Love feast

The first Christians generally celebrated the Lord's Supper with the accompaniment of a meal, called the “agape” or “love feast”.

OT antecedents of the love feast

The Passover meal

Other festive occasions

Deuteronomy 12:7; Nehemiah 8:10

The NT practice of the love feast

It was linked with the Lord's Supper

Acts 2:46 See also Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 11:17–34

With one accord they continued to meet daily in the temple courts and to break bread from house to house, sharing their meals with gladness and sincerity of heart,

The name ``love feasts''

Jude 1:12 See also 2 Peter 2:13; John 13:2, John 13:34 It was at the Last Supper that Jesus Christ gave his new commandment to his disciples to love one another as he had loved them.

These men are hidden reefs in your love feasts, shamelessly feasting with you but shepherding only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried along by the wind; fruitless trees in autumn, twice dead after being uprooted.

The charitable distribution of food

Acts 6:1

Abuses of the love feast

Selfishness, indulgence and ostentation

1 Corinthians 11:20–22 See also 1 Corinthians 11:33–34

Now then, when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat. For as you eat, each of you goes ahead without sharing his meal. While one remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don’t you have your own homes in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What can I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? No, I will not!

Licentiousness

2 Peter 2:13

The harm they will suffer is the wages of their wickedness. They consider it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deception as they feast with you.

Ungodly participants, especially false teachers

Jude 1:4, Jude 1:12 See also 2 Peter 2:1, 2 Peter 2:13

For certain men have crept in among you unnoticed — ungodly ones who were designated long ago for condemnation. They turn the grace of our God into a license for immorality, and they deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

These men are hidden reefs in your love feasts, shamelessly feasting with you but shepherding only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried along by the wind; fruitless trees in autumn, twice dead after being uprooted.

The heavenly love feast

Foretold by Jesus Christ

Matthew 26:29 parallel Mark 14:25

I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in My Father’s kingdom.”

The marriage supper of the Lamb

Revelation 19:9 See also Isaiah 25:6; Matthew 22:2–14 The parable of the marriage supper indicates the prerequisites for attendance at the supper.

Then the angel told me to write, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”