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Unless noted otherwise, all Scripture references are
from the New Scofield Reference Bible.
Printed in the United States of America
1990, Revised 2005
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. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.
(1 John 1:3, 4)
How to Have Fellowship With God
He would not proceed any further until He had washed their feet. He told Simon Peter, “If I wash you not, you have no part with Me” (see John 13:8). He was not discussing salvation – that was not the subject in the Upper Room. The great subject in the Upper Room was the matter of fellowship with Him – of vital, personal relationship to Him. He says, “If I do not wash you, you will not have that fellowship with Me.” You cannot fellowship with Him unless the wrong things in your life are dealt with in a very definite way.
When our Lord went into the Upper Room that last Passover, He erected on the dying embers of that famed feast something new. The Lord Jesus and His disciples were having fellowship. But before He began to tell them about the future, what would be coming – that He would be returning to this earth to take His own out of the earth; before He told them about the new, living relationship with those personally and vitally identified with Him, baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of believers, a union that is like the vine and branches; before He uttered that great Lord’s prayer in John 17 where the One who is our great intercessor prays for His own; before He entered into any of that, during that last meal He had with them He got up and washed His disciples’ feet.
He would not proceed any further until He had washed their feet. He told Simon Peter, “If I wash you not, you have no part with Me” (see John 13:8). He was not discussing salvation – that was not the subject in the Upper Room. The great subject in the Upper Room was the matter of fellowship with Him – of vital, personal relationship to Him. He says, “If I do not wash you, you will not have that fellowship with Me.” You cannot fellowship with Him unless the wrong things in your life are dealt with in a very definite way.
The book we are dealing with, that of 1 John, is believed by some to be the book of the Bible that was written last – not Revelation. Here John deals with the matter of fellowship. The Lord has left and ascended back to heaven. Having loved His own, He loved them right on through to the end, and He wants them to have continued fellowship with Himself despite the fact that He is now back up there and we’re down here on the earth.
John is talking to you and me. He spans the nearly twenty centuries, looks down on us today, and says, “We want you to have fellowship with Him, and this is the way it’s done.” The Lord washed the feet of His disciples when He was here on earth, and He’s still in the foot-washing business.
That which was from the beginning… (1 John 1)
The beginning that John talks about here is not any of the beginnings that have been mentioned before. There are actually three beginnings mentioned in Scripture.
There is, of course, the one in Genesis:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)
That beginning, in my judgment, cannot be shaken. When I was in college, the teaching was that you and I lived in a universe that was probably 200,000 years old. That seems to contradict Genesis 1:1, according to some. The figure moved up to two million, then it went to 200 million, and I believe now they are more or less settling for 200 million years. It could be 200 billion years, it could be 200 trillion years, it could be 200 “squillion” years – you and I live in a universe that’s very old. It is important to remember that we are dealing with the God of eternity. Some seem to think that God came out of eternity twiddling His thumbs, waiting for man to appear on the scene. Man is a Johnny-come-lately in God’s universe. We can only speculate about what God did in eternity past, because He didn’t tell us.
He comes out of eternity, and you and I find ourselves in this great universe. We may pick up rocks and say, “Oh, these are two million or 200 million years old.” All right. You can put any date you want on Genesis 1:1 and you’ll still be in the realm of what Moses has written.
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