Being isolated and feeling a lack of connection with others is widely recognised as a major problem of our times. By nature humans need relationships and social interaction, and as well as lacking something it is actually harmful to be friendless and alone. This also holds true of believers. In His grace, God “sets the solitary in families,” taking a personal interest in each yet drawing each into a family, a fellowship, a community defined by relationship with Jesus Christ. Sin separates and divides, but those who have union and communion with Jesus (in His grace, death, life) are supposed to have union and communion with each other (in each other’s gifts and graces). Self-interest, mutual suspicion and a constant sense of needing to protect yourself from criticism are hallmarks of an assortment of sinners, the opposite of what we should see in a community of saints. Instead, God gives His people to each other to serve and support each other, bring out the best in each other and help each other make progress towards glory. In the following updated extract, Westminster Assembly member Jeremiah Burroughs pleads with believers not to spoil their fellowship. Urging us, “Take heed of the kind of things which will hinder the good you may have in communion with the saints,” he identifies six things that hinder fellowship.

Going it alone

The first thing that I would forewarn Christians against is the sullenness of spirit that makes them love solitariness rather than communion. This exists amongst many who have true grace.

Sometimes it comes from abundance of pride, for they think that if they come among others, they shall expose their own weakness, and rather than risking this, they will deprive themselves of all that good which they might have.

But consider how unfaithfully you deal with God when you act like this. God has given you a talent, and you are not to wrap it up in a napkin, but to use it for God.

Consider, too, how it wrongs the church, for your gifts are not your own, but the church is to participate in them, and therefore you are to use them for their good.

Again (remembering that the communion of the saints is one of God’s ordinances), consider how you do much wrong to the ordinance of God, when you prefer to indulge your own grievances ahead of His ordinance. In Hosea 4, God threatens it as a judgement that He will “feed his people as a lamb in a large place” (Hos. 4:16), that is, scatter them from the fold, so that they have to go one by one, like a lamb bleating alone in the wild wilderness. Take heed you do not bring this on yourselves.

Again, there is a great deal of danger in this solitariness of spirit.

For one thing, spiritual dryness and barrenness of spirit will increase. It is only justice on God’s part to deprive people of gifts, when they do not have hearts make a good use of the gifts that He has given them.

Then, you will be ready to run into error, and strange delusions. If you observe the workings of your hearts, you have strange opinions of things, and think you are sure of them, until you come among other people, and then although you could not see the weakness of your opinions, others quickly can. Whereas if you refuse to come amongst them, but stick rigidly to your opinions, you run into errors.

Again, you will be vulnerable to the temptations of Satan. Immoderate solitariness is joined with immoderate melancholy, and this is the workshop the devil ordinarily uses to forge his temptations in. It is a great evil to keep the devil’s temptations close. Therefore come into communion with the saints!

Making it all about you

Secondly, when you do come into communion with the brethren, take heed of pride. The pride which sometimes keeps us away from communion is also a great hindrance to the benefit of communion.

You know how round things only adjoin with other objects at one point, but when you take flat things, they join each other in every point. It’s the same with us. Hearts swollen with pride cannot join with others, except in such tiny details as serve their turn. But if we have plain hearts, we will embrace each other in all things. Blow up a balloon with air, and when you touch it or handle it, it floats away. But when it is pricked, it falls, and then you may handle it easily. So hearts that are swollen with pride will not get as close to their fellows as low humble hearts will.

A swollen limb is fit for nothing, but all the other members of the body must serve it. Like when someone has a gouty leg — all the other members of the body must tend to it, but it is unfit to be serviceable to any. It’s the same with a proud heart — it expects every one to attend to it, but when it comes to be serviceable to anyone else, it is unfit.

Forgetting the wide expanse of grace

Thirdly, take heed of envying at the gifts and graces of one another. The wicked ones of the world envy one another, because the good they think of as their ultimate goal is so constricted that if one gets very much of it, everyone else must have less.

But the godly don’t need to be constricted like this! Their good is in God, and they have plenty space to spread themselves out in it freely and satisfy themselves. If people are riding or sailing in a narrow passage, they envy the one that is sailing ahead of them, because he is hindering them, but in the sea they don’t even think of them, because they have plenty space for themselves to sail. So, in Christians who place their happiness in God, where there is plenty room, there should not be envy.

Being over-sensitive

Fourthly, take heed of being petulant and irritable, obstinate and difficult to deal with, too easily flying into a temper. All things like this darken communion. By contrast, it is the meek spirit which is fit for communion. Moses suffered much for communion with God’s people, and indeed he was fit both to get good and to do good by communion, for he was the meekest man on earth.

Only looking for what you can get

Fifthly, take heed of self-ends in communion — making self-interest your main aim. When people are so scheming as to revolve around their own goals, and don’t even seem to aim at spiritual things, this hinders the sweetness of communion. Though people like this may manage things for a while so as not to be discerned, yet in the end they will be seen for what they are, only looking out for number one, and all will be shy of them. If you want to have genuinely sweet communion, labour for open hearts to one another, so that you may trust one another.

Failing to look ahead

Sixthly, labour to use the fellowship you enjoy now in such a way that every time you do enjoy it, it will make your heart spring, putting you in mind of the blessed communion you shall have later on with God and His people in heaven. Think like this: “If we find so much joy in enjoying communion with God’s people here, how much joy there will be in the communion our souls shall have in heaven, when we shall not only have communion with a few of God’s servants, but with all of them, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets and apostles!”

The Roman scholar Cicero spoke of the happiness of his death, “O famous day, when I shall go from this rout of people, and go and converse with those famous men!” But for us, brethren, we can think that, through God’s mercy, we have communion with God’s people here already, and also shall in the future enjoy communion with the saints of God for ever!

What isn’t worth enduring in order to reach this?! If it were only the enjoying of communion with Moses alone, it would be worth all you have endured! Therefore comfort yourselves for the present in what you already have, and let your hearts be raised in hope of better things afterwards, when you shall have them perfect.

For now, we rejoice that we are with God’s people if they are so much as conferring about any thing to do with God and Christ. But hereafter, we shall see nothing but God in His saints! We shall see the full glory of God shining in them — even the very bodies of the saints shall shine more glorious than the sun, and how glorious their souls shall be then!

Then there shall be no more danger of fallings out, or headstrong, quarrelsome behaviour — no more jealousies and suspicions. Instead we shall see the image of God perfectly in them, and we shall have perfect love to rejoice as much in the salvation of any as in your own salvation. Then we shall be with them in all holy exercises.

It is good to be with God’s people to do everyday business with them, but better to be with them to pray with them, to receive the sacraments with them, etc — the better the activity, the better it is to be with them. If so, then, what will it be like to enjoy perfect communion with them, and to be always in holy exercises with them, always singing praises to the Lamb, and giving glory to Him that sits on the throne for evermore, blessing God for the great mystery of the gospel?

Therefore make a good use of your communion here, so as not only to put you in mind of your communion hereafter, but to prepare and fit your souls for it.

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