“Fellowship” is a deep spiritual bond rooted in eternity and displayed in the lives of the church on earth. The Christian fellowship is the foundation of our togetherness.
It’s great to be together. But sometimes being together is hard. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes being together means that I get offended. Sometimes being together means that I will offend you. But we must be together.
- We must be together because God has put us together. We were all baptized into one body (1 Corinthians 12:13).
- We must be together because God intends our togetherness to glorify him in the community and bring about evangelism (John 13:35).
- We must be together because God intends for our togetherness to bring about maturity (Colossians 3:13).
- We must be together because we need one another (Galatians 6:1-9).
Togetherness can be difficult, but those difficulties bring about greater joys. We can’t help but wonder what God has in store for us as we go through life together. We know there will be good times and we know there will be hard times. We also know that the good and the bad can be for his glory.
1 Corinthians 1:9 says, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” The “fellowship of his Son” refers to the partnership that the members of the church enjoy together with themselves and with Christ himself. This is God’s plan for us–to work together with him for the Gospel and for his glory.
That sacred fellowship, which we enjoy and with which we are entrusted, is great because it depends upon the faithfulness of God. We will have difficulties, but God never will. He never changes. He is always faithful. We can always depend upon him. We can always lean upon him.
Donnie's Dogmatics 
interesting post. the strength snd value of togetherness is what God’s kingdom is about,
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Thank you for this. In America many of us live alone and, even with a family, we can be like islands unto ourselves. My read of the epistles is that for many of the churches of the time this type of isolation was just not the norm. They had to be together and I believe they often had conflicts but it was like living in a commune or a big family, we’re in this together and we have to make it work. Since so many of us can afford to live alone we just don’t have this ethos and so even when we’re asked to come together for small amounts of time it’s not our way of living and can be chaffing.
How do we solve the problem? I think it’s bigger than the church and it’s about our society today. We’re fragmented and we can afford to be (at least for now). Perhaps if things get tight financially we might see more communal living arrangements. One tragedy is there are tons of young adults struggling to pay rent and tons of seniors living alone in empty homes. Why can’t we get these two groups together?
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Thanks. The Lord has given us the church for that togetherness you described.
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