When I use a word,” said Humpty Dumpty to Alice on her journey through Wonderland, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Some of us take that sort of approach to the meaning of Christian fellowship. Is it the same as going to church? Is it what goes in the “fellowship hour” after the worship service? Is it something we have when we go out for Sunday supper with fellow Christians? Is it something that we have in our house Bible-study groups but that is remote and even irrelevant in church on Sundays? Or is it perhaps not really definable at all—something that we have in our house Bible-study groups speak about it?
It’s right at the point of definition that we meet our first problem, for we generally use the word to mean what we choose it to mean. Rarely do we stop to ask if we have any biblical guidelines for understanding what “fellowship” really is. Before you go to the bookshelf for your English dictionary, or for the theological dictionary that will tell you what the experts say, take your Bible out and read the first page or two. There, in the account of the creation of the world and its inhabitants, we have the most comprehensive explanation of “fellowship” that we could hope for.
Adam was made like God (Gen. 1:26 ff.), and as we read the idyllic description of his perfect life in the Garden of Eden we can see what the Bible means when it speaks about “fellowship.” At the beginning of time, Adam was uniquely privileged to share his life with God and to know God’s intimate friendship and presence. God shared himself with Adam as a friend, and Adam held no secrets from his Maker. You’ll remember that when Adam sinned, the first thing to go was his sharing with God (Gen. 3:8 ff.). When God arrived in the garden one evening, Adam was no longer waiting eagerly to share his life with God, for he knew that the true happiness, friendship, and fellowship with his Maker had now gone forever. Sin had come in, and from that point onward in human history men and women could no longer have the thrilling privilege of living in fellowship with God as Adam had done (Gen. 3:22 ff.).
As we read the rest of the Old Testament we learn how man for his part tried in vain to reach out toward God, in the effort to re-establish this fellowship, and how God attempted from his side to win back the friendship and obedience of man that had been lost through Adam’s fall. We all know how man’s efforts and God’s love ended in failure time and again, as sin tightened its grip on humanity. Then God gave his Son Jesús Christ for the sin of the world, so that this perfect fellowship between man and God could be restored. In order that we might share the life of heaven, God had first to share himself with us. And so we find, first of all, that at the heart of “fellowship” is something that God has done for us—and if in our own experience God has done nothing for us, then we can have no fellowship.
God’s great act of sharing leads to two great blessings for those who are willing to accept the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and his rule over their lives. We find them in First John 1:1–10.
1. Because of what Jesus has done, “our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (v. 3). Through Christ’s work we are brought again into a position of “sharing” with God, and as Christians we have “fellowship” with him. “Of course,” you say, “we all know that”—and so we do. But what does it actually mean to say that we have “fellowship with God”?
Having fellowship with God implies that two things have taken place in our lives. It suggests for one thing that our lives are devoted to the service of God. Exclusive devotion is involved because whereas we were once the servants of evil, we are now the servants of God, and the two things are incompatible: “What fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Cor. 6:14).
But fellowship with God also involves self-denial, related to a desire for a close personal relationship with our Lord himself. Paul spoke of fellowship with his risen Master as a sharing in the sufferings of Jesus Christ (Gal. 2:19, f.; Phil. 3:10). He did not need to be crucified physically as Christ was. But as he thought of what the crucifixion meant for Christ, he realized that for this to happen to the Son of God meant a fundamental denial of who he was (Phil. 2:5–11). And if Christians are to be closely linked to him, that relationship must mean self-denial for them, too. This is specifically what Jesus himself said: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). And this is what fellowship with Godmust involve for us today: separation from evil, and the denial of ourselves so that Christ can live in us.
2. We are also reminded in First John 1:9 that because of what Jesus has done for us, “we have fellowship with one another.” Because as individual Christians we are living a life of fellowship, or sharing, with God, we are also linked with one another, for we all share the common life that God has given us through the Holy Spirit. This is what most of us think of when we speak of “having fellowship.” But the Bible never speaks of our fellowship with one another in isolation from our fellowship with God. This means that to understand our fellowship together as Christians, we have to take our starting point from the love that God has shown us in Christ.
When we do that, we can see the great importance of the fellowship we have in our Christian congregations. To “have fellowship” with one another is not merely to have a social meeting. Rather, what we do and the way we do it, the character and the quality of our fellowship—these things are demonstrations of what God is really like. As non-Christians see us, and as they inspect the kind of fellowship we have with one another, they ought to see there a reflection of the Lord whom we serve. This means that the way we express our fellowship is a very serious matter. It isn’t just a matter of a committee’s discussing the best way to do things. Instead, it is a matter of understanding the kind of fellowship that God has already given to us as Christian believers.
Fortunately, we are not left in the dark to find our own ways of expressing our fellowship with God and with one another. In the writings of Paul we have a striking picture of how our fellowship should operate to God’s glory. In several places Paul speaks of Christians, in the context of both local and universal church, as “the body of Christ” (Rom. 12:3–8; 1 Cor. 12:12–31; Eph. 4:1–16), and the picture he has in mind is that of an ordinary human body like yours and mine. He looks at the body as a collection of individual faculties and organs, each one performing its own distinctive function. Even those that seem relatively unimportant are necessary for the smooth operation of our physical bodies. By applying this picture in the spiritual realm, Paul shows that God wants to teach us some very important lessons about our Christian fellowship.
For a start, we learn that although members of the body (or Christian church fellowship) perform quite different jobs, they are all of equal importance to God and to the fellowship itself. It would be very foolish for me to suppose that because certain organs in my body are hidden from view, they must be unnecessary or of secondary importance. Common sense tells me that the organs hidden from view are the most important of all. Just so in the Christian fellowship. Whoever we are and whatever our sphere of service may be, we are all of equal value. Male or female, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, we are all equal, and none of us is indispensable.
But we can take the argument a stage further. Because we are all of equal importance in our own Christian fellowship, each one of us has an effect on the life of the whole group. Think of your own body again. If your hand is seriously wounded and you don’t bother to have it treated, what will be the result? Gradually the wound will fester, poison will enter your bloodstream, your whole body will be affected by that one small injury. It’s just like that in the Christian fellowship. The Christian who habitually sins will be like a wound, having an effect on the life of the whole body. On the other hand, if we are living a life in close fellowship with God himself, we will be releasing not spiritual poison but spiritual nourishment into the fellowship, for the benefit of the whole body. Since we are part of a “body,” we cannot cut ourselves off from the local congregation to which we belong; everything we do in whatever context must have its inevitable effect on the quality and character of our fellowship. What a great responsibility it is to belong to the Christian church fellowship!
But there is an even more serious consideration. Because our church is not just any old body but is “the body of Christ,” everything that goes on there will have its effect also on the work of God himself. The kind of fellowship that people see is going to affect their impression of Christ, and so we must be very careful.
This leads us on to the final point about fellowship. We can now see clearly that as Christians we do not have fellowship together merely to fulfill some socialinstinct. We are not a group meeting for purely social purposes, though that aspect can play its proper part. The main purpose of Christian fellowship is spiritual, and can be divided into two areas.
First, and most obvious, is the fact that our Christian fellowship should be directed toward building us up as Christians. Look at what Paul says in Ephesians 4:12–16: the body of Christ is planned to ensure that “we all attain … to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ … to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” It is therefore our responsibility, as members of the body, to make sure that our fellowship activities are of such a character that they will promote these objectives, and that those who have been given to us as “pastors and teachers” have every facility to perform their God-given task.
There is something else, too. Jesus himself made a firm connection between the character of our fellowship and the effectiveness of our witness to non-Christians: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
One of the dire effects of Adam’s fall was that not only was fellowship between man and God destroyed but fellowship between man and man disappeared also—and Cain killed his brother Abel. In the fellowship that Christians have with one another, God wants to create a loving community that will be a witness to the non-Christian world. We are all asking ourselves how we can witness to God’s working in a modern scientific age. We can never give objective proof that Christians are “living in fellowship with God.” There is no mathematical formula to prove that God is our Father. But we can give to the world conclusive proof of God’s operation in our lives if our fellowship together is marked by that loving, sharing quality which is markedly absent in the world at large.
One of the reasons why we fail to communicate effectively with modern man is the simple one that we do not practice what we preach. We proclaim that God will reconcile men to himself, but are we always reconciled to one another? We speak of the love of God, but so often we do not reflect that love in our dealings with one another. We claim that God can change lives, but have we allowed him to change ours? This is a time for frankness and honesty, for Christians are faced today with unparalleled opportunities for witness to non-Christians. One of the things we need to learn again is that biblical evangelism is not something we pay evangelists to do. It is essentially a fellowship activity. God has raised up his Church so that men and women can see what “fellowship” means in its truest sense—and if our fellowship is working as it ought to be, that means they will see God at work in our midst.
As Christians we have so often missed the way in the past, but today God is giving us yet another opportunity to put our house in order. One of the things he is asking us to do is to examine our fellowship with him and our fellowship with one another, so that the body of Christ might work to his glory.
PARADOX
Fond of fetters?
I admit it;
Fond of those I chose to wear.
The chain is light, though strong-molded;
There is no key—
But should I care?
Take your freedom! Its kind only
Leaves you falling backward down
The mountain.
But when Iam weary,
Fetters hoist me, summitbound.
SUSAN M. WOODCOCK
