True Fellowship

What do you think about when you hear the word “fellowship” at church? Maybe it is hanging out in the foyer for a bit after the service getting caught up on the events of the week. Possibly your thoughts turn to sharing a meal together at someone’s house and getting to know them and their family a little bit better. Or maybe you are thinking “pot-luck” dinners and fried chicken after the service. While all of things are good and I readily admit that I enjoy all of them (especially the fried chicken part!), they are just a small part of what true, biblical fellowship is all about.
Over forty years ago Bruce Larson wrote, “The neighborhood bar is possibly the best counterfeit there is to the fellowship Christ wants to give to His Church. It’s an imitation, dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality. But it is a permissive, accepting, and inclusive fellowship. The bar flourishes not because most people are alcoholics, but because God has put into the human heart the desire to know and be known, to love, and be loved, and so many seek a counterfeit at the price of a few beers.” People are longing for true biblical fellowship, but unfortunately they are content to settle for inadequate imitations. Whether we know it or not, or even admit it or not, we long to live life in relationships with others.
The word “fellowship” in the New Testament comes from the Greek word group koinonia. While this word can be translated in a few different ways and it carries various nuances to it, it generally means “a relationship characterized by sharing in a close partnership” or “an association involving close mutual relations and involvement.” I like to think of it simply as sharing life together.
But our fellowship with one another is rooted and grounded in our fellowship with God in Jesus. In Galatians 3:26 the Apostle Paul writes, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” We “receive the adoption as sons” into the family of God through trusting in Jesus Christ to save us from our sins (Galatians 4:5). Because Jesus has saved us from our sins we are now brought into a new relationship with God where we can now relate to Him as Father (Galatians 4:6-7). And this new relationship with God also brings us into a new relationship with other followers of Jesus Christ.
The new relationship we have with each other springs from and flows out of our new relationship we have with God through Christ. That is why John wrote in 1 John 1:3, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.” Our fellowship with one another is derived from our fellowship with God through Christ; that is the common bond that we have that unites us.
John MacArthur comments on this fact and writes, “Anybody in fellowship with Jesus Christ is also in fellowship with anybody else in fellowship with Jesus Christ. This is our common ground. It is not social, economic, intellectual, cosmetic, or anything else superficial. Our common ground is that we posses a common eternal life and are children in the same family.” No other human relationship compares to the relationship that we have with fellow believers in Christ because our bond is Jesus Himself. So biblical fellowship occurs when I am living out my relationship with Jesus in relationships with other of Jesus’ followers.
But authentic New Testament fellowship does not happen automatically. Rather, it comes when we actively seek relationships within the Body of Christ where we can love one another (John 13:34), bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), pray for and confess sins to one another (James 5:16), encourage and build up one another (1 Thessalonians 5:11), be kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving to one another (Ephesians 4:32), be devoted to one another (Romans 12:10), rejoice and weep with one another (Romans 12:15), and through love serve one another (Galatians 5:13).
But here is the catch with all of these “one anothers” of the New Testament: they cause us to be focused on others at the expense of self. Fellowship within the church flourishes when we have a heart to love and serve others and when we actively seek ways to live life together with them for their benefit.
If it were possible for us to live the Christian life in isolation from other believers then the Lord Jesus would not have established the church and the Spirit of God would have never inspired the writers of the New Testament to include so many things we need to do in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ. But they did, because we need the church and we need one another. And when the church ministers to one another as it is called to do then we experience true biblical fellowship, true koinonia, and God is glorified and we are blessed.