This was written this past summer on July 21st:

A couple of verses I read yesterday in Mark fit right in with CH Carter’s sermon on Sunday ("What is Fellowship?"). Jesus was responding to a question about the greatest commandment:

Jesus answered, "The foremost is, 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all you heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these." Mark 12:29-31

CH Carter’s sermon was taken from Phil 2:1-4:

Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

CH Carter spoke of the two aspects of fellowship, the vertical and the horizontal, that is, our fellowship with God and our fellowship with others. These are exactly the dimensions addressed by Jesus in the verses in Mark: we are to love God with everything that is within us, and we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. CH Carter’s sermon also touched on unity, which brought another passage to mind:

Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:1-3

Is this kind of love and fellowship difficult? Well, unless it is empowered by the Holy Spirit, it is impossible. We do not naturally do this. We naturally care more for ourselves than others, and do not consider their needs more important than our own. But if we are His children, we have the Holy Spirit living within us, and it is His unity that we are preserving. We love God because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). We can then love others because we are secure in His love, and His Holy Spirit enables us to love as we ought to.

For myself, it is sometimes very difficult to get past “myself” and love as I should. We all need God’s empowerment to love each other and preserve His unity. Otherwise, our service and hospitality are of no real eternal value (1 Cor. 13). But thankfully, He DOES empower us to love as He desires. And His grace covers us in those situations where we don’t love, enabling us to confess when we fail and forgive those who have failed us.

He truly has given us everything we need.