What will it be like to enjoy perfect communion with God’s people, 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?

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.

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