Friday Apr 18, 2025

What Is the Church? (4): The Fellowship of God’s Son, the Cross, & Our Growth in Christ

At the beginning of his first letter to the church in Corinth, the apostle Paul tells us,
God is faithful, through whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
— 1 Corinthians 1:9
What a wonderful declaration is this! As the believers in Christ, God has called us into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord! It is not the fellowship of any person, teaching, or practice, but the unique fellowship of the Son of God.
And yet, just after saying this, Paul has to implore the saints in Corinth that there would be “no divisions” among them. He had to do this, because they had already begun to form parties around the different servants of the Lord:
Now I mean this, that each of you says, I indeed am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ.
— 1 Corinthians 1:12
So here we see that, while the fellowship of God’s Son is in itself something wonderful, when we seek to enter into this fellowship on the earth, the situation often becomes quite messy. Thus, as we see in opening chapters of 1 Corinthians, to actually have the fellowship of God’s Son requires that we as the believers in Christ experience the cross of Christ and grow in Christ.
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To download the pamphlet we use as the basis for this study, go to this page:
“What Is God’s Purpose for the Church?”
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