KOINONIA

If you had walked into the marketplace of Corinth in the first century and used the word koinonia, people would have understood you immediately, though not necessarily in a religious sense. The word belonged to the common life of ancient Greek culture. It described a partnership in business, a shared ownership of property, an intimate bond between friends, a union between husband and wife. It spoke of something held in common, something participated in together, something that belonged equally to more than one party. When the writers of the New Testament picked up this word and breathed new life into it, they were not inventing a concept from nothing. They were taking a word already rich with social and relational meaning and filling it with the weight of the gospel. They were saying, in effect, that what the best of human community has always been reaching toward, God has now made fully available through Jesus Christ.

Pages: 110, Paperback, Independently published