See also: Communion of Saints
📖 Biblical Definition
The communion of saints is the spiritual union and fellowship that all true believers have with Christ their head and, in Him, with one another. Being joined to Christ by faith, the saints partake of His graces—His righteousness, His Spirit, His comfort—and being members of one body, they are obliged to a fellowship of love that reaches both to inward gifts and outward needs. This communion is first vertical: every believer shares in the one Lord, the one faith, the one baptism, and the one Spirit who indwells the whole body. It is then horizontal: the members are knit together so that, as Paul says, when one suffers all suffer, and when one is honored all rejoice. The early church gave visible proof of it, having all things common and supplying the wants of the needy among them. The communion of saints binds the church on earth to the church in heaven, for all are one in Christ across the veil of death. It forbids the isolation of the solitary believer, who imagines he can prosper apart from the body, and it commands the practical duties of generosity, intercession, edification, and bearing one another’s burdens.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
Webster 1828 defines COMMUNION as fellowship and mutual participation; the “communion of saints” is the fellowship of believers with Christ and with one another.
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COMMUNION, n. — 1. Fellowship; intercourse between two persons or more; interchange of transactions or offices; a state of giving and receiving. 2. Mutual intercourse or union in religious worship, or in doctrine and discipline. 3. The body of Christians who have one common faith and discipline.
The communion of saints, an article of the Apostles’ Creed, denotes the fellowship of true believers with Christ and with each other in the mutual sharing of spiritual gifts and graces.
📖 Key Scripture
1 Corinthians 12:12-13 — "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body."
1 John 1:3 — "That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ."
Ephesians 4:15-16 — "But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together... maketh increase of the body."
Acts 2:44-45 — "And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
No major postmodern redefinition. The doctrine is not so much attacked as neglected—practical individualism erodes the mutual duties of fellowship, leaving believers isolated consumers rather than members of one body.
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There is little open denial of the communion of saints; the assault is by neglect rather than by argument. A people trained to autonomy finds the very idea of mutual obligation strange. The believer treats the congregation as a place to receive a service and depart, not a body to which he is knit by living ligaments and toward which he owes the labor of love. The burdens are not borne, the gifts are not shared, the needs are not supplied—not because the doctrine is denied, but because it is forgotten the moment the benediction is pronounced.
Recovering the doctrine means recovering its duties. The communion of saints is not a sentiment but a set of obligations: to relieve the poor among the brethren, to visit the sick, to edify the weak, to intercede for one another, to suffer together and rejoice together as one body feels in all its members. The early church made this visible by sacrificial generosity. A church that confesses the communion of saints in the creed but practices the isolation of strangers in the pews has emptied a glorious truth of its content.
🔗 Greek & Hebrew Roots
The Greek koinōnia stands behind “communion”—a partnership and joint participation, first with Christ and then among His people.
Usage
"The communion of saints obliges the strong to bear the burdens of the weak, not merely to pity them from a distance."
"They confessed the communion of saints every Lord’s Day and lived as strangers all week—the creed honored, the duty forgotten."
"By the communion of saints the church on earth is joined to the church in glory, one body across the veil."