Packer writes, “The more strongly one desires an end, the more carefully and diligently one will use the means to it” ( Honouring the People of God, 274). “This is eternal life,” Jesus prayed - and this is the goal of the means of his grace - “that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). The final joy in any truly Christian habit of grace is, as Paul writes, “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). Rather knowing and enjoying God himself, in the God-man, Jesus Christ, is the goal, the end, of Christian fellowship.
“Knowing and enjoying God himself, in the God-man, Jesus Christ, is the goal, the end, of Christian fellowship.” Nor is godliness or holiness the goal, vital and precious as they are. And if we leave the great end undefined, lesser ends come to replace it. In other words, “means” means means to some end. That we have means of grace in the Christian life implies some end, some goal, some target. Perhaps the word can seem hollow if we have lost the concept of fellowship as a means of grace, with the end of enjoying Jesus. We want our church to reclaim the electric reality of fellowship in the New Testament and not have the term die the slow death of Christian domestication. We scrapped fellowship from the name not because the biblical reality of fellowship is waning in importance. The word fellowship has fallen on hard times in many churches, like the word encourage - emptied of its power by casual overuse. Recently, in the process of doing some renovations, we needed to formalize a name for each room. “Fellowship Hall” had been the name we inherited for the other big room. Our church purchased the building three years ago.
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