Loving Enemies as a Mark of the Church

Lesson 17: Eating Together, part 2

After receiving the response to last week’s lesson, I decided to comment further on eating together as a mark of the church. It was an easy decision as I think it addresses one of the biggest spiritual problems in our time, the failure to eat meals together even with our own families. Certainly, as the […]

Lesson 16: Eating Together

Another mark of the church evident in the Gospels is eating together. Luke points to that in Acts when he describes the early church worshipping at the temple on the Sabbath and sharing meals with each other in their homes on Sunday. That practice developed into the sacrament we know as the Eucharist, Lord’s Supper, […]

Lesson 15: Community Beyond Family

It is obvious one difference between Jesus’ community and the modern Church has to do with his band treating its members with the intimacy usually associated with the biological family. They shared their money and loved unconditionally as would be expected in most families. As soon as we recognize this, many of Jesus’ tough sayings […]

Lesson 14: Love Enemies

My intention was to draw up marks of a gospel community, intending to come up with characteristics of a community that followed Christ Jesus. It seemed simply common sense to begin with accounts of what Jesus himself identified as his message. It quickly became evident to me that a primary mark of Jesus’ message and […]