What is Communion in General?

I’m reading John Owen’s book Communion with God.  One of the questions I had at the outset was, “What does ‘communion’ mean?”  The things that come to my mind when I think of “communion” are things like relationship, a sense of warm closeness, fellowship, or the Lord’s Supper.  Owen has a brief section entitled “What is Communion?” and here is what he says: communion is “a joint participation in anything whatever, good or evil, duty or enjoyment, nature or actions.”  So communion is, most basically, a joint participation.  Sharing something in common, whether nature, duty, enjoyment, actions.

More specifically, Owen says “communion is the mutual communication of such good things as wherein the persons holding that communion are delighted, bottomed upon some union between them.”  At first, this made me think of shared enjoyments.  If we share our common delight together, we are communing.  It made me think of John Piper’s book, The Pleasures of God, in which he discusses some things that God enjoys.  Communion with God would be sharing in his pleasures.  Loving what he loves.  Enjoying something in common and conversing about that enjoyment.

Then I noticed the odd word “bottomed.”  What it means is “grounded in.”  This communion is grounded in some union between the persons.  Of course, as Christians we have union with God through Jesus Christ.  We have been put in an unbreakable relationship with God through our union with Christ.  Built on the bedrock of that relationship, we can share with God “the mutual communication of” what delights us.

Then a couple paragraphs later I realized my initial understanding wasn’t quite what Owen was saying.  He writes, “Our communion, then, with God consists in his communication of himself to us, with our return to him of that which he requires and accepts, flowing from that union which in Jesus Christ we have with him.”  So what Owen had in mind was not necessarily the mutual enjoyment of the same thing, although I don’t think that’s wrong.  What he describes here, though, is God’s self-communication to us of what delights us about him, followed by our giving back to him what he delights in from us.

To generalize, then, communion is two people who have a relationship giving and receiving what brings joy to the other.  Owen then applies this to us and each Person of the Godhead in the rest of the book.  It occurred to me, however, that this description of communion could be applied to any relationship.  If communion were only the shared enjoyment of the same thing, it would be hard to commune with people with whom we don’t have much in common.  But if communion is giving and receiving what gives joy to the other, then we can commune with anyone, if we love them and are willing to work at it.  At a “less spiritual” level, a rabid football fan and I could have communion if I make an effort to communicate to him what he loves, namely football, and he makes an effort to communicate to me what I love, namely biblical studies.  Not that we have to talk football and theology in every conversation, me saying, “How ’bout that awesome touchdown?” and he replying, “Yes, it reminds me of the perseverance of the saints.”  Rather, in the dynamic of the relationship (that which we are “bottomed” upon, as Owen put it), we try to take an interest in what delights the other.  This requires love and should produce increasing closeness.

These thoughts made me think of the book about the “love languages,” (which I’ve never read) that basically describes how different people feel loved through different means, and we should learn how to express love in the particular ways that are meaningful to each person.  This observation has proven true in my marriage.  What makes me feel loved doesn’t work for my wife, and what makes her feel loved doesn’t work for me.  We speak different love languages.  Yet I constantly try to love her in the way that makes me feel loved.  I babble at her in my foreign love language and get annoyed when she doesn’t understand.  According to Owen, if I want to have communion with my wife, then I need to give her what brings her joy, and she needs to return to me what gives me joy.  I shouldn’t selfishly insist that she be the same as me, but in love give to her what brings her joy.  We must have “the mutual communication of such good things as wherein . . . [we] are delighted, bottomed upon some union between” us.

NOTE: It’s either David Powlison or Ed Welch (both biblical counselors) who has a critique of the love languages book, in which he notes positives and negatives, specifically that if our goal is to make a person feel loved we must be careful that we are not merely pandering to the idols of their heart.  I’ve read the critique of the book, but not the book itself, so I’m not qualified to weigh in at this point.

Shared & Unrequited Joy

I was talking to someone recently who lost their son when he was 19 years old. They commented that they could talk about him for hours on end. Everything about their life with him. “We don’t want to forget him,” he said.

I think he also loves talking about his son because of all the joy it brings to remember him as a living person. We always like to talk about whatever brings us joy. Whatever is really important to us, we like to tell about. I think it was C. S. Lewis who pointed out that joy is not complete until it is shared with someone else. If I really enjoyed a movie, I naturally want to tell someone about it. But more than just telling, I want someone to share in my experience of joy. So even though I’ve already seen the movie, I’ll watch it again with someone else, the whole time glancing over to see if they are sharing my delight or not. If they are, my joy is complete.

But what if they’re not? What if they watch the movie and say, “Eeh, that was alright, I suppose.” I like a movie called “Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald” (in Japanese, with subtitles). I think it’s one of the funniest movies ever, but my wife doesn’t care for it. There’s also a book I love called Such is Life, written in the late 1800’s by an Australian author. I think it is one of the most brilliant works of literature in the world. I could go on for some time talking about the brilliance of the dialogue, how funny it is, how unbelievably ingenious the hidden plots are. But I can’t find anyone else who likes the book or has ever heard of it. I have unrequited joy.

Unrequited joy is discouraging. It’s like a wet blanket on a campfire, or a computer virus that strikes just as you get to the last level of an awesome computer game, or a thunderstorm on an outdoor wedding, or a slap in the face. It stings, and it’s hard not to take it personally. It’s not nice if someone hates what I love, but what really hurts is if someone is completely disinterested in something I love, something that gives me great joy.

Three points: 1) The force of my natural, inner compulsion to talk about God or Jesus Christ is an indication of how much joy I really feel in him, how much love and delight I find in him. Ouch! I don’t need anyone to push me or command me to talk about what I love or what gives me great joy. Why do I need someone to push me or command me to talk about Jesus? The more joy I find in him, the more natural it will be for me to talk about him. Finding joy in Christ must therefore be a conscious goal of my life. 2) Evangelism can legitimately be viewed simply as my attempt to share my joy with another to see if they will find joy in the same person. That doesn’t seem so daunting. I’m not trying to manipulate or argue someone into believing a set of doctrines, I am sharing my joy in the person of Jesus with someone else. Whether or not they come to share my joy in Jesus is up to God. He is one who shines “in our hearts to give the light of the [experiential] knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). 3) One of the glories of heaven is that there will be no unrequited joy. Every person in heaven will have full, eternal joy in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and in each other. There will be no joy that is not fully shared and appreciated by everyone else. We will all praise together. There will be no “Eeh, I suppose God is alright,” or “I don’t know . . . Jesus just doesn’t do much for me. I’m glad you like him, though.” Our joy will be full because it will be fully shared and experienced by everyone else.

Do-able Christianity

It occurred to me recently as I studied 1 Corinthians 13 and thought about many of the sermons I have heard over the years that Christians who have a tendency toward legalism sometimes express it by sucking the emotions out of every virtue. Joy and happiness are defined as two completely different things, so that joy is reduced to peace or hope. Faith is said to have nothing to do with one’s feelings and is reduced to believing Gospel facts to be true. Love is said to be an action (which is true), not an emotion (which is not true). Fear of God is said to be respect or reverence, not actual fear. So one can have joy with no happiness, faith with no heart, love with no affection, and fear with no uneasiness. You can be a miserable person, but as long as you don’t deny Christ you can claim to be joyful. You can have no emotional reaction to the cross of Christ, but as long as you believe it to be true, you have faith. You can despise someone, but as long as you act good to them, you have love. As long as you behave biblically, you’re okay.

Could it be that this Christian behaviorism is nothing more than an attempt to make Christianity do-able without the Holy Spirit? I can see how legalism would push in that direction. I can’t change my heart, but I can choose to act certain ways, so I’ll define Christianity exclusively in terms of decisions of the will rather than affections of the heart. Give me the list of rules and I’ll keep them, but don’t ask me to have affection for someone I dislike. I can’t just decide to do that.

In fact, I’ve often heard preachers say, “God would never command us to do something that we can’t do!” Meaning, God would never ask us to change our emotions, because we can’t seem to do that by an act of the will. I say the exact opposite: “God never asks us to do anything that we can do.” Meaning, we cannot obey any of Christ’s commands without the Holy Spirit working in us. Legalism seems to want to make the Christian life naturally possible, whereas Scripture makes the Christian life naturally impossible. That is precisely why we need something supernatural in order to live it. I need the Spirit of God to work powerfully in my heart so that my emotions are stirred and enlivened in God-honoring ways. What is the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, humility, moderation? Sounds like pretty emotional stuff.

On this topic, I highly recommend Jonathan Edwards’ book, The Religious Affections, in which he establishes that true Christianity consists largely in the emotions (affections), enumerates things that don’t indicate one way or the other that your spirituality is genuine, and describes how to recognize true, grace-prompted emotions.