Building the Fellowship with your Fellow Fellows
[1] That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— [2] the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— [3] that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
1 John 1:1–3 ESV
When John talks about Jesus, he isn’t talking about something he read in a book, something he imagined, or even stories he heard from someone else. John was the guy that ate the ‘last supper’ with Jesus. When Jesus wanted to relax, He leaned over and relaxed on John. While not so common in our current culture, it was common in Jesus’ day for bros to lean on each other while they were hanging out. I think the only people that do this now are Middle School girls and football players. In Mark 3, it emphasizes that Jesus chose 12 disciples to be with Him. This is the way that discipleship happened.
John starts this letter by re-stating that he was one of the people that spent time with Jesus. That time spent was the best instruction John could ever get. That was Jesus’ plan for building up the church from the beginning: time together. By spending time together we bring things into unity under our shared walk with Christ. Our goals line up together. Our dreams and philosophies and outlooks and attitudes line up together. As we have fellowship with the Father on our own, in our own prayer and in our own solitude, our growth really happens as we come together with others.
The concept of a private quiet time and reading your own study Bible is really a very very recent convention. Jesus had His alone times, but even the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts wasn’t reading his scroll of Isaiah quietly to himself. He was reading it publicly enough that Phillip could hear it as he walked along the road next to him. It is good to read the Bible out loud with others.
We need each other to make the Christian life as manifest as it was when Jesus was walking around. We need other people to correct our reading of a certain passage or to listen as we talk it out. Studying the Bible together is the free upgrade you get beyond just reading it by yourself. That is the fellowship John is talking about. Not just a book discussion group, but the ability to see Christ live through others as we spend our lives together.