Fellowship in the Gospel

Philippians 1:3-5:

³ I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, ⁴ always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, ⁵ for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now.

For my weekly column, I am going to discuss something that the Lord has laid on my heart recently. The fellowship of the saints.

We as Christians often discuss fellowship.

"We are going to get together with some believers and have some fellowship."

"How about coming over to my house for fellowship?"

"We're going to have a fellowship meeting tonight."

Often we will loosely toss the word fellowship around as if the only requirement for fellowship is that believers are going to be together. We will discuss "the game" from last week, or what we did last Saturday, or even what things we did with the church, or the like.

But is this really what the Bible describes as fellowship?

In this passage in Philippians, Paul makes the statement that we have "fellowship in the gospel." Yet too often, we as Christians will come together and discuss anything but the gospel, the Bible, or anything related to spiritual growth... even our savior. But we are still willing to call the gathering fellowship.

Paul makes it clear in this verse - and throughout Philippians - that we as Christians have fellowship in the gospel. When we become believers, we have fellowship with other believers in the many areas - common goals - of glorifying Christ, serving the Lord, and growing in sanctification. We also share in the joy, the blessings, and the promises of the Lord. But we would not share in these if it were not for the gospel, the centerpiece of the Christian's life. Therefore, when Paul talks about fellowship, he makes it clear that our fellowship with believers should be in the gospel.

By stating this, I am not in any way stating that we only talk about the gospel, although it is the most important part of Christianity. We should also discuss other doctrines, and portions of the Bible, but the crucial and most important aspect of fellowship is the gospel.

Neither should we only discuss biblical topics, but the Bible in no way describes these as fellowship.

In conclusion, I think when we as Christians are together we should focus on true biblical fellowship and the centerpiece of our fellowship should be the gospel. And we should not gather for "fellowship" and discuss nothing that is biblical.