1 John 1:5-10 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.… I. THE NATURE AND THE MEANS OF COMMUNION WITH GOD. 1. We have communion with God in personal intercourse. 2. We have communion with God in the exercise and interchange of mutual thoughts and affections. 3. We have communion with God in the reception of His gifts and blessings. 4. We have communion with God in the exercise of mutual love to Christ. The heart of God and our hearts unite in their affections, and fix them on the Lamb. 5. We have communion with God in His works of nature. Never does the face of nature appear so lovely as when we thus behold in it the beauty of the Lord. 6. We have communion with God in the dispensations of His providence. II. THE CONNECTION WHICH EXISTS BETWEEN COMMUNION WITH GOD AND HOLINESS. 1. A man may say that he has communion with God whilst he is walking in darkness and living in sin. He may say it literally with his lips, or he may say it by assuming the external forms of religion. He is a liar against his own experience, which has never enjoyed the communion he professes; he is a liar against his own affections, which are holding communion with sin and Satan and the world; and he is a liar against God Himself, who declares that He has no communion with darkness and with sin. 2. "But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another." Such persons have communion with their God. God Himself is light, and they are children of light — and as the sun has communion with surrounding stars, because their beams of light resemble each other in nature, though they differ in degrees of glory, so there is a similarity, and a sympathy, and a harmony of character and pursuit, between God and His people, which is the origin and the means of their communion with each other. The holiness of the one attracts the holiness of the other. Their holy minds, their holy thoughts, their holy affections, and their holy pursuits meet and mingle. III. THE IMPORTANCE AND SOME OF THE ADVANTAGES OF COMMUNION WITH GOD. 1. Communion with God is connected with an interest in the blood of Christ. Even the man who holds communion with God needs and finds a refuge in the great atonement. He does indeed walk in the light; but that very light discovers to him more and more clearly his numerous imperfections and sins, and his abundant need of pardoning mercy. 2. Communion with God is the means of promoting our holiness. Those who most associate with God most resemble Him, and partake most fully of the Divine nature. 3. Communion with God is a source of the sweetest pleasure. Those who walk with God in the light of purity, walk with Him also in the light of joy. Matthew Henry, just before he expired, declared, as his dying testimony, that "a life spent in the service of God, and in communion with Him, is the happiest life that anyone can live in this world." And it must be so. There are no intelligent beings in the universe, whether men or angels, who can find true happiness in any place where God is not, or in any communion from which God is excluded. (J. Alexander.) Parallel Verses KJV: This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. |
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