Packer on the Necessity of Christian Fellowship

Here is a good quote from J. I. Packer on the absolute necessity of real fellowship among believers. This is supposed to be central to the church- not something we have to go find apart from our local church.

“We should not . . . think of fellowship with other Christians as a spiritual luxury, an option addition to the exercises of private devotion. We should recognize rather that such fellowship is a spiritual necessity; for God has made us in such a way that our fellowship with himself is fed by our fellowship with fellow-Christians, and requires to be so fed constantly for its own deepening and enrichment.”

-J.I. Packer, God’s Words: Studies of Key Bible Themes (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1981), 193. Cited in Ryken, Philip Graham, The Communion of Saints (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2001), 124.