LESSON FIFTEEN

KOINONIA

by Steve and Terri White 

"Get out of your country, from your kindred and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Genesis 12:1-3)

God called Abram out of the land of Ur because He wanted a people for His name -- a people who express His character on this earth, a people who expose His glory on the earth, a people who are different from the rest of the human beings in the world. God wanted the nations to look at this people and see what people are like when they know the Lord God.

Under the Law of Moses, the people of God were distinctive in two ways: (1) The Law included civil, legal, health, religious, and domestic regulations. God knew how to live, and when Israel walked in the Law, they were superior to all other nations. (2) God was present with them. The tabernacle was built to God’s exact specifications. All other "gods" came as they pleased and/or were territorial. After the people fashioned a golden calf (Ex. 32), God told Moses that He would give him the land, but that He was not going. God would send His angel before the Israelites. Moses refused to go without God’s presence because he knew that it was God’s presence that made them different from the rest of the nations (Exodus 33:15, 16).

WHY DOES GOD WANT 'A PEOPLE' FOR HIS NAME?

God designed man to only be complete, satisfied, and happy when living for another. Because only a loving God can bring people to their highest level of fulfillment, it’s an act of love on God’s part to encourage us to live our lives not just for family, but also for God. Therefore, God is most glorified when man is most satisfied in Him, and man is most satisfied when God is most glorified by his life.

When Jesus, the seed of Abraham, walked the earth, He fleshed out what it is like when one is living in and for the glory of God. He was the expression, or ultimate model, of what a people of God should look like. The coming of the Holy Spirit continues that expression in His people. 

There has always been just one Israel -- in the Old and New Testaments -- and it has always been the Israel by faith. It started with Abraham (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4), and continues today in the New Covenant for both Jews and Gentiles. Under the earlier covenants, His people were marked by the their obedience to His commandments and by His presence. In the New Covenant, the Holy Spirit marks the people of God:

". . . We are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people.’ " (II Cor. 6:16)

"Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you [singular], whom you have from God, and you [singular] are not your own?" (I Cor. 6:19)

The above scriptures reveal that the Holy Spirit expresses Himself individually and collectively in the people of God.

"that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ." (I John 1:3)

The Christian Life is lived in fellowship with the Lord and in fellowship with other believers. As individuals, we continually nurture our personal relationship with God. But as a body of believers, the New Testament assumes that for us to come into Christ, is to come into fellowship with other believers. God’s ultimate purpose is not for us to go to heaven, but for us to be a part of a people that express the glory of God. You can’t do that alone!

The English word fellowship is from the Greek word koinonia. It is also translated as sharing, relationship, communion, participation, or partnership and is used throughout the New Testament (i.e., Acts 2:42; I Cor. 1:9, 10:16; II Cor. 6:14, 13:14; Phil. 1:5; I John 1:3,6,7). The essence of koinonia is 'committed relationships'  – a committed relationship with the Lord and  committed relationships with other believers. It is the heart (or root) of the gospel, out of which everything else grows.

God did not design us to give glory to God alone: (1)The spiritual gifts require a people to be exercised; (2) God did not give all ministry to one person; (3) God did not give all truth to one individual; (4) God designed His people so that we need each other. Ministry, gifts, and truth are spread throughout the body so that we need each other. In koinonia we learn: to love one another, hospitality, submission, to restore when one falls (instead of condemn), to appreciate the gifts in individuals, to use the gifts to build up the body instead of finding a platform for ourselves, faith, to exhort and admonish one another, and to be vulnerable to others. Living in koinonia connects individual believers as a body where each individual fits into his place and functions without hindrance. Without koinonia, the church becomes a "spectator religion" with professional preachers monopolizing all the ministry while everyone else watches and waits. This is the downfall of western culture and the Protestant Reformation -- rugged individualism: independent and isolated Christians and denominations who follow God "their" way. God gets very little glory out of that kind of living.

Jesus chose twelve, not one. He chose twelve because of the nature of koinonia -- the need to depend on each other; no one person has it all. The twelve rubbed against each other -- daily. Each one had a different personality and giftings. God was not trying to make 'a person' of God, but a people for His name.

New Covenant life is one of interdependence with one another. A large part of our personal relationship with Jesus is supposed to be corporate, not personal. It is within the context of koinonia that we were created to live, and in that we are supposed to get to know Him. A corporate pursuit of Jesus Christ is that which makes us otherwise lone individuals 100 times stronger as we seek Him. Galatians 5 and 6 talk about the spirit warring against the flesh. The struggles believers were having in Galatia were not internal, but with one another as a local body (collective). Some of our problems will only be fixed when we begin to live in koinonia; this is where we learn that "love covers a multitude of faults" as we develop relationships with other believers. Some things God will not tell us by ourselves, but He will speak only in the midst of these intimate relationships. Pursuing God together is the only way God ever intended for believers to seek Him.

"How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification." (I Cor. 14:26)

Koinonia is the root; meetings are the fruit. Traditional Christianity has put the cart before the horse and made 'the meeting' the focus (root), with relationships supposedly forming as the result of the meeting. 'Sunday-go-to-meeting' relationships are inevitably shallow. However, when the focus is on koinonia, meetings will naturally occur because believers who are already connected will want to meet. Out of our intimate relationships, the body comes together to edify itself. No one needs to monopolize the meeting or has to feel that he or she must 'lead' it. The Holy Ghost is the only leader needed. As the body focuses on Jesus through the Lord’s Supper, gifts are released through each believer. Each part functions so that the whole body will be built up. (See Acts 2:42; Eph. 4:16)

And finally, the Holy Spirit within each believer – lived out in koinonia -- will infect the world. The leaven will work through the whole lump. "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal til it was all leavened." (Luke 13:21)  

NOTE: So far we have been talking about 'horizontal' koinonia, but the first form of koinonia actually expresses our relationship with the Lord Jesus (I Cor. 1:9; I John 1:3). This Greek word is used to describe not only our intimate relationships with our family and other believers, but also with God. The same word! It is out of the depths of our relationship with the Lord that we pursue koinonia with the people in our lives. So we see the whole gospel expressed in one word -- koinonia -- which is both 'vertical' and 'horizontal'. We call it the 'koinonia cross'.

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