360°

One of the aspects of being a truly devoted follower of Christ is to live it out 360°, that meaning, being deeply committed to one another. 360 is about an immersive reality lived out in the context of the body of Christ. It is where we make a commitment to one another. With this in mind, there are some core convictions we have about what it means to be a body.

1. God intends for everyone to live in fellowship

Acts 2.42-47 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 favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

The Greek word for fellowship, κοινωνια comes from the word for common. First it means that you have something in common. Be it a common goal, a common enemy, a common water supply, whatever. Then add to that idea the concept of partnership – that somehow you agree together in belief and action. This is like the Tolkien book, the Fellowship of the Ring – or for those of you who haven’t read the books – the first movie in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Then add a level of intimacy – this word was sometimes used of intercourse – the concept of sharing deeply in something together. Then not only include the concept of sharing in, but the idea of sharing out – because the word Κοινωνια was the word they used to give food to the poor, to redistribute wealth amongst the church members and even churches, and their partnership to take the message of Jesus to the world. It is the word for communion, the word for eating together, and the word for partnership. This kind of fellowship is awesome.

2. Fellowship Begins with Christ

But you have to have fellowship with Christ before you can have fellowship with His church. You need to be His partner before you can be our partner. We need to walk with Him before we can walk with each other. He is the joining factor for us that supercedes all other similarities that we might otherwise find. Christian fellowship isn’t about anything else. Your gender, colour, language is irrelevant to the concept of fellowship.

Colossians 3:11 Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

3. Fellowship begins when we share in and share out the life of Jesus

It is Jesus death that takes away our sin. It is Jesus death that atones for what we have done. It is His resurrection that gives us life. The presence of Jesus inside us is what gives us new life. Everything that we have to share with one another and the world, first begins with our sharing it with Jesus.

Romans 6.3-8 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

We had to die before we could live. We had to die to our sins, and we continually die to ourselves as we surrender instead by choice to what God would have us do. But now that we are alive, it is this life that first we share with Him.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

Jesus has brought us to life again in Him. We have restored relationship with God, we have an eternal home and a destiny, we have purpose and meaning. Not only that, but we don’t have to be like we were before – I hesitate to call it living, because although we were biologically functioning, God saw us as the walking dead.

Second, we share out the life of Jesus. It is the experience of what Jesus did and is doing in us that is a source of life, and the only meaningful thing that we have to share with anybody else. When we say we share the life of Christ, it all sounds a bit abstract. So let me make it intensely practical.

1 John 2:6 Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

4. Fellowship is really about walking with Jesus together

We share the life of Jesus in and out to the extent that we walk with Him.

1Jo 1:6-7 If we say that we have fellowship (κοινωνια) with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship (κοινωνια) with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

You can be a Christian and choose to walk in darkness. You can choose to live outside of fellowship with Him and others. But when we live outside Him, we do not live, and thus have no life to share. When we do not share in his life, we have no life to share with others. When this happens, we are forced to come up with other things that we have in common to artificially create fellowship. We create groupings based on age, sex, preferences, etc. and use them to make us feel connected to other people that are like us. Christian fellowship is not the only kind that there is. The problem is that if we don’t separate what God has called us to from what the world offers, it creeps in here and we begin to think that what they have out there is all that there is.

But instead, its supposed to be us that are connected to Jesus, and that is what makes us connected to one another. You can use whatever spiritual analogy you prefer – the body in 1 Corinthians 12, the vine in John 15, or the temple in 1 Peter 2. That we share in His life! If we want community here, then we need to rediscover together the heart of what it means to be a Christian – knowing Jesus – together.

Php 2:1-2 Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship (κοινωνια) of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.