I have a short task for you today. Head to whatever you use for a search engine, type in “how many Christians in the world,” and hit enter. Without quotes (meaning it’s not a phrase), you probably got results that report 2.4 billion or so followers. Wow! That’s a lot. Now, type in “world population” and hit enter. You should get results of 8.1 billion people, so roughly 30% of the people in the world are Christian, according to our stats, which probably come from a Pew Research report from 2020. 

Again, I say, wow! That’s a lot of Christians!

Do you go to church and “hang out” with other Christians? Consider your church’s atmosphere and what it’s like to “hang out” with other Christians. Is it loving (John 13:35) without strife, arguments, complaining, and the like? Do you all get into fights? Or is it a loving environment where you feel at peace and are content? The odds are you wouldn’t hang out with those people or go to that church if you didn’t like being there. 

Now, look around you at the world. According to our stats, three of every 10 people you see are Christian, but does it look like that? How does it look when you’re driving on the highways, freeways, and other roads? Walking through your village, town, or city? How about New York? Have you ever been there? Paris? London? Los Angeles? How about the 170,000 people or so who died in wars throughout the world last year? Were 30% of them Christians killing Christians? 

The odds are, after looking around, you’ve probably come to a conclusion or two, and one of those might be that there aren’t 2.4 billion Christians in the world. If that’s your conclusion, I agree because if 30% of the world were Christian, it would look different. Indeed, in the United States, we wouldn’t be having mass shootings every other week. 

What does this mean? It means that there are people who claim to be Christian but are not. 

Does that surprise you? 

Do you know anyone who claims to be a Christian but they don’t act like it? Maybe you do. 

Consider this verse from 1 Corinthians 5.

But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people (emphasis added).

1 Corinthians 5:11 (NIV)

Paul wrote this to the Corinthians about 1,970 years ago (54 AD), which isn’t too far from when Jesus was glorified. This verse tells me some people claimed to be Christian but didn’t behave like it for as long as there have been Christians. 

When Paul said to not even eat with such people, he talked about sharing fellowship with them in an organized fashion, such as communion. Still, the concept is to refrain from joining these people in fellowship.

Why does Paul say not to eat with the person? Consider what was happening. 

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this?

1 Corinthians 5:1-2 (NIV)

There was a man committing incest, and instead of admonishing him for his behavior, the church was caught up with other concerns, like who they followed (1 Corinthians 1:11-12). Imagine what it would look like to the outsiders who didn’t tolerate such behavior. It looked like the church condoned his actions by saying nothing to the man. 

Therefore, Paul told them to no longer associate with the man as a fellow Christian because he wasn’t acting like one.

When we think about these things today and how to apply them, I’m reminded of what happened before I became a Christian and lived with my girlfriend and her two children. 

I had lived with my girlfriend for about two years and occasionally attended church with her. Together, we went to two different churches. However, one of them I didn’t want to go to anymore because I didn’t like the people there. In fact, I knew my girlfriend had been talking to the pastor and his wife, and whenever the pastor gave a sermon, I knew it was about me, so I took offense. That was at a smaller church of about 30-50 people. 

The other church we attended had an average turnout of about 300 people per Sunday, and I liked that church. The people seemed nice, and the pastor wasn’t up in my business. After my girlfriend and I had attended this church more regularly, she told me one day that we were breaking up for some reason related to the church. Then, she moved out and went back to live with her parents, who lived a couple of hours away. 

Obviously, I stopped going to church and continued living my life. About nine months later (no, it’s not what you think), I got a call from my ex-girlfriend, who missed me and thought she made a mistake leaving. After some conversations, we got back together. She moved back in with me, and a month or two later, we got married. 

Then, we started going back to church (the bigger one), and I was saved two and a half years later. 

Eventually, I realized why my wife (then girlfriend) broke up and moved away. The church wasn’t okay with her living with a guy when she wasn’t married to him. Indeed, I think they had been “somewhat okay” with it when they thought I’d be saved, but after a while, they thought it wouldn’t happen. 

When I think about not sharing fellowship with another Christian, this situation from before I was a Christian comes to mind as an example of not sharing fellowship. 

You see, neither of those two churches liked what my Christian girlfriend was doing by living with a guy outside of marriage, and I think she was told that she had to make a choice. Break up with me and continue going to church there or stay with me and find another church, so she broke up with me and moved away. 

While I have mentioned one example, the premise behind discontinuing fellowship with another Christian is that you’re accepting of their behavior, and by accepting their behavior, others will think you condone it. Indeed, you might do the same things, and if you do it and this other Christian does it, then all Christians must be like that. If Christians are like that, then Christ must be like that. Therefore, you discontinue the fellowship.

As for those two churches, the church I was saved in was the larger of the two, and when I went back to the other church, I saw that I was wrong about them. Indeed, the Lord showed me that how I felt had nothing to do with the pastor sermonizing to me but had to do with the Holy Spirit trying to reach me.