Question: How can a church have a better togetherness? Another word for togetherness is fellowship. This is a term the Bible uses a great deal. The passage we will look at today is Colossians 3:8-17, which has a strong emphasis on “one another”. We have talked about how critical change is for each individual believer, but God also desires for us seek to have a changed life and fellowship together. This passage gives us principles for changed fellowship. God wants clean fellowship among us. The beginning of clean fellowship is what is put out of our lives. One of the most dangerous areas of living the old life is how it can hurt other believers. Verses 8-9 speak of sins that are to be “put off” which do not just harm ourselves, but those around us. Sins of attitude and speech do a great deal of harm to fellowship. These sins are usually manifest through our words. The Bible says that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Indicators of these heart issues include anger (violent passion), wrath (rage), malice (stirring up trouble), blasphemy (evil speaking about God), filthy communication (shameful words) out of your mouth. We do harm others with such speech and need to guard our reactions to what others do and be willing to change. A second sin that breaks fellowship is mentioned in verse 9. The sins of dishonesty to others need to be put off; we must be real, not fake. The Greek term is “pseudo”, which has become part of our vocabulary. A true fellowship is not where we fake like we don’t have problems, or one where we glory in our problems. He wants us to continue the process of change with others; we are to put off these sins of the old life that hurt others. As a result, these are attitudes and actions that must go through a renewal process. That renewal is based on knowing God by being close to Him. It is also based on conformity to His image. He created and saved us to be made into His image, not what we want to be. This process is centered on Christ; it is not centered on what race or nationality we are, what family we were born into, where we were raised, what our economic status is, but only Christ is to be the basis of our fellowship.
Posted on: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 12:06:02 +0000
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