The True Fellowship Of The Church Series

Now that we have established that to be apart of the true fellowship of the church you have to have fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ, John goes on to tell us how we can know if our fellowship is genuine. Our fellowship is not genuine when we live a life of sin. John tells us in verse 6, “If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.” Other words we can claim to have fellowship with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, but if we are living a continual life of sin, which is what darkness represents, everything that is evil and sinful, it’s not possible for us to be in fellowship with God. We know from the scriptures that God cannot fellowship with sin. We remember that from when Christ took on the sin of the world on the cross and he faced that time of separation from his Father. He couldn’t fellowship with his Father because of our sin. What John was facing here was a group of Gnostics that were trying to claim fellowship with God and that they were walking in the light when the fact was they had thrown off all restraints and were doing all kinds of immoral things. They were claiming themselves as righteous when their lives were showing anything but righteousness. John was saying you can’t say you have fellowship with God and your walking in the light when you are living in sin. If you do you are nothing but a liar.

Speaking of liars the other day I was shocked to learn that Tariq Aziz one of Saddam Hussein’s top men who had been the face of the administration for years was a professed Christian. They said he was the only Christian in Saddam’s regime. Here he was claiming to be apart of the fellowship yet all of these years he has told bold face lie after bold face lie, but yet he claims Christ as his Savior. Now some people would say, “You know he feared for his life he probably felt he didn’t have any other choice.” Of course how many Christians around the world have stood up for the truth even when their life was on the line. Fear shouldn’t change the truth. But now here he is in custody of the allied troops where he would not be persecuted for telling the truth and he doesn’t have to fear Saddam anymore and they said they continue to catch him in lie after lie. How can you claim fellowship and live like that. For John true belief meant you put your faith into action.

Now we may not have the crazy teaching of the Gnostics today, but in the church at large there are people who say that they are in fellowship with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ yet in their life there is consistent sin. We aren’t talking about a slip up here and there we are talking about a pattern in their life. You need to know that you cannot have fellowship with God and walk in darkness. There are too many people who are dependant upon a time long ago when they said they committed their lives to Christ, yet today they are living opposed to the way that God has called them to live. They believe they have fellowship with God and fellowship with the true church because of that decision, but if they had true fellowship with God they would not continue to live life walking in the darkness. There are also those in the church today that claim to walk in fellowship with God and with the church when they are living a life of secret sin. They do it in the cover of darkness so others won’t know. But the same is true for them. If you are living in the darkness, if you are living a life of sin, you are living a lie to say that you are a part of the true fellowship of the church. If you are in fellowship with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ you will walk in the light as He is in the light.