THE NATURE AND BASIS OF FELLOWSHIP

(On a Saturday afternoon in October I set forth my views on the nature and basis of Christian fellowship at the First Christian Church in Commerce, Texas. David Gibson, a local Church of Christ minister, responded in a reasonable and resourceful manner. Charles Turner, a teacher at East Texas State University and interim minister at First Christian, presided. There was vigorous and interesting audience participation. It was not a debate but an open and free discussion. A good spirit prevailed and we all learned more about a very crucial subject for our time. I would encourage more studies of this kind. I thought you might be interested in seeing the principles I set forth that served as the basis for the exchange of ideas. The attending comments are a summary of what I said about each principle. The occasion was all the more meaningful since this is the first time any friendly exchange had taken place since the Christian Church divided into two churches back at the turn of the century over instrumental music. It had a bitter end. One side broke the lock and took over the building, the other side went to court. The court ruled, as they always did in such cases, that the introduction of things like Sunday schools and instruments does not constitute a departure from the original intent of the movement. The Disciples got the building and the Church of Christ moved across the street, and finally to another part of town. They quit speaking to each other for the next 90 years, until the other Saturday. When I spoke at the First Christian Church the following Sunday it was the first time this century that a friendly voice from the Church of Christ had been heard in their assembly. —the Editor)

1. Fellowship is not agreement in doctrine as much as it is a relationship between persons based upon mutual discipleship of Jesus Christ.

The word that is the basis of our study, fellowship, comes from the Greek word koinonia which means by definition “fellowship, partnership” (Analytical Greek Lexicon). The affix ship is the key to understanding the meaning in that it implies a relationship between persons: a partnership joins partners; a fellowship joins fellows. Koinonia has to do with persons, not things or even ideas. We have fellowship with each other, not with things like Sunday schools or instrumental music or ideas like inerrancy or premillennialism.

In reading the massive Theological Dictionary of the New Testament on the meaning of koinonia one finds such definitions as “brotherly fellowship of believers,” “inward fellowship on a religious basis,” and “an expression of the full fellowship established by common faith in Christ.” This means that fellowship is the sharing of a common life, which is the way the New English Bible renders koinonia. It never uses the word fellowship. Compare, for instance, the King James Version of 1 Jn. 1:7 (“If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another”) with that of the New English (“If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, then we share together a common life”).

I suggest we let this serve as our working definition of fellowship: sharing together a common life in Christ.

My first principle says that we who share a common life in Christ (fellowship) do so not because we agree on all doctrinal matters, for it is self-evident both in Scripture and in our own experience that we do not, but because we have a common bond in Christ. We are united “in Christ” in spite of our differences.

2. Fellowship is not contingent upon or made necessary by approval or endorsement of any opinion, interpretation, or practice as much as it is the sharing of a common life in Christ. We can therefore differ on many things and still be united in Christ and in fellowship with one another.

I can work alongside the likes of Mother Teresa in ministering to the dying on the streets of Calcutta without endorsing or approving of what she might believe and practice as a Roman Catholic. We “share the common life” in serving the needy not because she is Roman Catholic and I a member of the Church of Christ, but because we are both seeking to follow Christ in helping others. Mother Teresa and I have some serious differences, but we have the one precious thing in common, a desire to follow Christ and to be like him, and that is the basis of fellowship. So it was with Paul and Peter. They had such differences that on one occasion Paul rebuked Peter to his face (Gal. 2:14), and yet they extended to each other “the right hand of fellowship” when they went their separate ways to preach the same gospel, Peter to the Jews and Paul to the Gentiles (Gal. 2:9).

3. We have no control (nor can we make any determination) over who is in the fellowship and who is not, or who is our sister or brother in Christ and who is not, for it is God who calls us into the fellowship, and only He can cast us out. Therefore, wherever God has a child, we have a sister or brother that we are to accept as such.

The Scriptures could not be clearer on this point: “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor. 1:9). It is God who calls us to share the common life in Christ, and according to 2 Thess. 2:14 we are called by the gospel. All who believe and obey the gospel are called of God into the fellowship of his Son.

We have no say as to who is in the family of God and who is not. It is like my father’s family. There were eight of us children and I was next to the youngest. My mother thought she was through having children when I came along, but when I was six years old Bill was born. They took me to my mother’s bedside to meet the new member of the family. They did not ask me whether I would accept him. He was my brother, for he was begotten of my father and born of my mother. I had nothing to do with it, and I had no choice but to accept him. I was stuck with him!

That is the way it is with sisters and brothers in Christ. We are stuck with each other, bonded together in the love of Christ, warts and all, differences and all.

4 . We are under apostolic mandate to accept all those who are” in Christ,” even as Christ accepted us, unconditionally.

The apostle Paul says it plainly in Ro. 15:7: “Therefore receive one another, just as Christ received us, to the glory of God.” A helpful rule of interpretation is: when you come to a “Therefore” stop and ask what it is there for. The “Therefore” here goes back to the previous chapter where the apostle enjoins that Christians may disagree without passing judgment on each other. “Who are you to judge another’s servant?,” he asks of those who would reject a brother over differences . “To his own master he stands or falls,” he adds, noting that each of us is responsible for what he believes only to the Lord, not to each other. Three times in Ro. 14 he charges that we are not to judge our brother or sister.

Then in Ro. 15:7 he says “Therefore” —in view of all that I have said— “receive one another as Christ has received us.” It is an adverb of manner —as Christ received us. He says elsewhere that Christ received us when we were weak and when we were sinners, even when we were “in error” and wrong about a lot of things —unconditionally by grace! That is how we are to receive each other, and when we do that it is to the glory of God. When we receive each other on our own terms or by the rules of the party it is to our own glory or the glory of the party, not to the glory of God.

5. There are only two biblical grounds for a church withdrawing fellowship from one of its members: heresy, which is disloyalty to Jesus Christ, and moral turpitude.

No one in Scripture is ever disciplined, disenfranchised, or withdrawn from simply for being honestly mistaken or even for inadvertently falling into sin. It is always one who has become morally corrupt, or insincere, self-serving, and selfcondemned (in that he knows he is doing wrong); and those who seek to deceive, lead the innocent astray, and divide the Body of Christ. These are those that the Bible calls false teachers, as in 1 Pet. 2:1. In the Bible a false teacher is never one who simply holds an erroneous position. He is rather one with a bad heart and evil intent, one bent upon destruction.

Such a one is referred to in Tit. 1:10: “Reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition.” The “divisive man” is a heretic or sectarian, one who is bent upon forming a party or sect around himself, dividing the Body of Christ. The next verse describes his spirit: he is “warped and sinning, being self-condemned.”

Such a one is to be warned, and, if possible, saved from his evil course. But if continued effort is of no avail he is to be rejected, so as to safeguard the church. Here the line of fellowship must be drawn. In 2 Jn. 9 he is described as one “who transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ. The context indicates that the heretic is one who denies Christ, and he is called anti-Christ (1 Jn. 2:23).

Fellowship may also be withdrawn from the one who is morally base, one who is unrepentant, one who has given his life over to persistent sin. This is not the person who out of weakness is “overtaken in a trespass.” Such a one is to be restored “in a spirit of gentleness” (Gal. 6:1). It is moral turpitude that cannot be tolerated, as with the fornicator in 1 Cor. 5, who went right on living in open sin with his stepmother. The apostle charged that such a one be “delivered unto Satan” by the assembled church, for it was Satan he now served. This is clearly a case of one being excluded from the fellowship of the church.

6. Loyalty to Christ or Christlikeness (or a sincere desire to so be) is the only condition of fellowship between Christians.

This principle is basic to our heritage in the Stone-Campbell movement as well as rooted in Scripture. The very first Church of Christ in this country, made up of former Methodists who resolved they would be Christians only and take the Bible as their only rule of faith and practice, drew up what they called “Cardinal Principles of the Christian Church.” One principle was, “Christlikeness the only rule of Church fellowship.” It was a remarkable insight for a rude frontier people who were caught up in a morass of man-made creeds.

We have a way of accepting folk so long as they parrot the party line and support our institutional system, however unlike Christ they may be. And we often reject those among us who are most like Christ —only because they veer from the party line.

Our Lord laid down the one basic test when he issued the invitation, “Come, follow me.” All who sincerely heed that call and follow him the best they know how are those who share the common life. “Whoever desires to come after me,” he said, laying down the rule that we are slow to accept, “let him take up his cross, and follow me” (Mk. 8:34). Those who are Christlike, or who desire to be, have one precious thing in common. They are sharing the common life in Christ, and that is what fellowship is all about.

7. A true Christian is. therefore. one “who believes that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and obeys him in all things according to his understanding” (Alexander Campbell).

This definition from brother Campbell should go far in helping us to understand, in the light of Scripture, the nature of fellowship. It is helpful because it takes into consideration both the mind and heart of a person. It recognizes that one might be wrong about some things but right about what really matters, loyalty to Jesus Christ. It points up a distinction that Campbell often made between errors of the mind and errors of the heart. Errors of the heart, such as willful neglect or insincerity, are much more serious than errors of the mind, such as a mistaken interpretation.