A Covenant People

After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. 1 CORINTHIANS 11:25

The Key in My Hand, Evans’s first book, begins not with wounds or forgiveness but in the Upper Room. So does a whole chapter of Feasting at the Table. His reason is simple. If you knew you had only a day to live, he asks, what would you do? You would not spend it on trivial things. You would gather those you love, tell them what matters most, and put right anything between you. On the night before He died, Jesus did exactly that. He dealt with priorities.

Three requirements

Evans finds three requirements in Jesus’ words to His disciples in John 13 and 14.

The first is servanthood. The disciples arrived with dusty feet and no servant to wash them, and Jesus Himself took the towel and basin and washed their feet, including the feet of Judas, who would betray Him that night.

If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. JOHN 13:14

Evans does not think Jesus meant chiefly a ritual, though he has found foot-washing services a blessing. He meant that we are to refresh one another from the dirt that clings to us from walking in this world. That, he says, is one of the chief purposes of Christian fellowship, and one reason he goes to church: to have his feet washed. The tragedy is that there is often as much dirt thrown among believers as among unbelievers.

The second is love. Jesus gave a new commandment, not an option: that we love one another as He has loved us. Liking one another, Evans observes wryly, is not commanded; loving one another is, and love rules out gossip and backbiting and makes us ready to honour and prefer others.

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. JOHN 13:34

The third is obedience to His word. If you love me, keep my commandments.

Promises and covenant

Alongside the requirements, Jesus made promises: a place prepared in the Father’s house, His return, the Comforter, peace that the world cannot give or take away, and joy that is full. Evans points out that these promises are covenant promises. Their enjoyment depends on the disciples keeping their side: being servants, lovers and obedient.

That is why he calls this the covenant of the Upper Room. A covenant, he explains, is an agreement between two parties, and in the ancient world covenants were cut with the shedding of blood. When Jesus took the cup and called it the new covenant in His blood, the disciples, he notes, did not ask what He meant. They understood. And so, Evans says, every time we take the bread and the cup, we renew our agreement. As we eat the bread we declare that we are part of Christ’s body. As we drink the cup we covenant again to serve one another, love one another and obey His word. He describes his own habit at the Lord’s Table of looking round at the congregation as he takes the bread, and quietly renewing those three commitments as he takes the cup.

But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. 1 CORINTHIANS 11:28

The unity that evangelises

From the Upper Room Evans moves to Jesus’ prayer in John 17, and to what he regards as the church’s most neglected method of evangelism. You cannot, he observes, tear out a single page of the Bible and hand it to someone as a gospel tract. But you can point to whole chapters that tell us how God intends the world to believe.

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. JOHN 17:21

When God’s people live together as servants and lovers in obedience, he says, the world will know and believe. The church’s own life together is the message God means the world to read. That is why he pleads for the church to confront its divisions and bitterness, which the world sees so clearly, as quickly as it confronts false teaching.

One body

Evans gives much space to Paul’s picture of the church as a body: not an organisation made by men but an organism made by God, into which every believer, of whatever denomination, has been baptised by one Spirit. He is not against denominations as such. But when our groupings divide us from those in Christ who differ on styles of worship or secondary interpretation, we bring condemnation on ourselves.

And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. 1 CORINTHIANS 12:21

The tragic truth

He is unsparing about how far the church falls short. Christian marriages that should show the world Christ’s love for His bride end in divorce as often as others do. Children raised in Christian homes carry the wounds of fathers who provoked them to anger. Business people tell him that Christians can be among the worst to deal with. Missionaries, he notes, leave the field more often through broken relationships than through illness or finance, and pastors leave churches after a few years of disappointed expectations. Churches compete for each other’s members and occasionally tear themselves apart in fights that the whole town remembers. After each example he asks, in effect, what the watching world is supposed to make of it.

He does not ask it to condemn. He asks it because he believes the enemy of our souls has made the breaking of relationships his chief strategy, precisely because unity is God’s priority. The next two chapters take up his remedy.

A caution about sickness

One part of Evans’s covenant teaching needs care. From Paul’s warning that some Corinthians were weak and sick because they took the Lord’s Supper unworthily, and from James’s instruction to call the elders, he suggests that some sickness among believers may be linked to broken relationships in the body, and that elders should discern whether reconciliation is needed before praying. He is right that Scripture makes such a link in some cases, and his pastoral concern is genuine. But the same Scripture shows that most sickness has no such cause, as Jesus said of the man born blind, and Evans himself is fierce against those who tell the sick that their illness proves some failure in them. His teaching is best received as a call to examine ourselves at the Table, never as a diagnosis to be applied to others.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Next time you take the Lord’s Supper, consciously renew the three commitments of the Upper Room: to serve, to love and to obey.

2. Think of someone in your church whose feet need washing this week, someone weary or discouraged. Do something practical to refresh them.

3. Is there a brother or sister you do not like? Ask God for grace to love them, and show that love in one concrete act.

4. Consider whether your church has made heresy of practice as serious as heresy of doctrine. Pray for unity among the churches in your town by name.

5. If you are carrying bitterness toward someone in the body, do not take the cup until you have at least begun to seek reconciliation.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, on the night You were betrayed You took a towel and washed the feet of Your friends, and of the one who would betray You. Make me a servant like You.

You have commanded me to love as You have loved me. I cannot do it without Your grace; give it to me for the people I find hardest to love.

As I eat the bread and drink the cup, let me mean what I promise: to serve Your people, to love Your people and to obey Your word.

Make us one, Lord, so that the world may believe that the Father sent You. Amen.