Is Community a Commandment?

God's purpose, plan, and vision for mankind will be accomplished through His community, His holy nation. It is impossible to understand community apart from understanding the very reason for our existence as human beings. This mystery is locked up in our very beginning, in the way we were made.

Man was created in the image and likeness of his Creator in order to express to the physical, material creation what the invisible God is like. Even though the entire universe was at His disposal, God's heart was not satisfied in creation. He longed for a counterpart, a body that He could dwell in and express Himself through. It was this longing that brought about the creation of man.

In the same way that it was not good enough for God to be alone, it was also not good for His image and likeness, man, to be alone. Even though the first man Adam lived in Eden, a beautiful garden, his heart wasn't satisfied until woman, his suitable counterpart, came into being. Only what was taken out of man himself, made of the same substance as he was, could be suitable to him. When Adam saw the woman he recognized that she was indeed made in his very own image and likeness, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, perfectly compatible, the completion of himself.

This first woman, Eve, was to Adam what they together were to be to their Creator. As long as they lived for their Creator, under His authority, and doing His will, there was fellowship between man and God. However, as soon as man and woman stopped living for their Creator and started living for themselves human essence became tainted and was no longer compatible with God. Just as Eve was made from the same substance as Adam, and so was compatible to him, we too have to receive the life from above in order to be reconciled to our Creator and be restored to our relationship with Him, enabling us to receive the life of God Himself, through His Spirit. There is absolutely nothing we can do on our own to make ourselves compatible. We can't work for it; we can't strive for it; we can't earn it.

Compatibility or non-compatibility is simply a matter of the source of our life. We have to receive the life of God Himself based on what He did for us when His Son, Yahshua the Messiah, became a sacrifice and died in our place. With His own blood He paid for all our disobedience and the things we did wrong as we lived for ourselves. It is amazing, beyond our understanding, and too wonderful to comprehend how our Maker's love towards us never stopped. When our Master was immersed into death it was similar to Adam being put into a deep sleep for the sake of bringing forth Eve. When our Master's body was pierced, it was like Adam's side being opened. His Spirit was released to form a new creation that would be compatible to Him, like a bride.

The Community is the Witness

This new creation began at Pentecost, when our Master Yahshua sent His Spirit to dwell in those who wanted to follow Him. Just as Eve was the evidence that something real took place with Adam that caused her to come into existence, so the first community was the witness of this new creation, proving to the world that Yahshua really was what His name declared — the Salvation of God, the Healer, the Restorer, the Bringer of the heavenly life. The community was the witness, the evidence that the Spirit was sent, and that Yahshua, the Anointed One, had lived a righteous, acceptable life and had therefore been received in heaven.

In Hebrew the word for witness and community is edah. That is the word that our Master used, for He spoke Hebrew. And that is exactly what He wanted to say: I will build My community, My witness. Just as God built Eve from the rib of Adam, so He will build the edah through the Holy Spirit that came forth from Messiah. This is the glorious community of our Master Yahshua, the most amazing creation that exists and ever will exist.

Love is the Distinguishing Mark

Our Master knew that the witness to the whole world would be the love of His disciples, because love is the distinguishing mark of His life. That's why He told His disciples that they should love one another in the same way He loved them. All men would know that they were His disciples if they had that kind of love for one another. He could confidently command them to love like He loved because He was going to give them His life that would enable them to do so. No one can do it who has not received His life. You have to have His love. That love is the perfect bond of unity. Divine love poured out in the human heart brings about community.

True community indeed is an expression of divine love. A demonstration of this community is divine love in action. It is eternal life.

Indeed, eternal life is a free and most gracious gift from our loving Creator, but it can only be given to those who really desire it, that is, those who are willing to do His will and live entirely for Him. This requires a complete surrender of the self-life, of everything in a person that is not compatible. Such surrender is only possible upon meeting the authority of God because the only thing that calls for a real and complete death of the self-life is the authority of God. To come under His authority means to die to everything of the independent self-life. Those are the terms that are required from man in order to make peace with God. It is the cost of discipleship, the requirement for compatibility. The death of self-life is also what makes community grow. It demands that everything that belongs to a person, his life and his possessions, be brought under God's authority.

Men with that authority will always establish community. The men our Master commissioned to establish His community completely submitted to His authority and put everything He taught into practice. For this reason they were able to call others into the same life of obedience.

True community, therefore, is a place to die and to live. If a person endures in the deeds of love they were created for, in the end there will be nothing left of the self-life. Every person in the community who dies every day to self and loves in deed will be completely transformed and made compatible. He will have learned obedience the same way as his Master Yahshua did, that is, through the things He suffered. His entire life will have come under God's rulership.

Just as Adam saw Eve and was satisfied, our Master Yahshua will see His bride, His community, and be satisfied. He will have done everything to bring it about. Indeed, we live in very exciting times. Once again the life of God is being poured out on the earth to establish His community. It will grow up into a twelve-tribed spiritual nation, the commonwealth of Israel, a witness to the whole world of the life of God. The demonstration of this life through the communities of this spiritual nation will be only a foretaste of what is to come in the next age. Then it will fill the whole earth, and eventually the whole universe in the eternal, never ending age. It will go on and on, forever and ever.

[A personal account of why we live in community: "So we can love each other"]