Shaking Hands in the Spirit

An Exhortation on the Unity of “Old” and “New” Members of a Local Church

Photo by dlxmedia.hu on Unsplash

Our exhortation today is about what we do in this season of welcoming newcomers into our church, whether they are new Christians, young people or new members. It has to with the handshake. Christianity takes even the most basic human greetings and infuses them with Christian meaning; the Holy Spirit wastes nothing.

When you see that new member or promoted child after church, you’re not just extending your hand for a normal handshake. It’s what Christians for generations past have called “the right hand of fellowship.” The word “fellowship” comes from the word “koinonia,” meaning partnership, brotherhood and bonds. It’s what men who fought under the same command at Bastogne or Da Nang or Falluja might feel towards one another when they shake hands. They may have just met, but there’s a bond, regardless of ethnicity or age. They just learned each other’s names, but there’s an instant loyalty and affection.

The handshake recognizes a preexisting unity. For Christians, that unity is not based on what we have done but on the bloody war that was fought FOR us, in our place, by our King Jesus. He and he alone is the basis of our unity. He alone sets the terms of our bonds of brotherhood. Thus even the past and the future are subject to Him.

This means that that handshake is the coming together of an old hand and a new hand - someone who’s been in the church already, maybe for a long time, and somebody new - in unity, in Christ. This means two things.

It first means the newcomer must humbly respect the grace that our King has given this body in the past - its collected wisdom, some of it acquired the hard way.

Yet that past grace is only set in wet concrete. God is adding to it and molding it, through newcomers. Thus that new person is more than a warm body for “your” ministry. They are God’s gift of new eyes and perspective. So then when we extend that right hand of fellowship the “old” hand is agreeing to give the “new” hand’s perspective equal weight with how we’ve “always done things” in the past.

The new member respects past grace, and the rest of the church receives new grace. What matters most is Christ, who pays the same wage to all, no matter where they come from or what time of day they started work (Matthew 20:1-16).