What the Local Church Provides for the Believer, Part 2: Fellowship

After a very long hiatus, here is the next part of my paper on the church.

The next practical necessity for a believer to grow spiritually is fellowship with other believers. Turning again to the example of the first believers in Acts 2 This is perhaps one of the most wonderful things about aligning with a local body of believers. But what is the basis for fellowship? Is it a common race, or a common interest? No! Rather, it is the new life we have been given in Christ when we were born again, with new desires and a new drive to please God. In this we can share sweet fellowship with people who may be our polar opposites or even former enemies, just as we have fellowship with God who reconciled us through Christ to Himself when were His enemies. It is this fellowship which we have in Christ that is the ultimate basis for our fellowship with other believers. John MacArthur writes: 

Anybody in fellowship with Jesus Christ is also in fellowship with anybody else in fellowship with Jesus Christ. This is our common ground. It is not social, economic, intellectual, cosmetic, or anything else superficial. Our common ground is that which is pulsing through the life of every Christian--the heartbeat of God (Whitney 149).

It is important here to distinguish fellowship from socializing. Fellowship is when we move past

the commonalities of everyday life in this world to speak of spiritual things, to talk about the 

things of God, perhaps discussing a matter of theology or even praying for one another. This 

fellowship is a means by which God richly blesses the life of a believer, giving him a unique joy 

and stirring up within him a love for his brothers and sisters in Christ. This fellowship which he 

shares with his brethren leads him into deeper fellowship with his Lord, building him up in

Christ.