Genuine Fellowship

1 John 1:1-4

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. ^2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. ^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. ^4 We write this to make our joy complete.

This morning I would like to take a word that is very common in our Christian jargon and create a Biblical framework for it. That word is “fellowship.” It is one of those words we use all the time and don’t really think much about what it means. Let me explain why it is so important for our study in 1 John, and for our Christian walk.

Last week we saw how John began this letter. Instead of starting with a subject, he began with a description: “that which was from the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched.” John is describing the Word of life which he also calls eternal life. John is describing Jesus and wants us to understand that eternal life is not a thing—eternal life is a person. Our salvation is not a thing, it is a person. Christians often describe themselves by saying, “I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ”. This phrase, “A personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” is not a Biblical phrase. You won’t find it anywhere in the Old or New Testament, but it is a thoroughly Biblical concept. Our relationship with the creator of the universe is not like tapping into the good side of the force, as the heroes of Star Wars do, but our relationship with the creator of the universe is intensely personal. It is not just a power, it is a person. He is a person. It is not just a worn cliché. We really do have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Then in verse three John states his primary reason for writing this letter. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. Any time you see the words “so that” or “in order that,” pay close attention, because the author is giving you the reason or one reason why he is writing. One of John’s chief reasons for writing this book is so that you also may have fellowship with us. The word fellowship is very important to John. This is the word we need to define very carefully, especially because we throw the word around a lot and attach a whole host of inappropriate meaning to it.

What do we mean we use the word fellowship? After the service this morning we will be having a “fellowship dinner”. So fellowship must mean something like “eating lots of good food”! If fellowship is not about eating, it must be what happens while we are eating lots of good food. Maybe fellowship means conversation. But that doesn’t seem quite accurate either, does it? Do you ever use that word outside of the church or in a context other than gathering with other believers? If we attend an office party do we call that fellowship? If we talk to our mailman, do we call that fellowship? The word fellowship is not really a Christian word like the words “sanctification” or the “trinity” are Christian words, yet we almost always use the word in a Christian context. Therefore, perhaps fellowship means “Christian conversation”. So a fellowship dinner is when we eat lots of good food and have a conversation with other Christians. I trust that you do enjoy the conversations you have with your fellow believers while you eat lots of good food during our fellowship dinner, but “Christian conversation still doesn’t seem like an adequate definition.

Maybe we are having trouble defining the word fellowship because we have not gone back to the original Greek word for fellowship. Does anyone know the Greek word for fellowship? It’s “koinonia,” right? Most of us have probably heard of that word. When I hear the word koinonia I think of a cozy fellowship. Let’s try inserting that into verse three. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have cozy fellowship with us. No, that’s still not right.

What do you do when need to understand something, but you get stuck? Whenever I get stuck, I always go to the all-powerful source of all wisdom. I ask Google. So while I was sitting in my office, I said, “Google, what is koinonia?” (I don’t really have a voice-activated computer, but sometimes I like to pretend I am Captain Kirk on the Starship Enterprise.) Here is what Google spit back at me.

· Koinonia is your online source for delicious pecan products, chocolate, fair trade coffee and more, handmade fresh from the farm! Shop now.[1]

OK, so maybe if we eat pecan products and drink fair trade coffee while we are having a conversation with Christians, then that would be koinonia—fellowship.

After all of my extensive research, I was still stuck, so I asked again. “Google, what is koinonia?”

· Koinonia Koffeehouse: Thank you for visiting the San Francisco Bay Area's most popular venue for fellowship and live Christian music![2]

Still not much help, but I was finding a common thread—coffee. Here at least is definitive proof that you cannot have genuine Christian fellowship without coffee!

My point in all this is to illustrate the fact that we use the word fellowship all the time, but we really don’t know what it means. Does it mean unity? Intimacy? Community? We don’t have a good understanding of this word, yet I am confident that we cannot understand this letter written by the apostle John unless we understand what fellowship means. More than that, this great book which is about love for God and love for our fellow believers is wrapped around the idea of fellowship. It is really important that we understand this.

I believe the key to understanding is verse three, especially the second half. John’s goal in writing was so that you also may have fellowship with us, but he defines this fellowship in the next sentence. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. Whatever fellowship means, the basis for it rests in our relationship with the Father and the Son. Our koinonia is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. But even prior to this, there is a deeper basis for koinonia.

The Father is in koinonia with the Son, the Son is in koinonia with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is in koinonia with the Father. The eternal relationship among the trinity is perfect fellowship. This is koinonia. Koinonia is not Christian conversation. Koinonia is the eternally existing, infinitely perfect intimacy within the triune Godhead. Any koinonia that we experience among fellow believers must be founded upon this perfect koinonia.

Does a non-Christian have koinonia with the Father, Son and Spirit? By definition, an unbeliever is outside of this perfect, intimate relationship. An unbeliever is unreconciled to God. If this koinonia could be illustrated by a circle, the unbeliever is clearly outside of the circle. But this is not how it all began. In the garden, Adam and Eve were originally in perfect koinonia with the Father, Son and Spirit. Through their sinful choices, they broke koinonia and were subsequently cast out of fellowship. Therefore, we could say that sin is the absence of koinonia and salvation is the restoration of koinonia. This is what Romans 5:10 teaches. “When we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.” We were formerly enemies of God but at the very instant of your salvation you were reconciled to God and you were transferred back into fellowship with God. Your koinonia was restored to it former standing. This is exactly what John meant in verse three: our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. So we have an illustration of the eternal koinonia within the trinity, the creating of koinonia with Adam and Eve, the breaking of koinonia through sin and the restoration of koinonia by trusting in the work of Christ on the cross. Would you say that this understanding of fellowship is a long ways from “Christian conversation”?

The next step in our understanding is to see the process of restored koinonia happening again and again. Every time an unbeliever is reconciled to God they enter into this koinonia with God. Each of these new believers has a restored koinonia with God and the circle grows and grows. This building of koinonia with the Father, Son and Spirit is the essence of the gospel. This is the good news of salvation. But did you notice what happens when each person enters into koinonia with God? Not only is each person in fellowship with God, by their relation to God they are also in fellowship with every other Christian. This is the full-orbed idea of koinonia. This is why we can meet a Christian in another culture who speaks a different language and we feel that we share a special bond with them. What we experience at that moment is the natural outworking of koinonia. We have koinonia with fellow believers in our local church we call Grace Church, but we also have koinonia with every believer throughout the world.

But this is also the reason why koinonia is impossible with unbelievers. You can have a great relationship with a non-Christian. You can drink coffee together, share intimate details of your life, learn to depend on one another and love and care for one another deeply. You can have all of these relational strengths, but you can never have koinonia, because you are reconciled to God and they are not.

The implications for this understanding of koinonia are absolutely immense. In fact, the rest of 1 John is basically an application of this foundational understanding of koinonia. If you feel like we have just scratched the surface of koinonia, that’s OK. We will flesh it out in the next few months as we study this book together, but for now, let me give you some immediate applications.

1. When we are saved, we are saved into the body of Christ. Koinonia is fundamentally a restored relationship with God, but it is not only that. Koinonia with God is inseparable from koinonia with other believers. Your salvation is not just you and God against the rest of the world. Your salvation is you and God along with all other believers. I am not saying that salvation comes by groups. Salvation can only happen between a single individual and God, but you are saved as an individual into a group.

2. Our koinonia with God is most visibly manifested by our koinonia with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. How many of you can see your salvation? For the purpose of illustration, I have represented koinonia as a circle with the triune Godhead in the middle, but can we actually see our koinonia with God? We believe it is real but it is an invisible reality, isn’t it? We can’t see our koinonia, so how do we know it is there? We can voice it with our mouths, can’t we? We can say to the world, “I love God.” But John says this is not nearly enough. In 4:20 he writes, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar.” Do you see what John is saying? He is saying that our koinonia with God is most visibly manifested by our koinonia with fellow believers. Therefore, if our lives demonstrate that we do not have koinonia with other believers, then it is evidence that we do not have koinonia with God. In other words, we are a liar.

3. A lack of koinonia bears witness to the futility of the gospel.

If the essence of the gospel is reconciliation to God, and if reconciliation to God is most visibly manifested by being reconciled to one another, then a lack of reconciliation bears witness to the futility of the gospel. Our lives as Christians and as a church bear witness to something. We cannot help the fact that our lives tell some kind of story. If we are unreconciled to a fellow believer, then the story of our life tells the world that the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross is powerless to change lives. I don’t care how loud we proclaim that “Jesus saves,” as long as our love is weak and our relationships are broken, our true message is this: “Jesus can’t change anyone.” If they’ll know we are Christians by our love, then what will they know by our lack of love? What story does that tell?

4. Our fellowship must exceed the fellowship of the world. If our love, our fellowship, our koinonia does not shine brighter than the lives of non-Christians around us, then why would they ever be drawn to the gospel? Now perhaps we think that we are already doing a much better job than they are. I am sure we are in some ways, but I read something this past week which sent chills down my spine. I read a one paragraph story out of the brand new Kickapoo Free Press. It was written by the founder and editor of the newspaper. Let me read it for you.

Four months ago, my daughter Molly Belle, was born and a beautiful thing happened. Well, really many beautiful things. In my circle of friends, when someone has a baby, a friend steps up to organize a “meal wheel.” It worked like this: Anyone can sign up to bring the family a meal on a certain night. Molly was born on a Monday morning. By the end of the week, our meal wheel was filled up for a month. We enjoyed fabulous roasts and elaborate salads, hearty soups and quiches, tarts and cakes—and the joy of our friends dropping in to see us and meet the new member of the family. It was an amazing gift. My eight-year old daughter, Irene, got it right away: “Wow Mom, I guess people really love us.” Yeah, honey, I think you’re right.[3]

They have their own church! They have fellowship with one another! It is not Biblical koinonia, but it is something with power and depth. I am not saying that we must have some kind of contest to see if we can provide more meals than the non-Christians—though that might be a good challenge for us. But here is one application for us all. We are heading straight into a possible building program, and building programs are notorious for either being wildly successful or else for causing some very nasty church fights. Are we ready for this? How is our collective koinonia? How is our sacrificial love? Here’s another way to ask the question: What if the editor of the Kickapoo Free Press asked us to tell a great story about our love for one another—what would we write? What story would we tell? Are we writing stories of genuine koinonia, or do our lives bear witness to the futility of the gospel?

Rich Maurer

June 3, 2007