What is the Church? The Power of Fellowship.
To get us caught up again with our sermon series, we will look at last week’s sermon from “What is the church? The power of fellowship.” The key idea we looked at was what our responsibilities are as a member of the body of Christ. As a believer who has come to faith in Christ, a disciple, we share in His divine nature, as we already looked at in last week's sermon and article summary on the church as spiritual warriors (2 Peter 1:3-4). From there, our union with Christ pours over into our union with one another through public and corporate fellowship and worship.
What we are called to when we come to faith is unity, which among many other things, is expressed practically through fellowship. Fellowship, or communion, derived from the Greek koinōnía, is as Eerdmans Bible Dictionary defines it: The communion or common faith, experiences, and expressions shared by the family of believers, as well as the intimate relationship they have with God. This is really ramped up when we get to the New Testament because the relationship between the Lord and His people is confirmed and strengthened by their communion in Christ. When someone comes to faith they come into fellowship with the Son, and through Him, with one another.
1 John 1:6–7 (ESV) If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
This should also bring to mind our tradition that celebrates the reality of our relationship with Christ and with one another, The Lord’s Supper. That is a tradition generally practiced the same way for two millennia and across denominations and church expressions. There are of course some variations, but the basic premise is of each person in a local church expression sharing in the Lord’s body and blood, commemorating His atoning death (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). So in our participation in the communion table, when we drink the cup and eat the bread, we’re sharing in the atoning sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood, and therefore share in what His death accomplished for us.
From that foundation, let’s look again at our main verses from the sermon and see our calling to fellowship and service to one another as the church.
Hebrews 3:12–14 (ESV) 12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.
What we can see in how Scripture deals with fellowship and communion together is in our calling to deal with one another’s struggles, bearing one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2). The reality being held out here is one of the means that God instituted to mature us and use us, for the benefit of others, is fellowship and a shared burden to persevere in standing against sin together. That’s why we’re called to “take care” or watch out for one another.
In doing so, we are then called to, and empowered to, “exhort [or encourage] one another every day.” But how and what do we watch out and encourage each other through? Everything, because we are empowered and equipped by the Holy Spirit to do so (1 Cor. 12:1-14). Sin, struggles, pain, doubt, fear, distractions, growth, maturity; you name it, the family of faith is called and equipped to be there to walk through it with you. Will we get it right everytime? No, but you can be confident that the Holy Spirit we share will never leave us and will be there to empower and equip us and see us through together.
That’s why the author of Hebrews is encouraging us to watch out for and encourage one another so that we can persevere to the end. As I mentioned in the sermon, most English translations render it this way, not saying “if we hold firm we will share in Christ,” but “if we hold firm, we have shared in Christ.” This is an important distinction to make because it shows that perseverance to the end in faith is necessary in that it confirms that we have been born again, that we have a heart of flesh and not of sin hardened stone. This isn’t a question of losing one’s salvation, but pointing to the fact that if one perseveres to the end it proves they had come to genuine faith. The Bible makes clear in 2 Cor. 13:5, Rom. 8:29-30, Mark 13:13, Matthew 7:21-23 and more, pointing to the reality that some people will make it to the end of life claiming Jesus with their mouth and never truly submitting their lives to Him as Lord.
So what is it we need as disciples for ourselves and for each other? What is it we need to stand firm against all struggles in life? We need the Gospel, even if we’ve been believers for years, the Good News of who Christ is and what He’s done for us and who we are now through faith is always the antidote, defense, and weapon against the deceit of the enemy, or the world, the flesh, and the devil. We watch out for unbelief and then encourage one another, because faith is more than just mere understanding of the truth of who Christ is, but a heartfelt embrace of the unsurpassed worth of Jesus to us.
So our calling, our instruction as a community of faith, is to encourage one another daily, as a means of God working in people’s lives and calling them to Himself. There’s no “one size fits all” when it comes to encouragement and service to one another’s faith journey. Think of Acts 2:42-47 (and Acts 4:32-37), Hebrews is also pointing to the sharing of a common relationship with one another, with and through Christ. This plays out in many ways, from meeting the physical needs of others, walking with them in their suffering, serving others alongside them, and of course pointing one another to the Gospel in all that we do. So “What is the church?” It is a place of fellowship, where we watch out for one another’s hearts, we encourage one another, and we stand firm and persevere with one another to the end.
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Extra Credit: John Piper - Look at the Book