Biblical Fellowship^13

5. The Fellowship of the Saints with Each Other

Rev J R Tallach

Francis Turretin identifies the following seven points as forming the basis for the unity and fellowship of saints.

1. Unity of the body. This is the mystical body of Christ. “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptised into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles” (1 Cor 12:12,13). Here is the unity of the Church as Christ’s mystical body.

2. Unity in the Head. Paul makes the reality of the unity in the Head clear. “That in the dispensation of the fullness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth; even in Him” (Eph 1:10). This was God’s good pleasure.

3. Unity of the Spirit. This flows from the unity with the Head, giving unity to the body. “He that is joined unto the Lord is one Spirit” (1 Cor 6:17). In the different workings of the mystical body, the Spirit is one. “But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit” (1 Cor 12:11).

4. Unity of faith. This unity is found both in the trust that is part of faith and the object of that trust. This is true before and after Christ came, as He “is the same yesterday, and today, and for ever” (Heb 13:8). Thus the substance of what must be believed was always the same. Irenaeus writes, “The Church down through the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, both by the apostles and their disciples, received the faith, which is one in God, the Almighty Father, who made heaven and earth, and in one Jesus Christ”.

5. Unity of love. Believers become one heart and soul (Acts 2:46) in what is termed “the bond of perfectness” (Col 3:14). The Church is the house of God held together by love and “maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love” (Eph 4:16).

6. Unity of hope. “There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling” (Eph 4:4). This is the inheritance in glory – the inheritance of the saints in light – which awaits all believers, Old Testament or New Testament, Jews or Gentiles.

7. Unity of Baptism. A further expression of unity is in the sacrament of Baptism where the believer makes public profession of his interest in the Saviour’s death and is baptized in the name of the one God and into the name of the Father and into the name of the Son and into the name of the Holy Spirit. As the water represents the Spirit and the blood, so the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace and the blood of Christ unite all believers.

Again this fellowship is publicly expressed when the Lord’s people remember His death until He come. They sit around the one table professing the one name, remembering the one death, at the command of the same Lord and Master. The fellowship within the Trinity already spoken of is reflected in the fellowship around the bread and wine. Perhaps that fellowship is more truly reflected when they sit round the table facing each other.

This unity as analysed by Turretin is demonstrated in the world and before the world by the gatherings of the Lord’s people around the Word and the Lord’s expressed delight in such gathering.

“God more than Jacob’s dwellings all delights in Zion’s gates.”
Again Ephesians 4:5 states, “One Lord, one faith, one baptism”. All these are baptized into the name of the triune God and united in the sacrifice of Christ.

In the fellowship which exists between believers in the Church of God on earth, the believer deals directly with the Redeemer. Thus they keep alive a sense of the guilt of their sins in their own heart. Pardon does not take away the sense of the guilt of sin. “My sin is ever before me”, David says. This sight of their sin rises from a sense of the evil of it and has the sanctifying effect of keeping them alive to the evil of sin all their days. In this exercise they gather up their sins and weigh them in the balance of the law, to consider their weight and impact. By faith they then overcome all objections to closing with Christ, for by His Father’s appointment He suffered the punishment due to these sins. “He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor 5:21).

By the ear of faith they hearken to the voice of Christ calling them to Himself; they lay down their sins at the cross of Christ and take from Him that righteousness He has wrought out for them. This fellowship by faith honours Christ and endears Him to the soul of the believer. The following statement from The Westminster Confession of Faith is well worth noting here: “This communion which the saints have with Christ doth not make them in any wise partakers of the substance of His Godhead; or to be equal with Christ in any respect: either of which to affirm is impious and blasphemous” (26:3).

I end with a quote from Calvin’s Institutes: “Moreover this article of the [Apostle’s] creed relates in some measure to the external Church, that every one of us must maintain brotherly concord with all the children of God, give due authority to the Church, and in short, conduct ourselves as sheep of the flock. And hence the additional expression, the ‘communion of the saints’. . . admirably expresses the quality of the Church: just as if it had been said that saints are united in the fellowship of Christ on this condition, that all the blessings which God bestows upon them are mutually communicated to each other.”^14

As noted at the beginning of this paper, fellowship is giving and receiving, and the more we are assured of the reality and strength of that communion, the more its flow will deepen and widen, as expressed in Acts 4:32: “The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul”. Being persuaded, Calvin observes, that God is their common Father and Christ their common Head, the Church cannot “but be united in brotherly love and mutually import [convey] blessings to each other”.