Is there any word used in the church today that is more distorted from Scripture’s intent than the word “fellowship”? I typed the words “bowling fellowship” into Google and I received 13,500 results. It seems you can put the word “fellowship” after any activity and that is far too often what people believe fellowship is, a group of Christians gathering together to do something in common from hang-gliding to playing Uno to basket weaving. But is this what is spoken of in verse 42?

The word “fellowship” is translated from the Greek word “koinonia.” It is used 20 times in the New Testament. And all of the instances have some form of its original meaning, which is the word “common.” In other words, it’s the coming together to share what is common together. Now you might think that seems to substantiate the bowling fellowship idea. But we see in the other uses of this word in the NT, most of them carry with it the idea of fellowship we see in 1 John 1:3: “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” So the biblical fellowship with one another is dependent on our fellowship with the Triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit. Paul uses the word in the same way in 1 Corinthians 1:9: “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” So what Paul and John and Luke here in Acts 2 is describing by fellowship is that these 3000 people and multitudes more after this event have come to so delight in their Savior and what He has done and who He is as He reigns eternally and this desire is given to us by His Holy Spirit, that they want nothing more than to meet with one another to enjoy His presence together.

And this desire is only a foretaste of what is to come. The fellowship we have now falters with our waywardness and our distractions and our sinfulness. Think of a sports season like football. There is so much hype that leads up to the Super Bowl. When that game is played there are all sorts of talk and media and people who are fighting to pay large amounts of money to get tickets. Companies vie for multimillion dollar 30 second commercial spots. Then the game is played and one team wins and another loses. And then it’s all gone. Nothing’s left. Those athletes who spent their whole life playing a game might retire to now go work at some retail chain wondering where their life is. No matter how wonderful the camaraderie is between athletes in the greatest of arenas, it always ends. But the fellowship we have through Christ by His Spirit will far outlast even our own lives. It will never end. And so shouldn’t it make sense that this should be your life’s pursuit?

This is why Luke tells us in Acts 2 that the new church persistently “devoted themselves to fellowship.” You can’t give up on God’s people. One of the identifying marks of a Christian is our fellowship together. This is at the root of the church. We need each other. And according to this text, Christians want to be together. Martyn Lloyd-Jones explains the significance of Christians devoting themselves to fellowship:

All who believed these things [devoting themselves to meeting together in fellowship], all who were Christians, were constantly found together…One of the first tests you must apply to yourself, or to anybody else, in order to discover whether or not you are a Christian is to ask the question, “Do you want to come together with other Christians?” If you do not feel this desire, there is only one explanation: You are not a Christian. (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Authentic Christianity, 91)

So much is at stake when Christians do not desire to come together, do not long to worship together. It undermines the very work of the Spirit of God in us. If He has genuinely cut us to the heart, we will not give up meeting together. And so, if you have grown weary joining in meeting, if you have been inconsistent because of all sorts of reasons, you might want to ask yourself, “Have you lost sight of your precious Savior and Lord and what He has done for you? Have you failed to see Him as exalted?”