Importance of Christian Fellowship
Does anyone else here have a hard time making friends? I’ve always been good at first impressions (I blame the 10 years I’ve worked as a secretary), but building a community of people that I trust and can lean on in hard situations? That’s so hard! Especially when I’m hurt, or scared, I tend to block people out and try to process the situation on my own. Only after I reemerge do I realize that I had completely cut people out of my life for that period of time!
Only recently, have I started to realize the importance of leaning on other like-minded Christians in all situations of life. Both through the highs and the lows. People who will celebrate the blessings God has given us, and mourn during the times God is pruning us. Luckily, I have a wonderful church family now that creates about 95% of my community, and it’s such a blessing!
Learning to put our trust in people is hard, especially in the world we live in where people will hurt others just because they can. But as Christians, we are given love and joy, peace, and patience, and several other attributes from God that make us the best at living in community. God has blessed us with the ability to share this life, this mission on earth, with others until we finally join Him again. Even when God created all things, the only thing that wasn’t perfect in His eyes was Adam being alone. That’s why He made Eve, Adam’s helper. Why is that important?
Well first, let's talk about fellowship a little bit more.
Fellowship with God Creates Fellowship for Each Other
If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:7 CSB)
Picture this: it’s 2018 and I am freshly engaged to the most wonderful man in the world, and he pitches his father doing our pre-marital counseling… AH! Luckily, it really was a wonderful experience, but there are just some things about marriage we don’t want to talk about with our father-in-law, right?? Something really great that came from it, though, was this concept of “Relationships are like triangles.”
Let me explain: God is the top corner of our triangle, and we are the bottom ones. As we pursue God more, we grow closer to Him, and we climb up the line from our corners to Him. This brings us closer together, too! In the same way, if we only grow closer to each other, we completely neglect growing any closer to God!
In the same way for all relationships, as we grow stronger in our walk with God, and pursue Him above all else, we naturally gravitate closer to each other! But again, if we neglect seeking Him, we won’t create a good foundation for our relationships with one another.
If we read all of this section in 1 John, we see this idea of darkness and light, and John tells us that there is absolutely no darkness in God. This means that we have to actively decide to turn away from the darkness within us: the desire to sin, the need to be in control, the lack of trust in God. I could list a million different ways that we allow darkness into our lives, and we have to choose to leave it all behind. To confess our sins and lean fully into God: That’s what we’re called to!
Once we decide that this is the way we want to live, we start moving up our triangle! We create a like-minded foundation to grow our relationships, that is wholly based in God.
Now, we are not able to force others to create this foundation for themselves, but we are called to share the gospel, to help get them on the right track for knowing God. We are also called to encourage and hold each other accountable to those who do know Him, and help them keep that upward motion! Let’s talk about this a little more.
We are Called to Have Fellowship in Godliness
And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching. (Hebrews 10:24-25 CSB)
The Greek word for fellowship here is Koinonia. This word appears 17 times in the New Testament! The author here in Hebrews is saying that fellowship is important for a couple of reasons: so that we may provoke love and good work, and encourage one another.
Let’s break this down a little bit.
This section of Hebrews is called “Exhortations to Godliness.” Exhortation means to strongly urge someone towards something. Here, we are being urged towards Godliness, and that includes gathering together!
It’s like the author is giving us a job description here as we seek out relationships together. We need to provoke each other to love, not jealousy or anger. We should encourage each other to work hard for God’s Kingdom: sharing the Word with non-believers and discipling believers into stronger ones.
We should just encourage each other, period! Life is hard! Especially as everything keeps getting more expensive and life seems to be running in fast forward. The thing that sets us apart from the rest of the world is the peace and joy we are allowed to have through God even amidst the hard times. And that is something we need to share with our fellow believers.
But encouragement also comes in handy as we struggle with our personal walks with God. When we struggle to read our Bibles or pray, we can reach to each other for encouragement and accountability. This allows us to really grow in ways we would fall short relying on only ourselves.
Fellowship Builds Unity
With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4:2-3 CSB)
As followers of Christ, we are set apart from the World. There are many ways that this is true, but the biggest one per Jesus Himself, is the way that we love.
Fellowship is a way we show our love to one another. By choosing to spend time together in a way that glorifies God, we are sharing the love that God offers us to each other. As Paul mentions in this passage, it’s with humility, gentleness, and patience that create the love we should share for each other.
It’s a bit of a domino effect. When we pursue fellowship that is founded in Christ together, we are pursuing unity. Unity comes from us all seeking the same things together, and this leads to us having peace through the Spirit!
At the end of the day, we have to spend this time on the earth before we get to finally be home, right? God has allowed us to not go it alone. Instead, we have each other to lean on, and grow with. In the same way that corporate worship is an integral part of our walks with Him, being with others is important, too.