Thoughts on Fellowship

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     The Lord's Supper is a public expression of corporate fellowship. The word "communion" is from koinonia. This is the word translated "fellowship." Every person you admit to your communion is in your fellowship. This startles a lot of folk because they realize they have been fellowshipping a lot of people they do not even recognize as brethren. Those who are students have seen the "handwriting on the wall." They must either admit the truth of what we have been saying, or alter their practice. But if they start debarring baptized believers who disagree with them most of them will soon have no one to "fellowship."

     Recently I asked a prominent evangelist if he would knowingly pass the bread and fruit of the vine to a member of the Christian Church if such an one visited his meeting. He replied in the negative. When asked why he would not, he said to do so would constitute endorsement of all the errors in the Christian Church. I know a lot of members of that church who do not endorse all of its errors. If the visitor were one of these, the preacher who is not a member of the Christian Church would endorse more errors than the member, according to this method of reasoning.

     I have always understood the purpose of the Supper was to show the Lord's death. It is therefore a fellowship of those who have been baptized into his death. It indicates that all so baptized have been added to the church of God. They are thus made a part of the one body, the family of God. A lot of members in that family have some queer ideas. But my eating with them at the Lord's table does not sanction or endorse all their varied ideas. It does demonstrate that, in spite of those ideas, we are one in recognition and portrayal of the great fact which is the basis of our hope -- the death of the Messiah!

     According to the reasoning of some of our brethren, the apostle Paul could not have passed the emblems to Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus, when they came from Corinth to visit him (1 Cor. 16:17), because in doing so he would have endorsed all the evils in the congregation of which they were members. We need to recall that one of the chief sins at Corinth lay in the fact that members of one faction would not eat with those of another. Paul rebuked such segregation and discrimination. He asks, "What shall I say unto you? Shall I commend you in this?" He concludes, "No, I will not."

     God holds no man accountable for what he disavows. I am not responsible for the ideas, opinions, and notions of other brethren. If I share the Lord's Supper with one who does not believe in Bible classes, I do not surrender my position. If I partake with one who believes in extra institutions that does not make me endorse them. Neither do I endorse instrumental music when I pass the emblems to a visiting brother who believes in it. God does not hold me guilty of believing something I do not believe.

     The position of some brethren is that of the Pharisees during the earthly sojourn of Jesus. They said, "This man eats with publicans and sinners," and they thought that by so doing, Jesus endorsed the errors of those with whom he ate. Guilt by association, in politics called McCarthyism, has no place in our spiritual thinking. We have no right to make anything a test of fellowship which God has not made a condition of salvation. If we are to reject Jesus as our creed and set up other terms of admission to His table, we ought to have the grace to de-

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mand agreement to that creed as a requisite to admission to our fellowship. It is deceptive and misleading to teach men that all who believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and who are immersed on the basis of that belief, are thereby introduced to all the privileges of citizenship, then change the rules after they have come in among us.

     Are you ready to ask a penitent believer as a requisite to baptism, "Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and do you here and now promise to oppose Bible classes, individual cups, unfermented wine in the Lord's Supper, orphan homes, missionary societies, instrumental music, the pre-millennial theory, and any other thing that we may determine in the future to be wrong?" If not, why not? If those things are necessary to your fellowship, why not put them into the creed to which men must subscribe to get into that fellowship?

     As for me, I shall make no demands which God has not made. I shall create no tests of fellowship which God has not made conditions to salvation. I shall not debar from His table any whom He has added to His family. I shall recognize as His children all whom He recognizes, but that does not mean I will endorse all they think or teach. Fellowship is not endorsement of a man's position!