1:9 - Fellowship with God
Paul says that God is faithful. He has called us into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
This word, translated fellowship, is "koinonia". It's a great word that means "association, communion, fellowship, close relationship" and, as the Bauer Lexicon points out, it is often used as an expression for the closest human relationship, marriage.
We are called into this type of relationship with God through Jesus. What a privilege! It is almost unthinkable that God loves us so much that He wants a relationship with us, and not just some relationship like "Hi, how you doing" on Sunday mornings. He wants a close, intimate relationship.
Do we think of God as someone who's promised to meet our needs but is aloof, distant? Many fathers, overly caught up in their work, provide handsomely for their families but are emotionally distant from those families. That's what many, many kids have grown up seeing - that their dad loves them by providing for them with material things, but takes little interest in them as persons. So, those kids think of God in the same way - as Someone who will provide for us, but who is too busy running the universe to be involved with us intimately, with our feelings and desires.
Thus, this verse, seemingly ordinary and very easy to skip over (especially if you speak Christianese), reveals quite a bit of God's heart. He wants to be very closely involved in all aspects of our lives.
(Matthew 15:1-20). When the religous Pharisees criticized Jesus' disciples for not performing the ceremonial washing before eating, Jesus got defensive. Defensive in a good way, meaning that he defended the disciples. He called the Pharisees hypocrites and then said "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." He then went on to explain that it is the heart, not clean hands, that really matters in life. The heart is the source of our good, and the source of our evil.
Thus, it is critical that our hearts be engaged with God, that we talk to Him about what really matters to us. That we admit to Him when we see the junk in our hearts. That we confess to Him when we find we're honoring Him with our lips, but satisfying our hearts with everything but Him.
The fellowship which God has called us into demands that we be totally honest with Him, about the bad and the good. About what we really desire as well as our sins. That fellowship is what Christianity is all about.
Next: We'll talk about the rest of the chapter and its relationship to denominations of today.
This word, translated fellowship, is "koinonia". It's a great word that means "association, communion, fellowship, close relationship" and, as the Bauer Lexicon points out, it is often used as an expression for the closest human relationship, marriage.
We are called into this type of relationship with God through Jesus. What a privilege! It is almost unthinkable that God loves us so much that He wants a relationship with us, and not just some relationship like "Hi, how you doing" on Sunday mornings. He wants a close, intimate relationship.
Do we think of God as someone who's promised to meet our needs but is aloof, distant? Many fathers, overly caught up in their work, provide handsomely for their families but are emotionally distant from those families. That's what many, many kids have grown up seeing - that their dad loves them by providing for them with material things, but takes little interest in them as persons. So, those kids think of God in the same way - as Someone who will provide for us, but who is too busy running the universe to be involved with us intimately, with our feelings and desires.
Thus, this verse, seemingly ordinary and very easy to skip over (especially if you speak Christianese), reveals quite a bit of God's heart. He wants to be very closely involved in all aspects of our lives.
(Matthew 15:1-20). When the religous Pharisees criticized Jesus' disciples for not performing the ceremonial washing before eating, Jesus got defensive. Defensive in a good way, meaning that he defended the disciples. He called the Pharisees hypocrites and then said "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." He then went on to explain that it is the heart, not clean hands, that really matters in life. The heart is the source of our good, and the source of our evil.
Thus, it is critical that our hearts be engaged with God, that we talk to Him about what really matters to us. That we admit to Him when we see the junk in our hearts. That we confess to Him when we find we're honoring Him with our lips, but satisfying our hearts with everything but Him.
The fellowship which God has called us into demands that we be totally honest with Him, about the bad and the good. About what we really desire as well as our sins. That fellowship is what Christianity is all about.
Next: We'll talk about the rest of the chapter and its relationship to denominations of today.
posted by Rob | 8:42 AM
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