Fellowship: An Ounce of Prevention
Those of us who have been through the child-raising years remember many things about how little children are. One of my memories from the early years is that our children wanted to be with us all the time. They did not want to sleep in their own beds. They did not want to go to their friends’ homes overnight. They did not want someone else besides mom or me to hold them. They just enjoyed our fellowship. That desire grew out of an innate need in their lives. They knew that our job was to care for them. They knew that we would do that too. Therefore, they enjoyed being around us.
Fellowship with others is a basic need that humans have. And, often, need produces the fellowship that we have. That was the case with those first Christians whom we read about in Acts 2. Three thousand people obeyed that first gospel sermon. They had come to Jerusalem to observe the feast of Pentecost in faithful obedience to their Jewish heritage. Their new-found faith as New Testament Christians produced a need for them to bond with each other.
Acts 2:42 says that these new Christians “continued steadfastly…in fellowship…” They did not return home immediately after the feast. They stayed in Jerusalem. They needed to be with other Christians. They needed to develop an intense bond.
It was probably easy in those early years for the Christians to be together. Their need for each other created that fellowship. However, as years come and go things can change. The writer of Hebrews (the book was written about or so years after the events of Acts 2) indicates that there were some who were falling away from that fellowship (Hebrews 10:25).
Failure to assemble with the church on Sunday is not the definition of unfaithfulness but it is a good indicator that something is not right. The less connected Christians are to each other the more likely it is that they will not remain faithful in their Christian walk.
Faithfulness is very much connected to fellowship. Without fellowship people will begin to drift away. They may even become rebellious. Paul described rebellious people in the Corinthian church. He said that some of them were sexually immoral, covetous, extortioners, idolaters, revilers, and drunkards (I Corinthians 5:10-11). He then said this. “I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people.” (I Corinthians 5:9).
The point of refusing to have anything to do with them is for the purpose of making them feel what they have given up—the fellowship with faithful Christians. If they do not feel that loss, they will not likely want to come back to the place they no longer “feel” connected to.
Therefore, fellowship is the ounce of prevention that helps make the pound of cure (disfellowship) less likely to happen. Let me suggest that we don’t settle for an ounce of fellowship. Lets go for the entire pound and make it even less likely that someone will want to leave.
