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Day 6 – Have Fellowship with Other Disciples
12 This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are My friends, if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you slaves; for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.
John 15:12-15
We have reached the end of our Making Membership More Meaningful and we end where we began: with the importance of having fellowship with each other. We need each other. To abandon our fellowship is actually a sin.
John 15:12-13. We are to love sacrificially. The significance of this command cannot be overemphasized. Jesus commands us to love one another in the same manner in which He loved us--to the point of sacrificial death. Having fellowship with one another in the context of the local church is one of the greatest ways that we can fulfill this command.
Verse 14-15. We are to love unconditionally. The condition that Jesus sets is not upon Him, but rather upon us. The love of Jesus is not conditional-- “I will love you if...” -- but rather it is “I love you period.” He has done all that He could do in demonstrating His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
We are to love unreservedly. Neither is God’s love reserved or guarded, but rather it is lavished upon us as seen in Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not with Him freely give us all things.”
Jesus says with that same sacrificial, unconditional, unreserved love with which He loves us, we are to love one another. That means that we are to commit to one another by being willing to be faithful and interdependent on one another through the local church.
Hebrews 10:23-25 gives a strong reason for us to keep having fellowship together. “ 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” Immediately after this charge, the writer says to do otherwise is a willful sin which will bring about serious consequences.
For a believer to not want to be around other believers could be a sign of not truly being saved. It is certainly a sign that something is seriously wrong with the lack of desire. John, the beloved apostle whom Jesus loved, wrote more about love than any other disciple. He said in his first epistle, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”
Remember, I did not say that, John, who lived longer than any other disciple; John, to whom Jesus gave charge of His very own mother; John, the one who put more about love in John 13, 14, and 15 than any other three chapters in the gospels; John who wrote the word love more in two chapters of his epistle (chapters 3 and 4) than any other two chapters of the entire New Testament, yes that John wrote this.
We should seriously and prayerfully challenge our hearts to ask God to reveal and help us repent of the sin of not having fellowship with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
Review the wheel and relate all six elements to growth. Will there ever be a time when we can stop growing in keeping God at the center of our life?
Stop growing in reading our Bible? _____________________
Stop growing in obeying Him? _________________________
Stop growing in witnessing? ___________________________
Stop growing in talking to God in prayer? ________________
or Stop growing in having fellowship with one another? _____
If we bear fruit in all of these areas, we will overflow with the nourishment to bear fruit through faithful, love-filled obedience.
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