Sharing in the Holy Spirit

I’d like to talk about the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, with some observations about some practical results of the fellowship that we have with the Holy Spirit.

The key verse for here is 2 Corinthians 13:14: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” There’s a lot wrapped up in this scripture – it shows our relationship with the Triune God.

Our relationship with God begins with the love of God. He loved us so much that he sent Jesus to rescue us from what would otherwise be an empty and a rather short life. And our salvation is given to us by the grace of Jesus Christ. It is his life, death and resurrection that has redeemed all humanity so that God’s for our rescue can be a reality. He did it for all humanity, all at once.

But then, in individual lives, the Holy Spirit works out our salvation by living within us, changing each us from the inside out, as Paul says, renewing our minds, transforming us into the image of Christ, who is the image of God.

I’d like to focus on the word “fellowship.” For some people, this word doesn’t mean much more than…talking with other people after church. And it can include that, but the biblical concept of fellowship means a lot more than having conversations.

The Greek word is koinōnia, and its general meaning is “share.” It comes from the Greek word for “common” – it means that we have something in common with each other. Sometimes it is translated as fellowship, and sometimes it’s translated as participate, or share, or partnership.

It is used about 20 times in the New Testament. We don’t have to look at every verse, but we will look at quite a few of them, to help us see the way that the word is used, and then that can help us understand a little better what “fellowship with the Holy Spirit” means.

Let’s start in Romans 15:25 – Paul tells the Christians in Rome that he is on his way to Jerusalem ²⁶ For Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem. ²⁷ They were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews’ spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings.

Paul is collecting an offering from the Gentile churches to give some financial assistance to the churches in Judea and Jerusalem. And he says that the churches in Greece were pleased to make a koinōnia for the poor Christians in Jerusalem.

Here the word koinōnia means a collection in which wealthy churches share with poor churches. They aren’t having a conversation with each other, but in a practical and tangible way they are indicating that they are fellows, people who are in the same group. They are having fellowship by sharing their resources with one another.

We can see a similar use in 2 Corinthians 8 – I used this passage in a sermon last month – Paul is again talking about the collection he was going to take to the Christians in Jerusalem.

And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. ² Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.

³ For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, ⁴ they urgently pleaded with us for the grace of sharing in this ministry to the saints.

Here again, Paul is using the word koinonia to refer to sharing material resources. He does the same thing in chapter 9, verse 13: Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, people will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else.

Their fellowship involved generosity. People who had something gave to people who needed something.

And let’s quickly look at one more of this kind of use – Hebrews 13:16 – And do not forget to do good and to have koinonia with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. Melinda used that one in the offertory message last week, and here again, the NIV translators decided that although the word is a noun, it is best translated here as a verb: to share with others. Some translations say “fellowship.” It isn’t just saying that we should have conversations with one another – it is saying that we make some sacrifices to help one another.

So you can see that this word koinonia often refers to giving physical resources to one another. However, it can also be used for abstract ideas. First Corinthians 6:14 asks this question: What do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?

These are parallel thoughts – Paul could have just as easily asked, What do light and darkness have in common? What characteristics do they share? Is there any koinonia here? No – they don’t share anything at all – they are opposites.

Philippians 3:10 also uses it in the sense of having something in common: I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and sharing [koinōnia] in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Paul didn’t actually have exactly the same sufferings as Jesus did, but he shared in the fact that they both suffered for preaching the gospel. They had something in common, in a very tangible way.

But our fellowship with Christ goes deeper than that. Paul uses the word koinonia when he is talking about the Lord’s supper in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 16. Here, it is sometimes translated as “communion”: Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation [koinōnia] in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation [koinōnia] in the body of Christ? ¹⁷ Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.

So now I have moved from an offertory message to a communion message. It’s all related together, isn’t it? Paul is saying that when we take some of the bread and juice of the Lord’s Supper, we are sharing in Christ himself, and by doing it together, we are also showing that we are one body. We are all in this together, sharing life together, because we are all sharing in the life of Christ, as symbolized by the bread and juice.

He’s not talking about transubstantiation, where the bread actually and secretly becomes the body of Christ. He is not saying that we are eating human flesh. That is clear a few verses later, verse 20, where he says that people who eat at the banquets in the temples of pagan gods are participating with demons: The sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.

They are not eating the flesh of demons, but they are symbolizing that they have some connection with the evil spirits. And in the same way, when we share in the bread, we are not eating human flesh, but we are symbolizing our connection with Christ, the one who gave his body and blood for us.

However, our connection with Christ is more than symbolic. The bread and juice are symbolic, but they are symbols of something much more important, that is that there is a spiritual union between us and Christ – Paul says that we are in him, and he lives in us. We died with him, and we are resurrected with him. He has taken our sins, and he gives his righteousness to us. There is an exchange of properties between him and us. He shares what he has with us. Just as the Greek churches shared their material resources with the Jewish churches, so also Christ shares what he has with us. There is a transfer from one person to another.

The first letter of John, chapter 1, verse 3, describes it this way: We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship [koinōnia] with us. And our fellowship [koinōnia] is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

The Gospel of John tells us that the Father lives in us, and the Son lives in us, and we will be in the Father and Son, and we will all be one. We aren’t just having conversations with God – there is a much closer connection than that. He is in us, and he works in our lives to help transform us to be more like what we were created to be.

And although John says it is the Father and the Son, he also indicates that it is the Holy Spirit who does the actual work within us. Jesus said that he would go away and send another Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to live within the disciples (John 14:17). The Father and the Son live within us by means of the Spirit, and the Spirit is the One who actually teaches us and works within us, to make the changes that we need. The Gospel of John stresses the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit: He is the one who helps us understand what Jesus is all about. He is the one who brings us to faith, and helps us put that faith into action in our lives.

Let’s look at one more scripture, and I promise that this will be the last one: Philippians 2, verse 1: If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship [koinōnia] with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ² then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

So Paul is mentioning here three inter-related benefits that we have with Christ. First, that we are united with him. Second, that we are encouraged by the fact that he loves us, and third, that we share in the Holy Spirit. And the result in our lives, he says, is that we will have more compassion, that our mind will be more like Christ, with love for one another and a spirit of unity within the church.

It works like this: God shares what he has with us, and then we share what he gives us with one another, and this is done by the Holy Spirit in us. So the fellowship of the Spirit is not a static thing that just sits there, as if the Holy Spirit happens to live in a hermetically sealed container inside us. No, when the Holy Spirit lives in us, he also interacts with us, especially to teach us and to change us.

And it is not just the communication of words to us – when we have fellowship with the Holy Spirit, it is more than a conversation – it is sharing in the Spirit of God. And since the Holy Spirit is part of the Godhead, one Person of the Trinity, fellowship with the Spirit is the same as fellowship with God. God is not just sharing words with us – he is sharing himself.

When the Greek churches had koinonia with the Jewish churches, they were sharing their resources. When God has koinonia with us, he is sharing his resources – spiritual riches that last a lot longer than material goods can. He is sharing his own qualities: love, tenderness and compassion. You can probably think of the fruit of the Spirit here: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This is what happens to us when God shares himself with us and we are led by the Spirit.

These qualities do not work in us as they are different from us, as if they are a computer virus that takes control over our operating system, or even as a program that runs alongside the one we are using. No, the reason that God shares himself with us is not so that we will have parallel processing, God doing his work while we continue doing whatever it is we are used to doing. He does not work alongside us, but rather in us and through us, so that our operating system itself is being updated, and we are doing the work he wants us to do. God does not just want us to have the right information, or even to do the right things, but he wants to change who we actually are.

He doesn’t just want us to act patient – he wants us to be patient on the inside. He doesn’t just want us to do acts of kindness – he wants us to be kind. He doesn’t just want us to do good deeds – he wants us to be good. That is why the fellowship of the Spirit is not limited to a transfer of words – it is a transfer of who God himself is. It is not just teaching, but also transforming.

God doesn’t re-write our software without our permission. We have to authorize the program to work, each day and each decision. Do we allow the high-priority update, or do we cancel it? We have choices to make, choices that affect who we are as people in community with other people and in relationship to God. When we have fellowship with the Spirit, God is working in us to transform us to be more and more like he is, more and more to be like what he originally wanted us to be.

God accepts us just as we are, but I for one do not want to live forever exactly the way I am right now. I see defects that need to be removed, and weak areas that need to become stronger. So I am thankful that the Spirit is changing me, even though it sometimes seems that the change is much slower than I’d like it to be – but really, it is happening just as fast as I allow it to, as fast as I absorb what he has already made available to me. If all I can do is take small sips, he does not turn a fire hose on me and blast me away. If I can download only 3 kilobytes per second, he does not try to dump 30 gigabytes on me every minute.

The goal of salvation is that we will live with God forever. But the Bible tells us that we are already living with God, and he is living in us, and he does that by means of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, as God shares his personal presence and his spiritual attributes with us. And those spiritual attributes are not just laid down on top of us like an overlay – they are sent into us to change what we are in the innermost being.

And as we are changed on the inside, we get changed on the outside, too. As our attitudes change, our behavior also changes. We become more peaceable, more trustworthy, more considerate, and more generous. And now I am moving back into an offertory message. When we share with one another, we are reflecting what God himself does with us, and we are showing in our actions the reality of a deeper spiritual truth: that we are one people, preparing to live with one another forever.

As John says, we have fellowship with one another, and the reason that we have fellowship with one another is not because we thought it was a good idea, but because we all have fellowship with the Holy Spirit, because we all share in the life of God. As we all draw closer to God, we also draw closer to each other.

If we have fellowship with God, then we also have fellowship with each other. He shares himself with us, and we share our lives with one another. We are brothers and sisters who will be living together for all eternity, and if it’s going to be eternal joy, we need more than just to tolerate each other – we need to love each other, and if the attitude of love is in our hearts, it is going to show in our actions as well. It’s going to make a difference in our lives.

Fellowship with the Holy Spirit, as God shares himself with us, is going to make a difference in the way we fellowship with one another, in the way we share our lives with one another.