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FAITHFUL WORDS.

BY

JOHN OFFORD,

OF PALACE GARDENS CHAPEL, KENSINGTON.

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE FATHER.

The

"Our fellowship is with the Father."-1 JOHN i. 3. THE inner life is essential to fellowship with God. It requires its spiritual faculties to understand his thoughts: it needs its God-born affections to appreciate and to reciprocate his love; it demands its Christ-like feelings to sympathize with his desires. And fellowship with God is equally essential to the inner life. Its spiritual faculties can find no satisfying subject of contemplation save in God himself: its God-born affections can rest on nothing short of his infinite love: its Christ-like feelings turn from every other object disquieted and distressed. inner life is for God; and God is for the inner life. Hence the Holy Spirit introduces this subject of fellowship with God, by a sublime testimony to him who is the eternal life. About to lead our spirits into the fulness of the heart of God, that Holy Spirit first directs us to him who came forth from that heart as the Father's great life-gift to the sons of men. "For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested to us." The eternal life himself, who was

in the bosom of the Father, came down to us, to give us life in himself; that, in the power of that life, we might in him for evermore have fellowship with the Father. It was beyond the power of God's Spirit to enable the soul of man, while dead in sins, to know communion with the living God. Its mental faculties, however exalted; its natural affections, however lovely after their kind, could have no sympathy of thought or emotion with the Divine Father; "for the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

Nor would it have sufficed, in order to this peculiar fellowship, that there should have been life-even life of the highest, purest, mental and spiritual nature—had it not been sonship life; a life bringing the spirit of man into the relationship of true childhood to God, as its Father. Paternal affections are the yearnings of the fatherhood nature toward its offspring: filial affections are the responsive yearnings of the childhood nature towards its source. Hence no life but the sonship life can qualify the heart to know and enjoy the mysterious blessedness of fellowship with the Father. Regarding God as a Spirit, it is clear that no nature but a spirit-nature can commune with him. Regarding him as the Father of spirits, it is equally clear that no nature but the God-born nature can hold child-like fellowship with him. There were thoughts and purposes, deep hidden in the eternal heart, kept secret from the ages, which he could reveal to no creature-mind, until the many sons should be born unto him with

the "first begotten from the dead;" with hearts capable of comprehending those thoughts, and able to rejoice in the wondrous blessings embraced in those purposes. There were affections, deep hidden in the eternal heart, which not even holy angelic spirits could call forth, and which could find no satisfaction until the travail of the soul of the eternal Son should yield its fruit; and until the instincts of the new-born offspring of that travail should breathe the cry of penitence and of need into that eternal breast, saying, "Father, I have sinned:" a cry which should draw out the gushing compassion of the Father's breast; which should induce the instant embrace of the everlasting arms; and which should call forth the heart-thrilling words, "This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." There is a deeply rooted affection in the nature of man, which remains untouched and unmoved until the special object for which God has designed it is brought within its reach. To that object it will thenceforth cling with a life-long grasp, and when death withdraws it from its embrace, it will remain silently embalmed in the most sacred chambers of the memory. This is the affection with which our God illustrates his special love, so long kept secret in his breast, to his own redeemed ones, saying, "As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee." And there is a deep spring of feeling in the breast of woman, of the very essence of her being, which lies secret and undisclosed, until she presseth her first-born to her bosom, when it bursts forth with a strange delirium of delight, thrilling her whole being with delicious

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pleasure. Oh, how this deep, mysterious passion will cling to its object; unwearied by years of oft unrequited solicitude and toil; unchilled by most unkind and withering neglect; and unquenched by the most sad and base ingratitude. Aye, how often

has it overcome the pangs of death itself, in its mighty convulsive longings for the blessing of its wayward one. And this is the mighty affection with which the Father of spirits contrasts his long pent up love to his children, in those heart-stirring words, "Can a mother forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will not I forget thee." Moved by this mysterious and long, long hidden love, the eternal Father sent his only begotten Son down into the unknown depths of darkness and of woe, to bring back thence his many sons unto his everlasting embrace. These sons, possessed of faculties and powers of thought like those of Christ himself, and led by the Spirit of truth, have power to penetrate the mind of God, and comprehend his thoughts and purposes. These Spirit-born children of God, endued with the affections and feelings of the life of Christ, are able through the Holy Ghost to enter the sacred enclosure of the Father's heart, and meditate the deep mystery of his eternal love—a mystery unknown to all save those who have been loved of the Father with the love wherewith he loved the Son. Yes, the life of the risen Son in the many brethren is essential to communion with the Father: the fatherhood of God, in all its reality, is essential to the full blessedness of the sonship life: and, may we not add, with thrilling, though all but awe

stricken delight, that the life of the risen Son, diffused through the being of the many sons, is ever essential to the satisfaction of the heart of the Father. In the fatherhood of the Father, revealed through the only begotten Son; in the sonship nature of the children of his love, in union with his risen Son, and in the experimental relation of the one toward the other, in all their living and loving exercises, in all these are found the essence of the fellowship of new-born men with the living God.

II. Fellowship with the Father is attained unto by the grace of the Spirit of adoption. Coming from the Father and the Son, to reveal to us our oneness with the Son, and our relation in the Son to the Father, he breathes within us the ceaseless cry, "Abba, Father." The Holy Ghost leads the restored spirit of the new-born saint into the riches of eternal love, and unfolds to the heart the sweetness of its fatherly nature towards its returning wanderers. Searching the deep things of God, and coming forth to make them known to us, he reveals those depths of the Father's heart, wherein the saints have been cherished from eternity, with the person of the Son; and wherein they are still so cherished, and will be cherished, so long as the Father shall love the Son. Ever breathing, through the spirits of the adopted sons, the assurance that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is their God and Father in him, and ever shedding abroad the love of God in their hearts, he deepens and strengthens their filial affections towards him, causing them to witness with him of their sonship by crying, "Abba, Father." Fellowship with the Father is the realized relationship of

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