, we may think that we are all right. However, the more we fellowship, the more we will sense that other things also need to be removed. The removing function of fellowship is truly profound and continuous.
If we do not know this aspect of fellowship, we will be unable to understand a person who has deep fellowship with God. For example, we may not understand the Lord’s word that John came neither eating nor drinking, and people said that he had a demon, and that the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and people said that He was a gluttonous man and a drunkard (Matt. 11:18-19). John’s not eating or drinking was in fellowship, and the Lord Jesus’ eating and drinking was also in fellowship. Those who live in fellowship do not uniformly express the same thing. Consequently, if we do not live in fellowship, we will be confused by these differences. Only by living in fellowship can we touch those who live in fellowship and understand their actions.
The effect of fellowship also has a positive aspect, which is the increase of the element of God. The more a person fellowships with God, the more the element of God will be increased within him. From the time we were saved, God’s unique goal has been to work Himself into us abundantly and richly. God’s work is not to make us good, whole, or spotless; rather, it is to work Himself into us. Hence, it often seems that the more we fellowship with God, the more God destroys our wholeness, goodness, and spotlessness so that He can add more of His element into us. This can be understood only in our experience, so I cannot speak concerning this aspect in a thorough way. Nevertheless, when we fellowship with God, we should sense that, on the negative side, God continually requires us to depart from the things that we should not have, and on the positive side, He wants His element to be continually added into us.
The increase of God’s element can be compared to the process of metabolism in our body; in metabolism old elements are constantly replaced with new elements. This does not mean that God’s element is added into us once for all. God is continually adding His new element into us in order to replace our old elements. From this we see that a spiritual person will not remain the same. A person who learns to live in fellowship is constantly undergoing a metabolic change. He may have had a certain condition last year, but he will have a different condition this year; he may have given people a certain feeling last year, but he will give people a different feeling this year. This was true even with the apostle Paul. We can tell from reading his Epistles that his early writings have a flavor that is different from his later writings because he was a person living in fellowship. He was constantly being changed and renewed. There is no outward standard for Christians. Those in religion have a standard, but Christians do not. The only need of a Christian is to fellowship with God.
When I was newly saved, I set a certain standard for myself. Anyone who did not meet my standard was considered unspiritual, and I questioned his salvation, but gradually I began to see that this was absolutely not right. My standard was absolute; however, many of those who were genuinely spiritual and who lived in fellowship were not up to my “standard,” whereas those who were up to my “standard” were apparently proper but not necessarily spiritual. Hence, we need to see that our genuine condition before the Lord does not depend on an outward standard but on inward fellowship. On one hand, this fellowship removes from us what we should not have; on the other hand, it continually adds the new element of God into us.
As an example, let us consider Bible reading. When I was young, I had the desire to buy sixty-six books of exposition on each of the sixty-six books of the Bible. I thought that this would give me a complete understanding of the Bible. However, gradually I saw that this was impossible. I needed to abandon the things I had received from others’ expositions and even the things I received myself when I read the Bible in fellowship. By letting go of the things I received in the past, I could receive new light in fellowship. Perhaps when I read the Bible next year, I will need to let go of the light I saw in the past so that there will be new light. This shows that in fellowship something is constantly being discarded, and something is constantly being gained. The things that need to be discarded do not consist merely of sin, the world, and the self. Even things that were given by God but have become old must be discarded. Brothers and sisters, the true condition of a Christian is found only in fellowship. No one can measure himself according to an outward standard, and neither can anyone measure others according to an outward standard. Every person needs to live in fellowship.
The effect of fellowship has the two aspects of constantly causing us to lose something and to gain something. However, the very things that we gain today may be the very things that the fellowship will require us to lose tomorrow. This is truly amazing. The more we live in the fellowship, the more intensive the metabolic function will become. If this metabolism ceases, and nothing old is removed and nothing new is added, our condition will remain the same year after year; we will no longer be in fellowship, and our growth will stop. A certain brother may have been wonderful five years ago, and he may still be wonderful today; he may have been lovely five years ago, and he may still be lovely today. We may say that such a brother is stable, but according to our experience of fellowship, there might be a problem in the future. A Christian who is in fellowship should always be changing. Fellowship constantly changes a person; it continually discharges the old elements within him and replaces them with new elements. Hence, the entire Christian living should be in fellowship. If we truly live in fellowship, the things that should not be in us will be removed on the negative side, and God will be added into us on the positive side. More and more we will be delivered from the self, and God will increase within us. This is the effect of fellowship.