LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 83

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Reaction to Dr. Gibbs’s Essay
The Meaning of Church Fellowship in the New Testament
tion, for that matter).20 People will easily say, “I’m a
Catholic, but I don’t believe a lot of things that the Catholic
Church teaches.” If “choice” is the ultimate good, then
“what I believe is a matter of my personal choice.” “My personal choice” is the deeply self-willed mantra of our culture.
In the church, however, self-will must give way to the mind
of Christ,21 so that we say back to God what He has already
said to us.22 Church confessional boundaries are ripe for destruction where there is no loyalty to the doctrinal content
of the particular confession.23 “Mine” must give way to what
has become “ours” through God’s gracious revelation of
Himself in Christ. Community implies and requires unity
in what is confessed and taught. St. Paul pleads for unity:
“I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there
may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.”24
Christ shares all that He has won for us by His passion,
death, and resurrection through preaching and sacraments.
In church fellowship the treasures of the church are shared
by those who confess the same faith, having been placed by
God under the baptismal cleansing in the name of the holy
Trinity. The faith’s whole content is the church’s treasure
given at once by grace whether to Aunt Tilly or her newly
baptized infant granddaughter. This depth of sharing is
why the Bible’s teaching of church fellowship is so important to us.
Scripture also points out that by falling into misbelief
one may have fellowship in demons25 and the sins of others.26 In fact one may share in the evil deeds of others by
sharing with them the peace.27 Therefore, this deep sharing may occur for either good or ill; for ill when the thing
shared is not the truth. In fact, the Bible sees fellowship as
being a matter of division between light and darkness, with
nothing in between.28 One may not ride two horses, one
going east and the other going west, at the same time. Now,
as President-elect Kieschnick will tell you, we in Texas are
highly talented, but we still ride just one horse or the other,
either the eastbound or the westbound.
The lamentable fact is that Aunt Tilly and Uncle Fred
are astride different horses. The faith they confess has significant disagreements. We may not merely paper over the
differences by pleading that both of them are believers. Because, as we noted at the outset, that is God’s business. All
that remains open to humans is the public confession to
which we pledge ourselves at our confirmation, publicly
reaffirming our belief in what was given at Baptism. There
can be no deciding who is a believer and who is not.29 For
only God knows the faith of the heart. We Christians can
only perceive and deal with a public profession of faith.30
Confessional agreement in the things that create and
preserve the church, that is, the Word and Sacraments, is
central to the fellowship of the church for the reasons so
ably outlined by Professor Gibbs’s essay. Church life is life
in a body. The parts of the body are interconnected, and
thus its members share together in all that belongs to the

Rev. Chairman, Rev. Fathers, Christian Brothers and
Sisters:
I appreciate Professor Gibbs’s approach to the meaning
of church fellowship in the New Testament. We struggle
with church fellowship where it affects Christian churches
that teach a different doctrine. Let me offer a case study to
illustrate the problem. Is my Uncle Fred, the Methodist,
who cannot commune at our church’s altar, not a Christian
because he is not a Missouri Synod Lutheran? That is emphatically not what the Bible’s church fellowship teaching
means. The Lord knows those who are His.1 That is God’s
business, because faith is a matter of the heart.
However, the Bible’s fellowship teaching does mean that
Uncle Fred shares, for example, in the doctrine that
Christ’s body and blood are only spiritually and not truly
present in the Lord’s Supper. That is the shared, public
teaching of Methodist theology.2 It is the teaching in which
Uncle Fred is sharing, even if he might not understand it
all.3 The Methodist Church and the Lutheran Church are
manifestly not teaching and confessing the same thing,4 no
matter what Uncle Fred believes in his heart. Eucharistic
sharing across confessional lines necessarily implies sharing the same confessed teaching, just as the members of
one body share all that belongs to that body. This is fundamentally what it means to be a church body.
“But so what?” you may ask. After all, on the other side
of the family there is Aunt Tilly. Aunt Tilly is a Missouri
Synod Lutheran who has been in church and Sunday school
every Sunday for her whole life. She listens quietly and
faithfully, but, for example, she wouldn’t be able to explain
our Lutheran teaching on the real presence.5 So why should
we commune Aunt Tilly but not Uncle Fred, the Methodist?
The answer to that is found in what the New Testament actually teaches about fellowship.
Lutheran fellowship practice must be based in the
Bible’s meaning of the word “fellowship.”6 In the Bible’s
view of fellowship we share in what is not ours by nature.
For example we have fellowship with God’s Son,7 in the
body and blood of Christ,8 in the altar,9 in the ministry,10
the Holy Spirit,11 the sufferings of Christ,12 the faith,13 eternal glory,14 the divine nature,15 and with the Father and
the Son.16 All of these holy things remain gifts that God
shares with us by His grace, and such things make and preserve the church, the holy bride of Christ. All of this is Aunt
Tilly’s, not because she can give a theologian’s statement
about it, but because God grants it all to her as a gift.17
The Bible teaches that fellowship is a sharing of something so that those who share it have a common life and
participation in the things that make up that life.18 Fellowship is a deep interpenetration among the sharers. The
means of grace that create this connection are themselves
the things shared.19 The sharing in the gifts of God imply,
indeed require, sharing in the same confession.
Unfortunately, the prevailing mindset of our culture denies that one could, or even should, share by heart and
mouth in the confession of any church (or other organiza83