Friendship vs Fellowship

Friendship vs Fellowship

“Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”

‭‭James‬ ‭4:4‬

“If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”

‭‭1 John‬ ‭1:6-7‬

Are they the same or are they completely different?

I believe they are different in many ways. 

The world provides friendships and your relationship with God provides fellowship with like-minded Christian believers. 

So to me, they are very different. 

Some people use fellowship as a verb, making it something to do - I look at it as a noun, describing what I am to someone else. A fellow believer. 

A friend is an acquaintance that you have built a relationship with that is based on worldly things.

A fellowship is someone you have developed a relationship with based on Godly things. 

You can be friends with someone of the world but you will never have true fellowship with them until they come to know Jesus Christ as their personal savior. 

We all have worldly friends. A neighbor, co-worker or family member who isn’t saved and in the family of God. Of course they would do anything for us but they don’t have a relationship with God and they aren’t going to Heaven. 

These relationships may weaken our relationship with God if we allow them to. These friendships should be limited if we are to place an emphasis on a Christ-centered life.  Our relationships should include more fellowships than friendships. 

We should all have a fellowship with like-minded believers. These should be other church members, also family members and men of God (preachers and pastors) and their families. These relationships are important because they strengthen our relationship with God and reinforce our Christ-centered life. 

The Bible commands us to love people, to look out after them and to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the entire world. Some of these are friends and some of these are fellowships. 

We must monitor our fellowships closely. Our fellowship has the potential of becoming worldly if the attention it places is fixed on the things of the world. Of course, we want our friendships to become fellowships by turning them toward Christ. And it’s important that we strive to keep our fellowships focused on God in order to do this. 

Once we live a life centered on Christ our friendships will see our fellowships. We put our effort, emphasis and focus on developing our walk with God and turning our friendships into Godly relationships. Our friendships still get our attention, but they don’t become distractions. And our friendships definitely shouldn’t pull us away from our relationship with God. 

We should always strive to keep our fellowships focused on God. Sometimes our fellowships get mistaken for friendships because that is where the focus is. We meet for fellowship and instead of talking about our Holy Father or our Christ-centered life, our talk turns to the things of the world. 

We have some things in common with our friends, but we should have many things in common with our fellow believers. 

Have a blessed day.