1. FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD

"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).

Fellowship with God as your Heavenly Father proves that you have been born again (1 John 1:1 to 2:2).

John starts his case for a "know-so" salvation by starting that "truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." This fellowship is the wonderful feeling of being right  with God so that, in prayer, one can talk with God as his Heavenly Father-in love, peace, joy, faith, and trust for every good thing.

This fellowship with the Heavenly Father is feeling just like the feelings of a little boy when he talks with his big, strong, good, and loving father, upon whom he depends for everything.

Only the children of God can have fellowship with God. Those who have fellowship with the Father and the Son are children of God. Paul tells the one and only way whereby one can call God Father and so have fellowship with him as his child: "When the fullness of the time has come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying. Abba, Father" (Gal. 4:4-6).

"God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have [God's] everlasting life" (John 3:16).

By being born again one becomes a son of God. This new Father-son relationship makes possible for the first time the sweet fellowship between the saved sinner and his Heavenly Father.

If you are now in fellowship with the Father and with Jesus, then you should know that you are a son of God and that you have eternal life. Only those who have been born of God and have the spirit of his Son in their hearts can cry "Abba, Father" and thereby have fellowship with God as their Heavenly Father.

When you first trusted Jesus to save you, you had the feeling of forgiveness from God and of love for God, and for other believers. You also had a peace of mind and a joy that you had never known before. You felt the presence of the Father and the Son in your heart, just as Jesus promised when he said, "My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him" (John 14:23).

Many Christians can remember the time, place, and occasion when they were born again, because it was such a great experience. Some others believed with such a childlike faith, perhaps in a Christian home, that they do not remember just when it was that they had saving faith. Some physical and spiritual births are with trial and others are with ease. But the fact is that if these Christians are alive physically or spiritually, then they have been born so. There had to be a definite time when the born-again ones received Christ into their hearts by faith, just as there was a definite time when they were born physically.

When told that he would have to have a birth certificate to prove that he had been born, the great American humorist Will Rogers answered United States immigration officials, "In Oklahoma when they see a grown man like me, they just take for granted that he has been born."

The main thing is that believers do now have, or they have had in the past, sweet fellowship, or the feeling of being right with God. This is because they believe that Jesus died for their sins. And they pray, "Our Father, which art in heaven," with the faith and feeling that God is their own Heavenly Father.

This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 1:5 to 2:2).

Notice the "ifs" in the above passage. When you were first saved, you were in fellowship with God and with other believers. I say "were" because this fellowship can be lost and gotten back many times by the children of God. Sometimes the child of God does not feel right with his Heavenly Father. He no longer has fellowship with God. The way grows dim not only between him and his Heavenly Father but also between him and other Christians. This loss of fellowship is caused by sins of omission as well as commission. "To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin" (James 4:17).

"Yes, I once had the joy of sweet fellowship with God." If you truly can say this, then you need to confess to your Heavenly Father your sins and repent of them.

When this fellowship with you Heavenly Father ceases it is always your fault. Yet, our Heavenly Father will do everything necessary to correct you and to restore fellowship with you. He says: My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?

For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby (Heb. 12:5-11).

Loving parents punish their children when they need it. And, if they also are wise parents they will fit the punishment to the degree of the wrong in order to get obedience from the child, both for the child's good and to bring harmony or fellowship into the family.

Likewise, our loving Heavenly Father will wisely punish his children according to their sin to get them to obey him and to live the good life of holiness which gives "the peaceable fruit of righteousness." Just as loving parents would not think of killing their children, neither would our loving Heavenly Father think of spiritually killing one of his born-again children, because "God is love."

Unsaved people, those who have not experienced the new birth, are the children of the devil. God leaves them to the laws of nature, and of Moses, and to the words of Christ for judgment, both in this world and in the next. So their punishment may not seem to come at all, since it may be much slower in coming than the punishment given at once by a loving father to his own children.

This explains why it seems that some Christians suffer more than some non-Christians. But the punishment of the non-Christian is sure to come in this world, and it will continue forever in hell and in the lake of fire in the world to come.

When children need to be punished for not obeying their parents, the parent-child "fellowship" is stopped but not the parent-child "relationship." So it is with God and his born-again children. For when they will not obey him and they need hard spiritual punishment to get them to obey for their own good, he uses the word "scourge" - a symbol to show how hard the punishment may have to be. But he will not kill them spiritually or cut off his relationship with them as their loving, all-wise Heavenly Father.

This is because Christ died for all of our past, present, and future sins. So the born-again sinner has passed from spiritual death unto spiritual life. All of his sins are forgiven, and he has God's eternal life.

Jesus, who now sits at the right hand of the Father, saves us from our present sins by declaring the saving power of his precious blood to the Father every time we sin. And so, God's just wrath, which says that "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23), is turned away from the believer who has sinned.

Even if believers are not faithful, "he abideth faithful; he cannot deny himself" (2 Tim. 2:13).

If there is any sin which a believer has not confessed to God in prayer, then the sweet fellowship with his Heavenly Father is restored. How many times? Not only "seventy times seven" but as many times as needed, as long as life on earth lasts (Matt. 18:22).

A sin is needs to be confessed to God only once to be forgiven, unless it is committed again.

A second time the disobedient child asked, "Mom, will you forgive me?" the mother replied, "Dear child, you can believe me, I forgave you the first time you asked. Go on and play and forget it."

By this time you should know that God's eternal life was a gift to you the moment you were born again. You should also know by now that your fellowship with God depends upon your faithfulness to God as your Heavenly Father.

If you call yourself a Christian and/or a church member and you never have had the joy and peace of sweet fellowship with God in prayer, then you never have been saved from your sins.

If you have never had sweet fellowship with God as your Heavenly Father in prayer, upon what then do you depend for your claim to being a Christian?

Do you claim to be a Christian because of church membership, water baptism, praying through, religious activity, morality, sincerity, good works, the second blessing, or the keeping of the Ten Commandments?  Or, are you claim to be a Christian because you say, "I am doing the best I can,"