Formed for FellowshipSample

Created for Fellowship

We are individuals, but we were not created to live isolated lives. Even the feeling and discouragement of loneliness is a signpost that “it is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). We were created for fellowship: fellowship with God, fellowship with other people, and fellowship with God’s world. As image-bearers of God, we reflect the God who created us—the triune God who exists as three Persons in one essence, an unbroken eternal delighting fellowship.

We do not undertake the journey of Christian formation alone. This holds true throughout God’s story and comes to its proper fulfillment in the body of Christ. Every local church is a visible expression of the larger body of Christ. The church is a formative community that encourages, supports, and challenges its members to continue along the path of holiness, to continue pursuing Christ-likeness. We aren’t just story-shaped creatures; we are creatures made for community.

Our need and desire for fellowship is not a reality of sin. We are, by design, structured for relationship. We are constructed for communion, formed for fellowship. God did not create the world because He was lonely. He already had perfect fellowship within Himself, needing nothing. Instead, He created out of abundant love. All creation exists out of the deliberate overflow of God’s delighting fellowship. We exist out of the overflow of worship for the purpose of worship.

And yet, sin has disrupted the direction of our desire for fellowship. Rather than moving toward loving fellowship with God, we run away. Sin fractures our fellowship with God, with others, and with the natural world. Like Adam and Eve after the fall in Genesis 3, we end up trying to use God’s world to hide from God’s presence. Instead of looking toward God, we look away. And what we look at makes all the difference in what we end up looking like.