Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

(1Cor 1.7-9)

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others..

(Phil 1.1-4)

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. We write this to make our joy complete. This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 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, purifies us from all sin. 

(1 Jn.13-7)

If you have had the privilege of being in a church family for some time, you will be familiar with the phrase “a time of fellowship” – it is often used to describe that time after a worship service when members gather to drink tea or coffee, standing and sitting about chatting and dropping biscuit crumbs on the heads of small children weaving their way through the room!

Our bible verses today suggest there is rather more to it than ‘tepid tea and soft biscuits’ as I recently heard one preacher say….and the definition which he went on to give fits so well with my own experience – and more importantly with the way the bible uses the word – that I wanted to explore it in this blog. Fellowship simply means “doing life together”, choosing to live out in practice the reality which is our unity in Christ, and our unity with Christ.

It is our union with Christ which is the foundation of our freedom and power to live as followers of Jesus – we can do life together with God the Father, Son and Spirit because we have been redeemed, transformed and forgiven; we have God’s life within us and our thoughts, desires and actions increasingly reflect his character and will. As God’s beloved children, we are able to draw upon all that he is and has done and will do, in order to live the lives he has laid out for us. On our own, we are incapable of anything good, but in Christ, all God asks of us is within our reach and we do it WITH him, in fellowship.

As those who are now walking in the light, not hiding from God or striving to be independent of him, but entering into his will for the world, we and our fellow believers are increasingly walking on the same road, in the same direction – towards the full realisation of the kingdom of Christ. We share a common life – we all have received God’s new heart for our old one, and all depend upon his daily forgiveness and cleansing; we all know that our power and vision come from Christ and that our own wisdom and motives cannot be relied upon to guide us securely.

It is our calling to work together towards the return of Christ in glory, witnessing to all as we have occasion, and building up the believers among whom God has placed us by bearing one another’s burdens, and practically ministering to the needs which each one has. This is “doing life together” – looking to Christ as our goal and also our enabler, recognising in each other the likeness of God and the obligation to love as he has loved us.

Let us, with the apostle John, seek to build one another up in the glorious truths of the gospel – of our salvation, and who we now are as God’s beloved children – so that together we rejoice in the vision of glory, and the complete assurance we can have. And as we do so, let us not be ashamed to “do life together” – since God has called us to walk in this intimate way with him, we should not be afraid to welcome others into our lives, to accept as well as give love and companionship in our labours for the kingdom. May our fellowship with one another make our joy complete and bring glory to God who has made it possible!