Κοινωνία – Fellowship

I hadn’t thought to write anything about fellowship, κοινωνία (kee-no-NEE-ah), but for two coincidences: I had a great time of fellowship, as well as a discussion about it, with my koumbaro just yesterday. And today, I read a post by Fr Stephen that included some relevant thoughts on κοινωνία.

From yesterday’s visit with my koumbaro, two points were brought home to me very strongly: Real fellowship, that is, κοινωνία, is extremely rare. What most people call ‘fellowship’ in Christ appears to be making merry with your ‘Christian’ friends. Actually, there was a third point: We can have no real fellowship with others, even other ‘Christians’, even other people who go to the same church with us, any more than we can have real fellowship with the world, if they and we are not of the same ‘mind of Christ.’ “…and what fellowship to light with darkness? and what concord to Christ with Belial? or what part to a believer with an unbeliever?”
(2 Corinthians 6:15, Young’s Literal Translation).

My koumbaro and I were surprised by the attitude of some people, who think that fellowship with the world is possible. They are mistaken, not understanding what real fellowship is because they have not tasted it themselves, nor have they decided to make the Word of God their home, which is the only way to have the ‘mind of Christ.’ Instead, they have taken on a multiplicity of teachers, letting their minds be tossed to and fro with the latest humanistic thinking, when there is really Only Christ, who says, “Nor are you to be called 'Teachers,' because you have only one teacher, the Messiah!” (Matthew 23:10, ISV)

I can’t explain this any better than a great article I found on the internet today, at Wikiversity…

κοινωνία is a principle applied to deep communal sharing. A stunning passage that demonstrates this principle is the opening section of John's first general letter (1 John 1). He uses the first person plural "we" referring to the fact that Peter, James and he saw something on that mountain top. (Matthew 17:1-9, Mark 9:1-10, Luke 9:28-36). This letter was written long after James has been killed, but John is being inclusive of other eyewitnesses to a myriad of additional remarkable events including the ascension and the subsequent miraculous manifestations of healing and deliverance. By verse three he has included the rest of the ἐκκλησία (the called out) of his day and is including even us, the readers, into the collective for a purpose...

"...that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us: yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ:"

Then in verse three he states the remarkable purpose for writing the general epistle:

"...and these things we write, that our joy may be made full."

The Greek phrase for "our joy" doesn't connote simply himself, his co-authors and the assembly of the believers of his day. It is an extremely plural second person inclusion meaning "our collective joy" – Peter, James, John, and the other eight, The Seventy, The First Century Church, The Seven Churches, The Father, The Son, you and me. "Our joy may be made full" in the Ancient Greek language has not yet been fully translated into English. This expansion of context comes from the true meaning of an Ancient Greek word translated into English as "fellowship" - κοινωνία.

Modern usage of the word "fellowship" especially in a "church" setting has been reduced to getting together once or twice a week to listen to some guy "preach" and then maybe have sandwiches and coffee downstairs in the "fellowship hall". This meaning is nowhere close to κοινωνία in the context of communion and oneness.

I mentioned that Fr Stephen has written a post examining the concept of κοινωνία, and here I quote the relevant passage, which addresses the idea of fellowship (calling it by another name, ‘communion’) with the world versus real fellowship…

Christianity is losing the battle of ideas – if only because Christianity is not an idea. The faith once and for all delivered to the saints is a way of life – a true communion in the life of God. It is God who makes Himself present to us in our world and not just in our heads. It is true that if we allow ourselves to have true communion with Him, He will heal our thoughts as well – given time.

Communion with the secular world is a communion of emptiness. Its ideas are false and its promises are not true. At the end of the secular world lies only death – from which no idea will save us.

Only one thing further I would like to add, and that is this: When once you have tasted true fellowship with another human being in Christ, you know there is no going back to mere play-acting and church protocol, no more pretending that “all is as it should be.” Instead, you want to do everything that accords with that fellowship, and you want to do nothing that endangers it. Why? Because in that real fellowship, Jesus Christ is no longer a mere idea if He ever was, but He is the risen and present Lord who mediates between man and man in such a way that men can truly be of one will, heart and mind. This fellowship is the miracle of the incarnate Body of Christ, what the institutional Church is at least an ikon of, though by the prayer of Christ, “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you” (John 17:21 NIV), it should be more.

I offer these reflections with a prayer of thanks to God for letting me taste this true fellowship, and to encourage all the brethren to settle for nothing less, but to even become wanderers and pilgrims in the earth—if they have to—to find it, because it is nothing less than what the Father wants of us, to be in real fellowship with Him and with one another.

Δόξα τω Θεώ.