Meeting Outside of Rome

Acts 28:14-15

There we found brothers and were invited to stay with them for seven days. And so we came to Rome. And the brothers there, when they heard about us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us. On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage.

Aaron Orendorff

The book of Acts, as chapter 1 tells us, is about all the things that Jesus—resurrected and ascended—continued to do and teach. For Luke, how Jesus continues his work, now that (physically speaking) he’s off the scene, is through two players: the Spirit and the church. Much of Acts, therefore, is comprised of “meeting scenes”—scenes of greeting, fellowship and farewell.

Finally at his destination (one to which Luke has been building for several chapters now), Paul is enveloped into just such a scene. The church at Rome—to the surprise Paul’s captors—“hear of Paul’s arrival and come to see him, doing with him what citizens of a great city would do for a visiting emperor or a returning [king]: they come out some distance to meet him, to escort him with them into their city” (Wright, 239).

With this something striking happens: for all his visions and special revelations, for all the works of the Spirit done through, for and around him—the healings, the tongues, the miraculous escapes and amazing preservations of life—for all the certainty of knowing (from the lips of Jesus himself) “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome” (Acts 23:11), for all of this and more, what finally grips Paul’s heart and erupts in praise and courage is the plain and ordinary sight of other weary Christians—God’s unimpressive though much-loved family—coming out to meet him on the road and walk the last few miles together.

Community and Learning

Acts 18:24-26

Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone (Part Two)

Luke offers us no set pattern for the way in which people come, step by step, into full membership of the Christian family and full participation in all the possibilities that are thereby open to them. Sometimes it happens this way, sometimes that. Just as humans grow to maturity at different paces, and some make great strides in one area while other have to catch up later, so it seems to be in the church. What matters is that we are open, ready to learn even from unlikely sources [i.e., “Priscilla helping her husband Aquila to teach a learned scholar from the great university city of Alexandria”], and prepared for whatever God has to reveal to us through the scriptures, the apostolic teaching, and the ongoing and always unpredictable common life of the believing family (108-109).

Aaron Orendorff

Throughout the book of Acts, great stress is laid upon the centrality of community in the Christian life. This stress runs contrary to a number of distinctly American assumptions about how life in general and Christianity in particular works. Many well-meaning (though misguided) disciples live out of on a nexus of individualistic principles that revolve, in one way or another, on the assumption “It’s just me and Jesus” or “It’s just me and the Bible.”

Here, with the introduction of Apollos, is one of the most powerful antidotes to those kinds of assumptions. Luke takes great pains to describe Apollos’ pedigree: a native of Alexandria (the great, as Wright points out, “university city”), an “eloquent man” (literally, a man of the word, that is, learned or cultured), “competent in the Scriptures,” having been “instructed in the way of the Lord,” “fervent in spirit,” and speaking and teaching “accurately the things concerning Jesus.” Luke could hardly have compiled a more flattering picture of a preacher-teacher. And yet, for all of his excellent learning and clear ability, two tent-makers—a man and a (gasp) woman—take this scholar aside in order to explain to him the way of God more accurately.

The lesson: God has built the Christian life—in all its various parts, including both learning and teaching—to be done in the context of community. To learn from and lean upon the insight and knowledge of others is not a weakness in faith, it is its fruit.

The Spiritual and the Practical in Community Life

Acts 4:32-35

Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone (Part One)

No wonder they were able to give such powerful testimony to the resurrection of Jesus. They were demonstrating that it was a reality in ways that many Christian today, who often sadly balk at even giving a tithe of their income to the church, can only dream of.

In particular, this paragraph shows us what is meant when . . . people talk about being of one heart and mind. No doubt there is always a call to try to think alike with one another, to reach a deep, heart-level agreement on all key matters. But the early Christians, being Jewish, did not make as sharp a distinction as we do between heart and mind on the one hand and practical life on the other. “Being of one heart and soul” in this passage seems to mean not just “agreeing on all disputed matters” but also “ready to regard each other’s needs as one’s own” (76-7).

Aaron Orendorff

One of the most challenging themes found throughout the book of Acts—especially if we take the text seriously—is how deeply interwoven the practical elements of life are with what we often regard as spiritual. It would be nice to let v. 34 stand alone: “And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.” Yet in context, sandwiched as it is between two of the most powerfully communal texts in Scripture, we are shown that great power, the testimony of the resurrection and great grace are not merely spiritual principles abstracted from real life. Instead they are inexorably linked to outlandishly practical things like common ownership, the selling of property and mutual trust.

The Church and the Gospel

Acts 2:42-47

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone (Part One)

Acts 2.42 is often regarded as laying down “the four marks of the church.” The apostle’s teaching; the common life of those who believed; the breaking of bread; and the prayers. These four go together. You can’t separate them, or leave one out, without damage to the whole thing (44).

This shared life quickly developed in one particular direction, which is both fascinating and controversial. The earliest Christians lived as a single family (45-6).

And they had a word for this way of ordering their life, a word which we have often taken to refer to feelings inside you but which, for them, was primarily about what you do with your possessions when you’re a part of this big, extended family. The word is “love,” agapē in Greek (46).

When Jesus’ followers behave like this, they sometimes find, to their surprise, that they have a new spring in their step. There is an attractiveness, an energy about a life in which we stop clinging on to everything we can get and start sharing it, giving it away, celebrating God’s generosity by being generous ourselves. And that attractiveness is one of the things that draws other people in (47).

Aaron Orendorff

What was it that produced this remarkable and profoundly communal way of life? Strategy? Planning? Programs? Leadership? No. The simple (frighteningly simple) answer is this: the gospel. Acts 2 is about God launching a renewed, missional community through the outpouring of the Spirit by means of the gospel preached. The Spirit comes in power to make the gospel known, to shape people (not simply individuals, but entire groups) into conformity with the gospel and it is only as the gospel is clearly proclaimed and authentically received that real, deep change takes place.

If what we long for is an Acts 2:42-47 church, then what we must do is declare and embrace an Acts 2:14-46 message.

More Spectacular

Acts 2:41-47

So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

D. A. Carson, For the Love of God (Vol. 1)

Acts 2 is sometimes called the birthday of the church. This can be misleading. There is a sense in which the old covenant community can rightly be designated church (7:38—“assembly” in NIV). Nevertheless there is a new departure that begins on this day, a departure bound up with the universal gift of the Holy Spirit, in fulfillment of Scripture (2:17-18) and in consequence of Jesus’ exaltation “to the right hand of God” (2:33). The critical event that has brought this incalculable blessing about is the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus Christ; this event was itself foreseen by earlier Scripture (July 15).

Aaron Orendorff,

One of the surprising (and often overlooked) results of Pentecost is the Spirit’s immediate and very practical effect on the physical and financial sphere of the church’s life. Much has been said of the Spirit’s “miraculous” works—especially as it relates to tongues and the “many wonders and signs” done by the apostles (v. 43). Yet what is more spectacular: that “each one was hearing them speak in his own language” or that “all who believed were together and had all things in common”? Certainly the first is flashier, more attractive and, in a sense, easier to manage; yet the latter, as vv. 46 and 47 reveal, is what led first to authentic worship and second to evangelistic outreach.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Matthew 18:15

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

Many of us prefer to pretend there isn’t a problem. We can refuse to face the facts, swallow our anger or resentment, paper over the cracks, and carry on as it everything is normal while seething with rage inside. Or we can simply avoid and ignore the other person or group, and pretend they don’t exist (34).

Many Christians have taken the paper-over-the-cracks option, believing that this is what “forgiveness” means—pretending that everything is all right, that the other person hasn’t really done anything wrong. That simply won’t do. If someone else—another Christians in particular!—has been offensive, aggressive, bullying, dishonest, or immoral, nothing whatever is gained by trying to create “reconciliation” without confronting the real evil that’s been done. Forgiveness doesn’t mean saying “it didn’t really happen” or “it didn’t really matter.” . . . Forgiveness is when it did happen, and it did matter, and you’re going to deal with it and end up loving and accepting one another again anyway (35).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

My brother's burden which I must bear is not only his outward lot . . . but quite literally his sin. And the only way to bear that sin is by forgiving it in the power of the cross in which I now share. Thus the call to Christ always means a call to share the work of forgiving men their sins. Forgiveness is the Christlike suffering which is the Christian's duty to bear (90).

A. Orendorff

All sin (i.e., wrongdoing) creates a debt. This can be seen easily in sins of a financial or physical nature, but it is just as true in relational sins as well. Forgiveness, therefore, means absorbing the debt created by another person’s wrongs, whatever the nature of those wrongs might have been. Justice means taking payments on that debt; forgiveness mean making the payments ourselves.

Community and Sectarianism

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

Getting saved is easy; becoming a community is difficult – damnably difficult (250).

We are a community. We are not ourselves by ourselves. We are born into communities, we live in communities, we die in communities. Human beings are not solitary, self-sufficient creatures. As we realize both the necessity and the nature of our lives in community, we also become aware of the difficulty, the complexity, and as Christians who are following Jesus, the seductions all around us to find an easier way, a modified community, a reduced community customized to my preferences, a “gated community.”

Sectarianism involves deliberately and willfully leaving the large community, the “great congregation” that is features so often in the Psalms, the whole company of heaven and earth, and embarking on a path of special interest with some others, whether few or many, who share similar tastes and concerns.

Sectarianism is to the community what heresy is to theology, a willful removal of a part from the whole. The part is, of course, good – a work of God. But apart from the whole it is out of context and therefore diminished, disengaged from what is needs from the whole and from what what’s left of the whole needs from it (239-40).

A. Orendorff

The most accurate measure of how authentically we are “doing” Christian community is simple: How many of the people close to you don’t you like? Such an assessment may sound harsh, and is of course easily misinterpreted, but what it means is this: Look at the people to whom you devote your time and relational energy. Who are they? Are they easy people, clean people, respectable, stable and necessary people? Are they efficient and productive people, people who make you feel better about who you are? The degree to which we devote ourselves to people who (from all worldly estimations) add nothing to us is the degree to which we have internalized much of the gospel. Grace in relationships – the essence of a gospel-shaped community – takes concrete shape only as we begin to say yes to relationships that can offer us nothing of economic, relational, and promotional value. The degree to which the people we invite obtrusively into our lives are people who we (in our more selfish and fleshly moments) could easily and happily do without is the degree to which we are doing more than “sinners do.”

Luke 6:32-36

If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

The Spirituality of Me

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (pg. 243)

It is an odd phenomenon to observe followers of Jesus, suddenly obsessed with their wonderfully saved souls, setting about busily cultivating their own spiritualities. Self-spirituality has become the hallmark of our age. The spirituality of Me. A Spirituality of self-centering, self-sufficiency and self-development. All over the world at the present time we have people who have found themselves redefined by the revelation of God in Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection, going off and cultivating the divine within and abandoning spouses, children, friends and congregations.

Paul Zahl, Grace in Practice (pg. 143)

Grace demolishes the idea of need-fulfillment. Need-fulfillment is a law that has no possible final satisfaction. Human need is limitless on its own terms. It is a bottomless well, a pail with a hole in the bottom. Grace nullifies this. The need for personal fulfillment is not met in Christianity. It is destroyed.

J.I. Packer and Carolyn Nystom, Praying (pg. 126-27)

A life of repentance is, in reality, a life of self-denial. When Jesus talked about self-denial he was…telling us that we have to say no to “carnal self,” that is, to our inner selfhood that has been shaped by sin into the mold of an ugly, self-serving egocentricity. This carnal self seeks to lead us along its own path…Sin in our system enslaves our natural self-love to unnatural pride, so as to keep us from loving God and others. So God exposes to our consciences, our self-absorption and self-centeredness, our tendency to focus entirely on ourselves and our own concerns.

Aaron Orendorff

Any vision of the Christian life that focuses directly upon the self – that speaks constantly my spirituality, my ­sanctification, my growth in grace – is doomed from the start. This is not to say that self-examination is itself a bad or corrupting practice, far from it. One of our greatest needs as deceived and deceptive people is to see ourselves as we are, not as we would like to be nor as others might see us, but as we truly are – unadorned, unpretensed and naked. Our trouble arises when the quest for self-knowledge – or worse “self-improvement” – becomes an end in itself rather than a means. All our spiritual striving must culminate not in us being better people, abstracted from the concrete realities of relationship and location, but better community members – better husbands and wives, better sons and daughters, better employers and employees, better friends, better neighbors, better listeners, better encouragers, better critics and ultimately better worshipers.

Individualism

Robert N. Bellah, Habits of the Heart

Individualism – A word used in numerous, sometimes contradictory, senses. We use it mainly in two: (1) a belief in the inherent dignity and, indeed, sacredness of the human person…[and] (2) a belief that the individual has a primary reality whereas society is a second-order, derived or artificial construct (334).

We [as Americans] believe in the dignity, indeed the sacredness, of the individual. Anything that would violate our right to think for ourselves, judge for ourselves, make our own decision, live our lives as we see fit, is not only morally wrong, it is sacrilegious (142).

Julie A. Gorman, Community that is Christian

Self-fulfillment, autonomy, [personal] rights, freedom, self-centeredness – these are the facets of negative individualism and the factors that mitigate against community. Individualism puts self at the center of a person’s world – everything revolves around the nurturing, exalting, and gratifying of that self (46).

Randy Frazee, The Connecting Church

Individualism is a way of life that makes the individual supreme or sovereign over everything (42).

Steven Lukes, Individualism

Religious Individualism…is the view that the individual believer does not need intermediaries, that he has the primary responsibility for his own spiritual destiny, that he has the right and the duty to come to his own relationship with his God in his own way and by his own effort (94).

John Locke, The De-Voicing of Society

If small groups are thought of as a solution to desocialization, I’m afraid the news isn’t very good…Princeton’s Robert Wuthnow has found that small groups mainly “provide occasions for individuals to focus on themselves in the presence of others. The social contract binding members together assert only the weakest obligations. Come if you have time. Talk if you feel like it. Respect everyone’s opinions. Never criticize. Leave quietly if you become dissatisfied…‘Attending weekly meetings, dropping in and out as one pleases, shopping around for a more satisfactory or appealing group – all of these factors work against the growth of true community’” [quoting Olds and Schwartz].

Randy Frazee, The Connecting Church

We have brought our mind-set of individualism into our small groups and therefore made them dysfunctions effective places of true community (47).

A. Orendorff

More than a belief, individualism operates at the cultural level sociologists and philosopher have termed worldview. What this means it that individualism is not so much something thought about as it is a way of thinking. Operating under the premise of individualism, the church and its various extensions are not communities in the trues sense of th word; they are collections of individuals. This is a profound and deep-seated assertion. The radically communal nature of the church as a fundamentally corporate entity is either wholly absent from the thought life of most parishioners or it is shrugged off as patently and hopelessly idealistic – something that looks good on inspired paper but, in the real world, simply can’t pay the bills.

Grace, One-Way Love

Paul F.M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life (pg. 36-38)

What is grace? Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable. It is being loved when you are the opposite of loveable.

Grace is a love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved. It has everything and only to do with the lover. Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do with weights and measures. It has nothing to do with my intrinsic qualities or so-called “gifts” (whatever they may be). It reflects a decision on the part of the giver, the one who loves, in relation to the receiver, the one who is loved, that negates any qualification the receiver may personally hold.

Grace is one-way love.

The one-way love of grace is the essence of any lasting transformation that takes place in human experience. . . . One-way love lifts up. One-way love cures. One-way love transforms. It is the change agent of life.

Grace depends on the fact that its origin is wholly outside myself. This is the heart of love; it comes to me from outside myself. Moreover, while it almost always elicits a response, which is my love in return, it comes toward me without any reference to my response. One-way love does not deviate on the basis of its goal. It is determined solely by its source.

One-way love is the change agent in everyday life because it speaks in a voice completely different from the voice of the law. It has nothing to do with its receiver’s characteristics. Its logic is hidden within the intention of its source. Theologically speaking, we can say it is the prime directive of God to love the world in no relation to the world’s fitness to be loved.

One-way love is also irrational because it reaches out to the specifically undeserving person. This is the beating heart of it. Grace is directed toward what the Scripture calls “the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). Not just the lonely, not just the sick and disconsolate, but the “perpetrators,” the murders and abusers, the people who cross the line.

A. Orendorff

The more difficult it is to love someone – the less lovely and lovable they are in themselves – the more our love towards them reflects and images God’s love towards us. It is no credit to your faith to love those who are inherently lovely; it is when we love those who we would naturally and justly recoil from that we show the authenticity of our faith. To love in the name of Christ is to love those who Christ loved: not the well, but the sick, not the righteous, but sinners.

The Hub

Richard F. Lovelace, The Dynamics of Spiritual Life

The “ultimate concern” of most church members is not the worship and service of Christ in evangelistic mission and social compassion, but rather survival and success in their secular vocation. The church is a spoke on the wheel of life connected to the secular hub. It is a departmental subconcern, not the organizing center of all other concerns (205).

Randy Frazee, The Connecting Church

The Bible clearly teaches that God intends to accomplish his primary purposes through the church. The first Christians understood that a decision to follow Christ also included a decision to make the church the hub of their world, even when it required the abandonment of existing social structures. Yale University professor Wayne Meeks makes this point, based on his meticulous research of the early church: “To be ‘baptized into Jesus Christ’ signaled for Pauline converts an extraordinary thoroughgoing resocialization, in which the sect was intended to become virtually the primary group for its members, supplanting all other loyalties” (36).

The Final Apologetic

Francis A. Schaeffer, The Marks of the Christian

“Notice, however, that verse 21 [of John 17] says, ‘That they all may be one…’ The emphasis, interestingly enough, is exactly the same as in John 13 — not on a part of true Christians, but on all Christians — not that those in certain parties in the church should be one, but that all born-again Christians should be one.

“Now comes the sobering part. Jesus goes on in this 21st verse to say something that always causes me to cringe. If as Christians we do not cringe, it seems to me we are not very sensitive or very honest, because Jesus here gives us the final apologetic. What is the final apologetic? ‘That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.’ This is the final apologetic” (15).

The Great Disillusionment

Dietrich Bonheoffer, in the book Life Together, speaks of what he calls the “great disillusionment” with which all Christian communities must come to grips with if they are to embody not just a human ideal but a divine reality:

Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves…Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it (Bonheoffer 27).

Our task as a church is to come together embracing and rejoicing in the reality that we are, in the words of one contemporary, “painfully uncool,” that the church is fundamentally comprised of “dropouts, and losers, and sinners, and failures and fools.” In Jesus' parable of the Great Banquet, after the original guests refuse the invitation, the master of the house commands his servants, “Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame” (Luke 14:21).

Luther said it like this,

“If you are a preacher of Grace, then preach a true, not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, then you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious [or imaginary] sinners. Be a sinner and let your sins be strong [sin boldly], but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly still. For he is the victor over sin, death, and the world.”

We are not imaginary or fictitious sinners, we are real sinners who rejoice and trust in a real Savior. The plain truth of the matter is that other people are going to fail you, other Christians are going to fail you and, as Bonheoffer says, we are going to fail as well. True community isn’t about hiding our failures, it isn’t about ignoring or sweeping them under the rug of superficial and shallow relationships, nor is it about God making us into super-Christians who are so spiritual and so mature that we never fail one another and therefore cannot tolerate failure in others. True community is about gospel re-enactment; it’s about coming together again and again and exposing and confessing our sins, exposing and confessing that we are sinners. Any vision of the church you have that isn’t big enough to deal with the truth that people are going to fail you, that people are going to hurt you, that you yourself are going to fail and hurt others, any vision of community that isn’t wide enough to incorporate this reality simply isn’t Christian and until that vision is shattered by the “great disillusionment” of what Christian community really is you will find yourself constantly complaining, constantly at odd, constantly without peace and friendship in the church.

(un)Natural Community

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Friendship is – in a sense not at all derogatory to it – the least natural of the loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary…Without Eros [i.e. sensual or physical love] none of us would have been begotten and without Affection [i.e. romantic or familial love] none of us would have been reared; but we can live and breed without Friendship. The [human] species, biologically considered, has no need of” (58).

“Friendship arises…when two or more of the [same] companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden)” (65).

“In [Friendship] love, as Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth? – Or at least, ‘Do you care about the same truth?’…We picture lovers face to face but Friends side by side; their eyes look ahead…That is why those pathetic people who simply ‘want friends’ can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question Do you see the same truth? would be ‘I see nothing and I don’t care about the truth; I only want a Friend,’ no Friendship can arise…There would be nothing for Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something…Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers” (66).

D.A. Carson, Love in Hard Places

Ideally, however, the church itself is not made up of natural ‘friends.’ It is made up of natural enemies. What binds us together is not common education, common race, common levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything else of that sort. Christians come together, not because they form a natural collocation, but because they have all been saved by Jesus Christ and owe him a common allegiance. In light of this common allegiance, in the light of the fact that they have all been loved by Jesus himself, they commit themselves to doing what he says – and he commands them to love one another. In this light, they are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’ sake” (61).

John Locke, The De-Voicing of Society

“From a physical standpoint, a community is a collection of individuals, but the residents of a true community act like members of something that is larger than themselves” (131).