Communion

VIEW:43 DATA:01-04-2020

COMMUNION (Gr. koinônia).—In EV [Note: English Version.] koinônia is tr. [Note: translate or translation.] ‘communion’ in only 3 passages (1Co_10:16, 2Co_6:14; 2Co_13:14), while it is frequently rendered ‘fellowship’ (AV [Note: Authorized Version.] 12, RV [Note: Revised Version.] 15 times), and twice ‘contribution’ or ‘distribution’ (Rom_15:26, 2Co_9:13 [RV [Note: Revised Version.] has ‘contrib.’ in both cases; AV [Note: Authorized Version.] ‘contrib.’ in the first passage, ‘distrib.’ in the second]). But it is ‘communion’ that brings us nearest to the original, and sets us in the path of the right interpretation of the word on every occasion when it is used in the NT.
Koinônia comes from an adj. which means ‘common,’ and, like ‘communion,’ its literal meaning is a common participation or sharing in anything. Similarly, in the NT the concrete noun koinônos is used of a partner in the ownership of a fishing-boat (Luk_5:10); the verb koinônein of sharing something with another, whether by way of giving (Rom_12:13, Gal_6:6) or of receiving (Rom_15:27, 1Ti_5:22); and the adj. koinônikos (1Ti_6:18) is rendered ‘willing to communicate.’
1. Koinônia meets us first in Act_2:42, where RV [Note: Revised Version.] as well as AV [Note: Authorized Version.] obscures the meaning not only by using the word ‘fellowship,’ but by omitting the def. article. The verse ought to read, ‘And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ teaching and the communion, in the breaking of bread and the prayers.’ And the meaning of ‘communion’ in this case can hardly be doubtful. The reference evidently is to that ‘having all things common’ which is referred to immediately after (Act_2:44 f.), and the nature and extent of which St. Luke explains more fully at a later stage (Act_4:32 to Act_5:4). It appears that ‘the communion’ was the regular expression for that ‘community of goods’ which was so marked a feature of the Christianity of the first days, and which owed its origin not only to the unselfish enthusiasm of that Pentecostal period and the expectation of the Lord’s immediate return, but to the actual needs of the poorer Christians in Jerusalem, cut off from the means of self-support by the social ostracism attendant on excommunication from the synagogue (Joh_9:22; Joh_9:34; Joh_12:42; Joh_16:2).
2. The type of koinônia in Jerusalem described in Act_2:1-47 seems to have disappeared very soon, but its place was taken by an organized diakonia, a daily ‘ministration’ to the poor (6:1, 2). And when the Church spread into a larger world free from the hostile influences of the synagogue, those social conditions were absent which in Jerusalem had seemed to make it necessary that Christ’s followers should have all things common. But it was a special feature of St. Paul’s teaching that Christians everywhere were members one of another, sharers in each other’s wealth whether material or spiritual. And in particular he pressed constantly upon the wealthier Gentile churches the duty of taking part in the diakonia carried on in Jerusalem on behalf of the poor saints. In this connexion we find him in 2Co_8:4 using the striking expression ‘the koinônia of the diakonia [‘the communion of the ministration’] to the saints.’ The Christians of Corinth might have communion with their brethren in Jerusalem by imparting to them out of their own abundance. Hence, by a natural process in the development of speech, the koinônia, from meaning a common participation, came to be applied to the gifts which enabled that participation to be realized. In Rom_15:26 and 2Co_9:13, accordingly, the word is properly enough rendered ‘contribution.’ And yet in the Apostolic Church it could never be forgotten that a contribution or collection for the poor brethren was a form of Christian communion.
3. From the first, however, ‘communion’ undoubtedly had a larger and deeper sense than those technical ones on which we have been dwelling. It was out of the consciousness of a common participation in certain great spiritual blessings that Christians were impelled to manifest their partnership in these specific ways. According to St. Paul’s teaching, those who believed in Christ enjoyed a common participation in Christ Himself which bound them to one another in a holy unity (1Co_1:9, cf. 1Co_1:10 ff.). In the great central rite of their faith this common participation in Christ, and above all in His death and its fruits, was visibly set forth: the cup of blessing was a communion of the blood of Christ; the broken bread a communion of the body of Christ (1Co_10:16). Flowing again from this common participation in Christ there was a common participation in the Holy Spirit, for it is from the love of God as manifested in the grace of Christ that there results that ‘communion of the Holy Ghost’ which is the strongest bond of unity and peace (2Co_13:14; cf. 2Co_13:11, Php_2:1 f.). Thus the communion of the Christian Church came to mean a fund of spiritual privilege which was common to all the members but also peculiar to them, so that the admission of a man to the communion or his exclusion from it was his admission to, or exclusion from, the Church of Christ itself. When the Jerusalem Apostles gave ‘the right hands of communion’ to Paul and Barnabas (Gal_2:9), that was a symbolic recognition on their part that these missionaries to the uncircumcision were true disciples and Apostles of Christ, sharers with themselves in all the blessings of the Christian faith.
4. We have seen that in its root-meaning koinônia is a partnership either in giving or in receiving. Hence it was applied to Christian duties and obligations as well as to Christian privileges. The right hands of communion given to Paul and Barnabas were not only a recognition of grace received in common, but mutual pledges of an Apostolic service to the circumcision on the one hand and the heathen on the other (Gal_2:9). St. Paul thanks God for the ‘communion’ of the Philippians in the furtherance of the gospel (Php_1:5), and prays on behalf of Philemon that the ‘communion’ of his faith may become effectual (Phm_1:6), i.e. that the Christian sympathies and charities inspired by his faith may come into full operation. It is the same use of koinônia that we find in Heb_13:16, where the proper rendering is ‘forget not the welldoing and the communion.’ Here also the communion means the acts of charity that spring from Christian faith, with a special reference perhaps to the technical sense of koinônia referred to above, as a sharing of one’s material wealth with the poorer brethren.
5. In all the foregoing passages the koinônia seems to denote a mutual sharing, whether in privilege or in duty, of Christians with one another. But there are some cases where the communion evidently denotes a more exalted partnership, the partnership of a Christian with Christ or with God. This is what meets us when St. Paul speaks in Php_3:10 of the communion of Christ’s sufferings. He means a drinking of the cup of which Christ drank (cf. Mat_20:22 f.), a moral partnership with the Redeemer in His pains and tears (cf. Rom_8:17). But it is St. John who brings this higher koinônia before us in the most absolute way when he writes, ‘Our communion is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ’ (1Jn_1:3, cf. 1Jn_1:6), and makes our communion one with another depend upon this previous communion with God Himself (1Jn_1:7, cf. 1Jn_1:6). Yet, though the koinônia or communion is now raised to a higher power, it has still the same meaning as before. It is a mutual sharing, a reciprocal giving and receiving. And in his Gospel St. John sets the law of this communion clearly before us when he records the words of the Lord Himself, ‘Ablde in me, and I in you’ (Joh_15:4). The communion of the human and the Divine is a mutual activity, which may be summed up in the two words grace and faith. For grace is the spontaneous and unstinted Divine giving as revealed and mediated by Jesus Christ, while faith in its ideal form is the action of a soul which, receiving the Divine grace, surrenders itself without any reserve unto the Lord.
J. C. Lambert.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909

in a religious sense, refers chiefly to the admission of persons to the Lord's Supper. This is said to be open, when all are admitted who apply, as in the Church of England; to be strict, when confined to the members of a single society, or, at least, to members of the same denomination; and it is mixed, when persons are admitted from societies of different denominations, on the profession of their faith, and evidence of their piety. The principal difficulty on this point arises between the strict Baptists and Paedo-Baptists.
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.

In simple terms, ‘communion’ means a sharing together in something that people hold in common. In present-day language, ‘fellowship’ is the word usually used to indicate communion (Act_2:42; for further discussion see FELLOWSHIP).
The particular act of fellowship with Christ where Christians share together in a token or symbolic ‘meal’ of bread and wine is commonly called Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper (1Co_10:16-17). (For further discussion see LORD’S SUPPER.)
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.

Communion, a fellowship or agreement, when several persons join and partake together of one thing (2Co_6:14; 1Jn_1:3); hence its application to the celebration of the Lord's supper as an act of fellowship among Christians (1Co_10:16); and it is to this act of participation or fellowship that the word 'communion' is now restricted in the English language, the more familiar application of it having fallen into disease.
The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.

Communion
(κοινωνία, a sharing), in ordinary terms, an association or agreement when several persons join and partake together of one thing; hence its application to the celebration of the Lord's Supper as an act of fellowship among Christians (1Co_10:16); and it is to this act of participation or fellowship that the word “communion,” in the religious sense, is now chiefly applied in the English language. In 2Co_6:14, it takes the derived sense of concord. The “communion of the Holy Ghost” (2Co_13:14) signifies that spiritual intercourse with the divine Spirit which the child of God maintains by faith and prayer. The Greek term has also a secondary meaning of bestowal in charity, in other passages, where it is rendered “contribution,” “distribution,” or “communication” [which see]. The word is elsewhere translated simply “fellowship” (q.v.). For a large number of treatises on this subject, see Volbeding, Index Dissertationum, p. 147 sq.
(1.) Communion (κοινωνία) therefore “properly means the sharing something in common with another. Hence, in the Christian sense, it signifies the sharing divine converse or intercourse (1Jn_1:3); and as this takes place, sacramentally, in the Lord's Supper, the word, in a third stage, signifies a joint participation in a spiritual sense of the body and blood of Christ, i.e. of his Spirit (Joh_6:63) in that sacrament (1Co_10:16). Some explain the κοινωνία in the Lord's Supper to be a communication of the ‘body and blood of Christ,' as though these were given by the Church to the receiver, but the above account of the order in which the senses of the word have grown out of one another shows that such an interpretation is untenable. The Church has not, nor pretends to give, anything as from herself in that ordinance, but Christians come together to hold ‘communion' with each other, and with their (once- sacrificed) Lord, of the benefits of whose death, sacramentally exhibited, they are in a special, though only spiritual, manner then partakers. ‘Communion' (κοινωνία) is that which is sought and spiritually partaken of by the receiver, not that which is actually conveyed by any person as the giver. Of the several names by which the Supper of the Lord has been at different times distinguished, that of the ‘Holy Communion' is the one which the Church of England has adopted for her members. The Rubrics, Articles, and Canons almost invariably employ this designation.” SEE EUCHARIST; SEE LORDS SUPPER.
(2.) In a historical sense, communion denotes participation in the mysteries of the Christian religion, and, of course, Church fellowship, with all its rights and privileges. Hence the term “excommunication.” In this sense the word is used also with reference to the admission of persons to the Lord's Supper. This is said to be open when all are admitted who apply; to be strict when confined to the members of a single society, or at least to members of the same denomination; and it is mixed when persons are admitted from societies of different denominations, on the profession of their faith and evidence of their piety, as is the case in Protestant churches generally. The principal difficulty on this point arises between the strict Baptists and Paedo-baptists.

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.

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