Fellowship with the triune God is the one thing that meets the vast need of the human soul for relationship with someone greater than ourselves. This fellowship begins when a soul first believes in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation and it grows bit by bit throughout the believer’s life. Those who want to deepen their relationship with the Lord have the opportunity to do so in the Lord’s Supper, an ordinance which God has given as a means of communion with Himself as well as with other believers. After her husband died, Margaret Durham (née Mure) worked to preserve his writings for the benefit of the church. Some of James Durham’s communion sermons were published with the title, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ. A friend of the Durhams, John Carstairs (who was married to Margaret’s sister, Janet), wrote the preface to this book. The following updated extract gives Carstairs’ ten-point description of the believer’s fellowship with God.

Real

Fellowship with God is most real. This is no chimerical fancy, or something that exists only in someone’s deluded imagination. “Truly,” says the apostle, “our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” Its effects are most real, though spiritual. Without a doubt, the more spiritual any thing is, it has in it the greater reality, and works the more powerfully and efficaciously. It is uncontrovertible, and quite removed from all reach of rational debate, that God is the greatest reality, and by proportion, communion with God (the nearest and closest approaches made to Him) must be very real. Marvellous are the effects of this communion, as your souls know right well.

Awe-inspiring

Secondly, it is an awe-inspiring fellowship, and full of dread. It impresses the soul with a deep, yet friendly, veneration of the glorious majesty of the great and holy God, who (as it says in Psalm 89:7) is “greatly to be feared in the assemblies of his saints” (where they are admitted to fellowship with Him), “and to be had in reverence by all that are about him.” When Jacob was admitted to very near communion with him, he says, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware” (Gen. 28:16). He was afraid, and said, “How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Familiarity here breeds no contempt, nor is it attended with any neglect or forgetfulness to keep due distance.

Humbling

Thirdly, it is a deeply humbling and holily self-debasing fellowship. This is apparent from the case of Abraham, who, as God’s special friend, was admitted to talk with Him with an unusual and extraordinary familiarity. Yet Abraham intersperses his discourse, in almost every sentence, with deeply self-debasing acknowledgements that he was but dust and ashes, and with prayers against God’s anger for taking it upon himself to speak to Him, when there was so infinitely vast a disproportion between Him and himself.

It was the same with the prophet Isaiah, when he had that glorious vision of the majesty of God (Isa. 6). He says, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips …”

It was the same also with Job, who was unique in his time, according to God’s testimony. When he is admitted to unusual nearness to God, he says, “Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes” (42:6).

The nearest approaches to God’s light (wherein there is no darkness at all), make the clearest exposure of the unworthiness, nothingness, and vileness of even the most eminent saints.

Transformational

This is a transforming fellowship. It assimilates the person to Him with whom they are having fellowship. There is no real communion with Him, but the result of it is some lineament of further likeness to Him. “We all,” says the apostle, “beholding the glory of the Lord as in a glass, are changed (or transformed) into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). Communion with and conformity to God have a reciprocal influence and force on each other: the more communion with Him, the more likeness and conformity to Him; and the more likeness to Him, the more communion with Him.

Wondrous

This is a wonderful fellowship, a fellowship that even sometimes transports, in a manner, the soul admitted to it, especially in any more than ordinary way or measure, into a sort of rapture and ecstasy of admiration at it.

David said, “Who am I, O Lord, and what is my father’s house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?!” (2 Sam. 7:18). Solomon, who was very near to God, says, in his solemn prayer at the dedication of the temple, “But will God indeed dwell with men on earth?!” (1 Kings 8:27).

Little wonder that it is greatly wondered at!

• The infinitely great and holy God who inhabits eternity, the High and Lofty One who dwells in the high and holy place, and is surrounded and attended there with an innumerable company of angels and spirits of just men made perfect, all of them shining in light and burning in zeal, none of them wearying to do him service — this one humbles Himself so far and stoops so low, so very low, as to dwell also with sinful (though humble and contrite) creatures, who dwell in cottages of clay and whose habitation is in the dust!
• He who is of purer eyes than that He can behold iniquity without detestation and abhorrence, yet humbles Himself, not only to behold, but with delight to dwell and keep fellowship with those who are in a great measure unholy, and have so much of what His soul hates dwelling in them!
• The glorious Persons of the dreadful and adorable Godhead come and make their abode with those in whom so great a remainder of stinking unmortified corruption still has its abode!

Sin-hating

Sixthly, this fellowship estranges from all idols, and from whatever is displeasing to God and estranging from Him. When Ephraim was brought near to Him, he says, “What have I to do any more with idols?” (Hos. 14:8). The people of God considered in a good spiritual frame and near to Him, say to every idol (which they cast away as a menstruous cloth) with indignation and abhorrence, “Get thee hence!” (Isa. 30:22). When David was admitted to very near communion with God, he says to wicked men (by whose company he might have been estranged from Him), “Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity!” (Psa. 6:8).

Indeed it is highly suitable and congruous that it should be so, for, “what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?” and believers are the temple of the living God (2 Cor. 6:16).

Reviving

This is a heart-quickening and reviving fellowship. God is said to “dwell with him that is humble and of a contrite spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite one” (Isa. 57:15).

Steadying

This is a heart-staying, calming and composing fellowship. It hushes into silence and drives away disquieting, perplexing and excruciating fears. When he was near to God, the psalmist said, “I laid me down and slept, I awaked, for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that have set themselves against me round about” (Psa. 3:5–6; see also Psa. 4:8 and Psa. 27:13–14).

Refreshing

Ninthly, it is a heart-cheering, refreshing, and rejoicing fellowship. The refreshing and joy that result from fellowship with God entirely surpass and transcend the joy that the people of the world have in the enjoyment of all their earthly pleasures. In contradistinction from the many who cry, “Who will show us any good?” (debasing, and in a manner, brutifying themselves, as if they did not have rational and immortal souls capable of enjoying God the chief good), the psalmist says, “Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us, for thou hast caused more joy of heart to me (i.e., by doing so) than when their corn and wine abound” (Psa. 4:8).

In Psalm 89:16, those who walk in the light of His countenance are said to rejoice in his name all the day. When the psalmist prays in Psalm 43 for admission to fellowship with God in His public ordinances, he promises that then he will go to the altar of God, to God “his exceeding joy,” “the joy of his joy,” the very heart and soul of his joy, or the cream of it, as some translations render it.

There is reality, solidity, strength and efficacy in that joy. It is heart-joy. In the very midst of the carnal joy, jollity and mirth of the natural man, arising from the greatest affluence of worldly pleasures and enjoyments, their heart is sorrowful, as Solomon says. There is no solidity in it, it has no foundation. If they would only reflect a little and ask for the reason for their laughter, mirth, and jollity, it would instantly vanish. It is kept up, to their delusion and ruin, by abstracting from, and not reflecting on, the insolidity and irrelevancy of its basis.

Sharpening

Tenthly, it is a fellowship that, in whatever measure it is attained by sojourning saints, it awakens desires, sharpens appetites, and stirs up instinctive longings for more, and yet more of it, even to completeness.

• Moses was a man of God, and His great favourite, whom He knew face to face. He was admitted to very much familiar fellowship with Him, and was told that he had found grace in His sight, that He knew him by name, and that at his earnest desire His presence would go with him (Ex. 33:12–14. Yet he still says to the Lord, “I beseech thee, show me thy glory!” (v.18).
• Similarly, holy Job was God’s darling. His candle shone on his head, by His light he walked through darkness, and the secret of God was on his tabernacle. Yet Job comforts himself amidst all his sorrows with the assured hope of having the fully satisfying sight and enjoyment of his Redeemer at the latter day.
• Likewise the spouse in the Song. She had often been brought into the banqueting house, with the banner of her Beloved’s love spread over her. His left hand had lain often under her head, and His right hand had embraced her. She had often sat down under His shadow with great delight, and found His fruit sweet to her taste, and her spikenard sent forth its smell while the King sat at His table. By the kisses of His mouth, she had frequently found His love to be better than wine, and He had often given her His loves in the vineyards. Yet in the conclusion of that high song, she cries, “Make haste, my Beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart on the mountains of spices!”
• So it was also with David, the man according to God’s heart. He had had much sweet communion with Him in his wanderings and wilderness condition, in caves and dens of the earth, and had often seen His power and His glory in the sanctuary. Yet he pants and breathes after more fellowship with Him, even as the chased hart pants after the water brooks. “When shall I come and appear before God?” (Psa. 42).
• Likewise the apostle Paul, Christ’s great favourite, who beside all the good days he had (in dispensing gospel ordinances, in planting and watering churches, in converting and edifying multitudes of souls, in triumphing by making manifest the savour of Christ’s knowledge) had been ravished into the third heavens, caught up into paradise and heard words that were not possible to be uttered! Yet, as if he had never been with Him, Paul desired to be dissolved and to be “with Christ” as best of all, and groans within himself, longing to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.
• Thus it was, finally, with John, the beloved disciple, who had often lain in his sweet master’s bosom, and could confidently say, “Truly, our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” Yet he closes his Revelation with the holily passionate desire, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

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