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!

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.

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