It is so wonderful that the Lord has brought us into the fellowship of the divine life, where we can enjoy oneness with the Triune God, participating in all that He is and has accomplished.
But we have to admit that there are still many problems in us, many obstacles to the fellowship of the divine life. As we see in Leviticus 14:6-10 and 14-18, we all are lepers, unclean sinners, who hear wrongly, do things wrongly, and have a wrong walk.
We need to apply the blood of Christ to our hearing so that we may hear the word of God, and then we can hear and be in the fellowship of the divine life.
We need to apply the blood of Christ to our doing, so that we may do the will of God, and we will be in the fellowship of the divine life.
We need to apply the blood of Christ to our walking, so that we may take God’s way, and we will be in the fellowship of life.
Also, we need to apply the cross to our whole being so that we may be thoroughly in the divine fellowship. All the obstacles to the divine fellowship in our being are dealt with by the cross of Christ, and when we take up our own cross and follow the Lord (Matt. 16:24) we will have a deeper experience of the divine fellowship both vertically and horizontally.
Applying the Blood of Christ to our Hearing, Doing, and Walking
As the Lord shines on us we realize that we hear and listen to the wrong things (be it doubts, fables, evil things in the world, strange teachings, gossip, etc), we do the wrong things (not the things of God but our own things, the things of the world, what we desire to do), and we have a wrong walk (we walk our own ways, the way of the world, the ways of the nations, the old ways).
We are unclean sinners saved by grace, and we need to apply the blood of Christ to our hearing (so that we may hear the word of God), to our doing (so that we may do the things of God), and to our walking (so that we may take the way of God).
If we have the wrong hearing, if we listen to the wrong things, we will have a wrongdoing and a wrong walking. Our hearing governs our doing and our walking.
First and primarily we need the cleansing blood of Christ and the precious ointment of the Spirit to be applied to our ears that we may hear the pure word of God. Pay attention to God’s word, be in God’s word, and listen to positive things. Reject anything that is negative, reject negative speaking, reject gossip, and reject any doubtful speaking!
After we apply the blood of Christ to our hearing, we enter into the divine fellowship and we are anointed with the all-inclusive compound Spirit. We are cleansed by the divine fellowship of the Spirit based upon the blood of Christ.
The Divine Fellowship Issues in Oneness
The way for us as the believers in Christ to be one as the Lord Jesus desired and prayed for in John 17:21 is for us to be in the divine fellowship.
The divine fellowship is God’s dispensing of Himself into us so that we and God would be made one. The fellowship issues in the oneness, and the fellowship is the oneness.
Through fellowship we enter into a joint participation of the Triune God – we partake of Him and He enjoys us, it is a mutual participation and partaking.
Since God is One and God Himself is the oneness, when we are in the divine fellowship we enter into the oneness of the Triune God. When we fellowship with God, God makes us one with Him and one with all the other believers in His Body.
The Lord Jesus desires to make all His believers one even as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one. By fellowshipping with God, we enter into the enlarged oneness of the Divine Trinity (John 17:21).
As we fellowship with God and we open to Him, the Father and the Son come and make an abode with us, making us one with Him (John 14:21, 23).
Don’t “try to be one”, and don’t do all kinds of things you think you need to do so that you may be one with the other believers – simply fellowship with God, and allow Him to make you one with God and with the members of His Body!
Experiencing the Cross to be Thoroughly in the Divine Fellowship
We may apply the blood, and we may fellowship with the Lord, but we may still not be one with the other believers because inside of us, in our being, there are some problems, some obstacles.
Sometimes we may not even want to fellowship with some brothers or sisters because of what they said to us or did to us a while ago. Sometimes we may avoid contact with certain saints because of the obstacles within us to the divine fellowship. The saints may be fine, they may seek our fellowship, but in us there are some obstacles.
The way to have a thorough fellowship with the saints is through having the cross applied to our being in our experience (see Gal. 2:20). If no death, no life; if no cross, no Christ; of no Christ, no Spirit, and if no Spirit, no fellowship.
We need to take up our own cross and follow the Lord – there’s a particular portion of the cross for each one of us, designed specifically for us, which we need to take and allow it to cross us out.
What does it mean to bear the cross? To bear the cross means to deny the self, to put the self to death, to apply the cross of Christ to the self all the time.
Our self gets offended very easily, and it has preferences and peculiarities which include some people and exclude many others. For us to have the horizontal fellowship, we need to deny ourselves – we need to apply the cross to ourselves by the Spirit, being senseless about ourselves. In this way, we can never be offended!
Also, we need to learn to forgive others as they sin against us, offend us, or do things that may bother us. As soon as the Lord unveiled the local church in Matt. 18, He said that we need to forgive one another 70 times 7 – so many times that we lose count!
We need to let the peace of Christ to arbitrate in our heart (Col. 3:15) by enthroning it as the ruler and decider in everything, and we should forgive all the saints, not allowing anything come between us and the saints.
Remember: we don’t have even one forgiving bone in our body but we have a forgiving life in our spirit! We need to let that life circulate in us in a free way!
As we apply the cross by the Spirit and we forgive others, we will experience a more thorough horizontal fellowship with the saints in the Body of Christ.
Lord, thank You for Your precious blood. We want to apply the blood of Christ to our hearing, that we may hear and give heed only to the positive things of Your economy. Lord, we apply the blood to our doing and to our walking. Make us those who exercise their spirit to apply the blood of Christ all the time and remain in the divine fellowship. Lord, we want to apply the cross to our self by the Spirit so that it may be no longer us who live but Christ may live in us. Lord, we desire a deeper and more fellowship in spirit with You and with the saints!
References and Further Reading
- This sharing is inspired from brother Ed Marks’ sharing in this message and portions in, The Triune God to Be Life to the Tripartite Man (ch. 19), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, ITERO spring 2013 “The Experience, Growth, and Ministry of Life for the Body“, week 1 entitled, Living in the Fellowship of the Divine Life.
- Hymns on this topic:
# First the blood, and then the ointment, / Cleansing, then anointing comes; / If we pass not thru Golgotha, / Ne’er to Pentecost we’ll come.
# If I’d know Christ’s risen power. / I must ever love the Cross; / Life from death alone arises; / There’s no gain except by loss.
# We are, we are, we are one in Christ! / Abiding in the true vine, / Receiving all the riches of the life divine, / We are one!
About aGodMan
