CHURCH MEMBERSHIP (9)

When you join the church you join the fellowship that God already enjoys – the fellowship between God the Father, Son and Spirit. The church is not just a human fellowship – we are added to an existing fellowship: God’s fellowship that each member of the Godhead enjoys and wants to share. Jesus explained this carefully to his disciples just before he went to the cross. John records it in chapters 14-17:

• Jesus promises to come again and take us with him so that where he is we may be also – and that place is his Father’s household in which there are many positions available.
• He explains that he is in the Father and the Father is in him – a tight fellowship.
• He said he would send the Spirit so that we could enjoy our part in their fellowship: “I am in my Father, and you in me and I in you.” “You will know the Spirit because he will be in you.”
• Jesus said: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Stay and live (abide) in my love”.

When you are spiritually reborn, you are included in the totally satisfying, brilliantly joyful and absolutely secure fellowship that already exists between Father, Son and Spirit. Nothing can separate us from his love. And this love creates brother and sister relationships with all real Christians in that fellowship.

Listen to Jesus’ prayer for us:

John 17.20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

So, know this: Church is an existing fellowship – not a programme, not an institution, not a denomination, not a social service and not a duty. Church is at the heart of your relationship with God and all the others who call him Father, too. Church will mean nothing to you until you have discovered Christ to be the highest value in your life. Until his brilliant goodness and power (his glory) becomes your deepest satisfaction and your highest joy - being in fellowship with him and his Father and the Holy Spirit will seem slightly awkward - or vague - or downright confusing. Why? Because you are still an idol worshipper. You have set up other things – things that God made but removed from him – as your objectives and loves in life. Satan has blinded you to your Creator and his plans. On the other hand: Church is fellowship – fellowship with God and with his people. It is you living in God’s family.