Alexander Maclaren Describes What Happened ...

Alexander Maclaren describes what happened because of Christ’s command:

“Barbarian, Scythian, bond and free, male and female, Jew and Greek, learned and ignorant … sat down at one table, and felt themselves all one in Christ Jesus. They were ready to break all other bonds, and to yield to the uniting forces that streamed out from his Cross. There never had been anything like it. No wonder that the world began to babble about sorcery, and conspiracies, and complicity in unnamable vices. It was only that the disciples were obeying the new commandment, and a new thing had come into the world—a community held together by love and not by geographical accidents or linguistic affinities, or the iron fetters of the conqueror .… The new commandment made a new thing, and the world wondered” (Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, Vol. 10 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1974), pp. 227–228.)