As Christian brothers and sisters united together in Christ, we must take time to be part of each other’s lives. True fellowship means knowing each other intimately. Fellowship is not done merely over a meal but in the sometimes private areas of life such as listening to a friend in pain or hardship. It means working to know the heart of others by sincerely striving to learn about them, their families, their work, and their difficulties.

I remember growing up in the church in the late sixties and early seventies when the word “koinonia” became popular to describe the special relationship that exists among members of the body of Christ, his church. Today, this Greek word is often translated in the Bible as “sharing” (e.g., Heb. 13:6) or “fellowship” (e.g., 1 John 1:3-7). It is not used very often in Scripture, nineteen times in the New Testament, but in common usage it often finds its way into the language of the church such as naming places and events—“Fellowship” Hall, “Fellowship” Meal, and spending some time in “fellowship.”
One aspect of Christian fellowship is sharing.
Fellowship is not a word unique to Christianity though (some academic benefits are called “fellowships”). When this English word developed in the late Middle Ages it was used to describe close friendships, companionship, and unity among members of a group. But what does it mean in Christian circles where it seems to be most often used when Christians gather together? What does it mean, from a biblical perspective, to have “fellowship”? One aspect of Christian fellowship is sharing.
Sharing is an important part of Christian fellowship. As members of the body of Christ we are to be a sharing people, not only in terms of the good things of life, material things, financial benefits, meals, and hospitality, but also in suffering.
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Through the joint workings of man and woman, God would use humanity to continue putting the earth into its beautiful order and fill it with His image. This is why generally men are more drawn to tasks that form and shape the world, whether physically or intellectually, and women tend toward tasks that fill and beautify the world, also both physically and intellectually. Furthermore, we should note that how God designed for the earth to be filled with His image-bearers is also reflective of God’s work of creation. 

Darwin (1809-1882), Freud (1856-1939), and Marx (1818-1883) can quite rightly be called the architects of modernity. During the 1800s, these three men were foundational in providing secularism’s answers to three of life’s most important and unavoidable questions regarding our origins, our guilt, and our hope.
Darwin’s theory of natural selection was the key to explaining man’s origin. How did we get here? Of course, answering that question always leads to a very important follow-up: Why are we here?
Although much of Freud’s work on psychoanalysis is no longer practiced by the psychological community, many of his ideas have so thoroughly permeated society that it goes unnoticed. Concepts like the unconscious, libido, id, and ego have weaved their way into our everyday vocabulary. But most importantly, we can thank Freud for teaching us to turn to psychology to help us resolve the strain that our sin and guilt place upon our consciences.
If Freud taught us to look inward, Marx gave us a vision for understanding the world around us. Focusing largely upon economics, Marx saw life as a great power struggle between the ruling class (the bourgeoisie) and the working class (the proletariat). He believed that nothing short of violent societal revolutions were necessary for the proletariat to free themselves from the financial chains that the bourgeoisie had shackled them with. Yet after such a revolution, utopia would surely emerge, a communist paradise without hierarchies and without oppression. Today, Marx’s economic vision of power struggles has been applied to all aspects of culture, fitting being called cultural Marxism.
Again, these three men gave secularism intellectual credibility. Because of them, humanity no longer needed to look beyond this world to answer questions about our origins, our guilt, and our hope. And it is largely due to their influence that we have need to spend an entire lesson focusing upon the questions before us. For over a thousand years, everything that we are going to discuss was practically assumed in the West, and the fact that we must now defend the reality of there being only two sexes can be extremely disheartening.
Nevertheless, we should remember that there is nothing new under the sun. Secularism is only a modern form of paganism that worships the self rather than the gods. Thus, with the diminishing of Christendom, we have actually been living through a revival of paganism. Of course, it has been rebranded. Instead of the world being created through the fighting of the gods, Darwinism says it was created through the struggle of every living to survive. Instead of visiting priests to absolve our sins, Freud taught us to visit psychiatrists, and instead of seeing a shaman to make us magic potions, we produce them in bulk and in convenient capsules. Instead of believing in places like Valhalla or Elysium, we now look for the communist paradise. You see, history does not repeat, but it certainly does rhyme.
Before Christianity became society identity of the West following the fall of the Roman Empire, only Christians and Jews believed in the imago Dei of mankind, yet for over a thousand years, it became an assumed doctrine in the West. In our present struggle over the doctrine of mankind, it is right that we must begin the doctrine that the Bible presents to us as the pinnacle of its very first chapter. The secular revival of paganism means that what was once assumed must now be defended and clarified.
Question 3
The first of the four sections of Gordon’s catechism focuses upon creation. That is an apt place to start because the Darwinian rejection of creation is at the foundation of nearly all the matters of sexuality that we will be discussing throughout this study. As we said in our reworking of question 2, we should be aiming to learn and remind ourselves through this section of the goodness of God’s design for mankind, including human sexuality. Let us begin then with Question 3:
How many sexes did God make a creation?
God made two sexes at creation; “in the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them.”
Gordon fittingly makes a direct quotation of Genesis 1:27 because that is the Bible’s explicit answer to that question. Together with verse 26, these verses form the climax of Genesis 1 and are also one of the most important portions of Scripture for answering the theological and cultural challenges before us. Thus, let us take a moment to consider them in context.
Even though God could have very easily caused the cosmos to exist in their entirety less than the blink of an eye, the LORD chose to create through a six-day process, which means that there must have been significant reason and purpose for Him doing so.
Indeed, if we take a sweeping glance over the six days of creation, we find that the first three days are works of forming and shaping. On day one, God creates light and divides the light from the darkness, naming them day and night. On day two, God divides the waters from one another and creates the heavens. On day three, God gathers the waters together so that land is formed, then he covers the land with plants of every kind. Day four corresponds to day one with God filling the cosmos with objects of light: the sun, moon, and stars. Day five corresponds to day two with God filling the heavens with birds and the waters with creatures. Day six corresponds to day three with God filling the land with a kinds of animals.
Day six concludes with the creation of man. He is last of God’s creation to show that he is the pinnacle, yet he is still created on the sixth day to show that he is still within the created order. Indeed, as we will read in verse 26-28, God gave man dominion over all the earth, but he is just as much as much of a creation as the earth itself. Indeed, Genesis 2 will reveal that God used the dust of the earth to form the body of man. For the moment, let us read Genesis 1:26-30:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,in the image of God he created him;male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.
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The Lord’s ordinary way is to bless conscientious diligence in a lawful calling with such a measure of success as the person may have whereby to sustain himself and to be helpful unto others. 

A recent worldwide study of attitudes to work shows that UK citizens are least likely to say that work is important in their life, and among the least likely to say that work should always come first, even if it means less leisure time. Compared with other nations, the UK is also relatively less likely to agree that work is a duty towards society. While the Bible condemns grasping ambition and earthly-mindedness, it also commends diligence, productivity, and generosity. This is an application of the eighth commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” In his commentary on Ephesians, James Fergusson looks at how Paul explores the transformation that takes place in every area of life when someone comes to know Christ savingly, including a radically changed attitude to work. In the following updated extract, Fergusson identifies the eighth commandment as informing Paul’s exhortation in Ephesians 4:28, “Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.”
Knowing Christ Transforms Everything
The knowledge which the Ephesians had of Christ was inconsistent with a licentious life. “Ye have not so learned Christ” (Eph. 4:20) It is not every sort of learning Christ, or knowledge that may be had of Christ, which excludes profaneness.
We rightly and savingly learn truth, when the knowledge of truth attained by our learning is such as Christ’s knowledge was, i.e., not merely theoretical and speculative, but practical and operative.
Three things are required from, and effectually produced in, the person who learns and knows Christ in this effectual way.
The first is a daily striving to “put off” (or “mortify”) “the old man” (v.22). This doesn’t mean the substance of our soul and body, or even the natural and essential faculties of the soul, but the natural and inbred corruption which has infected and polluted all these, and which we give way to in its “deceitful lusts.” The right order to go about the duties of sanctification is to begin with mortification in the first place, and then proceed to the duties of a new life, for the plants of righteousness do not thrive in an unhumbled, proud, impenitent heart.
The second thing is a serious endeavour to have your mind and understanding more and more renewed, or made new, by getting a new quality of divine and supernatural light implanted in it (v.23). It is not sufficient that we cease to do evil, and labour to mortify our inbred corruption, but we must also learn to do well, and endeavour to have the whole man adorned with the various graces of God’s Spirit, making conscience of all the positive duties of a holy life.
The third thing is the daily task of putting on the new man (v.24), that is, being more and more endued and adorned with new and spiritual qualities, by which not only is our mind renewed, but also our will, affections and actions.
Christians Observe Each of the Ten Commandments
The apostle then presses on them the exercise of some particular virtues. These belong to all Christians of whatsoever rank or station equally, and they are all enjoined in the second table of the law. He exhorts them, first, to lay aside and mortify the sin of lying (v.25), forbidden in the ninth commandment (where someone speaks what they know or conceive to be untruth, with an intention and purpose to deceive), and to “speak the truth, every man with his neighbour,” that is, to speak as they think, and to think of what they speak as it really is, so that our speech would conform both to the thing itself, and to our conceptions of the thing.
He exhorts them, next, to restrain and moderate their anger (v.26–27), for anger is forbidden in the sixth commandment. Anger is a natural affection, planted in our first parents at the first creation, and it was indeed also found in Christ Himself, who was without sin. So anger is not in itself a sin, nor always sinful. Instead, it is in its own nature indifferent, and becomes either good or evil according to the grounds, causes, objects and ends of it.
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