Envisioning GracePoint: 
Life-Changing Fellowship
1 John 1:1-10

Introduction
We are on week four of our sermon series exploring together our new Vision Statement.  Each week we are exploring one of the seven Biblical purposes of why we exist as a local congregation.  This morning we will explore what does it mean for us to be a people who engage in “Life-Changing Fellowship.”

When you think about Christian fellowship, what images and ideas come to mind?  I suspect that for the majority of Christians, fellowship mostly includes ideas of potlucks and other social events.  Some will go a little deeper, and include the sense of community we have when we gather together for worship, prayer, or service.  A smaller few might go even deeper, and also include the activity of being in a small group.

All these activities are good, and they all can include aspects of authentic Christian fellowship.  But if we are to live into the new vision God has given us, we must understand and participate in a far deeper kind of fellowship that what most of us settle for, or perhaps even know exists.

Let us pray…        

Listen closely to our Bible passage for today as to what all is involved in authentic Christian fellowship.  Scripture reading…
1 John 1:1-10:
1:1 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.  And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.  4 We write this to make our joy complete.

5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.


A Biblical Definition of Fellowship

When the Bible speaks about “fellowship,” as in our Bible study passage today, it is the Greek word, Koinonia.  This word was used in the time the New Testament was written to include all of these ideas:
•    to be joined together in a common bond (such as in a friendship, marriage, social or political group)
•    to share common ownership, property, or ideas
•    to participate together in an activity
•    to be joined together with the divine

The New Testament presents an understanding of fellowship that includes all these aspects, but also redefines them as they relate to our being in Christ.  
Christian Fellowship then includes:
•    We are spiritually joined together with every Christian who now lives on Earth and in heaven because the same Holy Spirit lives within every one us.
•    We are spiritually and relationally joined together in a local congregation to live out our faith in a caring community where we worship, grow, serve, and have fun and friendships.
•    We share a common understanding of the faith with all true Christians despite our different theology on secondary matters.  We share our material goods as well.
•    We participate together in the common mission of saving sinners, ministering to needs, and making disciples
•    We participate in the nature of Christ that makes us increasingly more like Christ
•    We participate in the very inner community of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because we are seated in this community through our union with Christ in the Holy Spirit!
These last two points are the deepest and most powerful aspects of Christian fellowship!  

In 2 Peter 1:3-4 we read:  “3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in (have fellowship with) the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”

As our passage in John reveals: “Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”  You can spend the rest of your life pondering that truth and never exhaust its depth.  And we will spend eternity celebrating and participating in this reality!  

All Christian Fellowship flows out of these two aspects of our fellowship through the Holy Spirit in Christ and with the Trinity.  Every Christian who is living as he or she should, and so is not willingly separated from some type of Christian community, experiences to some degree these aspects of Fellowship.
But in the new Vision our Lord has imparted to us, God is calling us to pursue a depth of fellowship that goes beyond just these aspects of being in community.  Christ offers us a deeper fellowship that can involve entering into super-natural, extra-ordinary spiritual relationships with the Triune God, and the family of God, that can become the most important, the most enjoyed, and the most life-changing reality in your life.
 
Authentic Christian fellowship can go way beyond just having close, healthy, caring relationships with God and each other.  When this is what we settle for, it is like settling for the kind of relationship that exists between elementary school friends, when what God offers us is the kind of relationship that exists between life-long friends or in a strong, intimate marriage.

We need to understand that there are levels of fellowship with different depths of intimacy.  To live a dynamic, healthy, truly satisfying, and deeply life-changing Christianity, I am asserting that every Christian should have all five levels of fellowship operating in his or her life.
1. Common Fellowship:  This is simply being an active member of a faith community fully participating in its life of worship, relationships, spiritual growth, and ministry
2. Friendship Fellowship:  This involves being in closer relationship with a number of Christian brother and sisters that you spend time with outside of “church” events engaging in activities that are fun, supportive, and faith-building.
3. Small Group Fellowship:  This is a group that meets regularly to intentionally enter into deeper relationships by creating a safe place to share deep pain, tough questions, and entangling sin in order to connect with Christ’s comfort, power, peace, and joy.  
4. Spiritual Friendship Fellowship:  Marriages include many aspects of this depth of fellowship.  But married or not, each of us need one same-gender friendship where you enter into an intentional, covenanted relationship to share the deepest struggles of life that really cannot be shared even in a safe small group or with your spouse.
5. Trinitarian Fellowship:  This is the deepest level of intimate relationship that we abide in with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  This is pursued by engaging in all of the “means of grace,” and “spiritual disciplines” gifted to us through Christ.  

Again, it is my observation that all Christians involved in a local congregation experience some degree of “Common,” and “Friendship” fellowship.  But if this is all one has in his or her life, there will be very little authentic spiritual growth or deep transformation happening in that person’s life.  Becoming more like Christ in every aspect of our life and person absolutely requires engaging in “small group,” spiritual friendship,” and “Trinitarian fellowship.”  This last three, deeper forms of fellowship, are what we are calling, “Life-Changing Fellowship.


Life-Changing Fellowship requires:
•    First of all, and always most importantly, pursing intimate, abiding relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  
And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

•    Then out of that relationship, entering into intentional, planned, long-term, close relationships with a few other Christians in a small group, and with one other Christian in a spiritual friendship, wherein we can share our deepest struggles and highest joys and so become more like Christ.  
6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.

This is what John is getting out in this passage.  We walk in the light when we engage in the kind of fellowship with God and one another where we are continually honest about our sin, sorrow, and struggles with God and a few others in the Body of Christ.  Such authentic, transparent, vulnerable fellowship is mandatory for deep change (sanctification)!


Fellowship is the Essence of the Church

This kind of fellowship is the very essence of what it means to be the Church, capital “C,” of Jesus Christ.  This kind of intimate relationship with God and one another is the defining “being” of the Church.  

We read in Acts 2:42-47 what Christ desires His Church to look like:
“They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.  All the believers were together and had everything in common.  Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.  They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.  And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved!”
All our ministry activity is secondary and flows from our fellowship with God and one another.  This is why we must first get this relationship thing in order before we focus too much on ministry activity.  Whenever we come together in the name of Christ, our first priority must be the quality of our relationships, not the activity we come together to accomplish.  All our activity, no matter how important, is secondary to being in relationship with God and one another.  

This is how we pull all this together in our Vision Statement:
Life-changing FELLOWSHIP, offering a safe place to belong, believe, and be real (1 Jn 1:3)
God’s kingdom plan for all creation is to dwell in intimate relationship with the triune God and with one another.  We foster a taste of such relationships through small groups and in all aspects of our life together.   


Moving Past the Dream of Community to Authentic Community

Now for us to continually live into this vision of entering into Life-Changing Fellowship, we must do so with no illusions or delusions of just how impossible this calling is apart from God’s grace and Spirit.  

Dietrich Bonheoffer was a German theologian who gave us such classics as “The Cost of Discipleship,” and such phrases as “cheap grace,” and “When Christ calls us (a man), He calls us (him) to come and die.”  Bonheoffer died for his faith under the evil reign of Hitler.  He also gave us, next to the Bible, the most profound work ever penned on Christian Fellowship called “Life Together,” and absolute must-read (as is the Cost of Discipleship”) for every Christian.
In this book, Bonheoffer describes Christian fellowship, Christian community, as a miracle and a gift, as something we do not create but as something God creates and offers and we enter into.  He also gives us this dire warning:
“He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter….”  

Real fellowship is so much messier than the dream of fellowship!  It more often than not comes up way short of what we had hoped for!  So to push past all this disappointment, and so to still experience the legitimate, not-ever fully-but-often-mostly-satisfying fellowship that is available this side of glory, Bonheoffer goes on to say, we must experience this:  
“But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams.  Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.”

•    In other words, Christian community is a mess, it is hard work, it is something we strive for but never fully attain!  
•    We are entering into relationships with sinner/saints who one minute show us Christ and the very next show us Satan!  
•    Christian community requires much grace, patience, perseverance, forbearance, and commitment!  
•    Yet despite all the frustration, all the infuriation, all the irritation that we must endure in pursuing authentic fellowship, the relational and transformational reward is worth the cost!
 

Living Into Our Vision of Life-Changing Fellowship

When we come together for worship, prayer, teaching, preaching, planning, or ministry, we must do so in an environment of authentic Christian fellowship.  God forbid that we should ever come together, and be so focused on the business or tasks at hand that someone in that group leaves with a deep burden untouched, or a great joy uncelebrated!  

Let’s always be sure to emphasize our relationship with God and one another first, before we jump into whatever task we must accomplish.  Let each of us decide this day, that Christ calls us to make relationships with the Trinity and the family of God our number one priority in life.  

So let us re-evaluate how we are living in order to restructure our lifestyle to allow for all five levels of authentic Christian fellowship to be operating on our life.
The central activity of the Church is to save sinners and make disciples, and this is true.  But the defining essence of the Church is community, fellowship.  This is the aspect of being the people of God that will last forever.  All our ministry as currently defined will become obsolete when Christ returns.  But being in ever-more-intimate relationship with God and one another will go on forever!


The Fellowship of our Lord’s Supper

Until that day, the Sacrament of the Lord’s Table, also called Holy Communion, or Holy Fellowship, is, or at least should be when participated in with all its potential power and meaning, the supreme event of Christian fellowship.  

In this act of worship, we can encounter a depth of intimacy with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with one another, and with all Christians globally and in glory, that cannot be experienced in any other fellowship event.

Bonheoffer says this:
“The fellowship of the Lord's Supper is the superlative fulfillment of Christian fellowship.  As the members of the congregation are united in body and blood at the table of the Lord so will they be together in eternity.  Here the community has reached its goal.  Here joy in Christ and his community is complete.  The life of Christians together under the Word has reached its perfection in the sacrament.”