If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.
John 15:10 (ESV)
It would appear that Christ is setting up a different set of commandments than were in place at his first coming, ie his 33-year life in Israel. He is instructing his followers to follow "his" commandments and contrasts these with his Father's commandments which he followed.
So, that begs the question, what are Jesus commandments? Further reading in John 10 sheds some light on that. Two verses later, , Jesus tells his listeners, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." John 10:12 He again tells his disciples in John 13:34, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." One additional commandment is added in the 22nd chapter of Matthew. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. Matthew 22:36-38 (ESV)
Did God not want His chosen people to love those outside of the Jewish faith in the O.T.? Was His emphasis more on creating a nation than inclusion of Gentiles? If this were the case, which I believe can also be supported with passages and examples from the O.T., this would have been even one more Jesus was seen as such a radical. Inclusion? Acceptance? Loving those not like us? You gotta' be nuts!! But that was the very foundation of his teaching.
Last night at Ridgecrest, Jose presided over his last Lord's Supper as pastor of Ridgecrest. He gave a clear explanation of the bread and juice and what they represented. At one point I was considering asking P.K. if there would be some way to host a Lord's Supper at The Gathering Tree some Sunday morning. Then right before the bread was passed around, Jose reminded those in attendance that Ridgecrest's practice/policy/belief was that only those who had accepted Christ as Lord and Savior, were to partake of the bread and juice.
I had assumed that was the practice at Ridgecrest since it was what I had been raised to believe in other Southern Baptist churches, but it dampened my enthusiasm about the possibility of a Gathering Tree communion. So many of the guest at The Tree already feel secluded, set a apart, isolated, so to offer a ceremony, then tell them, "only some of you can participate" would not send the right message.
More research is required on this for me to be comfortable with Baptists' exclusion of nonbelievers from the Lord's supper. What verses support this exclusive view of the Lord's Supper?
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