9. Lessons in Fellowship
It is often said that there are three major lessons or themes in the epistles of the apostle John: love, truth, and obedience. Some verses in these letters even mention all three themes together, directly or indirectly. Consider an example (emphases added here and below):
And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard [the truth] from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love (2 John 1:6). These three themes certainly are the most noticeable and frequently mentioned in John's letters, and each theme appears in all three of his epistles. But there is also another theme that serves as a thread connecting the apostle's themes of love, truth, and obedience. That connecting thread is the theme of fellowship with God and with his people.
Today, when we hear the word "fellowship" we tend to think of things like church socials and informal get-togethers with friends. But the Greek word koinonia used by John primarily means a deep sharing or "communion" based on the fact that through God's Spirit Christians share or partake of the mind of God and Christ and share that communion of mind with one another. This theme of spiritual fellowship is found in all three of John's epistles (1 John 1:6-7; 2 John 1:9-11; 3 John 1: 5-10), and John (who uses the word koinonia over half of the times it occurs in the New Testament) repeatedly stresses the things that develop or destroy that shared oneness God desires us to have with him and with others. Fellowship Based on Obedience We find the first part of John's message about spiritual fellowship stressed in his first letter: we cannot have true fellowship with God and others if we are not living according to God's way of life. Unrepentant sin cuts us off from God, and eventually from others:
If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 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 (1 John 1:6-7). John stressed this same relationship between obedience and fellowship when he wrote:
We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands … Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did (1 John 2:3, 6). Fellowship Based on Truth In John's second epistle he stresses another aspect of fellowship – that it can only exist in the presence of truth, especially the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ:
Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them. Anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work (2 John 1: 9-11). Here John looks at two sides of this spiritual reality – first, that only the one who has truth ("continues in the teaching" of Christ) has fellowship with God, and second, that we ourselves must not extend fellowship to those who do not have the truth. This is not talking about perfect agreement on every aspect of doctrine we may hold, of course, but about the basic truth of the gospel. This is a spiritual reality that John had begun to discuss in his first letter:
We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3). Fellowship Based on Love John's third and final letter preserved in the New Testament stresses the role of love in true fellowship:
Dear friend, you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers and sisters, even though they are strangers to you. They have told the church about your love… We ought therefore to show hospitality to such people so that we may work together for the truth. I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will not welcome us. So when I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, spreading malicious nonsense about us. Not satisfied with that, he even refuses to welcome other believers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church (3 John 1:5-10). In this detailed discussion, as he did in his second letter, the apostle looks at two aspects of spiritual fellowship. First, he links the Christian's works – "what you are doing for the brothers and sisters" – with our love for others and for God. Next, he gives a practical example where those who do not express love are devoid of true fellowship and even try to withhold fellowship from others. John shows that such behavior is not only the very opposite of fellowship, but it is also the opposite of love.
The Apostle of Fellowship When we remember that, of all the apostles, John probably had the closest fellowship with Jesus (John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20), we should consider carefully what he stresses regarding the role of fellowship in the Christian life. Biblical evidence and historical tradition agree that John was the last surviving apostle; his letters represent distillations of what is most important in the Christian faith by one who not only knew Jesus closely, but also had a long life to ponder and summarize his Master's teachings.
For John, love, truth, and obedience were the ultimate principles of the Christian way of life, but he knew that these great principles do not exist in a vacuum – he makes it clear that all of them exist and have their being in our fellowship with God and, when it is available to us, with other believers. These are John's greatest lessons: without love, truth, and obedience we cannot have true fellowship. And without true fellowship we cannot have love, truth, or obedience.