Page 20 - THE CHURCH BEFORE THE MOCKING WORLD

CHAPTER SIX
A New Commandment and a New Covenant
One cannot really understand what Christianity is without grasping the power of the celebration and commemorates and focuses upon the ?New Commandment?and ?The New Covenant?.
One could go as far as to say that whatever it was prior to this day, the community of God?s people was never to be the same again.
The totality of change brought about by the Upper Room scene is punctuated by the change that takes place when Our Lord Jesus Christ declares sacred words then symbolises those words by a series of sacred actions.
The richness of the Jewish Passover should be obvious in the Upper Room, but the story does not end there. Rather, the Jewish Passover symbolism acts as a trajectory for something that is profound, unique, and utterly life changing.
Passover has a wonderful picture of deliverance by blood. The deliverance is in the form of judgement averted. What is often missing in our reflection of this deliverance is the fact that in the mind of God, Passover was His means of ?defining?Himself in relation to Israel.
He declares, ?I am the God who brought you out of Egypt?, over and over again in the Old Covenant Scriptures.
Likewise, Our Lord Jesus Christ at Passover in the Upper Room ?re-defines?everything that relates to God and man in the New Commandment and the New Covenant.
Firstly, the New Commandment.
A New Commandment I give to you. Love one another. By this shall all men know you are my Disciples. If you love me, you will obey my commandment. If you do not love one another. You have disobeyed my commandment.
You cannot be considered a Christian Disciple to the on-looking world, and you cannot claim to love Our Lord Jesus Christ, if obedience to this command is ignored.
On this note may the Roman, The Orthodox, and The Protestant Churches all be silent and simply repent. No justifications. No reasonable explanations, just silence and repentance.
To make things even clearer The Lord, The King, The Eternal Logos explains what it is to love another. He washes His Disciples feet; even the feet of Judas.
He uses this Sacred Symbol to authenticate His propositional statement. Then, to make things even clearer, He tells them that if He, Jesus, has washed their feet then they should wash each other?s feet.