Fellowship: What a to Live! – Part 2
Scripture Reference: Romans 12:9 – 21
Introduction
Last week we left off talking about fellowship and its value to the life of the believer’s for his/her growth and development. We are reminded that as we live for discipleship, the chance to bear the life of Christ in a Christless world, as we live to worship, the chance to honor God in a godless world, we also have the chance to fellowship in an isolated and lonely world.
We defined fellowship as the opportunity to share our lives with others in order to strengthen, encourage, and build one another up through Jesus Christ.
Someone once said that the idolatry of individualism in our culture has influenced even the way we think about spiritual growth. So much of the teaching on spiritual formation is self-centered and self-focused without any reference to our relationship to other Christians.
This is completely unbiblical and ignores much of the New Testament. The truth is that Christians need relationships to grow. We don’t grow in isolation from others. We develop in the context of fellowship.
Dietrich Bonhoffer, the German pastor who was martyred for resisting Nazis, wrote a classic on fellowship, Life Together. In it, he suggests that disillusionment with our local church is a good thing because it destroys our false expectations of perfection.
The sooner we give up the illusion that a church must be perfect in order to love it, the sooner we quit pretending and start admitting we’re all imperfect and need grace. This is beginning of real community.
Bonhoffer said, "He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter... If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even when there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty.
If on the contrary, we keep complaining that everything is paltry and petty, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow..."
From Romans 12 I had address the cornerstone of a developing a healthy fellowship began with our relationship with the Savior.
I. Fellowshipping With The Savior (Romans 12:1 – 2)
As we grow and mature as believers in Christ, we will find that fellowship is vital to living. More specifically, fellowship with our Savior is key to real living.
God was so committed to fellowshipping with us that He came and occupied a temporary body like ours to helps see and even greater way to have fellowship with Him as the Father…
According to verses one and two in this passage, you developed fellowship with God by…
A. You Give Him Your Body
Before we trusted Christ, we used our body for sinful pleasures and purposes, but now that we belong to Him, we want to use our body for His glory.
B. You Give Him Your Mind
God transforms our minds and makes us spiritually minded by using His Word. As you spend time meditating on God’s Word, memorizing it, and making it a part of your inner man, God will gradually make your mind more spiritual (see 2 Cor. 3:18 ).
C. You Give Him Your Will
We surrender our wills to God through disciplined prayer. As we spend time in prayer, we surrender our will to God and pray, with the Lord, “Not my will, but Thy will be done.” We must pray about everything, and let God have His way in everything.
I can have unbroken fellowship with my Savior by giving Him by body, my mind, and my will.
II. Fellowshipping With The Saints (Romans 12:3 – 16)
When Saints are communing with Jesus Christ, the dynamic of this fellowship will automatically overflow into their relationships with other believers. Our horizontal fellowship is simply an overflow of our vertical fellowship.
In short, we belong to each other, we minister to each other, and we need each other. What are the essentials for spiritual ministry and growth in the body of Christ?
A. Honest Evaluation (v. 3)
3. For through the grace given to me I say to every man among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.
There is nothing more harmful to the body of Christ than those of us who overrate or overestimate themselves. The same cross that was needed to get me in Christ is the same that was needed to get you in.
The same blood that was shed for my sins no matter how many was the same blood that was shed for your sins no matter how few. The same Jesus that saved me from how far I was down is the same Jesus that saved you no matter how far up you were.
Not only must there be an honest evaluation if we are going to have fellowship with each other, but an honest cooperation.
B. Honest Cooperation (v. 4 – 8)
Each of us has been given something to do to help build one another up, but it cannot happen if we are not connecting. You know where I believe the best places to sense the needs of others in the church? --- Church School.
Eugene Peterson makes it simple:
6let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t. If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; 7if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; 8if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.
Fellowship involves moving from an honest evaluation to a honest cooperation to a honest participation.
C. Honest Participation (vv. 9 – 16) – read it once again…
Verses 9 –16 focus on the attitude with which we do things. Paul reminded them that they must enter into the feelings of others. Christian fellowship is much more than a pat on the back and a handshake.
It means sharing the burdens and the blessings of others so that we all grow together and glorify the Lord. If Christians cannot get along with one another, how can they ever face their enemies? A humble attitude and a willingness to share are the marks of a Christian who truly ministers to the body
Taking care of and looking after one another is literally saturated throughout the Scriptures. Fellowship was meant to be a way of life.
Over 50 times in the New Testament the phrase “one another” or “each other” is used. We are commanded to love each other, pray for each other, encourage each other, admonish each other, greet each other, serve each other, teach each other, accept each other, honor each other, bear each other’s burdens, forgive each other, sing to each other, submit to each other, and be devoted to each other.
The great difference between those who just attend and the members of this church is centered on the word “commitment”. There can be no true fellowship with other people here if there is no true commitment to other Christians.
It’s like the difference between couples who just “live together” and those who get married. While becoming a Christian means to commit yourself to Christ, becoming a church member means to commit yourself to other Christians. It’s a commitment to a specific group of believers - to practice the “one-another’s of the New Testament. I mentioned earlier.
One church defined fellowship as being committed to each other as we are to Jesus Christ.
It is so important that the New Testament gives more attention to the unity of the church than to either heaven or hell. God desires us to experience oneness and harmony with each other.
Unity is the heart of fellowship. Destroy it, and you rip the heart out of Christ’s body. Without unity there is no fellowship - and without fellowship there is no church.
What verses 3 –16 of Romans 12 is helping us to see is that we should focus on what we share in common, not our differences, we are to be realistic in your expectations…let me say something briefly about that idea.
Once you discover what God intends real fellowship to be, it’s easy to become discouraged by the gap between the ideal and the real in your church. Still we must passionately love the church in spite of its imperfections. Longing for the ideal while criticizing the real is immaturity On the other hand, settling for the real without striving for the ideal is complacency. Maturity is living with the tension.
"Be patient with each other, making allowance for each
other’s faults because of your love."
Believers are going to disappoint you and let you down but that’s no excuse to stop fellowshipping with them. They’re family, even when they don’t act like it, and you don’t just walk out on them.
People become disillusioned with the church for many understandable reasons. The list could be quite long: conflict, hurt, hypocrisy, neglect, pettiness, legalism, and other sins.
Rather than being shocked and surprised, we must remember that the church is made up of real sinners, including ourselves. Because we’re sinners, we hurt each other, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally.
But instead of leaving the church, we need to stay and work it out if at all possible. Reconciliation, not running away, is the road to stronger character and deeper fellowship.
Divorcing your church at the first sign of disappointment or disillusionment is a mark of immaturity. God has things he wants to teach you, and others too. Besides there is no perfect church to escape to. Every church has its own set of weaknesses and problems. You’ll soon be disappointed again.
Groucho Marx was famous for saying he wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would let him in. If a church must be perfect to satisfy you that same perfection will exclude you from membership, because you’re not perfect!
Every church could put out a sign "No perfect people need apply. This is a place only for those who admit they are sinners, need grace, and want to grow."
So we should focus on what we share in common, not our differences, we are to be realistic in your expectations, choose to encourage rather than criticize, refuse to listen to gossip, practice God’s rules for conflict resolution, not our own, and support the pastors and the leaders. Those are the things that we strength our fellowship with each other.
III. Fellowshipping With The Sinners (Romans 12:17 – 21)
17 a Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. 1b Respect what is right in the sight of all men.
18 If possible, a so far as it depends on you, b be at peace with all men.
Anybody in these days and times who lives a life in fellowship with God, and fellowship with other believers knows that you still live next door to people who don’t know God, work with people who don’t acknowledge Him, shop with people who don’t know God and exist in a world where people don’t know God.
When I speak of fellowshipping with sinners I am not stating that we should participate in the practices of those who have not identified with God in their heart and their lifestyle choices. This is not a message of tolerance either. That is, a spirit of acceptance to things people are practicing religiously or unholy by their own standards.
Keep in mind that when Paul makes his way down to this section of the chapter and write out our responses to unbelievers it is from the premise in verses one and two --- a transformed mind.
I am not to respond to situations caused by misunderstanding, misuse, or a mistake the same way as unbeliever does even if it is directed towards me personally.
The non-Christian in not impressed by the theology I talk, but the theology I walk. The text seems to suggest that evil, harm, wrong, or something bad will come my way inflicted by someone else.
And our response I believe can only be a supernatural response. On our own it is impossible not to repay evil, not to retaliate, not take matters into our own hands, not react in the same manner in which we were responded to, but the Spirit of Christ deposited in us can.
We cannot afford to be vindictive in our hearts or thoughts because it will lead to greater spiritual and emotional pain. But we need to diligently live to have a life apparent to many that God is alive in us.
A man was once handing out gospel tracts came across a gentleman to which he handed him a tract. “What is this?” ask the man. The other man stated, “It is a tract and I want you to read it.”
“I don’t read, “ the man replied, “but I will tell you what I will do --- I will watch your tracks. The world is watching the tracts you make not the tracts you give out. Handing out the tracts is not the problem, it is living the life reflected in the tracts is the burden.
Here is practical application…do your best not to be the cause of problems in the presence of an unbelieving world. Get to work on time, do the best work, don’t cheat or steal from anybody.
If you borrow a lawnmower from your neighbor, return it. If a co-worker talks about you, bless them instead. If a conflict is about to rise at work, be the bigger person and squash it immediately. If someone cut you off, ease off the pedal and let them through.
The pilot was Jewish, and the co-pilot was Taiwanese. It was the first time
they had flown together, and it was obvious by the silence that they didn’t
get along.
After 30 minutes, the Captain finally spoke. He said, "I don’t like Chinese."
The co-pilot replied, "Ooooh, no like Chinese? Why is that?"
The pilot said, "You guys bombed Pearl Harbor. That’s why I don’t like
Chinese."
The co-pilot said, "Nooooo, Noooo... Chinese not bomb Pearl Harboh. That
JAPANESE, not Chinese."
The pilot answered, "Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese... it doesn’t matter.
They’re all alike."
Another 30 minutes of silence. Finally the co-pilot said, No like Jew."
The pilot replied, "Why not? Why don’t you like Jews?"
"Jews sink Titanic."
The pilot tried to correct him. "No, no. The Jews didn’t sink the Titanic. It
was an iceberg." "Iceberg, Goldberg, Rosenberg. No mattah..all same!
I love verse 18 because it contains those first two words, “if possible.” Some people you are just not going to get along with.
19 a Never take your own revenge, beloved, but 1 leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “ b VENGEANCE IS MINE , I WILL REPAY ,” says the Lord.
We are called to be in the world but not of this world. Paul makes it clear that we are not to be God in judgment, vengeance, or anger, but we are to be God like in love and peace.
We ought to go out of our way to build bridges to those who don’t like us and hate God. We are being challenged to allow our transformation by God and our edification of each other, be translated into meaningful connection in the community.
We are not ask to shut ourselves up in the house, but be proactive in relating to those who don’t have a fear God, or interact well with other people. Even in our own households.
While I support working in a Christian environment, attending Christian schools, shopping at Christian owned businesses, fellowshipping at Christian coffee houses, purchasing Christian merchandise, being on a Christian basketball or track team and being around other Christians alot.
But God’s influence is not to be felt just among the believer, but among the believer. Jesus didn’t come all of this way just to hang out with us, but to hang out with the sinners.
You don’t have to have your Bible on your desk to show co-workers and supervisors that you are a Christian, but if having your Bible in your desk reminds you that you are a Christian, put it up there (listening to Christian music, prayers and sayings posted in your cubicle, fish on the trunk of your car, etc.)
Jesus also warned His disciples that their worst enemies might be those of their own household ( Matt. 10:36 ). Unfortunately, some believers have enemies because they lack love and patience, and not because they are faithful in their witness.
There is a difference between sharing in “the offense of the cross” ( Gal. 5:11 ; 6:12–15 ) and being an offensive Christian!
20 “ a BUT IF YOUR ENEMY IS HUNGRY , FEED HIM , AND IF HE IS THIRSTY , GIVE HIM A DRINK ; FOR IN SO DOING YOU WILL HEAP BURNING COALS ON HIS HEAD .”
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Even if our enemy is not converted, we have still experienced the love of God in our own hearts and have grown in grace.
[Close]
We defined fellowship as the opportunity to share our lives with others in order to strengthen, encourage, and build one another up through Jesus Christ.
We fellowship with the Savior, we fellowship with the saints, and we fellowship with the sinners not because of what we should do, but because of who we are.
The reading of our Membership Covenant…
