Dear congregation, words like communion, fellowship and communication are buzzwords. Today in every aspect of society people are grappling with breakdown in communication, in churches and families and society and international relationships. The whole world craves good communication. Workshops are held all over the country for workers and factories and offices and plant management for how to develop good communication skills among themselves. So much is broken down. We realize that two-way communication is important, but so few good solutions are being offered for the problem of the lack of communion, the lack of fellowship, the lack of communication. Today, some are offering the option that if you take away all authority and you put everyone on one level, you'll have better communion. The problem with breakdown we are told is that there's not supposed to be any kind of hierarchy. That's one solution they say.

Others say, "No, that's not the problem. The problem that you've got to, particularly in the church, you've got to water down the distinctives of the Word of God. You've got to strive more for an ecumenical movement. You've got to join the World Council of Churches. You've got to wipe away the stark distinctions between Roman Catholics and Protestants and well, take the edge off of truth and if you're more ecumenical and you're more broad, you'll have this lack of communication be broken off and you'll be able to fellowship." Still others say, "That even isn't far enough. What we really need is to cover up all differences and let everyone do what he wants to do in his own eyes. Give total freedom and throw out the Word of God completely and let man be the captain of his own ship and the master of his own fate, and then we'll be able to have good communication where everyone has freedom to do what they want to do."

And still others say, "The key really is sincerity. We've got to train people ethically to be sincere. Whatever they believe is their business, but even if there's sincerely wrong, that doesn't matter as long as they're sincere. Sincerity is the key to communication." Well, you can fill in the gaps. There are more answers given today, but those are just four of them. But all four of these answers and many more that are given do not resolve the problem in truth.

They may promote compulsory communication or a shallow form of communion, but it's not true communion. True communion, the dictionary says is where people show intimate sharing with each other, particularly in conversation and are bonded together about meaningful things. Well, the world really doesn't know much about that, does it? The level of communication in the world is usually at a very shallow level. Even where people have common interests and common hobbies and they bond well because they've got these common hobbies, still they don't get to the depths of their being. They don't have truly intimate profound conversation. They don't have real communion where heart touches heart and mind touches mind and where there's fundamental core heart issue agreement on concepts and truth and on what life is all about.

Only in Christianity can there be real and genuine communion and fellowship and communication because the root and the source and the essence of communion lies in truth, in the God of truth and out of Him, knowing Him, having communion with Him vertically, we can have genuine communion with His people horizontally. And I'm going to argue with you tonight that only true believers know true communion with God and with one another. We want to look at that with you from I Corinthians 12 verse 20 and a consideration of question 55 of Lord's Day 21 of our Heidelberg catechism. I Corinthians 12:20, "But now are they many members yet but one body." In question 55, "What do you understand by the communion of saints?" First that all and everyone who believes being members of Christ are in common partakers of Him and of all his riches and gifts. Secondly, that everyone must know it to be his duty readily and cheerfully to employ his gifts for the advantage and salvation of other members.

But with God's help, I want to consider with you the best communion on earth. We'll look at it in three thoughts. First it's essence, second, it's exercise, and third, it's excellence. The best communion on earth, it's essence, it's exercise and it's excellence. Well, tonight moving beyond question 54, you recall that we spent about 20 messages on question 53 and about 10 on question 54, and we're going to look at question 55 just in one message tonight, and then 56, and then Lord's Day 22, and then Reverend Wenzwock has already covered 23 through the early fifties. And therefore after Reverend Kyvenhoven or candidate Kyvenhoven, I'm getting premature here, would be ordained, then there will be time to move back into Lord's Day one and move through the catechism again. And I'll just finish off these last few in the early twenties that we hadn't covered, and then there'll be an orderly progression by particularly Reverend Wenzwock and the then Reverend Kyvenhoven through the catechism.

So tonight our focus then is on real communion. Real communion. What is the root? What is the essence? What is the source of real communion? Well, the answer to that question is simple and profound. It's simple because the answer is God. It's profound because none of us can ever grasp the depth of the communion, the intimate heart-to-heart, mind-to-mind truth-to-truth fellowship that exists between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

So what we need to understand immediately as we approach this subject tonight is that if we truly want genuine communion with God and with man, we must know God himself and share in that communion of the Trinity living out of that so that we in turn can truly share from heart-to-heart with other people. Now, there are different levels of course of communication in society and we don't deny that tonight. Sociologists, psychologists have all got their own schemes and systems and there's no end to ideas, but basically there's three or four levels, isn't there? There's the level of general communication where you meet someone, you ask about superficial things, you ask about the weather, you ask how many children they have in their family. You ask if they're married and so on. This is good as far as it goes, but we all recognize that this is pretty shallow level of communication. Nothing wrong with it. That's usually how you speak when you meet people.

But real communication goes deeper, doesn't it? There's a second level of communication where you get into your likes, into your wants, into your needs, and you begin to share with people what you care for, what you dislike. That goes a bit deeper. You begin to get to know each other that way. And then there's a third level that can be reached in a really good natural marriage. Without the Lord Jesus Christ, you might say, a level of marriage that might reach maybe the B level. That's very unusual to have a marriage outside of Christ reach that high of a level, but it can be there.

It can be people that just coalesce well, they function well together by nature and they communicate really well and they share their inmost beings with one another as husband and wife and they enjoy their fellowship. Well, that's a deeper level yet. But what we're getting at tonight is that only a true Christian can reach the deepest level of communication on earth. In which he has fellowship with the Father and with the Son as John says, and knows an intimacy in which he bears his whole soul and embosoms himself to God the Father and God the Son by the Holy Spirit and enters into the love of God of which Jesus has said, "Come."

And it says he takes us by the hand, "Come and I will lead you into the presence of my Father and I will show you a love that passes all understanding. Oh, heavenly Father I will, that they will be with me where I am and that thou will show them the love. Wherewith thou hast loved me." That is real communion. When the power of the Holy Ghost sheds abroad the love of a triune God in our soul and we become open and naked and communicative as it were with Almighty God and find in Him a peace and a joy and a love that passes all understanding and passes every human relationship in this world, then we have real fellowship, real communion with God through His Son.

And once you have that, you see, you then will also be able to bond in real communion with the children of God because life's deepest goals and dreams and passions and desires and affections, you will share with them. You will love the same Savior, you'll love the same truth, you'll love the same special day, the Sabbath. You'll love the same word. You'll have a vast field of real truth to communicate about. So there is a richness you see in real communion that God's people have that the world doesn't know anything about. The world thinks when it reaches level three, it's got all that this world has to offer. But we say based on God's word, when we are members of the body of Christ and share in that body, there is a love that surpasses all of this world's love. It is the best communion here on earth.

Now that communion begins oddly enough when we begin to realize that we've broken communion with God. It begins when we are emptied of our self-righteousness and we learn to seek God and we learn how empty our lives are without God. That communion begins when we have a need for communion. And that need is the work already of the Spirit of God emptying us from vessel to vessel, showing us how empty life is without God and without Christ, showing us that this entire world is like one big mirage without the Savior and we learn to cry out after the living God and cannot be satisfied without communion with Him. May I ask you tonight, dear friend, have you ever had real communion with a living God? Have you ever been in contact with God through prayer? He through His Word to you and you back through prayer to Him, a two-way communion where there was real contact, where you know had the ear of the Lord of Sabaoth and He heard your cry and you fellowshipped through his son and you enjoyed the peace that passes all understanding.

You see, if you know something of that you've tasted something that has spoiled you for life, something above and beyond everything this world has to offer and you want more of it and you want it steadily and you miss it when it's not there. I believe that communion with God is the foundation of this little article, this precious little article in the Apostles Creed. I believe in the communion of saints. And so our forefathers spoke a great deal, didn't they, of union and communion with Jesus Christ? They used words like this, vital union, sacred union, spiritual union, mystical union, eternal union, personal union. You see how the intimacy of all these words, that union refers to coming into a state of union, being born again, being from my dead state in Adam to a living state in Jesus Christ and having a real relationship with him. But now out of that union, out of that new birth by which when I repent and believe the gospel, I'm born again into this wonderful state of union, out of that flows communion, and that communion grows when God's people are healthy, that is, our entire lifetime.

So think of it like a marriage, a really good marriage when two people, let's just picture young people, boys and girls. Let's just picture a wedding right now, a wedding in this church building. Two people walk down the aisle, the bridegroom and the bride, they walk down separately. But when they walk back out, they walk out as one. And that's not just by chance, that's figuratively. And in actuality the truth, they're pronounced husband and wife while they're up here and when they walk back out, they are one in their state, they are in union with each other. In fact, the last thing we say before they go out is, "I now present to you Mr. and Mrs." and we say one name and the woman allows her name, you see, to be taken up into the man's name. They are one in union. But it takes a lifetime of communion to live out that union and to truly share in the depths of their being.

It takes a lifetime to learn, to move from the I to the we and to truly be one in affection and one in spiritual intimacy and one in every area of life. It's a growing process. Well, it's the same thing with spiritual life, very same thing. You see, we become one with Jesus Christ in state. We are in union with Him from the moment we're born again. And that's true of every single believer, not just the assured ones, not just the strong ones, but also the weak ones. You notice how the answer to question 55 puts that, "What do you understand by the communion of saints?" First that all and everyone, everyone who believes, faith is the hallmark you see, being members of Christ, as being united to Christ are in common partakers of Him and of all His riches and gifts.

So the Holy Spirit in regeneration is God's bond to us that unites us with Christ and from our side, the bond is faith that unites us to Jesus by that spirit. That's why Calvin spoke of the double bond that unites us to Jesus Christ, the spirit from God's side and faith from our side. And when we truly believe and put all our hope, all our salvation in Jesus Christ alone, you see at that moment we are united with Jesus Christ and we become a saint. A saint, you say? Yes a saint. The word saint is a Greek New Testament word derives from a Greek, New Testament word, hagio, saints, or hagios, saints. And a saint is any believer. We must never, never, never let Roman Catholic ideas define the word saint for us. Roman Catholic ideas is that the saint is some very, very, very special believer who has acquired some degree of sainthood usually after he dies or always after he dies. And so he's declared a saint years or centuries later.

That's not biblical. The Bible calls every believer a saint. The Bible called all those Corinthians believers in which there was so much confusion says they're saints. We heard a year or two ago from Reverend Wenzwock's series of sermons on that epistle. And remember how he stressed that they're call of God to be saints. Same thing to the Ephesians. Paul calls them saints you see. Every believer is a saint because he's holy, he's hagio. Now, how is a believer holy? Well, in three ways, a believer is holy. First of all in Jesus Christ. And that's most important of all. It's only in Christ that we're declared holy. Outside of Christ you know we're absolutely unholy. There's no hope for us whatsoever. Outside of Jesus, we're nothing but sinners. But secondly, we're also holy from the moment we're born again because you see we'll never be unborn again and we have a destination.

Everyone who's born again is on his way to holy heaven, to a holy place, to be with a holy God for a never-ending and a holy eternity. So saints are called saints, that is holy, because of their destination. And thirdly, the word holy or hagio in Greek also means to be set apart. And when God makes us to be born again, you see He sets us apart from the world. We walk a different way. We live according to a different drummer. We have different goals in the world. We love what God loves and we hate what the world loves. We're different people. We're set apart. We're holy.

So when we say, "I believe in the community of saints," what our forefathers meant is that God's true people who are all one in Christ, partakers of Christ by faith, all those people have a fellowship with each other that goes beyond human words and that goes beyond the fellowships that transpire in this world. Now, in this world, of course, there's all kinds of little fellowships. You get a certain kind of special car and you see other people riding along the road. They have that same unique car. There's a little bonding that goes on when you pass each other by and you wave and, "Ah, you've got that car." Well, that's not a very deep fellowship, but it is a fellowship. But what we're saying now you see is in true communion, that is grounded in Jesus Christ, there is a way for God's people to commune with each other that goes beyond everything this world knows.

But if you're not a partaker of Christ, you do not know this secret. You've not understand this. Your fellowship doesn't go beyond human level. You don't understand what it's like to meet God's children here locally or anywhere around the world and have this immense bonding that happens. Now, how does that happen? Well, it's very hard to explain. Let me just try to use scriptural language. If you think of John 15, you see Jesus is the vine. There's sap that flows through this vine and he in graphs branches into the vine. Some of those branches are dead, but he makes them alive, you see? And when he makes them alive, the sap from Jesus flows into that branch. Christ's blood flows through His members, even the weakest member in faith.

And where there is this blood as it were flowing through, where there is the same life from branch to branch, branch recognizes branch as it were. The tree is one. There's a fellowship, the parts of the tree. Paul uses an even better example. He says, "It's like our body. Our body is one. There's a fellowship in our body." This is my hand, these are my fingers. And if this finger hurts, you see, my brain doesn't say, "Oh, that's just your finger. That's somebody else's finger." No, this says, "This is part of my body. We are one." There's a fellowship in your body that is intimate to yourself. No one else is you. Your body is you.

But in true communion of saints, you see there's a oneness in the whole body of Jesus Christ. And that oneness is bonded together. It can be tarnished by sin, but we are to strive to exalt that oneness, to live out of that oneness and to treasure that oneness. Therefore, everyone who believes be made members of Christ are in common partakers of him and of all his riches and gifts. So this is the essence. This is the essence of the communion of saints. We're one in Christ.

And we're one in his riches and gifts. Now, what does that mean riches and gifts? Well, Jesus doesn't come to us empty-handed, does He? You've heard the expression many times from Reverend LaMaine many years ago, "When Christ comes, He brings everything with him." You see, He doesn't just come by Himself. You don't just commune with Him. But when you commune with Him, you get riches and gifts. You get precious treasures, precious things, things that are free, things that flow from the fullness of his heart. Things that you don't have to make yourself worthy to receive them for they're free gifts of God.

What things? Well, this is a gift of pardon. Pardon of all sin. That's a great treasure. There's a gift of peace. Peace that passes all understanding that the world doesn't know anything of, an inward peace that's so great. You feel peace with God. You feel peace with your neighbor. You even feel peace with nature around you. That's a great gift. Another treasure is joy. We heard about that this morning in four different aspects, this wonderful joy that Nehemiah said, "The joy of the Lord is your strength. It's a gift of righteousness. We are reckoned, righteous in the Lord Jesus Christ." What a gift that is. There's the gift of holiness. Actually, I just spoke about. There's a gift of happiness. We heard that too this morning. True blessedness, true happiness in the Lord Jesus Christ. There's a gift of contentment. I'm content with whatever the Lord will send my way if I'm truly in communion with Christ because I know He knows for me what I need better than I know for myself.

There's a wonderful thing that Jeremiah Burroughs called in his famous classic, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. And there's a gift of protection. I know I'm safe and secure in my almighty Savior. And on and on it goes you'll see. When there's real communion with Jesus Christ, we are incredibly rich. Rich with the gifts of Christ rich, with the gifts of salvation, rich with all the gifts of the covenant of grace. We have everything we need in the Lord Jesus Christ. And no one else can give that to us but Christ. Many, many years ago I was counseling a young lady and she came to me and said, "I want to divorce my husband because he doesn't meet all my needs. He doesn't meet all my needs." Well, I said to her, "Quite frankly, my friend, no one on earth can meet all your needs. A thousand husbands couldn't meet all your needs. Only Jesus Christ as our teaching prophet, as a sacrificial blessing, interceding high priest, as our ruling, guiding governing King can meet all our needs."

Now it's out of this communion with Christ, this wonderful relationship with Jesus, that we commune with one another and have fellowship with one another and exercise this communion in very real and practical and loving ways. And this communion is so incredibly beautiful. I'm talking now about the horizontal communion that flows out of the vertical. It's so incredibly beautiful because it's all arranged by God. And God uses the local church to accent that communion so that every local church represents as it were, a little part of His body. And the invisible members that is the true members of Jesus Christ, those who are born again in that local church form the essence of that little part of the body. And they know a communion among themselves that serves to make them all stronger in faith and all helpful to each other by the diversity of their gifts. And that's what our instructor goes on to say. Secondly, that everyone must know what to be his duty readily and cheerfully to employ his gifts for the advantage and salvation of other members.

You see, a child can't do what a father can do. A father cannot do what a mother can do. A teenage son can do things that a little infant cannot do. An infant can fill needs and can provide joys in a family that a teenage son cannot provide. You see from the weakest member, the little baby to the strongest, from the youngest to the oldest, we need each other and we can borrow as Calvin put it, "We are constrained to borrow from each other's gifts, to have a whole body, to represent the whole body of the Lord Jesus Christ." And so there ought to be harmony and communion and mutual fellowship in family circles, the family circle of grace by which the one supplies the needs of the other and fellowships with the other. And one can learn from the other.

We can all learn from each other. So think of it this way, the beginner in grace, the feeble member is critical for a church. You've got to have new blood running through your veins. It's wonderful to have newborn babes of grace to pastor, to counsel, to see the vitality of first love in them. It's just great for a church. But it's also great to have fathers and mothers and grace who've got wisdom and counsel to give to everyone in the church of Jesus Christ.

And that's why Paul says in this chapter, "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' or again, the head to the feet, 'I've got no need of you.' The whole body is one body. And the more inconspicuous members, the more visible members of the body, these things all have relationships to one another. In fact, the most tender parts are often the most valuable parts," Paul says. He's thinking no doubt of things like the eye, how tender your eye. If you get a piece of dust in your eye, boys and girls, you don't wait until tomorrow to get it out, do you? No, your eye is tender, but it's a valuable part, a very valuable part of your body. The whole body you see needs every other part in the body to commune with each member.

See, if everybody was like me, wow, the singing in this church would just be atrocious. You wouldn't ever want it on a tape or anything. But if I was like all of you or some of you, if I was like some of you, the preaching would be very, very bad because you have a hard time standing up in front of people and preaching. So you need preachers. I need good singing and we meet each other's needs, you see. This is just one example. There's thousands of them. We need each other in every way. We need each other to pray for each other, don't we? The youngest believer who's got a tender life with the Lord, oh, how jealous I am, how I covet the prayers of the youngest believer because they have a tender relationship with God. It's wonderful when newborn babes are praying for you.

It's also wonderful when advanced fathers in grace are for you, isn't it? So none of us had the same experiences. None of us are identical. What a boring church it would be if everyone were like me, if everyone were like you. How exciting, how beautiful when God takes all kinds of people with all kinds of background, educated, uneducated, poor, rich, and brings them together and brings them to know the same Savior and as different as they are in personality, in character, in experience, they all come to know their own sins and misery before God and become lost sinners before a Holy God.

They all come to flee for refuge in Jesus Christ. They all come to want to express that glorious salvation they've received by faith in a lifestyle of gratitude and holiness. It's just amazing what they have in common, though there are so many differences. And if that's true in this local body, imagine how true it is around the globe when you can go to other countries and they speak different languages, have different customs, different backgrounds, all kinds of strange foods, strange ideas, strange work patterns, everything is strange. The whole culture is strange. And you talk about Jesus Christ and you're what?

There's something incredibly bonding, affirming that warms the soul and brings about communion and this experience of the communion of saints that I'm at a loss to put into words. But what happens you see is in Christ, and the key words here is in Christ. In Christ believers learn to love one another and commune with one another and bear their soul to one another and feel fellowship with one another in absolutely wonderful ways, sometimes even with people that are no longer alive. I told you before that Martin Luther said, "If you didn't feel close to David when you read the Psalm, something is wrong with you, with your spiritual life."

Now, it doesn't mean that you're going to feel equally close to every single believer. That awaits for heaven. Believers have different characters as well. Some you feel closer to than others, but there will be a bonding. There will be a bonding with every believer and there will be special bondings with certain believers in which you will say, make you say, "I believe in the communion of saints." And this after all is actually a mark of grace that affirms whether we are born again or not. Isn't that what John said? "We know we pass from death to life," I John three or four, "We know we pass from death to life if we love the brethren."

And John goes on to say, "If you don't love the brethren, if you don't have this communion of saints, you don't feel a bond with the people of God. You've never been born again because you can't say you love God when you don't love the brethren." So the vertical relationship of love and communion with Jesus will absolutely give you a communion horizontally with the people of God. If it doesn't do that, then the vertical isn't true either. John says. So these two belong together. So often today you hear only about communion of saints or you hear only about communion with God. In hyper Calvinism, you tend to hear about communion with God and no need for practical reality among the saints, which is bad news. And in Armenianism you tend to hear only about communion among the saints and not very much about vertical experiential communion with God, which is also bad news.

The both belong together. I believe in the communion of saints has two parts here, doesn't it? First being members of Christ and then second, sharing readily and cheerfully our gifts with each other and enjoying each other in a bonding of true spiritual fellowship. Now where this fellowship is present, then we can overlook each other's faults, weaknesses and shortcomings and character flaws and all kinds of infirmities. And we're bonded together by bigger things.

Just like in a good marriage, you overlook each other's small flaws and you appreciate the big assets that both people bring to the marriage. So in spiritual life, you appreciate the gifts you find in each other. You appreciate them, you treasure them, and you forget about the weaknesses. Love covers a multitude of evils. And that's what the New Testament Church did as soon as they were brought in on the day of Pentecost, the great wonder 3,000, the church went from 120 to 3,120, grew 21 fold in one day. That's a wonder, that's a miracle. But it's just as wonderful, just as much a miracle that we then read at the end of the chapter, "And they continued steadfastly in the Apostles doctrine, communion in doctrine, and in fellowship, communion in speaking together from soul to soul about the things of God and in breaking of bread, communion in the Lord's Supper and in prayers, praying for one another and so communing with each other that way."

Now, this mystical, spiritual, intimate communion is defined in our Lord's Supper for them this way, "Besides that, we by the same spirit may also be united as members of one body in true brotherly love, as the apostle said, for we being, many are one bread in one body for all partakers of that one bread." And bread of course is Jesus Christ. "For out many grains, one meal is ground and one bread baked out of many berries being pressed together, one wine floweth and mixes itself together. So shall we all who by a true faith are being grafted into Christ, be all together one body through brotherly love for Christ's sake, our beloved Savior who has so exceedingly loved us. And we show this not only in word, but in very deed one to another."

So you don't only affirm it verbally, but you show it with your hands and your feet by giving of yourself to one another. And how do you do that? Well, that's where our instructor comes in and says, "You do that by employing your gifts, readily cheerfully for the advantage and salvation of other members." Do you have a gift to pray? Well, you should be much in secret prayer. You should have the bulletin open every week praying for the names. Be much in secret prayer, praying for the names of the sick and so on. And if you have a gift to pray aloud, go and visit people and pray together with them. Maybe you have a gift of conversation, a gift that you can speak about spiritual things, godly conversation. Do you edify your neighbor with this gift? Do you edify other children of God with this gift?

Maybe you've got a gift that you relate well to young people. Are you employing that gift? Are you reaching out to young people seeking to bond with them? Maybe you have a gift that you like old people. Are you visiting them in the nursing home, reaching out to them, the spiritual truth? You see, whatever your gift may be, maybe you've got a gift you're a fast worker. Well, are you helping out in some ministry of the church? Where maybe it takes mundane effort, but we need people who can work fast and work well to be part of the body of Christ. Whatever it is you see, you are to employ your gifts because love that communes cannot help but show itself. And it shows itself by word, not gossiping, not cutting down each other, but affirmative words, appreciative words, supportive words, lovingly, corrective words when your brother or sister go astray and by deed, reaching out in one way or another, employing your gifts.

So this is what God does. He brings together this wonderful communion. He doesn't give any single individual all gifts, but He gives every single believer some gifts. So everyone has something to contribute to the body and everyone has some need from the body to receive. And in this way, the body is built up. And we confess, "I believe in the communion of saints. God establishes the essence of real communion then makes the people on earth and He brings to the new birth and spills over something to that communion and to them so that they may commune with each other and thereby prepares them for the excellence of communion with Him in the new heavens and on the new earth, where they may be one with him forever without sin." What an awesome thing this is, congregation, the excellence of the communion of saints. One day, dear believer, you will be with the holy angels and with the saints, not just the souls of the redeemed made perfect but their bodies and souls, the whole man, the saints themselves, and you will be in one company, you will be in perfect union and perfect communion.

And think of what that will be in that great day. There'll be a great multitude, a great variety of saints of all ages, all natures, all cultures, all personalities, all kinds of experience, all will have stories to tell of the wonders of free grace. And you will relish to hear every one of them. And together you will commune with each other about the one person who binds you together, the Lord Jesus Christ. What a communion that will be. Millions upon millions upon millions of believers will be your friends, your brothers and sisters, and you will spend eternity with them without one speck of interruption or discommunion, if you will.

You see a little bit of real spiritual communion on this earth is a foretaste of the glorious everlasting communion of glory. And on that day, there will be no disagreements, no divisions, no denominations, no Presbyterians or Reformed or Methodists or Baptists. There will be no theological arguments or controversies, no personal understandings, no pride, no ignorance, but we will love one another in perfection. Luther and Calvin will fully agree.

There will be not a hair's breadth of difference between any of us theologically or in any other way. We will be one in Christ as Christ is in the Father and the Father in Him. Perfect, complete, excellent, intimate communion and we will commune perfectly even with those Christians who here on earth we found it kind of difficult to get close to. Not every Christian's the same. Some Christians are more lovable than others, quite frankly. But there in that day, all will be holy, all will be perfectly beautiful. Everyone in heaven will be admirable and lovable and sin-free and attractive and appealing and glorious and clothed with the beauty of Christ. And we will have the privilege of being intimate friends and fellow members with such glorious beings practicing forever and ever, the grace of love, which we were taught in principle to begin to practice here on earth.

And so here on earth, when you meet a fellow believer with whom you don't always see eye to eye, you ought to remind yourself of the importance of loving that believer, all those cursed quarrels and horrible divisions and misunderstandings and criticisms. If you're going to love each other perfectly in glory, shouldn't you begin practicing loving each other now, here below? What the shame it is when God's people don't love each other. Can we not try, congregation, to see each other as we will one day be and begin to love each other and do away with all the nonsense and the shortcomings and the things that get in the way from that communion? And remember that every believer is going to perfection, every believer will be perfect, sin free in soul, sin free in body. Therefore, what a tragedy it is on earth when believers don't love each other freely and don't commune with each other openly.

We need to see this as a sin. It does so much damage. It's a poor example for the world. Jesus said, "When the world sees the special love of believers, the world will sit up and notice and say, 'Behold how they love one another.'" It's the church's most powerful witness in the world because the world won't naturally believe the Bible. It won't naturally believe the gospel. It won't naturally believe your spiritual experience, but when it sees real love, it will sit up and notice. Well, thank God we do. We do have a lot of love in this church and we're most grateful for it. We do have a lot of people employing their gifts in a huge variety of ministries and we're most grateful for it. But there's always room for improvement, isn't there? Always room to love each other more.

How poor it is also for the church's welfare, when one brother and one sister or two brothers or two sisters don't really get along well together, that's a sin against the church. "My brethren, these things ought not to be in the church of God, Paul says early in this chapter, "There ought to be one faith, one purpose, one hope, one baptism, one spirit." And worst of all, it's a sin against God, not only against each other and against the world and against the church, but also against God. The Lord says clearly, "Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ." Paul commends the Ephesians for their love unto all the saints in Ephesians six he commands them to supplicate for all the saints. In Philippians four, he says, "Salute every saint." And David says, "I am a companion of all them that fear thee."

So yes, we are allowed our very, very special friends. Jesus had them too, Peter, James, and John were the three among the 12 He was the closest to, but He loved them all. Well, loved them all savingly, except Judas. But you see, you as a believer are to love every other believer but then have special relationships indeed with certain believers. This is perfectly normal and agreeable, may even be that way in heaven that you may have special friends in heaven, but you will love everyone in heaven. But there's one more reason why it's so bad when believers don't show a lot of love to each other here on earth. It brings hypocrisy into the open when believers quarrel. And it leads eventually into spiritual darkness. Our own souls are darkened when we don't get along well with one another in the faith and quarrels come and people get involved and things get complicated and sin brings confusion.

I mentioned John Calvin a moment ago. Do you know what Calvin once said to Luther? Well, he said to Melanchthon about Luther. He said, "I would traverse every ocean of this known world if I could have an audience with Master Martin and we could be united in the faith." What a glorious thing that is. At the same time, we're not striving for false unity. That's what many people are doing today. There's even some evangelicals today that say, "Well, since Jesus wants everyone united, we've got to do away with the distinctions between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. We got to see our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters as converted people, and we shouldn't try to disciple them. We shouldn't try to bring them the gospel. We shouldn't proselytize them," is the word they use. What a tragedy that is because Roman Catholicism, I'm not saying there's never a Roman Catholic that isn't saved and that is drawn out, but Roman Catholicism in terms says doctrine is not the gospel.

At least some Roman Catholics are honest about that. I sat next to a woman on a plane very recently, and I asked her if she was a Christian. She said, "No." I said, "Well, what do you believe in?" Then she said, "I'm a Roman Catholic. I'm not a Christian." Because she understood there was a fundamental difference between a Roman Catholic and a Christian. That doesn't mean you can't befriend a Roman Catholic at some level, but certainly not in a intimate way, not into a way of real, real communion. So we must be very careful in our relationships with people who differ with us so radically as a Roman Catholic would differ and really have another fundamentally different religion, a religion by which you're saved partly by your own works. And therefore it's very critical in our relationships that we handle them wisely and that we don't develop relationships with those who differ from us greatly, especially not long-term relationships that would end in marriage.

Well, we need to learn from all these things to flee to Jesus Christ, to aim for an ideal in the communion of saints, and yet remember the real, that we will always come short of it, but to hate everything in us that stands in the way from believing and exercising in the communion of saints. So let us choose our friends carefully.

Let us be a companion of those that fear God, as David put it. David was very clear, "Those who are closest to me, I will want to be those who fear the Lord." He says, "A forward heart shall not depart from me. I will not know a wicked person." That doesn't mean he won't ever say a word to a wicked person, but, "I will not know." It is an intimate term in Hebrew. I won't get close to a wicked person. I won't get close to someone who believes a very different doctrine than I do because I know that that person can perhaps leave me astray. And so I stay my distance. I evangelize perhaps, but I don't become involved in that person's life in an intimate way. I choose my companions carefully.

You see, if you know your own heart very well, you can sooner be made evil in vain by evil company than be made good by righteous company and we can easily pick the wrong friends. And so many people have done it, and so many people have been sorry later and blinded by what they've done. So dear young people, choose your friends very carefully and look for those with whom you might bond, especially in a spiritual way.

And dear friends, if you don't know what it means to have communion with God, you don't know the deepest level of communion with men either, and you need to repent and seek grace to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and ask God to help you to open your eyes to see there's a communion, there's a level, there's a depth in this world, a better communion than you have ever known, the best communion on earth. For this is life eternal to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent and out of, and that's eternal life. And out of that eternal life, you may commune with one another in a way and at a level this world knows nothing of, but a way and a level which brings true joy and true fellowship into your soul. Oh, may God help us to know by experience, to know by conversation, to know by words and deeds, I believe in the communion of saints. Amen.

Gracious God, please bless this message. Forgive all our shortcomings in preaching, and give us a big heart for communion with thee and communion with one another. And help us to be able to say in the depths of our soul, experientially, "I believe in the communion of saints." Lord, we wait on thee. Be mindful of us and bless us, and help us to go forward in our lives seeking that communion that can stand us in good stead for the great eternity to come. All this we ask out of free grace. In Jesus' name, amen.