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The Lord did not create us in a vacuum. Our destiny is not accomplished by being isolated and separate from other people. To the contrary, it is accomplished in relationship to them. In fact, relationships are very important to Jesus. We see this in Matthew 22:38-40, where He said: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
To summarize, Jesus said that our greatest duty is being in good relationship with God and our second greatest duty is being in good relationship with other people. God doesn't not want us to pull apart from the people that He puts around us, but to interact with them in a loving manner. In fact, many of our destinies share a common component of positively effecting other people, such as to encourage or strengthen them in their own walk and destiny. And our ability to fellowship well with others is an important part of that.
So we are going to start looking at fellowship and relationship with each other. I'd like to start by sharing some things that our owner's manual (the bible) has to say about this. Hebrews 2:10 says that "God is the One who made many things, and all things are for His glory. He wanted to have many children to share His glory" (NCV).
What that verse means is that God wants a family. He just wanted kids, and He wants us to be a part of His family.
It says there in Ephesians 1:5 that "God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure." God's objective is to bring you into relationship with Him, to bring you into a family, His family. The whole Bible is the story of God building a family.
The first commandment says that we're to love the Lord, and the second commandment says that we are to love our neighbor. So let me ask you a question: where God is going to teach you and train you in how to love your neighbor? Where's He going to begin? The answer is that we start by learning to love each other, by learning to love the people in the family of God. In short, we need to learn to fellowship together and get along well with each other.
So let's look at "fellowship." What does it mean? I believe that this is a very misunderstood word. Let me ask you, what comes to mind when you hear me stay the word fellowship? Food? Or do you think of a party?" Oftentimes when we think of fellowship, we just think of connecting or talking to somebody. And that is true--that is involved in fellowship. But it's also something that really goes deeper.
If a couple of believers were standing out in the little area outside before church and they're drinking their coffee and their visiting, they might say, "What about them A's." And the other guy goes, "How about them A's!" And he goes, "Those A's aren't doing so good, are they?" "No, they're not doing so great. I'm not doing too bad." "Yeah, yeah." "Well, how you doing?" "Well, I'm doing OK." "You alright?" "Yeah, I'm doing alright." "Yeah, OK." "How's the family?" "Yeah, the family's doing OK." "Yours?" "OK." "Alright, well, I guess we'd better get to church." "Yeah, well, you know its great fellowshipping with you." "Yeah, me too. Same to you."
Now, was that fellowship? No, that was communication--a little bit, at least. But it was just surface communication. It is what is on the top. It could lead to fellowship and oftentimes fellowship may begin on that level. But fellowship really goes a lot deeper than that.
The Greek word is "koinonia" and it means connecting and relating and partnering with other people. God is building a family and I want you to know something that your physical family on this earth, one day is going to disintegrate and fall apart. But, your spiritual family will last forever. Some of your family is already doing that (falling apart). But God wants you to know that you have a spiritual family that is going to last forever. God wants us to love His family that He is putting together, and that is called fellowship.
1 John 4:21 says, "The person who loves God must also love other believers." That means that if you're going to love God, you're going to have to love His family. If you're going to love God, you're going to have to love the other believers as well. Many of us say, 'I love you God' but those other people, I don't know about.' It's not an easy thing.
1 Timothy 3:14-15 says, (Paul is writing), "I'm writing so that you will know how to live in the family of God." (That family is the church.) He says that because we don't always know how to have relationship. And the place where God is going to teach and equip us in relationships is in the family, e.g., in the church. The church is not the building. The church is not this petition, the church is not a business; it's not an organization. It is family. We don't always see it like a family. But God wants us to see it like a family.
As we come into this family with God there are levels of relationship that God brings us into. They are
The first is kind of a beginning, kind of a surface thing. We have to start at the beginning and progress to the end stages. The last is a deep and meaningful relationship. I would like to look at these four levels over the next few lessons. Let's start with the first.
Level 1 -- Membership
This is the first level, the beginning level. I call it the level of "membership," It is the level of choosing to become, choosing to belong. Ephesians 2:19 says, "You are members of God's very own family. And you belong in God's household with every other Christian."
When you gave your heart to Jesus, you entered into the family of God. By faith, you came into relationship with Jesus and when you made that commitment to Him, you were also inducted right into His family.
The family of God is manifested in local congregations and it is manifested in believers--that is where it happens to be manifested. The Christian life is not just a matter of believing; it is a matter of belonging. We have to make a choice that we are going to connect with other believers.
A Christian without a church is like an oxymoron. I mean, a believer is to be connected with other members of God's family. It's kind of like a guy that says, "I'm a football player. I just don't want to belong to any particular team." "I'm a tuba player. I just don't want to belong to any band or any orchestra." Have you guys ever heard a tuba solo? It's bad, isn't it? I mean, it makes sounds like umpa, umpa, umpa, umpa. The tuba needs the other instruments. It sounds better when you have the other members of the band playing. When you're playing by yourself, you sound really bad.
Likewise, the Christian needs the other members. Even though you are in the family of God by virtue of a relationship with Jesus Christ, you still need to choose to connect. You need to choose to be a part of, and relate to a church. That is very important.
Romans 5:12, says, "In Christ we who are many form one body. Each member belongs to all the others." In Christ we form one body. Now what that means is that if I'm not connected with other people, I'm not able to fulfill my purpose or do my function. For example, a hand just needs the other parts, right? The hands needs...it needs an arm. We function better when we are connected with each other. And the bible calls the church "the family of God." He calls it the "Body of Christ."
What this means is that we make a commitment, we make a choice that says, "I'm going to choose to be a part of a local church. And I'm going to choose to fit and to belong. That's a decision that I make."
But in America (and some other Western countries), we have this consumer religion. We have a lot of Christians that fall into the category of being "cruise-matics." They just cruise from church to church. They go here, and they go, "Oh, its hot here. I'm going to go here this week." And they say, "OK, it's hot over here. I'm going to go over here this week. It's going to be hot over here this week. I'm going to go there." I mean that would be like me saying, "You know what, John? I think I'm going to go live with you next week." And I'd spend 3 or 4 days with him, and say, "That guy can't cook worth a hoot. I'm not saying in this house. I'm going to go to Marsha's house." You know, and see how they do. And then after a while, I'll think, "I'm going to go to Dan's house and spend some time with Dan."
If I tried to do that, then John and Marsha and Dan are not going to let me do that--anyway, not for long. My wife and I have a pretty good relationship, so they don't have to worry about that, she's not kicking me out. (Smile.) But you understand a lot of people treat the Body of Christ like that: there is no commitment. There is nothing stuck; there is no resolve. And then they say, "Well, just don't like every church." I mean, how does that make Jesus feel?
Mike Warren talked about that in his book Forty Days Of Purpose. He said that church is a love issue. How would you like it when somebody says, "I love you but I can't stand your body?" That wouldn't make me feel good. Or, what if that say, "I love you. I just can't stand your wife." Well, if someone said that to me, it would really offend me.
Unfortunately, that is the way we treat Jesus a lot of times. "I love You, Lord, and I just love being with You. I just hate the church. I could really enjoy being a Christian, if it weren't for all those other Christians You want me to connect to." It's a love issue.
We have been talking about the first level of relationship, which is choosing to belong and choosing to connect. It is choosing to relate to others in the body. We know that we already belong in the bigger picture, but we need to recognize it in relationship to our own local church as well. We need to be connected with a church, connected with a body. We need to get connected in covenant with other people. That is the first step.