For many people, fellowship means going to church and listening to a sermon. To others it means gath­ering togeth­er around a table, shar­ing a meal, remembering good times, and looking toward the future with a mix of despera­tion and hope. To Christians, fellow­ship ought to be some­thing deep­er, howev­er, some­thing more purpose­ful and fulfilling, a sharing of mutual benefit which will provide nourishment for the soul. The apostle Paul wrote the Ro­mans exhort­ing them not to be igno­rant about fellowship and told them of the great desire he had to exchange spiri­tual fruit with them.

“For I long to see you that I may impart unto you some spiri­tual gift, to the end you may be established;
   That is, that I may be com­forted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.
   Now I would not have you igno­rant, breth­ren, that often times I pur­posed to come to you, (but was let hitherto) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among oth­er Gentiles.”  Romans 1:11-13

For centuries Christians more often than not came together igno­rant of true fellowship and its spiritu­al purpose. They came together for every reason but to sharpen their personal relation­ship with Jesus and share the good fruit of God. Many church-goers still believe that any gathering under the Christian ban­ner, for whatever purpose, is fel­low­ship. They believe singing hymns, or receiving communion, or talking over coffee and donuts is fellowship; and in worldly terms that is the sum total of most fellowship.

The com­mon dictionary defines fellowship as camaraderie, but in God’s world that defini­tion is far too shallow. A deeper look into the root of the Hebrew word re­veals that sharing is synony­mous with fellowship. Among the called out ones (the Church), fellow­ship means sharing the fruits of God. The exchange of the fruits of the Spirit (or fruits of righ­teousness as it is called in many places in the epis­tles) encourages us in God’s Word and helps to make it a reality in our daily lives.

Sharing and Washing Are at The Heart Of Fellow­ship
Any group or place that claims to provide fellowship will make it possible for the individual believer to share the fruits which God has grown in them. Saints will not be required to sit silently like wooden people in a row watch­ing the back of one another’s heads while one or two people do all the min­istering and sharing.

Further, any true fellowship will make it possible to test the fruits. Believers will be able to have the dust of the world washed from them by the comfort, encouragement and gentle admonitions of fellow saints. True fellowship will allow a saint to grow according to God’s time-table. The fruits of patience and longsuffering will be in evidence so new, or less mature, believers can “catch up” with the older, wiser brethren. Immature brethren seeking deliverance and freedom will be allowed to confess their sins and faults openly in an atmo­sphere of love, there­by having their “feet washed” from the dirt that clings to them through un­avoidable contact with the world. In Christ’s name sin will be forgiven. In love and faith, unruly and unlearned believers will be taught, and even re­buked when necessary, to the end that they are delivered from their sins. Body ministry, the type spoken of in 1 Cor 12, will be em­ployed and prac­ticed in the spirit.

Paul longed to have fellowship with the Romans. To Paul that meant im­parting spiritual gifts to them, encour­aging their faith and sharing spiritual fruit with them. Paul, being wise in the Lord, knew that all of his knowledge, all of his freedom and all of the gifts of the Spirit were useless unless they pro­duced fruits for God’s use. He also kn­ew full well that where there is no sign of fruit then all of the fellow­ship, or rather presumed fellowship, in the Church is in vain. If no good fruit is growing in our personal lives we have nothing to share of any val­ue when we come together as believers. Our fellowshipping, no matter how impres­sive the music and the worship, is, in a manner of speak­ing, fruitless.

Jesus taught His disciples to be­ware fancy talk and hypocrisy. He warned them about watching for fruits. He said, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.  Ye shall know them by their fruits.” Matt 7:15-16 Paul gave the Church at Galatia an outline of what God says are good fruits and what are bad fruits.

“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lascivious­ness,
   idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, vari­ance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
   envyings, mur­ders, drunk­enness, revellings, and such like; of the which I tell you be­fore, as I have told you in time past, that they which sow such things shall not inherit the king­dom of God.
  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
  meek­ness, temper­ance: against such there is no law.
  And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
  If we live in the Spirit let us walk in the Spirit.” Gal.5:19-25

Everyone who is honest must admit that at some point during their ­life he or she has been well acquainted with the works of the flesh. The nature of the fruits of the Spirit, on the other hand, is a mystery to the unconverted heart. It is the personal ministry of the Holy Spirit that reveals them to us after we are born again. The list in Galatians is a summary of the fruits, but only a summary. To that list we might add things like honesty, patience, humility, and kind­ness also.

We must learn what the fruits are before we can detect them
Learning and detecting the fruits is not something we can treat like Psy­chology 101. They are much more than a list just to be memo­rized. Kno­wing what the fruits are is one thing; know­ing what they really mean and how they affect our lives is another. Worldly ideas about such things as love, joy, peace, etc., are quite different from God’s truth about them. We may be very happy that we made a dishonest buck, but is that the joy of the Lord? We might find peace by compromising the truth or someone else’s interest, but is that spiritual peace? The grea­test exam­ple is in the greatest fruit of all, love. It has been said, love is never having to say you’re sorry. That’s garbage. It is not love to allow people to have their own way regardless of their treatment of others, or to simply give them any­thing they want. That’s deadly. Nor is love indiscriminate uni­ty, as ecume­nism teaches; look what a unified Ger­many did in World War II. Nor is love to be con­fused with recon­ciling sin to Christ; Christ came to destroy sin. God and sin will never be brought together, never be recon­ciled. Instead, love is a mixture of truth and mercy, as the pair so often ap­pears side by side in Psalms. God’s love never ignores the truth, but rejoices in it, and yet it mixes com­passion with truth in a way that works salvation and righteous judg­ment at the same time. God’s love is a miracle; it is beyond our highest thoughts. It is Jesus hanging on the cross, the truth about our condition, and God’s wonderful mercy com­pressed into one enormous act of love. Love is embodied in a person. Love is Jesus.

Brothers and sisters, it is not enough to know the words or throw around Christian platitudes concerning fruit. The Church must know how to detect them if they are to benefit by the sharing of them. We must not settle for a basket of pretty looking plastic fruit. Do not settle for anything but the real thing. If we are to be nour­ished by the fruits then we must de­tect the real thing first in our own lives and spirit, and then look for them in those around us. We must not be ignorant about the fruits and that true fellowship is about the sharing of those fruits so everyone can be mutually nourished.

Paul wrote to his friend and fel­low soldier in Christ, Timothy,  about the realities of fellowship.

“And let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.
   But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honor, and some to dishon­or.
   If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.
   Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteous­ness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” 2 Timo­thy 2:19-22

Fellowshipping among the saints, partaking of the good fruit of God, one with another, is one of the great­est joys of the Church. The God-given purpose for the gifts of the Spirit is to produce fruit for God’s use. As the parable of the sower of the seeds shows: some hear God and immediately forget about it; some do God’s bidding for a short while but persecution scares them off, some grow but get choked by the cares of the world and never bring fruit to perfection; and some, with pa­tience, slowly, just the same as the fruits of nature grow, bring forth spiri­tual fruit for other saints to be nourished by and comforted. If we have love (and the other fruits) then we will have some­thing to share when we come together with other saints.

#4 The Gifts: Given by the Spirit