JESUS CHRIST: BASIS OF FELLOWSHIP

God is faithfu4 by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. — 1 Cor. 1:9

Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. — 1 Jn. 1:3

Jesus said to him, "Follow me." And he arose and followed him. — Mt. 9:9

A few years back I was invited to a Jesuit college to serve as a judge for a program that the Jesuits called "propositions for public examination." So I listened as the students defended their theses and afterward gave my evaluation. Taking a page from the Jesuits, I would like to do something like that in this article, and allow you the reader to be the examiner.

My proposition is: It is right, appropriate, and scriptural for us to "walk" (have fellowship) with a person insofar as he or she "walks" with Christ. Or to put it another way, Since fellowship is in Jesus Christ, we can enjoy fellowship with all those that are in Christ.

My thesis assumes that those who walk with Christ will be at different levels in their understanding and obedience. They may be ignorant about a lot of things that will afterwards be matters of knowledge. They may always be wrong about some things. But they have one resolve: to follow and to obey Jesus Christ as he leads the way. In heeding the call, Follow me, they are forming the habit of obedience. However flawed their thinking may be in some particulars, they are generally obedient to Jesus Christ. This means that they not only walk by the light they have, but they continue to seek for more light. As they near the shepherd's call, they respond like faithful sheep.

My thesis implies that there can be no real fellowship except with those who are in heart and mind habitually obedient to Jesus Christ. We may belong to the same church and even subscribe to the same doctrinal tenets, but since fellowship is "sharing the common life" it cannot be merely formal or institutional. It is deeply personal, involving those who share a common bond, and it is anchored in Jesus Christ as Lord. This means that fellowship is a matter of being right (in our love commitment) about Jesus. One can be wrong about a lot of things and yet be right about Jesus. So the essence of fellowship is loyalty to Jesus Christ. How can there be the sharing of the common life when there is no real loyalty to Christ? But how can there not be fellowship when there is loyalty to Christ?

And we must show great caution in our judgment of who is following Christ and who is not, who is sincerely committed and who is not, and who is loyal and who is not. If people look like Christians and act like Christians and profess the faith of Christians, it would seem appropriate to regard them as Christians. I had rather err in accepting someone as a Christian who seems to be one but is not than to err in rejecting someone as a Christian (for whatever reason) whom the Lord accepts as a Christian. 

The above passages are enormously important in understanding the nature of fellowship and in sustaining my proposition. The first one, 1 Cor. 1:9, assures us of a truth we are slow to learn: that the domain of fellowship is in God's control not ours. God calls us into the fellowship of Jesus Christ. It is a gift that we accept or do not accept. Fellowship or the shared life in Christ is not a commodity that belongs to a church, to be extended or withdrawn at its discretion. Nor do we receive or exclude people from "our" fellowship as if it were ours to dispense at will. We are to accept fellow believers as part of the fellowship on the same condition that Christ accepted us, according to Rom. 15:7, and that means the standard of acceptance is less than perfect. In fact, Rom. 5:6-8 makes it clear that it was when we were both weak and sinful that Christ accepted us. We are to show the same mercy toward others in our practice of fellowship.

The second passage, 1 Jn. 1:3, makes it clear that fellowship is based upon the fundamentals of the good news (gospel). The apostle John refers to "what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you," and it is that message that brings us into the fellowship. When he goes on to say in verse 4, "so that our joy may be complete," he refers to the joy that we have as fellow Christians in communion with Christ.

The third passage, Mk. 9:9, has to do with the call of Matthew Levi, the tax collector. At the call of Jesus the revenue man left his tax office and followed him. Levi was at that moment in fellowship with Christ. And when Simon the Zealot heard that same call he too followed Jesus. A Zealot who hated everything that smacked of Rome and a Roman tax collector were now sharing a new life. Because of Jesus, Simon laid aside his dagger and Levi his tax records, and they forgot their enmity toward each other. They now shared a common life. Jesus now made all the difference in their lives.

When they heard the call they followed Jesus. This is the meaning of discipleship and this is the meaning of fellowship.

There are of course other indicators of Christian fellowship, particularly the Lord's Supper and baptism. Baptism is the act of induction into the fellowship, and because of that is submitted to but once, while the Lord's Supper, which is observed frequently, is a continual expression of the communal life in Christ. We may conclude, as a general rule at least, that wherever there is a community of believers in "the fellowship of the Spirit" there is the practice of baptism and the Lord's Supper.

But fellowship begins with the call of God in our hearts to follow his son Jesus Christ. We have a great deal in common with anyone who has heeded that call. To the extent that he or she hears the call and responds to it in following Jesus Christ to that extent we are in fellowship with him or her. There can be no other basis for Christian fellowship. While that person will surely be baptized (even if Levi and Simon may never have been) and eventually break bread with other disciples, it is in being a disciple, one who walks with Christ, that is the beginning of fellowship.

The lowly Roman Catholic nun, who works with the bums on Skid Row or with the dying on the streets of Calcutta, may be some distance from us on many doctrinal issues. But surely my thesis is true, that I can work beside her and love her and count her my sister in the fellowship of the Spirit because she is where I am, following Jesus Christ according to her understanding. She doesn't have to approve of my hangups and I don't have to endorse her errors, but we can walk together to the extent that we walk with Christ. —the Editor