Week 2: The Fellowship of the Eternal Life
God's Word is not only the basis of our faith but also the source for understanding our Christian experience. In this post, we'll continue to explore the cycle of life from 1 John 1:1-7, one of the most helpful topics for maintaining, developing, and growing in our daily Christian walk and experience. The eternal life issues in fellowship, fellowship brings us into the divine light, and the divine light makes us aware of our need for the cleansing of the blood of Jesus. As believers in Christ, our repeated experience of life, fellowship, light, and the blood enables us to advance in our Christian walk and grow spiritually. As we saw in our last post, this cycle begins when we receive the eternal life, and in this post, we’ll consider the scriptural basis and application of the next step in the cycle: the fellowship of the eternal life.
Fellowship is mysterious. So we’ll present some practical examples in this post to facilitate our comprehension and application. But it’s also helpful to understand what fellowship is not. If we want to really understand fellowship according to the Bible, we need to overcome a conventional concept of fellowship. Just like with words such as "prayer" or "worship," the word "fellowship" is so common in the Christian vernacular that the original Scriptural significance can be misunderstood and even lost. “Fellowship” is often used to mean “spending time with like-minded people.” But this broader, secular definition can dilute the deeper Scriptural meaning and intention. We need to realize that our understanding of the word “fellowship” shapes our expectations and experience of it.
What is the source of fellowship according to the Bible? In our last post, we saw that Jesus Christ is the eternal life and that when we receive Him, we receive zoe, the eternal, uncreated life of God. This fundamentally changes our relationship with God. Formerly, we were only God’s creatures, created by Him, but now that we share His life, we are also His children. (John 1:12-13) Organisms that share the same life possess an innate ability, based on that life, to communicate with and relate to each other. The joint participation in the activity of God’s divine life is what the Bible refers to as “fellowship.” 1 John 1:3 says, “that which we have seen and heard we report also to you that you also may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” The Greek word for fellowship is koinonia, which means “joint, common participation.” The fellowship of the eternal life is our shared and mutual participation in God’s life. 1 John 1:3 makes it clear we can have fellowship with God and with other believers. By virtue of having the same divine life as God, the believers can have fellowship with one another. And while fellowship among believers is a vital part of the Christian experience, to understand the cycle of life, we’re going to focus specifically on the experience of an individual believer’s fellowship with God. To help us better understand the experience of fellowship, we can use a simplified understanding of electricity as an example. Fellowship is like an electrical current. The current of electricity is the flow or movement of electricity, just as the fellowship is the flow or movement of God’s life within us. How is this flow possible? Because God is Spirit and because He created us with a human spirit.
John 4:24 tells us explicitly, “God is Spirit,” and goes on to say, “and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness.” This indicates that we have a spirit which corresponds to what God is in His essence. In his gospel, John uses similar, well-known expressions: “God is love” and “God is light.” (4:8;16) According to the Greek grammar, these expressions are not used metaphorically but predicatively. God is not like light; He is light. Similarly, God is Spirit. The Bible also makes it abundantly clear that we have a human spirit. Zechariah 12:1 says, “…Thus declares Jehovah, who stretches forth the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him.” This verse not only indicates that God gave man a spirit, but also that man’s spirit is ranked in importance with God’s creation of the heavens and the Earth. This is a fundamental realization in our Scriptural understanding of fellowship. Because God created us with a human spirit, we can have fellowship with God, Who is Spirit. Our fellowship with God is by the Spirit in our regenerated human spirit. This is why the Bible refers to it as “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. 13:14) and the “fellowship of (our) spirit” (Phil. 2:1).
The fellowship of the eternal life is not separate from life; it is the flowing of the eternal life itself. Without the current or flow, for all practical purposes, the electricity doesn’t exist. The same can be said of our relationship and fellowship with God. Our life relationship with God is unbreakable and unconditional. But our fellowship with Him can be interrupted and is conditional on our cooperation. Once you have been born, you have an unconditional life relationship with your parents. But it’s possible to affect the quality of your communication and interaction with them; your fellowship with them is conditional. Similarly, once electricity is installed in a building, it is always available but not always in use. No one would say that there is no electricity in the building, but if it’s not switched on, its practical effects are nonexistent. Just as a little insulation can interrupt the flow of electricity, even a little sin can disrupt our fellowship with God. In our experience, an interruption in fellowship with God means a loss of joy. Right after John mentions fellowship in 1:3, he goes on to say in 1 John 1:4, “And these things we write that our joy may be made full.” “Our” includes not only the apostles but also the believers reading his epistle. When we maintain our fellowship with God, we are joyful Christians. What is your level of joy? If, in your Christian experience, you are constantly sorrowful, it may be an indication that you are disconnected from the current, the flow, of the fellowship of the divine life.
This simple realization has huge ramifications for our Christian walk. Many genuine believers in Christ have been stumbled by mistakenly thinking that the loss of their fellowship with Christ equals the loss of their eternal salvation. As we have already pointed out, this is unequivocally wrong. Throughout our Christian journey, the quality of our relationship with Christ can and will fluctuate; we can experience abrupt stops and new beginnings. Yet, throughout all the seasons of our Christian experience, we can be assured that our life relationship with God is unchangeable. He will always be our Father, and we will always be His children.
Fellowship is more than Christian friendship. It is the living presence and flow of God’s eternal life within us. Fellowship brings us into a shared participation with other believers and with God Himself by His divine life. Our relationship with God is unchanging, but our fellowship requires ongoing care. To remain joyful and advancing in the Christian life, we must treasure and maintain this fellowship. What then is the purpose of our fellowship with God? If the foundation is unshakeable, what more is there to build? And what can we do if our fellowship with God is interrupted? In the next post, we’ll see how fellowship brings us into the light of God, exposing what hinders us and drawing us even closer to Him.
