Fellowship: The Nature of Fellowship

Today, in the twenty-first century many Christians do not have a biblical understanding of the concept of “fellowship.”

Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom

Sunday June 25, 2017

www.wenstrom.org

Fellowship: The Nature of Fellowship

Lesson # 1

Today, in the twenty-first century many Christians do not have a biblical understanding of the concept of “fellowship.”

In this study, we will go into great detail regarding this concept so that we can have a well-rounded biblical view of fellowship with the triune God and our fellow Christians.

The Scriptures teach that Christian fellowship which is biblical has two directions: (1) Vertical: God (2) Horizontal: Body of Christ.

Christian fellowship is a relationship and partnership with God and Christ’s body and involves sharing His objective of advancing His kingdom on earth by caring for and working together with the body of Christ in this endeavor.

The church age believer can experience fellowship with God because of the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross and His resurrection and session at the right hand of the Father.

Fellowship with God and their fellow believer is based upon their union and identification with Jesus Christ in His crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection and session at the right hand of the Father.

There are many synonyms in Scripture which describe the church age believer experiencing fellowship with God.

As we will note, it is first of all synonymous with experiencing eternal life.

When a Christian is experiencing fellowship with God they are experiencing eternal life.

They are also experiencing their salvation or in other words, their deliverance from eternal condemnation, condemnation from the Law, spiritual and physical death, personal sin, enslavement from the sin nature and Satan and his cosmic system.

To experience fellowship with God is also to experience sanctification or in other words, fellowship is experiencing being set apart to serve God exclusively in doing His will.

The believer must be filled with the Spirit or more accurately influenced by the Spirit in order to experience fellowship with God which is accomplished by obeying the Spirit’s voice as He speaks to the believer through the communication of the Word of God regarding the will of the Father.

They must also be operating in the love of God in order to experience fellowship with God.

When a believer is experiencing fellowship with God, they will experience undeserved suffering which advances them to spiritual maturity.

The believer will pray when they are in fellowship with God.

Lastly, the believer who experiences fellowship with God and grows to spiritual maturity will experience intimacy with God.

A study of two word groups (koinōnia and metochos) that are employed in the Greek New Testament to denote the concept of fellowship, express four related and essential elements that describe what fellowship involves.

The noun koinōnia, this word comes from koinos, which means “common, mutual, public,” and it refers to that which is held in common.

The meaning of these two word groups can be boiled down to two main ideas: (1) “To share together, take part together” in the sense of participation and partnership, and (2) “To share with” in the sense of giving to or receiving from others, sharing what we have with one another.

As we will note, there are four critical concepts that are derived from these two meanings according to New Testament usage.

The New Testament usage according to sentence construction refers to: (1) the thing shared in common in some way by all parties involved as relationships, blessings or burdens, privileges, or responsibilities (all believers in Christ share many things in common); (2) the person(s) doing the sharing with others; (3) the person(s) with whom there is sharing; and (4) an abstract quality of the concept of fellowship, with no object, used alone as in .

There are several words in the Greek New Testament which describe Christian fellowship and what it entails.

First of all, we have the adjective koinos, which means “common, common ownership, common property, partner” (, ; ; ; , ; ; ; ; ; ; ).

The noun koinōnia means “partnership, participation, fellowship, close relationship, association, communion, expressing a two-sided relation” (; ; C. 1:9; 10:16; 2 C. 6:14; 8:4; 9:13; 13:14; ; Phlp. 1:5; 2:1; 3:10; ; ; , , ).

The verb koinoneo means “to share with someone in something which he has, to take part, to partake in, to participate, to possess together” (; ; ; Phlp. 4:15; 1 Tm. 5:22; ; ; ).

The noun koinonos means “partner, associate, companion” (; ; ) or “partaker, sharer” (; ; ; ).

The adjective koinonikos means “belonging or appointed to society, generous, liberal in sharing or giving, sharing what is one’s own” ().

The noun sunkoinonos means “partnership, fellow sharer” (; C. 9:23; Phlp. 1:7; ).

The verb sunkoinoneo means “to participate or share in something with somebody” (; Phlp. 4:14; ).

The adjective metochos means “sharing, a partner, a companion” (; ; , ; ; ).

The adjective metecho means “sharing, a partner, a companion” (1 C. 9:10, 12; 10:17, 21, 30; ; ; ) and the noun metoche means “partnership, fellowship” (2 C. 6:14).

Based on the meanings and uses of these words, four key ideas develop that are important if we are to grasp the richness the New Testament’s teaching on “fellowship.”

If we understand these four concepts we will begin to have a grasp of the doctrine of fellowship and its implications and demands on our lives.

Since fellowship is extremely important and forms an essential foundation for understanding the ministry we are to have with one another, let’s look at these four main concepts of New Testament fellowship.

Christian Fellowship denotes the following concepts:

(1) Relationship with Christ: We are all permanently united together by the common (eternal) life that we share as a result of regeneration and the baptism of the Spirit (; C. 1:9; ).

(2) Partnership: We are to work together for a common purpose to obtain common objectives for the glory of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ (cf. ; Phlp. 1:5; ; ).

(3) Companionship: We are to communicate with one another and have fellowship with one another sharing with one another the things (viewpoint and thinking) of Christ (; ; ; ; ; ; ; ).

(4) Stewardship: We must recognize that all we have belongs to the Lord and has been given to us as trusts from God to invest for His purposes.

Believers need to be willing to share their material possessions for the promotion of the gospel and to help those in need.

Good stewardship stems from recognizing our relationship to Jesus Christ, but it also means recognizing our partnership in Christ’s enterprise on earth. (; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ).

An English dictionary can shed a lot of light on the Bible if we would use it in our Bible study.

The translators chose English words according to their real and exact meanings.

When we study our Bibles, we assume we understand the full significance of a word, but often our ideas are very incomplete and this is particularly true of the word “fellowship.”

Webster’s English dictionary can add to our understanding of the concept of fellowship.

They provide the following definitions for the word “fellowship:

(1) companionship, company, associate (vb.)

(2) the community of interest, activity, feeling or experience, i.e., a unified body of people of equal rank sharing in common interests, goals, and characteristics, etc.;

(3) partnership, membership (an obsolete usage but an important one. It shows what has happened to our ideas of fellowship).

There are three key ideas that come out of this:

(1) Fellowship means being a part of a group, a body of people and is opposed to isolation, solitude, loneliness, and our present-day independent kind of individualism.

(2) Fellowship means having or sharing with others certain things in common such as interest, goals, feelings, beliefs, activities, labor, privileges and responsibilities, experiences, and concerns.

(3) Fellowship can mean a partnership that involves working together and caring for one another as a company of people, like a company of soldiers or members of a family.