Do we not see it in our family life? At any rate, I do. I can speak for myself in this matter because my family always has been a very affectionate one, and this loving and expressing our love to one another has brought us very close together. I think about the children. I go back to the time when they were little, and remember how they would climb upon my knee, and how they used to press their little faces against mine, and their little hearts, as it were, against my breast; and how, with more feeling than their words could express, they used to say, Dadda, papa, father, you are a dear! I do love you!' You would readily imagine what I should say back to them.
It has been just the same with my wife. She has sweetened my life very much with her expressions of love. She has done it by responding to my appeals, and by sharing my sorrows and joys. And I have no doubt that were she here to speak for herself, she would say she has equally felt the force and sweetness of my expressions of affection during the many years we have loved and lived together.
I have only told you these things because I want you to see that the fellowship of love is just as real between the Lord Jesus Christ and the soul that is set upon Him, as it is in these sacred human relationships.
3. Then there is the fellowship of service. Now, it follows that, if we are fully saved, we are and we should be workers together with God, not simply going out on 'our own', as you young people say sometimes, trying to do people good; but really, if it is as it ought to be, your relations are expressed in those words, 'We are workers together with God'.
There are several particulars about that fellowship of service which I want you to note. For instance, there is the union of purpose. You cannot have fellowship with God in service without a union of purpose. Are you in for that? Perhaps it may give my words a closer application if I glance at two or three references: 'For this purpose was the Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the works of the Devil'. Are you in union with Him for that purpose? There is the reason round about us, plain and visible enough.
Take another: 'To this end came I into the world that I might bear witness of the truth'. Are you in union with Him in that witness-bearing? I assure you there is a great need of it.
Take still another: 'As the Father hath sent Me, even so'—that is a very powerful little link—'even so send I you'. There is not only the sender and the one sent, but the same purpose in both minds.
There is the unity of effort; that is, being yoked together for the work. It is a beautiful thing to be yoked with loving comrades in service, so that when there is a difficulty to face, some burden to be carried, or something to be moved, then you can go in for a good pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together. But this fellowship with Christ really means having Jesus Christ as a yoke-fellow in your work for God; that as you are not your own, you are not left to yourselves, but find that He is yoked up with you, and when the pull comes it is pulling together—He pulls and you pull.
4. Then this service sometimes goes so far as to become the fellowship of suffering. Jesus Christ could only redeem men by the sacrifice of Himself. There was no other way, and if He had not done that man would not have been redeemed, and the whole world would have remained under the ban of condemnation and without hope. It is on the same track that we must work out our union with Him in the service of God and humanity.
When I was meditating on this Divine union a picture imaged itself before my mind. The scene was a prison in Rome, where was seated a prisoner for Christ's sake; his name was Paul. During a visit to Rome they showed me the place where this was supposed to have occurred. There is Paul, in this prison-cell, writing a letter which he wants to send by one who, having visited him in prison, is now returning to his own people at Philippi.