FELLOWSHIP IN THE GOSPEL
There’s a key phrase in the opening verses of Paul’s Letter to the Philippians: in verse 5 of the Authorised Version he refers to "Fellowship in the Gospel". I wonder what comes to mind on hearing these words? Money isn’t the only thing that can be devalued. Words, too, lose their meaning with the passage of time. This has happened to the word "fellowship". The popular idea of fellowship is that conjured up by the thought of fellow Christians meeting together in a friendly atmosphere at a public meeting. The Biblical meaning of fellowship is far richer than that. When Paul spoke of the Philippian believers’ "fellowship in the Gospel" (1:5) he meant a "partnership where we are growing in grace in the kingdom of God". It refers to something that belongs to us all, something that we share together. It does depend on how we spend our time and what we are doing with our lives. Someone made the wry comment: "No one was ever heard to say on his or her deathbed, ’I wish I had spent more time in the office.’"
The Apostle Paul was going through a trying time in his Christian experience. He was writing his letter to the Philippian church from his prison cell, probably in Rome. He wasn’t there because he’d committed any crime but because the Jerusalem Jews had accused him of desecrating the temple and had demanded of the Roman authorities that he should be put to death. As a Roman citizen Paul had exercised his right to appeal to Caesar. Already he’d been a captive for several years. At the time of writing it’s likely that his case had been heard and he was waiting for the emperor’s verdict. Although physically he was a prisoner, confined to his cell, his mind and spirit were free and active. God was using the apostle’s enforced confinement to reveal to him, and through his writing to the church, precious truths concerning Christian fellowship in the Gospel.
Several times in the letter to the Philippian believers Paul stresses that he’s writing to them all. His message is for the young believers as well as for the old; those who are new to the faith and also the more experienced. It’s for the church members who had caused him some grief and for those who by their love and devotion caused him to rejoice - it’s for all. So no matter in what position we might find ourselves we’re all included in those to whom the word is addressed. Let’s think how we as Christians may express Christian fellowship. In the first place our fellowship or partnership in the Gospel is shown in:
THANKSGIVING
Paul’s thanksgiving is inspired by memory. "I thank my God in all my remembrances" (3. He turns his mind back to recall treasured memories of his Christian friends in Philippi. There was Lydia, the businesswoman, who was his first convert we know of. Paul’s heart must have been greatly encouraged as she responded to the message of the Gospel. Her’s was a real conversion, not a mere decision. She was anxious to go on in the faith for she publicly demonstrated her discipleship by being baptised. She was most likely instrumental in her family’s conversion for they were baptised with her.
But Paul could be thankful for Lydia for several reasons. Not only was she a faithful Christian and church worker, she was a trusted friend. She was quick to realise that Paul and his co-evangelists needed hospitality in their work of spreading the Gospel. No doubt they were willing if need be to sacrifice home life in the cause of God’s Kingdom, but think how they would thank God as she opened her home to them. The historian Luke mentions how she "constrained them" - she simply wouldn’t accept "no" as an answer to her invitation.
There’s another incident recorded by Luke that serves to reinforce how reliable she was in Christian service. Paul and Silas were badly treated by the authorities in Philippi and illegally imprisoned. After they had been released and expelled from the city it was to Lydia’s home they went. She was willing to stand by them in their hour of need. She was a friend indeed! She was one of the blessings in Paul’s life together with other Christians in Philippi, for which Paul gave thanks to God.
Paul would have lost an important aspect of the fellowship of the Gospel if he hadn’t recognised these benefits as God’s gracious provision. We are serving the same God. I’m certain that we can all look back with joy to some "Lydia" in our lives. Someone who’s been a pillar of strength at a crucial time; a comfort to the distressed; a friend to the lonely, a guide to the puzzled and wavering. This thanksgiving is one side of the coin - the other, is for us, in our turn to be the provider of these blessings to others. There’s a two-way action involved. We are to be givers as well as receivers. This in turn will evoke a response from those who are helped in further thanksgiving and so another link in the chain of the fellowship of the Gospel will have been forged to the glory of God.
Another way in which the fellowship, our partnership in the Gospel expressed itself is in:
PRAYER
Paul’s letters to the churches recall some of his prayers. Philippians gives us an insight into his prayer life. He writes, "In all my prayers for you all" (4) "This is my prayer" (9). What a prayer list Paul had! He can’t ever have been short of topics to bring before the throne of grace. Paul’s prayers didn’t consist of vague generalities but were specific petitions for a definite need. And of course this is the most effective way to pray. Someone once passed the comment that if God answered the prayer "God bless all the missionaries" the result would be so slight as to be hardly noticed! They contrasted it with the prayer "God bless ’so and so’ in ’such and such’ a situation". When the sun’s rays are focussed through a magnifying glass tremendous heat is generated in that tiny spot - the same may be said of focussed prayer. That’s the method Paul adopted. His was informed praying.
One of the members of the Philippian church, Epaphraditus (2:25), had been sent to visit and help Paul in his imprisonment in Rome. Undoubtedly Paul would have questioned him closely as to the state of affairs at Philippi and so he was aware of their particular needs. In Paul’s day communication was slow and difficult, but the point to note is that Paul used all the information he had as to the needs of others in making his intercessions. Nowadays distance is no hindrance to the receiving of news from afar, both for news generally and of news of those in whom we have a special interest in the work of God’s Kingdom.
We should use the information we glean from missionary magazines and letters, even electronically through the Internet, to pray intelligently for God’s servants in specific situations. And not only for our missionaries, but for evangelists and ministers and for Christian societies engaged in specialised work. They all need our prayers. Fellowship implies a joint participation. It’s an activity that is shared. So Christian fellowship as it is expressed through prayer becomes a privilege. Although our vocation may not be that of the missionary, the evangelist, the pastor, through the fellowship of prayer we can be much involved in the extension of the Kingdom of God. We can be co-workers with Christ - indeed we are expected to be. Of course, we can’t do it by our efforts alone. William Booth was fond of telling his officers: "Do your best but count on God to help because doing our best isn’t enough." But God will help us if we have a servant spirit. Hudson Taylor likened Christians to lamps; said, "God is looking for wicks to burn, the oil and the fire
come free." We need the enabling power of the Holy spirit. How else can Paul’s prayer be realised, (10) "be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless ... filled with the fruit of righteousness ... to the praise and glory of God."
So now we’ve seen that the fellowship of the Gospel expresses itself in Thanksgiving and Prayer. Paul goes on to state that it’s also shown in:
LOVE
Paul makes an open confession of his love for his converts at Philippi, "How I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ" (8). He tells them, "I hold you in my heart." They were not merely in his head, indicating that he still knew of them; nor were they on his lips, that he spoke of them; but were on his heart, the centre of his being, of his affections. Even those who had caused some trouble in the church and who might well have been described as being "on his nerves" were within the embrace of his love.
Paul didn’t like what they did, but nevertheless he dearly loved them. The natural response from the worldly person is to be unloving, harsh and hard but this isn’t the way to express fellowship in the Gospel. Paul says it’s shown in practice by our love. It must be love not only for the Lord and those for whom we find it easy to love, but also for those who we find unattractive, the people who are in the greatest need of our love.
There’s an old fable that tells of the rivalry between the wind and the sun. They were arguing as to which was the most influential on Earth. Neither would concede the claims of the other so they decided to have a competition. From their vantagepoint in the sky they saw a man wearing a raincoat out for a walk. The wind and the sun agreed that whichever of them managed to get the man to take off his coat in the shortest time would be the victor. The wind tried first: he blew and blew but the only effect was to make the man turn his collar up. Then it was the sun’s turn: he shone gently and warmly on the man. Very soon the man felt much better and before long he took off his coat. The sun had won. He had achieved his aim, not by giving the man a buffeting as the wind did, but by the gentle influence of his warming rays. Loving concern has very much the same effect.
In Paul’s great poem of love to the Corinthian church he makes the case that whatever other gifts or virtues we posses, love is the one we cannot afford to be without. Paul’s ambition for the believers at Philippi was "that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight" (9). The Lord Jesus Christ taught his disciples that love was to be the hallmark of his followers. "By this" he said, "all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). To know what love is, we only have to look at God, for he is love. He revealed it through his Son by his countless acts of compassion and his self-giving to obtain our redemption. It’s this supreme example on which we should seek to model ourselves.
One of St Augustine’s famous sayings is, "Love, and do what you will." This is best explained if you see love as being the moving force of one’s life. It will influence all we do or think. "Love, and do what you will," said the great Christian thinker of a thousand years ago. He continues, "Let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good." Paul implies in his prayer that there’s always more progress to be made in the showing of Christian love. It’s fatal to become complacent and think we have achieved a high standard for in that moment pride will creep in and so nullify the expression of the Gospel in love.
Our partnership in the Gospel shows itself in many ways. We’ve already mentioned the aspects of Thanksgiving, Prayer and Love. The list wouldn’t be complete without a word regarding the expression of the fellowship of the Gospel in:
SERVICE
A report had reached Paul in prison that disturbed him. It showed that the Philippian believers were passing through a phase of pessimism. They were pessimistic about Paul. The thoughts going through their minds were: "What’s going to happen to Paul? Will he be condemned or will he be acquitted?" That was the question that everyone was asking. They thought his imprisonment was a terrible setback for the cause of Christ and absolutely no good could come of it. Nowhere can you discover a more optimistic prisoner than Paul. He’s anxious to correct the Philippians’ mistaken impression that he’s a victim of circumstances. He accepted the sphere of service that God chose for him, not with resignation, but with rejoicing.
"I want you to know," Paul writes emphatically, "that what has happened to me has really served to advance the Gospel" (12). He didn’t see his imprisonment as a roadblock to his mission but rather as a means of advancing the cause of Christ. Paul is convinced that in every circumstance, no matter how unpromising the conditions, the initiative always remains with God. He had lost his physical freedom, but what he had was of far greater value. What experiences has God allowed in your life that are part of his plan to advance the Gospel? Some words of Jim Elliot, a Mission Aviation Fellowship colleague of Nat Saint who was martyred in bringing the Gospel to the Auca Indians in Ecuador in 1955 are worth quoting: "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose." Paul was content to leave his future in God’s hands, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain" (21).
Paul didn’t know what the outcome of his imprisonment might be but he had the assurance that God was in command of the situation. Paul was under constant guard and in this way came into contact with many who may have otherwise never heard the Gospel message. The guards listened to him as he talked to friends who came to visit him and as he dictated his letters. And so the news spread from guard to guard, to the families of his guards, even to the household of Caesar himself. And not only that, for Paul’s amazing steadfastness and courage while under fire had a remarkable effect on the local Christian church. They took fresh heart and Paul could report that "they are very much more bold to speak the word of God without fear" (14).
There’s a remarkable book entitled "Green Leaf in Drought". It tells the story of two missionaries of the former China Inland Mission. They were 20th century descendants of St Paul in the same kind of situation. They took charge of a station in a remote province of China just when the communists were gaining power and making things very difficult for Christians. The missionaries were a young couple with a baby. They knew God had called them to go to that area but when the arrived there they were coldly received by the local church and doors of service were slammed in their face. They were falsely accused and persecuted by the authorities; they had to face poverty and sickness and were forced to do menial and degrading work. After two years of testing the communists released them.
Many times they asked, "Why has God allowed this?" The author points out that it was the Lord’s purpose in deliberately bringing his servants into perplexing circumstances so that they might live their message before the eyes of the weak and frightened little church. Trial was piled upon trial but God supplied their need and gave them a joy and peace so that the Chinese believers were encouraged to trust God for themselves. The young missionary couple could join Paul in stating that "what happened … has really served to advanced the Gospel" (12).
I live in Guernsey in the Channel Islands. I remember back in the 1950s there was a short period of freak tides and currents around our coast that swept up great shoals of fish to the beaches. Before this phenomenon only relatively few people were interested in fishing but now it was so easy to catch fish that hundreds of people took to fishing and became champion fishermen overnight. Unfortunately, after a few days the sea conditions changed, the fish less plentiful and so did the amateur fishermen. The wave of enthusiasm had risen high, but didn’t continue. Fellowship in the Gospel is more demanding than that!
Perseverance is a vital element of the Christian life. I used to work for an American bank that had the slogan "Quality Loyalty Consistency - QLC". This was drummed into its employees as a means of getting the most out of them. A colleague thought they were too demanding and countered the slogan - in private - with his own interpretation of what QLC stood for: "Quality of Life Counts!" meaning that he wasn’t going to stir himself too much. But God expects more that from us - it must be "Quality Loyalty Consistency". That’s what Paul meant when he refers to "fellowship (or partnership) in the Gospel". Let’s be sure to put it into practice.
