Privilege and Obligation.
JOHN tells us that our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. This is an announcement of great honor and privilege. It tells of intimate friendship, confidence, and partnership with God. There are many foreshadowings and illustrations of this truth in the Old Testament. Enoch walking with God, speaks of the intimacy and fellowship between God and his beloved follower of those far-off days. To be the disciple of any eminent and good man is a privilege. To be his daily companion and walk with him, and be taken into his confidence is a privilege that any one of us might covet. What fellowship there must have been between God and Enoch! Who can tell it? What high and holy converse must have passed between them! No doubt the theme of creation and redemption made up a large part of the matter of their conversation. For three hundred years the fellowship continued on the earth, and, without doubt, it has not been suspended in Heaven. Nor was the pleasure on Enoch's side alone; for we read that the patriarch had this testimony, that "he pleased God." God was a delight to his soul, and he was a pleasure to God. In later times we have the story of Abraham, who was styled the "friend of God." Abraham was taken into God's confidence to such an extent that when God was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he paused, and said: "Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?" That, indeed, was a testimony to the high regard in which he was held by the Lord. Among other of the patriarchs this same kind of intimacy existed. Noah, Daniel, and Job are mentioned as being intimate in their fellowship with God; so intimate, indeed, that he said even their prayers would not avail in a certain case. It is a great thought that man should be the friend of God; but that he should be the intimate and confidant of Jehovah is a truth that, but for the word of God, which bears witness to the truth of it, no man would for a moment presume to think. God as our Creator, Redeemer, and even our Father, is not so striking a fact. In all these relations there is a certain something that suggests awe and reverence, rather than close companionship. Even the filial relation, when God is the Father, is one in which a certain reverential distance is proper. But when God takes us into close fellowship with himself, and calls us friends, it is a thought that may well call out from us the greatest wonder. If God revealed himself as the friend of his people in Old Testament times, it is much more freely set forth in the New Testament. Just before Jesus went away he said to his disciples: "Henceforth I call you no more servants, but friends." He had, earlier in his ministry, distinguished John the Baptist by calling him "the friend of the bridegroom." "Ye are my friends." Certainly this is the highest title he could bestow upon them. Do we receive it? Have we appropriated it, and do we rejoice in it? And are we striving to be worthy of it? To have fellowship with the Father and with the Son is the saint's highest privilege. Few, we fear, get beyond the apprehension of mere redemption relation to God, and fewer still get into the comfort of an experimental knowledge of the fatherhood of God. It is only an elect few who seem to have taken Abraham's and Enoch's and Daniel's and Noah's and Job's place under New Testament conditions, and become the friends of God. And yet this is for all of us. Alas! that we do not press into it. This high privilege is not one for abstract enjoyment, or aesthetic spiritual joy only. It involves obligation. "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I have commanded you." Of the conspicuous friends of God mentioned in his word they were all devoted servants as well. They were chosen for great service. Whosoever is the friend of God must be a "worker together with" him. Friendship or fellowship is a great privilege; but it involves great obligation, and we would with the apostle urge our readers not to "receive this grace of God in vain," but walk worthy of this high calling, both in all manner of godliness and holy conversation, and in utter and entire consecration. The friends of Jesus Christ cannot be the friends of this world, for this world is the enemy of Christ. The sequence of friendship with God is far-reaching, and is worth the careful study of every earnest Christian.—Independent.