In his book, The Shack, author William Young depicts for his readers an astounding community. Between its members there is both light-hearted fun as well as deeply committed affection. It is a community of purposeful interaction and wondrous creativity. As the word suggests, there is a common unity – a complete oneness, an inseparable union among its members – yet also on display are the distinct personalities, the individual rhythms and colours of each member.
The reader is at first taken-a-back at the roars of laughter that emanate from this community; and then we’re moved by the power of the love, grace and mercy we encounter there. For sure, William Young has appealed to our imagination, yet somehow, all the reader imagines has a compelling ring of truth.
It’s a community of three. We are most familiar with this community as a family: the Father, Jesus His Son, and the wonderful person we know as the Holy Spirit. Inseparably one, this is God. Distinctly personal, this is the Trinity – the heavenly Family. The love and passion in this community is so powerful that they can do anything. Their wisdom so perfect that they are stumbled by nothing.
Although we may never have formed or spoken this thought, there is a knowledge deep within every human being that they were made to belong to such a camaraderie. To be free, yet strongly belonging and belonged to; to be distinct, yet never discordant; to do things that no one else can do, yet be celebrated for that which is done by everyone else. We know we were made to roar with laughter – a lot! To experience and show a tender affection – a lot! And to create worlds where people flourish.
If we deeply know or long for this, it’s not by accident. God put that there. It’s why he made the earth.
It is a time before time. Nothing exists except the Trinitarian Community: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God is ALL.
Among the three Persons of the Godhead, there is unbroken fellowship between the Father and the Son by means of the Spirit. A council is held. God conceives a plan. He shrouds this plan in a mystery, and He hides it in the Son. The plan will be disclosed at an appointed time far into the future. Paul of Tarsus will later call this timeless plan “the purpose of the ages"; and “the mystery.”
What is this plan? It is this: In eternity past, the Godhead plans to one day extend it’s fellowship to a people not yet created. Put another way, God wills to produce a community on earth that will reflect the community that is found among the Father, the Son and the Spirit.
God, who sees the end from the beginning, takes the first step in carrying out this plan.
Within the Godhead there is a Lamb. This Lamb is God the Son. At a future date God will symbolize this Lamb by a created animal called by the same name. This Lamb exists now – in eternity past – and He is slain. God completes all things before He creates all things.
God's “eternal purpose" provokes Him to create a universe and an earth. He weaves into His creation pictures and symbols of His Son and of this future community that will express His nature.
The appointed time has come. God the Father sends the Eternal Son into the earth. The Son will become the embodiment of all the symbols embedded in creation. He will also fulfil all that the nation of Israel foreshadowed.
The Son will come into the earth to manifest and embody God's eternal purpose for mankind. He will also die for the sins of the world and be raised again as the Head of a new race — a race that was chosen before the foundation of the world — a race that will include both Jew and Gentile. The Son will come into the world to establish the community that the Godhead purposed in the timeless past.
(Frank Viola, “The Untold Story of the New Testament Church”)
Paul writes.
I was chosen to explain to everyone this plan that God, the Creator of all things, had kept secret from the beginning. God's purpose was to show his wisdom in all its rich variety to all the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. They will see this when Jews and Gentiles are joined together in his church. This was his plan from all eternity, and it has now been carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord.
For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height - to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:9-19 NIV and NKJV)
Jesus prays.
May they all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me and I am in You. May they also be one in Us, so that the world may believe You sent Me. I have given them the glory that You have given to Me. May they be one just as We are one. I am in them and You are in Me. May they be made completely one, so that the world may know You sent Me and that You have loved them just as You have loved Me (John 17:21-23).
Once the glory of this proposition dawns on us, we can never be deeply satisfied by ‘networking’, content with a database full of ‘relationships’, fulfilled by ‘membership’ of a church, or impressed by the accomplishments of an ‘organisation’. This is a revelation that awakens that created longing for koinonia on earth as it is in heaven.
John worked in the fishing industry of his day – a small family operation that he shared with his father and his brother, James. It was on a normal working day, devoted to repairs and maintenance of their boat and fishing gear, that Jesus spoke to both John and his brother – calling them to follow him.
Jesus had just spoken the same word of invitation to two other men he met along the sea shore that day. They were also brothers, and fishermen. Thus John and James joined Peter and Andrew as men who became followers – disciples of Jesus.
Becoming a disciple of Jesus was not a career move, it was not a new job. We see them with the boats, and fishing, as the story of their relationship with Jesus continues – but no matter what the demands of their family business would be, joining this band of fellows to learn from Jesus would change everything!
Jesus became a presence in John’s life that would indelibly mark him and define his future. He would become a man of huge influence, well beyond the small fishing community of Galilee. For thousands of years to come, John would be known by countless millions as “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. That day on the beach a humble fisherman began a life of fellowship with God.
“The disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23) was the pseudonym John gave to himself, not one bestowed on him by Jesus or any other person. It was the expression of what John experienced and how he felt whenever he was with Jesus – he felt like the most personally loved person Jesus had ever met! Not everyone will feel that way, but that has nothing to do with how Jesus loves them – we are loved extravagantly, unconditionally, uninterruptedly, unendingly, and impartially by Jesus. The thing about John was that he “hung out” with Jesus a lot – that didn’t make him more or less loved by God, it just greatly increased his awareness that he was a disciple whom Jesus loved.
The year is A.D. 65. Over thirty years have passed since Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension from the Mount of Olives. John has been without the physical presence of Jesus for over three decades. But this is the year he writes his gospel and his three letters (five years later he would write the book of Revelation). In his first letter, John writes to people who never got to walk the beaches of Galilee with Jesus, they never ate a meal of fish with him around an open fire, nor did they have Jesus turn up at their family gatherings, or hear him tell his down-to-earth parables. John writes to them …
(1 John 1:3-4) That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life - the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us - that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.
The optimum word John uses here is “fellowship”. That seemed to be the issue, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” had enjoyed a fellowship with Jesus – he had heard him, seen him and handled him – surely John and the other disciples had a fellowship with Jesus that no one else could expect to have in this life.
To fellowship means to experience nearness, friendship, the interchange of thoughts and feelings, community and joint participation with another. It’s the Greek word ‘koinonia’, and there’s a satisfying and transforming depth of companionship implied in its use. I am sure that everyone reading John’s letter has within them a sense that John was privileged, but me, not so much. That here was the reason John had such a deep and unshakable awareness of how loved he is by Jesus, something that we’ll have something of, but never quite like John.
But then John catches their resignation by surprise. He tells them that they too can experience the full joy of koinonia with Jesus! Yes, even decades after Christ’s return to the Father. He tells them that when they have fellowship with us (that is, the believers of the post-gospel age) that in truth their fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus!
John is telling us that we’re at no disadvantage. When we place ourselves where we can experience nearness, friendship, the interchange of thoughts and feelings, community and joint participation with other believers, it’s as satisfying and transforming a depth of companionship with Jesus, as we would know if we had time travelled to A.D. 31, and sat around a fire on a mountainside with a handful of others and koinonia with Jesus, just as John, James, Peter and Andrew had done.
Every two weeks I sit down with three other men – Wayne, John and Ray. It could be in a lounge room, or over breakfast at a café – and there are many other times in-between when I get to interact with them both singularly and together. There is both a satisfying and transforming fellowship among us, and if I go too many days without this tangible companionship I start to miss it badly. I have learned that in this koinonia I am in fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus. And each time I leave that community, I depart full of joy, and knowing that I am the disciple whom Jesus loved.
This is koinonia: this is the high purpose for the creation of the human family, the great longing of God for the redeemed community, and this is the great privilege of every believer in A.D. 2011.
