Page 22 22 The call to be a Bethany is not a call to individual prayer or Bible study. This is not at all what I’m saying. It is a call to live as a community–to live out your life in the context of a body of believers who are making a home for their Lord together . . . to give Him a place to lay His head. The early church gathered together daily in one form or another. They lived a shared life together. The church does not exist to make you and me better citizens in society. That is incidental. It’s not what the church is. The church is an alternative society. It’s not a supplement to this world. It’s a world of its own out of which we live our lives in society as God’s people. And God’s people live as a shared-life community. Make no mistake about it: You cannot separate devotion to Jesus Christ from devotion to His house. God wants a Bethany. An extended family made up of sisters and brothers who give Christ His rightful place. You can’t be a home for Christ yourself. It takes a community of believers to do that. And it requires your time . . . a great deal of your time. Let’s now look at the fourth and final narrative.
It's important to understand that Jesus did not become the second, or last, Adam (1 Cor. 15:45), in the sense of being like pre-Fall mankind. Rather, in the incarnation, He took upon Himself all the frailties, limitations, problems, and suffering that were the heritage of the Fall, enduring all its terrible earthly consequences.
John MacArthur