Christian Fellowship

“Howbeit ye did well, that ye had fellowship with my affliction” (Phil. iv. 14).

The Apostle always exults in the conception of fellowship. There is no spiritual privilege to which he more frequently returns. He regards himself as the centre of vast correspondences radiating in every direction. He is like some central telephonic exchange, and his intimacies are in every quarter. He has fellowship with the Divine. The Holy Spirit and he are in constant communion. There is a ceaseless passage of heavenly commerce; aspiration and inspiration cross each other continually. And he has fellowship with the human, entering into the secrets of another man’s life, vibrating in ready sympathy with his thought and feeling. But there is one particular feature

in his conception of fellowship which I wish to emphasise. He is possessed by an intense desire to have communions with the darker things, both in his fellow-man and in his Lord. “That I may know Him... and the fellowship of His sufferings.” He was not contented to share the triumph of Olivet; he wanted to feel something of the pang and chill and loneliness of Gethsemane. And it is the same in his relationship with his fellow-men. He longs to share their burdens, and their secret sorrows. He will “weep with them that weep.” I am therefore not surprised to find how heartily he commends the Philippians for their “fellowship with him in his affliction. He had been in ways of necessity and they had willingly shared his burden. He had been in the gloom and they had sympathetically walked with him in the darksome way.

“Not that I seek for the gift; hut 1 seek for the fruit that increaseth to your account.” I think that is a most exquisite suggestion of Paul’s unselfish spirit. At the very moment when he received their gift and feels relief in his necessity, he is mindful of what is happening in the lives of those who have bestowed the gift. He knows that no man can engage in any true ministry without some transfiguring energy entering into his own life. No one can engage in any true beneficence without personally gaining a certain enrichment of life. Paul, therefore, is assured that while he has received the gift, the givers have not gone without reward. He recognised their kindliness, but he was also sensitive of their own spiritual enlargement. This is a wonderful sign of spiritual alertness. He was more elated by their gain than by their gift. He was jubilantly sensitive to their growth at the very moment when they were giving their treasure away.

There is no finer attainment in the spirit than this. When our exclusiveness breaks up, and in our moments of personal ecstasy we are mindful of the light that is breaking in the lives of others, we are assuredly putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. But this is not an elementary attainment, one to which we easily spring in the opening stages of the Christian life. It is a matured grace and it comes as a natural issue of large communion with our Lord. We may test the vitality of our communion with Him by our sensitiveness to our brother, and when tested by this standard the Apostle is clearly seen to have the mind of Christ.

But the Apostle’s consciousness not only contains the element of gratitude, and discernment of the spiritual enrichment of his brethren, it also includes the relationship of the gift to the Lord. For the ministry of man touches God, and this threefold relationship was in the Apostle’s mind. He is sensitive in every direction, and therefore he is not numb to the impact of human things upon the Divine. “The things” that came from them were “as an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God.” Here is a threefold correspondence which so repeatedly possesses the life of Paul. There was a felt kindness offered to him by his friends in Philippi. There was the fertilising influence of this kindness upon their own souls. And there was the ascending odour of their gift to gratify the spirit of our Lord.

It is well for us to remember that every act has this threefold influence, impinging upon self and brother and God. When we are sensitive to all of these, our life is complete. The negligence of any one of these implies that the holy circle of life is broken. Now I have said that the attainment of these large circles of fellowship is a matter of patient cultivation. But, happily, the possible opportunities of such cultivation are not scattered and infrequent. Every moment affords a favourable and congenial season. Every moment of common intercourse gives us the opportunity of practising brotherly discernment, and of wistfully considering the spiritual gains of our brother. There are some saints, and Paul was one of them, who are sensitive to the spiritual gains of their brethren as they would be to a new perfume if their neighbour introduced into his garden a bed of mignonette. But this need not be the acquisition of a few saints; by patient and assiduous practice it can become the gift of all.

And surely, too, we can practise the discernment of the pleasure of our Lord. Whenever a kindly deed is done, we can think of the ascending odour, “an odour of a sweet smell” most “acceptable” to God. And so shall we come to “drink of the river of His pleasures,” and “the joy of the Lord” shall be our strength.