The Fellowship of the Lamb

 

“Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me” (John 16:32).

 

Jesus looks beyond our doubts and fears, He looks beyond our cowardice, He looks beyond our abandonment of Him, and He affirms that we are His brothers and sisters, He affirms our belief (even the midst of our doubt!), and He affirms our Father’s destiny for us from the foundation of the world. However, not only does Jesus not deny our unbelief, He reveals our unbelief. “Do you now believe? You will leave Me alone.”

 

Earlier in the Upper Room when Peter proclaims his willingness to die for Jesus, Jesus replies, “Will you lay down your life for Me? Truly, truly, I say to you, a rooster will not crow until you deny Me three times” (John 13:36).

 

After all, Jesus is the Light of the world, He is the Truth, we ought to expect Jesus to reveal the truth and not hide it. Jesus reveals our doubts and fears and exposes our grand pronouncements that are without foundation so that He may burn away the dross within us and bring us out of the furnace as pure gold in Him. Jesus is always seeing the end from the beginning, and if Jesus see us this way, ought we not learn to see one another this way in Him?

 

The ”hour” is upon Jesus and the disciples, it is an hour with many facets; an hour of betrayal, an hour of darkness, an hour of sacrifice, an hour of scattering; yet also an hour of glory, of completion, of resurrection, of a new Day dawning, of gathering – an hour that is still unfolding in eternal victory in the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Family of God.

 

The disciples will be scattered, but they will also be gathered, and while Jesus will speak of victory in the next verse, He will not deny the reality of verse 32. Let’s recall what Jesus says at the beginning of our chapter, “But these things I have spoken to you, so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them.” The hour has come for the disciples to enter into “the cost of witness” that Jesus spoke of in John 15:18 – 16:4.

 

As we read this passage, and the Gospel account of disciples abandoning Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, we may feel sorrow for times when have abandoned Jesus and we may hope that we shall never do so again. But let me ask a question, “Are we willing to be abandoned by other Christians as we are faithful to Jesus? Are we willing to stand alone for Him?”

 

You see, we may read the passages of Peter’s denial and of the collective desertion of Jesus in Gethsemane, and experience both conviction and a desire to faithful to Jesus amid persecution. This is as it ought to be. However, I want to take us a step further, I want to ask whether we will positively commit ourselves on the heavenly Altar of the Cross to a sacrificial witness for Christ in which we ourselves are abandoned.

 

Paul knew what it is to be such a witness.

 

“At my first defense no one supported me, but all deserted me; may it not be counted against them” (2 Tim. 4:16).

 

Perhaps this was, in part, an answer to Paul’s desire that, “I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the koinonia of His sufferings” (Phil. 3:10)? To be alone, to be abandoned, is an exquisite form of suffering; to look for your friends and to see no friends, that pieces the heart and soul, that is agony.

 

Yet, as the Father was with Jesus so that He was not alone, so Jesus was with Paul so that Paul was not alone. “But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me” (2 Tim. 4:17). You and I can be certain that Jesus Christ will always be with us. We can also be certain that if we are faithful to Jesus and to others that we will experience what it is to stand alone for Jesus Christ, that we will know what it is to be abandoned…if only for enough time to be accused, rejected, and crucified!

 

This is the entrance to John 17, the entrance to the Holy of Holies, the passageway into koinonia with the Trinity, the entering into the glory which Christ Jesus has given us (John 17:22; Rom. 8:17; 1 Pt. 4:12 – 14).  

 

This, my friends, is the fellowship of the Lamb.