The Fellowship (1 John 1:1–5) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Imagine with me a church in a large city, filled with godless images and practices where no gospel work had ever taken place. The church, although fairly small, has had some influence in the community, even creating quite a stir about their message of salvation in Christ alone. Opposition arose toward the church but the congregation joyfully trusted in Christ and banded together for encouragement and support.

Members of the congregation came from all walks of life and from every social strand. For many years they lived with much unity as a visible demonstration to the power of the gospel. But with the next generation, some began to listen to competing voices alluring them toward teaching contrary to the gospel. Others grew slack in their study of the Scriptures and discussion of foundational teaching, so that they questioned what they had been taught concerning Christ and the gospel. As that happened, a few enthusiastic teachers with a different message captured their attention and lured them away. Emphasizing special experiences and secret knowledge, some found it more interesting than the gospel. Consequently, they split away from the church that had nurtured them and where they had confessed faith in Christ in order to embrace a teaching contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Those remaining struggled. What was the truth? What experience was legitimate? Their friends who left still remained in the community. The teachers that influenced them still spoke out against what those in the church confessed believing concerning Christ. The former members even derided those who remained in the church as outdated and archaic. Some doubted, while others wrestled with assurance in Christ. How would they recover the joy, fellowship, and unity that they had known in earlier years?

That imaginary story is not imaginary. That’s what happened a generation or more after Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus. Now, in the later years of his life, the Apostle John ministered to the Ephesian congregation. False teachers had arisen that drew people away. John declared of them, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us” (2:19). So a group split from the church that John, without hesitation, explained that they did not belong to Christ or to the true body of Christ. How could he make that kind of statement? What were the criteria for being genuine believers in Christ?

That split had shaken the church. It made many question their relationship to the Lord. Some wrestled with the essentials of the gospel. So John wrote his epistle to bring them back to certainty in the gospel, assurance of relationship to Christ, and joyful fellowship with one another. But assurance is needed now as then. First John addresses it.

The gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed and believed brings us into joyful fellowship with the church and with the Father and Son. How does that happen? Let’s think about the message proclaimed and the fellowship explained.

I. The message proclaimed

John’s approach in this letter or what some call a treatise on assurance differs from Paul. We’re accustomed to Paul’s more linearly organized letters. John, on the other hand, has organization but it’s more spiral than linear. In other words, he doesn’t pull the lever and drop everything on you at once. He layers his message of assurance by considering the Person of Christ, issues of sin and obedience, relationships in the body, evidences of false teaching, and characteristics of true knowledge of Christ. That’s why he starts addressing assurance in the first chapter and then in the last writes, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13). That wasn’t a new subject. That was the subject [...]