1 John 1:1 - end; 1 John 2:1 - 6; 1 John 4:15, 16; 1 John 5:2 - 6, 13, 20, 21.

I wish to say a word, dear brethren, on the subject of fellowship which involves walking and keeping. Hebrews 13 deals with it, it says, "We have an altar of which they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle". That is the Christian altar, and eating of the altar is fellowship. The altar is thus presented from the standpoint of fellowship; it is indeed the standard of Christian fellowship. "Are not they who eat the sacrifices in communion" [or fellowship] "with the altar?" We have an altar, and the altar does not vary, it sets out in perfection God's standard, and that standard has been upheld by Jesus in the sacrifice of Himself. He is both the Altar and the Sacrifice. Think of Him as the Sacrifice and how He has put away sin from before the eye of God by the sacrifice of Himself. Once in the end of the world He appeared in order that everything due to God's throne, where He now sits at the right hand, should be upheld; that God should be vindicated and His glory shine forth. That was the result of the Lord Jesus offering Himself on the altar. And that is the altar the Christian has, and that is to be the standard of our walk together. It indicates in that chapter that there are those who have no right to eat, and that is ever so. They may claim the right, they may even think they are doing it. It says "We have an altar, of which they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle".

Now the tabernacle referred to in that verse, was the literal tabernacle, a figure of the true; a dwelling place authorised by God to be made with hands and pitched by man. But those who served that tabernacle had no right to eat of the Christian altar, even though that tabernacle was made according to

divine specification. Something better had been established -- the true tabernacle which the Lord had pitched and not man. Christ has not entered into holy places made with hands, figures of the true, but into heaven itself. Even though there were right things made by hands in the old dispensation, they had no place whatever in Christianity. Nothing made with hands, nothing that man has devised, nothing man has pitched has any place in true Christianity.

Now if those who serve the tabernacle made with hands, which was originally divinely specified, have no right to eat at the Christian altar, how much less those who serve systems that have never had divine authority! Such may still break bread, but the privileges that attach to the Lord's Supper will never be known in their true character, because God is not mocked; He never changes His standard. And so you get the principle of separation in Hebrews 13, "Let us go forth to Him without the camp"; that is outside of everything that man has pitched and everything that man has made. Go outside of it all, the divine system is outside of it all, let us go outside to HIM who is the Centre of that system, the Son of God. Let us confess Him as the Son of God. Let us hold fast the confession of the hope unwavering, for not only is the Lord Jesus about to appear, but the whole system we live in by faith and by the Spirit is going to appear. Let us hold fast the confession of the hope unwavering and go forth to Him outside the camp rejecting everything that belongs to the camp. The Christian altar stands clear of all those things; I am speaking of it abstractly, the divine thought, "we have an altar". Why should we tarnish it, why should we lower the standard? The standard is in Jesus and in His death upon the cross, where He upheld God's glory at the uttermost cost to Himself; He being made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might become the

righteousness of God in Him. That is the aspect of the death of Christ which is brought before us in Hebrews 13. The bodies of those beasts whose blood was carried in to the holy of holies as a sacrifice for sin were burnt outside the camp. What a sacrifice was the sacrifice of Jesus! He offered Himself without spot to God and God made Him to be sin for us as typified in the burning without the camp. It ought to make us shudder at the thought of bringing anything into our walk and ways as Christians which is in the slightest degree out of keeping with Jesus and His sacrifice, and thus out of accord with God and His thoughts and His glory, which Jesus upheld; and therefore to make us eschew everything that is pitched by man or made by man. But I am not speaking only now of things that are actually made with hands, but what men figure out in their minds. "Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image". We can easily figure out things in our minds and make a kind of graven image of our own conception of God. So Hebrews 13 is a testing chapter but a blessed chapter, and a chapter we should all take up surely with spiritual exhilaration if we know something of the earlier part of the epistle and the blessedness of our place within.

If you have been inside you want your circumstances down here, as far as is within your capacity, to be in accord with what is inside. If you have been where Jesus dwells in the holy of holies you would like to provide Him with conditions down here, among those with whom you meet, in keeping with the holy of holies, in so far as that can be done in these mixed conditions. We can never claim to have achieved it, but we would be satisfied with no less an objective than to provide Jesus, when He comes to us as He has promised, with conditions suited to Himself. There can be no other standard, however much we fall short of it; and so let us remember

that we have this altar, remembering also that we may have all the outward appearance of having the Lord's Supper and yet not have it. That was the case with the Corinthians. It says, "I hear that there exist divisions among you. When ye come therefore together into one place, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper". If you had gone to Corinth and said to the brethren, 'Do you have the Lord's Supper?' they would have said, 'Certainly we do'. The apostle said it was not the Lord's Supper. It shows how we can deceive ourselves, and think we have got the Lord's Supper when we have not. The outward form does not make the Lord's Supper. What makes the Lord's Supper is the inward state and the Lord's presence in consequence. No outward position -- much is claimed of an outward position -- secures the Lord's presence, but an inward state; a state in keeping with the altar. He goes on to speak of those who individualise it, as is done in the case of the so-called Sacrament around us. People isolate themselves. They take the ground of breaking bread only as individuals. 'If the person next to me is unconverted, it is nothing to do with me, I am just remembering the Lord as an individual'. But that is like a person eating his own supper. I do not belittle that. The Lord feeds such souls because He is faithful, but it is not the Lord's Supper. That is something to think over. Let us not claim anything, least of all a position, as though the Lord were automatically connected with a position. It is a question of conditions from week to week. It is "where two or three are gathered together to My Name there am I in the midst of them". Surely our hearts crave for the presence of our Beloved at His Supper. We must have Him, whatever the cost.

Now when we come to John, he deals with what is vital and inward. He does not use the word altar. It has been said that he gives the truth of the terms

rather than the terms of the truth. He does not speak of the altar in terms, but he gives you the altar in substance. It is implied in this first chapter, "If we walk in the light as He is in the light". How is it that God has come into the light? Through Christ's sacrifice at the altar! Where has God's character been displayed? In Christ's sacrifice at the altar! There we have learnt that God is light and God is love; God is righteous and God is holy. There we learn God's mercy, there we learn God's abhorrence of sin. The knowledge of God has come to us by way of the altar, the sacrifice of Christ. As to our communion with the altar, he says later in the epistle, "Hereby we have known love, because He has laid down His life for us; and we ought for the brethren to lay down our lives". That is the positive side of communion with the altar. I suppose if anyone was in that state of soul -- prepared to lay down his life for the brethren -- there would be no doubt that he was walking in the light, because he would have nothing to hide. If you are walking in love, and love is your only motive, you have got nothing inward to hide. That man is walking in the light. But the moment you get mixed motives then you have got something to hide, you have got something you are ashamed of. There is no dark part with God, nothing, speaking with all reverence, that He needs to hide. The message, thus, is that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. He is all that He says He is, all that He purports to be; and that is what we should be. The Lord Jesus speaks of it, "I am altogether what I say to you". How wonderful it would be if we never went in our words beyond what we really were in our hearts.

And so here it speaks of walking in the light, but first of all it says, after giving us the message that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, "If we say that we have fellowship with Him". Now

the first point in fellowship is fellowship – or communion, which is the same word in the original – with God. We think much of fellowship with one another, but the first thing is fellowship with God. God's desire for that came out in the garden of Eden. God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. Walking is the idea of fellowship or communion. He had given the garden into Adam's charge to till it and keep it, and Adam had not kept it and so there was no communion. It was impossible for God to walk with man -- a solemn thing. But God has wrought that communion might be restored, but in a new and most blessed way. The apostles had fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ in a unique way, and John writes that we might have fellowship with them. We must begin that way, taking account of what they saw, heard, handled and contemplated. They have passed it on to us that we might have fellowship with them; and thus, in the measure in which it is open to us, we have fellowship with God.

So the first thing is, "If we say we have fellowship with Him". You see, if you have not communion with God you are really outside of vital Christianity. I am not saying you are not a Christian, but what is the value of my being a Christian, in a practical sense, if I have not communion with God? So normally, if a man professes to be a Christian, he is really professing that he has fellowship with God. But "If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not practise the truth". That is a very solemn thing, because it is useless to think of true fellowship with one another unless each one of us individually has fellowship with God. That is the basic thought of fellowship -- communion with God. You may have dark spots which the brethren do not know, but if you have got dark spots, if you have got hidden motives, wrong motives, selfish

motives, anything of the flesh in fact, you will not have communion with God because you cannot escape the eye of God. You can escape the eye of the brethren and go on a long time perhaps, but you cannot escape the eye of God and God is no respecter of persons. Nor does He ever lower His standard though He is gracious and kind, and will help you to get back to it. But if there is darkness in my heart, I may remain in fellowship amongst the brethren but I have lost fellowship with God, and my fellowship amongst the brethren is more or less an empty shell. "If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not practise the truth".

Now this is a thing to maintain every day. You cannot hide anything from God, and the first point as to fellowship is to live under the eye of God, and to let Him search the heart as to every hidden motive and every evil thought and every intrusion of the flesh; to walk under the eye of God and to judge it at once. You may try to hide it from God like Adam with the fig leaves, but you cannot do it. So the first and foremost thing, if you want to be in fellowship, is to walk under the eye of God. Let our links with God be unimpaired, communion free and unhindered between our souls and God, so that we abide in the Son and in the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. He says to the little children in the next chapter, "Ye shall abide in the Son and in the Father". Fellowship with God means that my home is in the Son and in the Father. That is the family aspect of the holiest -- abiding in the Son and in the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Then I begin to think of fellowship with the brethren. It goes on to say at once, "If we walk in the light as He is in the light we have fellowship with one another". If we let God's light shine into our hearts day by day, keeping short accounts with God,

that communion with Him may be unimpaired, we shall have fellowship with one another. If there is nothing to mar communion with God you may be sure there will be nothing to mar communion with one another. So if we walk in the light as He is in the light -- walking with God in the full light of all that He is as manifested in Jesus -- we have fellowship with one another. What a rich fellowship! Each one of us day by day maintaining communion with God, our links with the Father and the Son, our home in the presence of God, and then we have fellowship one with another. Sweet fellowship indeed! "And the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from every sin". There is no need to keep any part dark, because, though we all often offend, that does not cause the fellowship to break down. If we are with God, then every offensive thought and motive is dealt with at once. The enemy would accuse and depress you; he would say to you, 'Look at those evil motives that arise in your heart, and yet you thought yesterday they had all gone'. But they will continue to arise while we are down here because the flesh remains in us. That is why we are exhorted to keep our hearts more than anything that is guarded. But there is no need to let the enemy cast you down, because the blood of Jesus Christ in all its efficacy remains. Satan is the accuser of the brethren and would turn you in on yourself, saying, You are not fit for communion with God! But the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from every sin, and, as the accuser would attempt to come between my soul and God, accusing me as I approach God (for he accuses the brethren before God day and night), I can claim the abiding efficacy of the blood. "They have overcome him by the blood of the Lamb, and by reason of the word of their testimony". There is no need to be under the power of sin in

the flesh, nor under the power of depression.

So "the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from every sin"; and on this basis we walk in the light together. How wonderful is real Christian fellowship! Let us give up all pretence and hypocrisy. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves". I do not mean that anyone here would go to that extreme, but we may walk, act, and allow pride as though we had no sin, and thus find it very difficult to confess our sins. But real fellowship involves sincerity and truth, first of all in our relations with God, so that our communion with God is unimpaired, and then in our relations with the brethren. "If we confess our sins he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness", 1 John 1:9.

Many sins are only known between my soul and God, for the thought of foolishness is sin. Other sins, which are open and public, have to be confessed not only to God but to the brethren. There is nothing to fear, if we are honest. What causes trouble is the hiding of things instead of transparency with God; this is darkness. If we bring all to the light, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. That is how the fellowship is maintained in reality. Otherwise we may maintain formally the breaking of bread without a vital link of fellowship.

It is a great thing to see that fellowship is based on moral principles; and not on knowledge of doctrine. Of course we must all be real Christians, having the doctrine of the Christ, acknowledging His deity, His atoning work, and the basic truths of Christianity, including separation from evil; but, as having these fundamentals, the essential thing is the fleeing of youthful lusts and the pursuit of righteousness, faith, love and peace. If we are all pursuing these things we can walk together. So that basically our walk together is a question of right and wrong,

and so is our walk with God. If I do something wrong, be sure of this, that my communion with God will be broken until I acknowledge it. "I acknowledged my sin unto Thee". We need to be sensitive as to anything that hinders fellowship with God. We need our senses exercised to discern good and evil, right and wrong.

But where a wrong is done which affects the name of our Lord Jesus Christ or affects the brethren, fellowship with the brethren can only be restored as the sin is acknowledged. The person concerned may normally be godly in walk, devoted and thoroughly sound in doctrine, but, if he has done something wrong it is a question of judging acts and facts. If he has done something wrong fellowship is broken until it is acknowledged. Now we need help as to this, not only in our relations with God, but also in our relations with one another. We need to be simple, loving and faithful with one another, because judgment has to be maintained without respect of persons. Scripture forbids respect of persons in judgment. If anyone does wrong, and we continue to have fellowship with him before he has acknowledged it, God will not support us. You cannot mock God, you cannot afford to overlook divine principles. I am not going to help the offender, nor myself, nor the brethren if I make excuses for him. He has done wrong, and until that is acknowledged, communion with God is certainly broken. That is a matter between the person's soul and God, but then, if there is faithfulness, communion with the brethren will be broken. If not, God will have to say to the brethren. When the king sinned -- David -- he had to go the way of his meanest subject for there is no respect of persons with God. One might have said, 'That is David, surely you will excuse him because of what he has done, he killed Goliath, he saved the nation'. It makes no difference. David had sinned

and when it comes to sin there can be no respect of persons with God, nor with us if we are with God, and God will have to say to us if we do respect persons when it is a question of right or wrong. The first thing we begin to do is to seek to justify persons we love, persons who have helped us, instead of helping them to walk in the light, and obtain fresh joy in the experience of God's grace like David did. David the king had to go the same road; the man who had killed Goliath and had done wonderful things, had to go the same road as the meanest of His subjects. There is no respect of persons with God. Now we must bring that home to ourselves because we are apt to make excuses for ourselves, and for others, but we must be with God in the matter of fellowship, because we want fellowship to be real. God will never depart from His principles, and we are to follow righteousness, faith, love and peace. Righteousness, faith and love go together as one whole. We cannot have righteousness without faith and we cannot have righteousness without love, for love is the whole law, Romans 13:10. They go together, and if they are transgressed, we shall never have peace because God, in His government, will have to say to us. May the Lord help us in these things, that we may walk in the light as God is in the light!

"He that says he abides in Him ought, even as He walked, himself also so to walk", 1 John 2:6. What a standard of walk! What an attack has been made of late on the walk of Jesus here, as though He were no example to us. He that says he abides in Him ought to walk even as He walked. And you may depend upon this, that in everything that Jesus did and said, He glorified God; and that is to be our standard. Whether you eat or drink or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God, and Jesus did that right on to the cross. But then just prior to that, we have the word, "Hereby we know that we know

Him, if we keep His commandments. He that says, I know Him, and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him". So while we walk, and walk together, it is as keeping His commandments. We are to keep His commandments, and keep His words, and if we are to keep these then, in the first instance, we must keep our own hearts, as already stated. "Keep thy heart more than anything that is guarded for out of it are the issues of life". And that is how this epistle ends. It says of Jesus at the end of the epistle, "He is the true God and eternal life. Children, keep yourselves from idols". Where do the idols begin? In my own heart. Let us keep our hearts more than anything that is guarded, keep them wholly for Christ, and as keeping our hearts wholly for Christ, He being enshrined there, we shall have also in our hearts every command of His. Every command of the loved One will be precious to and kept by the lovers. Every command is a necessity of the divine nature. Furthermore, we shall keep His word, we shall be near enough to Him to get the very desires of His heart, and they will all be imperative to us because of love.

In the beginning, God brought in the idea of keeping. Adam was told to keep the garden -- this translation says "guard", but it is the same word -- with a view to God walking, and man having communion with Him. Our walk will not be right unless we are keeping things; unless we are keeping our hearts, more than anything that is guarded, keeping them wholly for Christ, keeping them from idols; and thus keeping His commandments and His word, as those who delight in everything that pleases our Beloved. And then while John speaks about commandments he says "his commandments are not grievous"; "My yoke is easy, and My burden is light"; whereas the doctors of the law bound on men burdens grievous and hard to bear. Do not be afraid of divine commandments, they are not grievous, they are delightful!

The Lord says of the Father "his commandment is life eternal", John 12:50. He has commanded that we should have eternal life, and it meant Jesus going into death. The detailed commandments are laid upon us to ensure that we enjoy eternal life, because although it is given to us, and we are called to it, unless our hearts are right and our feet are right, we shall not enjoy it. And unless we enjoy it (see Psalm 133) God will not have the praise that is His due (Psalm 134). Divine commandments are blessed, not grievous.

"Hereby know we that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments". The true proof of my love for my fellow Christians is that I love God and keep His commandments. I do not help them and I do not help myself if I surrender one commandment that is truly the Lord's, and truly God's. I help myself and help my fellow Christians in the best way possible by keeping the commandments, and they all have in view dwelling conditions for God. "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God". This is the practical enjoyment of the tabernacle system. John does not mention the tabernacle in his epistles but he gives you the kernel of it as applied to the individual. "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God" has gone outside the camp like the man in the 9th of John. The Son of God is known now as the One who has gone in to God; the great High Priest, who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. The confessor of the Son of God is enjoying tabernacle life, God is abiding in him and he in God. It puts God abiding in him first, because it is a question of the public confession. The next verse puts it the other way round. "God is love, and he that abides in love abides in God". That is the way we come into things, we go in to God first. "Abides in God, and God in him".

It is really the principle of tabernacle life, as it were, only put in John's way, and shown to be available to the individual.

May God help us to be in the gain of these things, and to realise how simple the ground of fellowship is, that it is a question of moral principles, a question of right and wrong, of keeping short accounts with God, and in a right way keeping short accounts with one another; and remembering that it is not right before God to recognise, as though it belonged to Christianity, anything man-made. It does not help others, and it does not help me, if I condone by my presence or by my links any such thing. "Let us go forth to Him without the camp". Let it be a clean break; let us hold fast to the true tabernacle which the Lord has pitched, and not man; to which we, and all Christians belong. May the Lord help us to get back to that. We have imbibed things of man, and they have flooded in of late, and we are glad to be free of these; and now let us get back to the real thing. Do not let us grope about in the dark as though we did not know what the real thing is. Let us get back to that in which there is nothing of man. Let us get back to God Himself as the Centre, and to Christ Himself as the Inaugurator and Upholder of the true tabernacle, and thus, by the Spirit, enjoy our life hid with Christ in God; and learn from Him the commandments which govern God's house. They are not grievous. Let us not go about as though we are not people under command. Let us not allow the state depicted in Judges when everyone did what was right in his own eyes, but let us be governed by the true light of God and be true to the system in which God is enshrined.

May it be so for His Name's sake.

Enfield, 10th February, 1962, Divine System Volume 1