Fellowship in Community

I John 1:3

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is wiht the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

John's authority came because he actually walked with Jesus. He saw Jesus with his eyes; he heard Jesus speak with his ears and could actually touch Jesus and feel a real, live person. John said that he wrote the letter of I John so that we could also have fellowship with "us." How do you have fellowship with someone who is no longer physically living here on earth?

The word fellowship in the Greek is koinonia, which means to have something in common. We are able to experience this fellowship with Jesus because of what we have in common with Jesus- the Holy Spirit. Every Christian has the Holy Spirit and this Spirit is also Christ's Spirit. We can still fellowship with Jesus because the Holy Spirit is living in us. We can fellowship with the Father and the Son in the same manner that we fellowship with other believers.

Fellowship usually happens in community. What is community? In a book I'm reading right now (The NIV Application Commentary of I John), Christian community is defined as "partnership in experience; it is the common living of people who have a shared experience of Jesus Christ." I'm still struggling to decide what my definition of community is. I've heard it's the neighborhood you live in which to me is just a geographical location and says nothing about interaction. Many of us don't even know the names of our neighbors.

I think I really like the definition given in the commentary. I have several friends that are experimenting with living in community. They have several people living in a shared house, not just to share expenses, but to also share meals, prayer and life experiences in general. I think that goes back to the definition given in the book. I think without being willing to partner together to make the experience work there would be less of a willingness to communicate through difficult times. But, most of all their experiment in living in community is bound together in their shared experience of Jesus Christ.

Their fellowship is triangular. Person 1 fellowships with Christ. Person 2 fellowships with Christ and they fellowship with each other.