Originally preached: August 13, 2023

That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.
1 John 1:3

Into the Heart of God

There are dimensions to God, “deep things,” that beckon us beyond the shoreline of casual faith. We are invited into a relationship so profound, so all-encompassing, that it requires a lifetime of meditation to begin to grasp. It is an invitation to move beyond mere pleasantries with the Almighty — the spiritual equivalent of “how are you doing?” where we seldom expect a deep answer — and into the very heart of “fellowship divine.”

This fellowship is not a simple, singular connection. The staggering intention of God is for us to have a deep, personal fellowship with each distinct person of the Trinity: with God the Father, with God the Son, and with God the Holy Spirit. This isn’t about having three separate, fragmented relationships, like a father who relates differently to each of his four children. With God, these fellowships are not different in quality or depth; they are “cohesive that bleeds all into the same thing, all into the same depth of relationship.” This is not a truth to be resolved in a single sitting, but a reality to be lived, a depth to be explored. Let us, then, set a framework to understand the manner by which we are called into this sacred communion.

Communion by Invitation

Before we can speak of our relationship with God, we must begin where all true relationship with Him starts: with His love. Our fellowship with the Father is founded upon a staggering, unmerited truth: “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God” (1 John 3:1). This is the cornerstone. God’s original design in the Garden was perfect communion, walking with Adam in the cool of the day, sharing His very mind. But sin shattered that intimacy, creating a divide, a separation.

How, then, is fellowship possible for us, who are “shaped in iniquity” and “born in sin”? It is possible only because “the love of God… pulls us sharply back into the arms of God.” He is the initiator. He is the one who bridges the chasm. Our fellowship is not on our terms or according to our definitions of love, but wholly on His.

God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
(Romans 5:8)

This is the bedrock of our communion with the Father. It is a love that doesn’t wait for our worthiness but creates it. As John writes, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). Our love for Him is never the origin story; it is always the response. “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). The quality of relationship we can experience is predicated entirely on the quality of love He first extends—and He extends the very “fullness of his love.”

This love is not a fleeting emotion; it is our eternal security. It is the foundation upon which every promise of God stands firm. We can trust His words because we are grounded in His unchanging affection. “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not” (Lamentations 3:22). When we are foundationally secure in this love, it changes how we face every trial and tribulation. The winds of suffering that might otherwise scream “God has abandoned you!” are silenced by the deep, abiding truth that we are His, and His love is our anchor.

Communion by Participation

The Father’s initiating love finds its ultimate expression in the person and work of His Son. The love of God is not an abstract concept; it is an enacted reality. God, in His faithfulness, called us “unto the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:9). The Father’s love, unwavering despite our failures, provides the way back into communion through the Son. This is communion by grace.

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.
(Ephesians 2:8)

Through this grace, we are drawn into a fellowship with Christ that is characterized by justification, adoption, and sanctification. He becomes our spiritual sustenance, the very source of our life. As Jesus said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches… for without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5).

But this fellowship is even more profound. Through Christ, we are made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). This is a staggering thought. It means that “what is true of Christ becomes true of us.” Our relationship with Him becomes one of:

• Shared Affections: We begin to love what Christ loves. His supreme delight was to do the will of the Father. As we are fused with Him, our affections are reordered. We no longer look for loopholes or gray areas, because our deepest desire aligns with His: to please the Father.
• Intimacy: Our lives become “hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). This is the intimacy Jesus prayed for in John 17, “that they may be one, as we are.” We are “sweetly wrapped and swaddled in the personages of God,” secure and cherished.
• Mutual Delight: The Father declared of the Son, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” In Christ, that same delight is extended to us. We find our complete satisfaction in Him, and He, in turn, delights in His work in us. “He satisfies my soul,” and we find ourselves “wanting for nothing.”

This is the glorious exchange of grace. The things that separated us from God are resolved in the person of Christ, and we are brought into a fellowship so deep that His very nature begins to permeate our own.

Communion by Revelation

If our fellowship with the Father is by His love, and with the Son by His grace, our communion with the Holy Spirit is perhaps the most mysteriously intimate. It is here that the very mind of God is imparted to us. The Spirit is not merely a force or an element, but the third person of the Trinity, whose communion we are invited into (2 Corinthians 13:14).

God is a Spirit (John 4:24), and the Holy Spirit is, in essence, the spirit of that Spirit — the very disposition and inclination of God Himself. And what is the sum total of God’s disposition? What is the defining characteristic of His mind? It is love. “The mind of God, how God feels about things, how God formulates his thoughts… are all born out of the fact that God loves. The sum of those things is God’s love. He is infinite love.”

This is breathtaking. When we receive the Holy Spirit, we are not just receiving a helper; “God says, ‘I’m giving you my mind.'” This is how the new covenant is realized: “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to them a people” (Hebrews 8:10). The Spirit becomes our internal compass, our divine litmus test, leading and guiding us into all truth. He reveals the “deep things of God” that our natural minds could never search out on their own (1 Corinthians 2:10). He teaches us to compare “spiritual things with spiritual” (1 Corinthians 2:13), allowing us to infer the will of God even when scripture is not explicit, because we have been given access to the very mind of God.

This is the fulfillment of Paul’s exhortation: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). The selfless, obedient, love-driven mind of Christ becomes accessible to us through the indwelling Spirit. We are no longer left to our own flawed thought processes; we are given the “benefit of eternal knowledge,” and He puts it in us.

The Trinity Present In Fruit: Love, Joy, and Peace

These three streams of fellowship — the Father’s love, the Son’s grace, and the Spirit’s mind — are not separate rivers. They flow together into one magnificent symphony of communion within the believer’s heart. This cohesive work unlocks the very “fruits of the Spirit,” which begin with love, joy, and peace.

The joy Jesus spoke of was not fleeting happiness, but a profound, shared delight. “These things have I spoken unto you,” Jesus said, “that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full” (John 15:11). This is the joy the Son experienced in perfectly doing the will of the Father, the joy of perfect union. He invites us into that same joy. It is the joy described in the old hymn: “And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.”

This is why we are warned, “Quench not the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19). To stifle the Spirit is to “shut off the valve on the fullness” that God intends for us. It is through the Spirit that the fullness of God’s love, joy, and peace are experienced. It is through the Spirit that our right relationship with the Son, and in turn the Father, is realized in our hearts.

God’s ultimate desire is to bring us into this complete, cohesive fellowship, to give us a “vertical slice” of heaven here and now. He unlocks treasures stored in heavenly places “so that we can experience them now.” It is a foretaste, a down payment, a promise of the fullness that is to come when we see Him face to face.

This is truly fellowship divine. It is an invitation into the very life of the Trinity — a life initiated by the Father’s love, secured by the Son’s grace, and experienced through the Spirit’s indwelling. It is a relationship of depth, intimacy, and fullness that satisfies the soul completely.