Fellowship with God - the further implications of the Trinity

"...The Trinity provides the only explanation of God's character that personally satisfies me."

I promised to at some point address the thorny issue of my own possible bias toward the Trinity, and I think this is the best time to do it.  Here, in the middle of a discussion of Christ's Sonship, an issue that has puzzled both Christian scholars and Watchtower theologians alike; for even the Watchtower has frequently shifted its view of Jesus' identity over the last century.  If the Christian layperson, or the entrant Witness, has never wrinkled his brow in question over this idea, it is because he has never deeply pondered the exact nature of the Divine.  (After all, how does a man truly fathom the things of God?)  

When I say deeply, I mean deeply in a way that causes the greatest minds to wrestle with the mysterious.  We can put our hands on matter; we can touch it, taste it, describe its shape.  But things we cannot see become increasingly difficult.  We tend to rely on explanations of the most educated... explanations which can turn out to be as wrong as our own uneducated guesses.  

I once sat through an hour-long lecture on organic transformations.  The professor, an eccentric, aging man who found more amusement in provoking his students than actually teaching them chemistry, spent the better part of class time describing a complex reaction between molecules... a reaction which we poor students took for granted as the truth.  It made some sense, and it looked very intelligent spread across the blackboard.  Then, with one horrible flourish of a damp face-rag, he erased it all.  "It's WRONG!" he cried.  "You've all been fooled!  For decades, chemists thought the reaction went THIS way, but it DOESN'T!  It goes this way..."  He then raced through the true equation, one equally beautiful and complex, but with a slight twist that altered the product dramatically.  

How could we poor students have guessed the reaction was wrong?  We had never seen the molecules or grasped at the processes by which they interact.  It is doubtful that even under the guidance of a lab instructor, had we witnessed the reaction itself, we would have had any idea of what we were viewing.  We took it on faith... faith in smart people who do not always have the right answers.  

As I wrestle with these issues that pertain to a Being far greater than myself, I must confess that my brain hurts.  People have at times called me intelligent, and perhaps God has gifted me with a mind that can grasp some of the more complex equations in life.  But I am no philosopher, nor even a great scientist.  I am just a Christian of some twenty-seven earth years, hoping to understand some basic truths in the life that I live by God's grace.  I can follow along with some of the best, begin to comprehend theories of matter and spirit, but just as easily a greater mind can point out to me where my reasoning has led me wrong.  

With that in mind, let me take a step back to meditate on those things that I can see to be true at a glance.  The foremost being the fruits of the Trinity in a Christian's life and thought.  The "product," if you will.  

Two themes come to mind, and I will address them here; they both have to do with relationships.  The first is our relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ; and the second is the relationship that Christians have with our community.  The Bible refers to both of these relationships as "fellowship."  I believe it is that "fellowship" at stake when we talk about the Trinity.  

What is "Fellowship"?  

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched - this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.  The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.  We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.  And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.  We write this to make our joy complete." -I John 1:1-4

The word for "fellowship" that John uses is a precious concept.  My Greek lexicon defines "κοινωνια" in the sense as John uses it as: "association, communion, fellowship, close relationship."  Κοινωνια is what is at stake as we decide what to believe about God.  

Thus the Apostle states his purpose in what will turn out to be a simple, but incisive letter addressing Christian theology and its implications for a believer's daily life.  The criteria by which a true Christian is known, he writes, are that he "walks in the light" as God Himself is in the light, and that he loves his brother.  John goes on to warn against false teachers who deny the Son.  He who does not have the Son, he warns, does not have the Father, either.  He writes these things, so that we may have fellowship with one another, and with the Father and Son.  

The heresies challenging the early Church were more than differences of opinion.  They threatened the true κοινωνια that Christians have with God the Father.  Most commentators agree that John seems to be addressing docetism, an early heresy stating that Jesus, although God, did not actually become a human being and die, but only appeared to be human--and thus, it logically follows your salvation is only an appearance.  This idea was based on the pre-Gnostic idea that matter is evil and spirit is good, so God could not be associated with matter... similiar to the line of reasoning by which the WT describes being "born of the spirit" as becoming a spiritual being, rather than cleansing the existing being from sin by the Holy Spirit.  

If Jesus' identity, nature, and work are not what we think they are, then we lose a key connection with God.  If Jesus is not God Himself, God made flesh-and-blood, living the life that He lived in the Gospels, then we lose the living, breathing, tangible example of who God really is.  

"This is how we know what love is: that Jesus Christ laid down His life for us," (I Jn 3:16). 

We know love, because He first loved us.  Jesus taught us who God was by SHOWING us the Father.  He is the love of the Father made into a living example for all to see.  

As humans, we are good at making theories, but bad at applying them to our everyday lives.  A living example is the best teacher, more powerful than all the books in the library.

Jesus showed us who God is because He is God.  His disciples once asked Him to show them the Father.  He answered, "Have you been with Me so long, and yet you do not know Me Philip?  He who has seen Me has seen the Father.  So how can you say, 'Lord, show us the Father?'  Do you not understand that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me?" (Jn 14:9-10).  

When Jesus walked the earth, if He's God, then He literally showed us the Father.   He showed us the Father's will, heart, and emotions.  He showed us the Father's love--God's own love toward you personally, not just love in general.  When the leper in Mark 2 knelt before him, he did not doubt God's power working through Jesus... his question was, "Lord, if You are willing...?"  Jesus did not say with a shrug, "My Father is willing, so I'll carry out His work."  He touched him with His own hands and said, "I am willing!  Be clean."  His personal love for this guy came through.  Likewise, when the sick woman grasped the fringe of His prayer shawl and was healed from her chronic hemorrhage, He turned to her with the utmost tenderness and said, "Daughter, be encouraged!  Your faith has made you well; go in peace!" (Mt. 9:22).  Jesus wasn't just an automaton, an intermediary.  He really, personally cared!  

Jesus also showed Israel what God thought of Israel's spiritual state, of her greedy and pompous leaders that He Himself had commanded to be her shepherds.  "Woe to you, teachers of the Law, Pharisees--hypocrites!" He ranted at the deceivers and blind guides.  He personally hurt for His people.  "Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings... but you were not willing!" (Mt. 23:37).

In fact, every aspect of Jesus' life showed us an aspect of God's innermost being.  

When He was born as a baby in a stable, He showed us that God is more interested in the heartfelt praises of the ignorant and unclean than in dining with the beautiful and elite.  

When He worked until age 30 as a carpenter, He showed us that God cares as much (if not more) about our mundane lives lived on tables and chairs, in houses hewn out of wood and stone, as He does about our spiritual devotions.  

When Jesus stormed into the Temple and threw out the swindlers from the Gentiles' Court, we learned that God hates it when we try to make others buy their way into the Kingdom of God, in order to line our own pockets.  

When Jesus kissed the little children, we learned that God values us in our purest, humblest, and most genuine state.  

When He let His hands be nailed to the cross, we learned that God does not take our earthly pain for granted.  He feels it personally with us.  

This last point--that of God's own self-sacrifice--is a key dividing point between Aryanism and the Trinity.  If Jesus is a god, then, all right, he was used of God to accomplish the salvation of mankind.  It was very nice of him to do that, whether or not he had a choice in the matter of God's will.  But if Jesus is God, then God personally died for you!  The one you personally sinned against, personally bore your sins in His body on the tree.  Jesus is more than just a means of salvation.  God personally showed us the ultimate self-sacrificing love, in that while we were in our most wretched and helpless state, He suffered the penalty in Himself to give us new life!  "Greater love has no man than this," Jesus said, "than that he lay down his life for his friends."  -John 15:13-14.  

This changes our relationship both with Jesus and with God.  

If Jesus was merely used of God to do His dirty work, it inspires a completely different sentiment in the heart toward both parties, than if Jesus is the ultimate, self-sacrificing God who loves you enough to die!  

Our love for Jesus stems from His identity!  

I believe the Apostles' attitudes testified to this truth.  Peter opens his second letter with a greeting that starts with Jesus and just snowballs as Peter cannot contain expression of what Jesus means to him: "To those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ: grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust..." (II Pet. 1:1b-4)  

Wow!  Jesus is all that.  He's not just a divine tool, a means to an end.  He's our Savior.  He offers us everything we need to live a Christian life.  He calls us by glory and virtue.  He offers us the precious promise of a new life--a life in which we may become like Him instead of fallen, corrupt, and hopeless.  That is what Jesus means to Peter.  

Similarly, Paul, at the mention of Jesus' name, has great things to say about Him: "He has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.  He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.  All things were created through Him and for Him.  And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.  And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have preeminence.  For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.  And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and irreproachable in His sight."  -Colossians 1:13-22.

I believe John recognized this truth as well.  The Beloved Disciple, the one who leaned his head against Jesus' breast at dinner, the one who witnessed His passionate, genuine, personal love from the Sermon on the Mount to His blood on the cross... that same John spent every drop from his pen exhorting Christians to emulate that love.  It is also in John's writings that we find the clearest statements of Christ's deity.  For him, love and God go hand in hand.  

Am I biased?  Perhaps I am.  I love Him.  Love changes our hearts, our attitudes.  Having known Him, I cannot believe that the living essence of God that Jesus made visible to us was a mimicry, or a pretense, of the love we see in God the Father.  Every word that He spoke was genuine, straight from the heart.  I believe that Jesus was and is forever the One that His actions say He was: that God who made us, who knows us personally, who loved us enough to give His life for us.  

And for that, I love Him!  

Fellowship within the Trinity

But as to God's character?  Going back to my original statement.  The most unsettling question I have heard time and time again from atheists and skeptics goes like this: 

"If God is such a loving, unselfish God, then how can He insist on having everybody worship Him?" 

How indeed?  Yes, I know God alone is worthy of worship and all that.  But still, it's an honest question.  Pride is about ME.  Love is about YOU.  And the God of the Bible has shown Himself to be a loving, caring, merciful God... yet a God who insists that we give to Him all the glory and honor and praise.  This God discourages us from living for our own selfish motives, and encourages us to submit to His will.  He encourages us to have the same mind as was in Christ Jesus, who left His heavenly habitation and emptied Himself.  All that seems well and good, except for the uncomfortable fact that the object of this self-emptying and other-glorifying to whom God directs us is... God Himself!  If God were to provide an example of this type of humility, shouldn't somebody ELSE be directing our worship to Him?  

I believe that God is love, and that God is eternally unchanging in all aspects of His character.  Love is necessarily other-directed.  However, that fact that God is love is impossible under the supposition that God was once alone.  

God is eternal.  We know that to be eternal means to be always existing, from infinity to infinity, or as the Psalms say, "from everlasting to everlasting, You are God."  God is unchanging, from everlasting to everlasting.  There was never a time in which God did not exist as we know Him today.  

If God created Jesus, if He made Him a god out of nothing, out of matter, or even out of some of His own essence at a specific point in time, then Jesus is not eternal.  He may have no end, but He had a beginning.  That beginning was at some point in time AFTER God eternally existed.  (Even if you disagree with me on the infinity part, you've got to give me that!)  

Now, if Jesus is not the eternal God, and if the Holy Spirit is not a person, but only a force emanating from God, then we have a scenario in which Jehovah-God was once alone in the universe. 

Whom did God love, before He created the Son?  In order to love, you have to be other-focused.  You have to love in relation to another.  If there is no other, then love cannot exist. 

Now, here's the other view, and let's see if it fits any better.  According to Christian theology, God exists in three Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  These three exist eternally in relationship with one another, and they are one in substance.  Three persons; all the same God.  All loving, all eternal, all omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, etc., etc.  

This means that it is possible that God is and has always been love.  God the Father loves God the Son loves God the Spirit, etc.  God is eternally other-centered, and before He created anything, He existed as eternal Love within the Trinity.  On earth, Jesus showed God's other-mindedness by not putting forth a separate agenda, but instead submitting to and glorifying God the Father.  God the Father, in turn, glorified the Son, having highly exalted Him and giving Him the Name that is above every Name.  The Holy Spirit also glorifies the Father and the Son, by giving liberally to believers out of what belongs to God.  When God glorifies His Name, it is as the three Persons of the Trinity glorifying each other.  

The Son glorifies the Father: Jn. 5:23, 11:4, 13:31-32

The Father glorifies the Son: Jn. 13:32, 17:5, Phil. 2:6-8, 

The Holy Spirit glorifies the Father and the Son: Jn 16:13-15, 15:26, I Cor. 12:3

Not only does God glorify God in a truly other-serving sense, but God seeks the glory and love of God from others.  This is why He seeks worshipers to worship Him in spirit and in truth.  He is not self-centeredly demanding worship; but rather, the three Persons of the Trinity work in relation to one another see YHWH glorified.  

Before the foundation of the world, God is love.  God did not create man because He needed someone else to glorify Him.  Rather, God created man to exist in loving fellowship with Him.   He already had glory, fellowship, and love within the Trinity.  He created man and invited the creation to share in that fellowship.  

So, to restate my previous thought, I believe that the Trinitarian view is the only one that can adequately explain to me how God can require worship, however merited, and still be the ultimate loving, unselfish, and humble person that He wants us to be, and that I know Him to be.  

Fellowship with the Father - and with His Son, Jesus Christ  

"We proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father... and our fellowship is with the Father, and with the Son, Jesus Christ."  

The difference is that as Christians, we relate to Jesus Christ as our beloved God in three Persons.  He is more than just someone you worship on Sunday, or teach about throughout the week.  He is present in your everyday life.  

I mean that as literally as is possible.  

One of the most heartbreaking questions I have ever been asked was, "What is it like to have a 'personal relationship' with God?"  From someone who had known about and preached the way of Jehovah's salvation for over a decade.  At the time, I had no coherent answer--it was like being asked what it's like to breathe oxygen, or to see in color.  But here I will attempt to describe that κοινωνια with God which, to me, is life itself, and without which, all of life would be meaningless.  

Jesus' name was Emmanuel, which means "God with us."  When He was on earth, you could track Him down on the street, run screaming after Him, fall at His feet and present your problems, the ones too big for you to solve on your own but, of course, never too big for God.  When Jesus was on earth, you could take that crazy parable about seeds and soil, the one that didn't make sense to you... and ask the author for an explanation.  You didn't have to rely on a paragraph written by some guru or a detailed workaround that matched someone else's theology.  You could ask the Author of all creation about His creation, and He would help it make sense to you.  If something was broken, sometimes He'd fix it for you on the spot. (Reminds me of my dad.)  

Jesus said as He was about to die that "I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you."  He then explained that when He left the earth physically, He would send us the Holy Spirit to guide us in all truth.  The παρακλετος, the Helper or Comforter, is present with and within all believers who will receive Him and believe on His name.  

Like blind Bartimaeus who stumbled after Jesus on the street, I sometimes find myself wrestling with God in the darkness.  I don't understand all the plans of God or His word, but I can ask the Author for help and guidance.  I remember one moment of confusion in my life... in a few months, I had lost everything that was important to me... including my cell phone.  It was a cold morning, I was on my way to a job interview and, while tripping over my heels and ripping the hemn out of my skirt, I was racing around the house having it out with God.  The conversation went something like this... "God, I don't understand what you're doing... did I do something wrong?  I did exactly what you told me, but all these problems are happening, and are you going to answer me or what?--God, where's my cell phone?--God, why are you doing this to me?  Are you trying to drive me crazy...?" I turned square around, looked down at the pile of laundry on my floor and instantly I KNEW: The jacket you wore yesterday.  The cellphone is in the right pocket.  You're welcome.  Wow.  My entire life was in disarray--I would never have guessed to look there, not in a million years!  I grabbed the cellphone, dried my tears, and dashed out the door.  I stopped, as the cold air hit me like a wall.  "Oh," I sobbed, deflating like a balloon.  "Thank you, God.  I guess You still love me."  

Of course, I do. 

"Sorry for yelling at You.  I know all these problems have something to do with Your purpose for my life..."

The problems I had been worrying over turned out to be The key ingredients in a Divine plot of magnificent proportions, involving not only me, but at present five other people, my church, a Bible I received back in 2008, and a series of personal-sized, meaningful miracles that indicated not only an intelligent design, but also personal knowledge of me and perhaps each and every other person in the universe.  Like the author of a complex adventure novel, I see God laying the foreshadowing in my life for His purpose--a purpose that involves the general principles of His Great Commission, but also has meaning for me on a personal level.  

God's Holy Spirit also speaks to us to help us understand his Word.  Now, I am skeptical of those who believe they heard a voice from heaven giving them some radically deviant interpretation of the Bible... however, I do believe that we can ask the Author for insight into His Word and He will give it to us, liberally.  

I have experienced countless incidents like this one: I was puzzling over a particular event--the one where Jesus cursed the fig tree.  An atheist friend of mine had told me he felt like that fig tree, that God had created him a certain way and then cursed him for being that way.  I didn't feel that was the meaning of the parable at all, but, not having a better answer for him, I asked God that night as I was changing for bed: 

"God, please help me to understand the parable of the fig tree."  

I stopped with the toothbruth halfway to my mouth, as the answer came very clearly: 

The fig tree is Israel.  

That was all He had to say.  Of course, I was able to make the connection between the fruitless fig tree and the events that followed: Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, the center of YHWH-worship, only to find that the Jewish religion has ceased to bear fruit of love and holiness.  He condemned those who were financially profiting off the poor who came to sacrifice to their God and prophesied the replacement of that religious system with the New Covenant.  That was why the fig tree withered.  

I went online to check the commentaries and discovered to my surprise that most students of the Bible connected the events to support that exact same conclusion.  I'm not knocking a good, scholarly exegesis of the Scriptures, but it helps to have the author at hand when your scholarly lightbulb won't turn on.  

God makes Himself accessible to us through Jesus Christ.  (Incidentally, know why Jesus was born in a stable?  Because shepherds were considered unclean.  They couldn't have come to visit Him in a palace, or even a nice house.  But a warm cave full of animals was accessible to these first worshippers.)  I believe that God gets down on our level, that He meets us where we are at any point in time that we open the door to Him.  It doesn't matter to Him that He's the eternal God of the heavens.  He meets our needs, our poor, fragile, emotional and fleshly needs of today.  He is our daily bread... our Living Water.  

In Revelation, Jesus says that "I stand at the door and knock.  If any man opens the door, I will come in and dine with him, and he with me."  It is this intimate fellowship--table fellowship, close relationship--that Jesus Christ offers to human beings.  This cannot happen if we view Him as merely a telephone operator, a sort of political channel to God who has no personal interest in us--in ME--after all.  I believe that our Lord has not only a purpose for the human race, but a specific purpose for MY moment-to-moment life.  I believe that He wants to be involved in my adventure, if I will open the door and allow Him to be the author of this adventure.  I didn't ask for or merit this special interest.  It's freely given, initiated by the Creator of all.  What is man that He is mindful of him???

"Greater love has no one than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends," Jesus said in John 15.  Then... wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, He calls us His friends!  "You are My friends," He says, "if you do what I command... this is My commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you."  

Jesus does not call us His servants, because "a servant does not know what his master is doing."  A servant simply does his master's business, without choice or complaint.  A friend is a partner in the journey.  A true friend serves out of love--the same giving, self-sacrificing love that we see manifested within God Himself, within the Trinity.  A true friend can anticipate the same love being shown him by his friend in return.  

When we serve God out of fear or of a sense of duty, we are reduced to the role of servants.  But when we serve God out of love, even lowering ourselves to the position of a slave, as Jesus did when He knelt down on the dirty floor to wash His disciples feet, we are always regarded as the beloved friends and children of God the Father.  He lets us share in a little of His plans, not because we demand knowledge, but because He loves us so much.  And, more importantly than that, we are surprised by the daily grace and mercy of God as He Himself gets down to serve us, to wash our feet, to comfort us when we are hurting and lift our heads when we are discouraged.  He uses other children of His to support us and fellowship with us so that we are never alone.  Which leads us into John's final point: that fellowship with others naturally flows out of a truly loving relationship with God Himself.  

Fellowship with One Another - A Trinitarian Model

"If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.  God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him....  If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar.  For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen."  -I John 4:15-16, 19-20

I remember vividly the day that my girl-friend and I stepped into the church that was to become our Christian family.  I had received an invitation from a friend to visit her immigrant church.  

It had been a long time since I had experienced true Christian fellowship.  I was a rare breed, a dedicated churchgoer who kept an emotional distance from people and spread my attendance over several different congregations in order to avoid getting hurt by any one of them.  I had chalked up some crazy church experiences in my past, and the scars went deep.  Now, I gravitated toward big churches with high traffic, places where I could hide in a crowd and worship God without putting down any "roots."  But something had changed of late.  I felt far from God.  I missed the Jesus I had known as a child.  I was tired of serving Him religiously, while keeping Him at a distance from my daily problems and struggles.  I wanted that "κοινωνια" with Him, that fellowship which I felt was inextricably tied into a close, accountable relationship with other believers. 

Church that day proved to be an answer to my prayers.  

I made my way into a well-lighted room full of clean, well-dressed people singing a familiar hymn in a strange tongue.  Speaking but a little of it, I strained to translate a few main points of the message for my guest, a task not hard due to its simplicity.  The church itself was as simple as the people, and as their teachings.  There were no elegant trappings to distract the eye, nothing but a few simple plants adorning the podium, and the words in the mother tongue, "...We preach Christ crucified."  Which was exactly what the sermon happened to be about--about the personal relevance of Jesus' saving work in a believer's life, and how a close relationship with Jesus Himself can help us overcome sin in our lives.  It was a particularly relevant topic for both of us.  

But what followed impressed me the most.  Immediately after the final "Amen," every female under the age of 25 made a beeline in our direction.  There were no nosy personal questions; they simply wanted to learn our names, welcome us, and introduce us to their friends and relatives.  I gathered that everyone must know everyone else on more than a casual level, otherwise a newcomer would not stand out.  Indeed, I was to find out, the youth got together on average 2-3 nights a week outside services to eat, play games, and spend time praying for one another.  As soon as it became apparent that my friend and I had nowhere better to be on Sunday mornings, we were invited to participate in any and all of these activities.  Truly, this was the friendship that I missed and longed for.  

Not only the youth, but the elders made us their business.  Despite the language barrier with the older generation, my friend and I were approached by everyone, including a group of old ladies wearing hand-knitted caps and little shawls around their necks.  They shook our hands and kissed us in true Eastern fashion.  

"Are you a believer in God?" one asked me.  I told her yes.  "Do you love Jesus?" another asked.  My friend lowered her gaze.  For which she received another kiss and a grandmotherly nibble on the ear, a gesture that surprised both of us.  Evidently people around here felt comfortable enough with outsiders to treat them as family.  

"Jesus loves you," she said.  "Very, very much!"  

We stayed.  Despite our respective pasts, despite language and cultural differences, despite conflicting views, and even despite the simple fact that most of these people had grown up together and shared the best years of their lives... we were quickly assimilated and accepted as part of the "tribe."  My girl-friend was baptized a year later (the event was a party of tremendous proportions), and our pastor acted persistently to get me instated as a member so that I could sing in our adult choir.  (We were both asked to join the youth choir the second Sunday we came.)  Not only did people go out of their way to make us welcome... I came to understand that serving and welcoming others was the whole point of our meeting together.  

I imagine that this is exactly what the First-Century Church was like.  A place where a brother bearing the name of Christ would be greeted with joy, and an unbeliever lovingly invited to join the family of Christ.  A place where each one puts others first.  In spite of--or perhaps because of--the language barrier, I was able to focus on these things.  

I realize that in a place not transformed by the Holy Spirit, such an environment would hardly be possible.  The world has enough workplaces run by pointy-haired idiots with low self-esteem seeking to bolster their sense of power through management.  How is it that the Church is led, for the most part, by mature and humble people who use their leadership position to serve others?  The world is full of teenage peer groups that cut each other down mercilessly.  How is it the the Church breeds tightly knit, but inclusive groups of young people who encourage one another in a mutual love for their Lord?  The world is torn by war, violence, hatred, and hunger.  And yet, the Church provides love, acceptance, self-sacrifice... and even on occasion, a very fine dinner of stuffed cabbage and kolbasy with varenniki for dessert.  Of course, I believe that these virtues exist outside the Church; however, within the Church, love reigns--it must, or the group will either collapse on itself and disband, or it will become a cult, the antithesis of Church.  When sin is dominant, strife abounds; but where the Savior is worshiped in spirit and in truth--not just in words, but in deeds--His love dominates and creates this atmosphere of fellowship.  Love allows closeness, and it fosters true family spirit, the same attitude present eternally within the Trinity.  

When I experienced true Christian fellowship--experienced it before, but now allowed it to penetrate me for the first time--I gradually began to heal from the scars of the past.  I learned that Christians are family as surely as real brothers are family.  The expression, "Blood is thicker than water" applies as much to Jesus' blood as to familial ties.  It took me almost two years to come around to this realization, as the friendships I made in church were tested by the storms of tribulation.  The same old ladies who greeted us with a holy kiss that Sunday morning were the ones who supported and encouraged me through the loss of my hopes and dreams, sharing with me their own experiences of God's faithfulness through suffering and persecution.  The youth who accepted me as family continued to accept me, even when my temper got the better of me, even when I struggled, stumbled, fell hard, got up again, grasped at straws, and leaned on friends.  When life becomes crazy, my Christian brothers help keep me sane, and I am eternally grateful to God for them.