JOHN 13:34-35

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Spiritual community is birthed when redeemed people do life together. God is the essence, if you will, of everything and when we come to know Him intimately we have a foundational connection through prayer and the Scriptures. This connection creates foundational attitudes like:

Humility, Holiness and Love.

These attitudes are the basis of the New Covenant Truths we find in the Bible: New Purity, New Identity, New Disposition and New Power. These truths generate a response towards God and grace towards others.

New covenant Truths–->Response to God—>Grace towards others

This is not a program to implement or follow; this becomes the DNA of a healthy community of redeemed people when the truths of the bible are applied to the Christian life.  This is what will effect change  within the church and attract those outside the church.

The New Covenant Community Intro:

So what is ‘new’ about the New covenant? Well, there are four things that we see in the New covenant that together form the structure of our ability to rightly relate to each other as believers in Jesus. We must pay special attention that these things are in place and embraced by every believer. Otherwise, we will become a dysfunctional church…

Spiritual Community mp3:Spiritual Community Intro

The New Covenant Community Part 1:

Spiritual Community is first of all a response. It’s our response to God and then our response to each other. Our response to God dictates the way we should respond to each other. Take for example the first truth of the New Covenant, a ‘New Purity’. The first New Covenant truth is that God has forgiven our sins! The slate is wiped clean of any record of sins and I have been given Jesus’ righteousness in it’s place! Only the offended party can forgive. I have terribly offended my God, and He has graciously forgiven me in Jesus Christ. If He has truly forgiven me, what should my response be?

Spiritual Community Part 1 mp3: Spiritual Community Part 1-’A New Purity’

The New Covenant Community Part 2:

I mentioned in part 1 that Spiritual Community is first of all a response; God’s grace filled response toward us and our grace filled response toward others. Spiritual Community is also a place. It’s a place where the truths of the New Covenant are allowed to work out, and it doesn’t happen automatically. It’s in this place of grace filled responses that we find our ‘New Identity’. The Bible says…we are adopted sons of God; that our citizenship is in heaven, and that if anyone be in Christ he is a new creation…These are wonderful New Covenant truths, but they do not manifest themselves automatically…

Spiritual Community Part 2 mp3: Spiritual Community Part 2-’A New Identity’

Below is a link to a chart that will give you an idea of the structure of the New Covenant Truths and our response toward God and toward people.

The Structure of Spiritual Community