(I John 5:1-13)

When we were very young many of us were taught a very profound lesson. Most likely it was your mother who took you upon her lap and clasping her hands before your wonder filled eyes, said to you: “Here’s the church, and here’s the steeple: open the door and see all the people.” Then she taught your chubby hands to do that old nursery routine. And so you learned, or should have learned, that it takes more than a building with a steeple upon it to make a church; that you must open the door and see all the people before you’ve really seen the church.

The church is not the building by itself, nor even the program of activities carried on within the four walls under the steeple, nor even a church building filled with a crowd of people, but rather the church is fundamentally the company of people gathered together because of their common belief or faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. First and foremost then, a Christian church is a company of believers in Christ. St. John, in his First Epistle, says that this criteria of the redemptive fellowship — it’s being a company of believers — is really the secret source of its power: “This is the victory,” he writes to those early Christians, “that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God.” The first thing to be said of a Christian church then is that it is a company of believers, people with a common faith in Christ.

Now faith, or belief, is a very simple thing and yet a profound thing, and the simplest part is the most profound. No, I’m not talking in riddles. I’m speaking sober truth. For there are two kinds of faith.

First, there is faith, or belief, which is intellectual assent. A man tells me that in Australia they celebrate Christmas in the summertime, and though I haven’t been to Australia and actually seen and felt their warm December days, I believe it to be so about that country down under. I accept that piece of information as fact. So also with my religious faith. I believe what is written in the New Testament about Jesus as the Son of God. I acknowledge this record as the truth. Possessing this kind of faith, or belief, with other men I can say: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.”

But if this is the only kind of faith we as a group of people have in common — that is, agreement on a given code of doctrine, a creedal statement, then we do not have that dynamic faith which can and will make the church a redemptive fellowship and victorious over the world.

For the second kind of faith is actual reliance upon God and implicit trust in Him. C. S. Lewis describes this kind of faith as “the change from being confident about our own efforts to the state in which we despair of doing anything for ourselves and leave it to God.” (Christian Behavior — p. 67)

The Psalmist had this kind of faith when he said: “I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.”

It was faith of this sort that Jesus insisted one must have in order to enter the Kingdom of God. “Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of God.” How must one be like a little child? Why, like the child’s complete reliance and trust in his parents — so the believer must have that kind of faith which trusts and waits upon the Heavenly Father, despairing of our own resources and powers, completely committing oneself to Almighty God.

Martin Luther says of such faith: “Faith is a lively, reckless, confidence in the grace of God … so it is that a man, unforced, acquires the will and feels the impulse to do good to everybody, serve everybody, and suffer everything for the love and praise of God who has bestowed such grace upon Him.”

But why the necessity of a company of believers? Why a church? Why can’t a man be a believer, have the real saving faith all by himself with his God?

Tis true that faith, or belief, in its inception, is a matter involving commitment of the individual to God, His purposes and His will, but Christian faith immediately has its implications in the social realm.

The earliest Christians had no notion of an individual believer. “To be a Christian meant also to be a member of the church. The personal life was a life in this community, and it was hardly possible, even in thought, to separate the one from the other … By the act of birth you find yourself, whether you will or not, a member of the human race. By confession of faith you enter the Christian community.” (E. F. Scott — Man and Society in the New Testament)

The instant faith is born in us we recognize that we are a child of God, and almost at the same instant we recognize the other children of God who are of the household of faith as our brothers in Christ. John, in the first Epistle, puts it this way: “Everyone who believes Jesus is the Christ, is born of God; and everyone who loves the Father, loves the sons born of Him.” (Moffatt — I John 5:1) For this ancient patriarch the connection of faith and love is of the closest nature … Faith that does not lead to love and love that is not based on faith are equally spurious. The Christian faith implies a fellowship of believers.

Furthermore, faith is normally fostered within the company of believers. A young college woman had heard speeches and sermons at chapel services on the body of Christian truth, but no vital personal faith was born within her. Then after her marriage, she saw a bitter, crushing sorrow come to her mother-in-law, a woman of stalwart Christian faith. When the younger woman saw the older borne up by a faith that kept her courageous, composed, confident, as her world tumbled in, that young woman’s soul was stirred, awakened, to the truth and reality of God, and she committed her life to Him. So faith came to her in the fellowship of believers.

Most of us know, too, how our personal faith is nurtured and strengthened by our remaining intimately associated with the company of believers. As faith cannot exist in a vacuum, neither can it flourish in an isolated, solitary individual. A young woman was talking to a group of American college students at a Y. M. and Y. W. C. A. retreat. Her husband had been killed in the war. Now she was giving herself to relief and rehabilitation work among students in war ravaged lands. She was appealing to our fortunate American college youths to support World Student Relief, not only with their gifts of money, but also to support the hard-pressed and despairing Christian youths of other lands with their interest, prayers and friendship. She spoke in this vein: “I don’t know about you. You may have faith in God strong enough to stand by yourself in the midst of temptation and adversity, but I’m not strong enough just by myself. I need, and must have, the support and help of my friends and family and fellow Christians. I need not only that direct relationship of my soul to God, but also God mediated to me in the lives of my fellow Christians — their hopes and faith and love (which is God in their lives) to help and support me.”

But even more than all this, the victory of our faith over the antagonistic and destructive forces of the world depends upon a fellowship of believers. It is to the army fighting and working together that victory ultimately comes, not to individual, separated soldiers, however numerous they may be. “This is the victory that overcometh the world,” writes John to the little Christian band, “even our faith.” Not my faith, nor your faith, but our faith.

And how is this? Well, I know of no better way of putting it than this: He who trusts in God, can be trusted. There’s no hope for the salvation of our shrinking world community, save as it becomes a community of believers who can confidently trust one another because each puts his trust in God.

Winston Churchill, in his Memoirs, gives a graphic description of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler in the pre-Munich negotiations. Chamberlain he describes as a good and able man, sincerely desiring and working for peace, coming back from his first meeting with Hitler and saying: “I got the impression that here was a man whom you could count on when he had once given you his word.” But Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement to secure peace for our time failed miserably. Why? There were many reasons, of course, but the principal one was that Britain’s Prime Minister was dealing with a man who was outside the company of Christian believers. He held to no Christian code of ethics. He did not humbly put his trust in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He gave his solemn promises as the responsible head of a great nation which he had no intention of keeping. Chamberlain, in those early days, was unaware of the Machiavellian he was dealing with.

The only hope of our world today is faith: faith in Almighty God which involves individual commitment to His will and trust in His saving grace; faith which dwells in the worldwide community of believers inspiring and directing and supporting our common life. An old gentleman put it all very plainly to me when he said: “What our world needs to be saved from more than anything else is its unbelief — its unbelief in Almighty God. When that salvation is accomplished all the world’s other troubles will take care of themselves.”

“This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” The company of believers, the faithful, or “faith-filled”, are the ultimate victors because they are the eternal realists. The materialists, the folks who put their trust in business success to bring complete satisfaction in life, or those who in self-indulgence commit themselves to ceaseless pleasure hunting to ferret out happiness, or those who trust in riches to supply security — these are the believers in the temporal, the passing, the corruptible. They are the folks who pin their hope on the shadowy, unsubstantial, undependable things. These are the dupes, the foolish dreamers of this world. The hard-headed realists of life are the company of believers. They are no fools.

Dr. James A. McConnell of Oklahoma City tells of fishing one day on the Missouri River. He saw a boy begin frantically waving a red flag from a temporary dock of homemade piling jutting out into the river. Dr. McConnell looked up river and saw a large Missouri River steamboat coming down the way full steam ahead. It looked to him as if that barefooted farmer boy was trying to flag that swiftly moving boat. Moved by curiosity he pulled in his fishing pole and walked to where the boy was waving the red flag. He began to talk with him.

“‘You don’t mean to tell me that you are fool enough to think that great riverboat will respond to your signal and try to stop at this little dock on the bend of a swift moving river?’

“‘Sure I do, Mister. It’ll stop.’

“‘Why that boat couldn’t stop on this bend in the river to come in here even if they paid any attention to your flag,’ said Dr. McConnell.

“‘They’ll stop all right, Mister. They’ll stop. I ain’t afraid they won’t stop.’

“‘You certainly are the biggest fool I ever saw to think that big boat would pay any attention to a boy’s signal on this bend in the river and stop at this God-forsaken spot!’

“Just at that moment, much to his surprise, Dr. McConnell saw the great riverboat make a sudden swerve out of its downward course, heard the whistle blow twice in recognition of the signal. Then the steamboat slowly made its way into the crude homemade dock on piles. The gangplank was run out, the boy stepped on board, looked over his shoulder at the stranger standing on the shore, and said, ‘I ain’t no fool, Mister, my father’s the captain of this boat.’” (W. L. Stiger — Sermon Stories of Faith and Hope)

The man of faith, small, insignificant though he be, faces the crises and uncertainties of this world confident and unafraid. He’s no fool either, for he knows this is his Father’s world.

O company of believers, Christ’s redemptive fellowship: “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.”

• Scripture Reference: Psalms 27:0-0 • Secondary Scripture References: 1 John 5:1-13 • Subject : Fellowship of faith, The; 629 • Special Topic: n/a • Series: n/a • Occasion: Series on Redemptive Fellowship • First Preached: 5/23/1948 • Last Preached: 3/25/1958 • Rating: 3 • Book/Author References: , Martin Luther; Man and Society in the New Testament, E. F. Scott; Sermon Stories of Faith and Hope, W. L. Stiger; Christian Behavior, C. S. Lewis; Memoirs, Winston Churchill