Formed for Fellowship

Scriptures: Deuteronomy 6:4-5, 1 John 3:2

Shaped by What We Seek

We are born into this world not knowing who we are but with a deep desire to become something more. We are like a toddler who doesn’t know their own age but pretends to be a great lion. We enter this world not knowing what we are, who we are meant to be, and how we got here, yet absolutely certain we were meant to become something more than we are by nature.

I don’t just mean we are born as infants who haven’t yet developed self-awareness. That’s true, but it isn’t truly the problem. Our ignorance isn’t fundamentally developmental; it goes deeper, all the way to our soul. We are born separated from who we were designed to be. And separated from the God who can transform us into that “something more.” It’s not just that we don’t know who we were created to be, it’s that we can’t know it. Our true identity as image-bearers of God is across a great chasm we cannot cross on our own.

Because we don’t know who we are, we have no clue as to what we can become. So we end up becoming the sum total of what hooks our love, desire, knowledge, and imagination. We end up looking like whatever we love. What we worship begins to work itself out in what we believe, why we think we are here, and the way we live.

As some have said: we become what we behold.

We are more changeable than we might believe. Even the most stubborn among us is constantly being shaped by who and what is around them, like a large boulder sitting in a riverbed. You may not see it over a matter of seconds but watch that boulder for one hundred years. Then watch it for a hundred more. Bit by bit, the river shapes the boulder, cutting it back, softening the edges, and re-forming the rock.

Formation is slow, but it is constant. It never stops. We are changing—being changed—in ways we are aware of and unaware of at all times. But contrary to what some have suggested, we don’t begin as blank slates. We are born into this world malformed, out of shape. We are in desperate need to be re-formed, to be re-aligned with the ways, words, and wonders of God. Why? Because God wants us to enjoy fellowship with Him, His people, and His world, but we can’t do this unless we are re-formed.

Before we can become what we were always intended to be, we must be born again. Made new. Made alive. To be re-formed we have to first be transformed. This is the journey of Christian formation: becoming what we were already declared to be; becoming who we already are in Christ.

The journey of Christian formation begins, ends, and is filled with God’s people beholding God.

And as we behold God, we become like Him.

Scriptures: Genesis 2, Genesis 3, Acts 2:42-47

Created for Fellowship

We are individuals, but we were not created to live isolated lives. Even the feeling and discouragement of loneliness is a signpost that “it is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). We were created for fellowship: fellowship with God, fellowship with other people, and fellowship with God’s world. As image-bearers of God, we reflect the God who created us—the triune God who exists as three Persons in one essence, an unbroken eternal delighting fellowship.

We do not undertake the journey of Christian formation alone. This holds true throughout God’s story and comes to its proper fulfillment in the body of Christ. Every local church is a visible expression of the larger body of Christ. The church is a formative community that encourages, supports, and challenges its members to continue along the path of holiness, to continue pursuing Christ-likeness. We aren’t just story-shaped creatures; we are creatures made for community.

Our need and desire for fellowship is not a reality of sin. We are, by design, structured for relationship. We are constructed for communion, formed for fellowship. God did not create the world because He was lonely. He already had perfect fellowship within Himself, needing nothing. Instead, He created out of abundant love. All creation exists out of the deliberate overflow of God’s delighting fellowship. We exist out of the overflow of worship for the purpose of worship.

And yet, sin has disrupted the direction of our desire for fellowship. Rather than moving toward loving fellowship with God, we run away. Sin fractures our fellowship with God, with others, and with the natural world. Like Adam and Eve after the fall in Genesis 3, we end up trying to use God’s world to hide from God’s presence. Instead of looking toward God, we look away. And what we look at makes all the difference in what we end up looking like.

Scriptures: Ecclesiastes 3:11, John 4:14

Created to Behold

You and I are born to behold. And that’s because we were created to behold.

To behold is more than mere seeing. I see my phone on the desk; I see the computer in front of me as I type these words; I see the limbs swaying in the breeze outside of my window. But when my wife smiled at me from across the living room this morning as I sipped coffee, my eyes had barely shaken the sleep off, but I beheld my wife. 

Beholding is attention that evokes devotion, delight, praise, thanksgiving, or even sorrow. You might be surprised to see sorrow included here, but we all know how easy it is to avoid bearing witness to genuine godly grief. Why does the grieving heart hide their face as they sob in their hands? To be seen in grief and to behold those in grief draws out our humanity into the realm of vulnerable love. Beholding is attention that leads to allegiance and affection. 

While there are many good gifts in this world that we are invited to behold, we were created to behold God. To worship Him, to attend to His presence above and beyond any and all else. Nothing but God will ever satisfy this longing. As the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us, eternity has been placed in our hearts (Eccles. 3:11). When Jesus meets the woman at the well in Samaria, she’s thirsty for something beyond what can be pulled up with a bucket. Jesus tells her, “Whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life” (John 4:14). She came looking for water, and Jesus invited her to behold the God who quenches our deepest thirsts. 

Adam and Eve were created so that they could behold God by living their life in His presence, reflecting His purposes, in His place. God creates the world as a temple that is to be filled with the worship of God. Humanity was designed to worship God, reflect His image to the world, and bear witness throughout all of creation to His glory. The rupture in the garden has disrupted this design, but it hasn’t destroyed it. When humanity rebelled against God, they fractured their fellowship with God, but they weren’t forsaken by Him. We were created to behold God so we can become like God. But we need real help.

Scriptures: Genesis 1:28, Romans 5:12-21

Created to Become

I can put on a mask if I want to pretend to be a superhero but don’t ask me to fly through the air to rescue a falling child. 

Even the most convincing costume won’t turn me into what I look like in the mirror. It takes more than a mask to become a superhero and it takes more than a mirror to know who we were created to become. 

Bookstores, social media accounts, and podcasts are full of people with a vague sense that there must be some reason why they exist. Everyone seems to be looking for help or offering up some kind of solution to the universal urge to become. Our culture’s obsession with becoming knows no bounds: becoming healthy, becoming wealthy, becoming successful, becoming important, becoming productive, becoming valuable, becoming worthy, becoming loved. Everyone feels that they were made to be something more than what they are by nature. Why? 

In the beginning, God gave humanity a purpose. He created Adam and Eve in His image, He blessed them, and He commissioned them: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion . . . over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28 ESV). Consider for a moment that everything God commissions Adam and Eve (and with them all of humanity) to do is a reflection of what He has already done. God tells them to “be fruitful and multiply.” The Creator God tells them to become creators because He is the Creator. Their creation will be different from His. They will create from what God has already made; He created from nothing. 

God tells them to “subdue and have dominion” over every living thing. The Lord God who rules over all things tells them to reign over His world. It’s not their possession, and they don’t own it, but He is entrusting it to their stewardship. He reigns over all things, so He gives them rule over some things. 

If Adam and Eve wanted to become what God was asking of them, they need only look back to God to see a picture for what it should look like. If they just kept beholding God, they would become what God was inviting them to become. But they stopped beholding God in order to try and become God. Not like God. They tried to become God Himself.

Scriptures: Revelation 22:2-7, Genesis 3:5-7

Become What You Behold

We are creatures of body and soul, image-bearers of God who have been created by God in order to behold God and become a reflection of His presence and purposes. This is why we exist, but we aren’t born this way. We are born as a broken reflection of this created goal. Like looking into a cracked mirror, we are left with fragments, glimpses, bits and pieces of what we were intended to reflect. 

Adam and Eve were meant to behold God and become more like Him as they lived out His purposes in the world. But shortly after they are established in God’s garden, they look away from God. The temptation of the serpent in Genesis 3 is nothing less than an invitation to turn away from the trusting embrace and worship of God. Already made in God’s image, the temptation of Satan in the garden isn’t to become more like God but to become God. For the creatures to become the Creator. For the stewards to become the owners. 

Adam and Eve become what they behold in Genesis 3, and it leaves them naked and ashamed. They are exiled from the garden, and their access to the tree of life is removed, beginning the long story of exile, rescue, judgment, and redemption. 

But the story doesn’t end in a garden, it ends in a city. If we go all the way to the end of the story, we find a new beginning. In Revelation 22, God brings a new city to a new earth, and there is a river flowing from the throne of God. Planted by this river is the tree of life which is “for the healing of the nations” (v. 2 ESV). 

We were created to live as God’s people in God’s presence to reflect God’s purposes in God’s place. But the garden story ends with exile, curses, and consequences. Our first parents beheld a lesser glory and became less than what they were created to be. 

And yet, when God restores the whole world, when the story is “finished,” what will we discover? We find God’s people in God’s presence reflecting God’s purposes in God’s place. 

We will become what we behold. We were created for this, designed to begin to look like whatever we love most, to reflect in our habits what we receive in our hearts.