Fellowship and Community
Third of a talk on the Acts of the Apostles given at Nedlands Angllican Church 17th March 2024
Luke makes an important statement at the end of his description of the Pentecost event.
What does God want me to do? This question was put to me by a young woman, who had just given up on gurus and turned her life over to Christ. She had repented; that is, she had turned to face God and Jesus, and turned her back on an old life. This is what the three thousand did; and they were baptized to demonstrate publicly and to themselves that they were sincere in their commitment. This is repentance. They were now people of faith, as was the young woman. And so, she wanted to know what God wanted of her for her new life. It is important to get this distinction clear. Many people think of the new life, when they think of repentance. For Luke the new life is what John the Baptist called “works befitting repentance.”[1] Of course, repentance has a continuing place in the life of a Christian, but that is not the point here.
Luke now describes the new life that characterized that first three thousand. They devotedthemselves; there was nothing casual about their new commitment, they threw themselves into the new life. The first thing they devoted themselves to was “the apostle’s teaching.”
What is an apostle? Apostle (apostolos) was a word the early Christians took over from Greek and gave a new meaning. In Greek it meant something like a naval expedition, or an embassy, but the Christians used it as the equivalent of a Hebrew word which meant someone you appointed to be your legal representative—what we would call a person with power of attorney. In political terms an apostle would be an ambassador. He could speak on his government’s behalf. Jesus chose twelve disciples from a much larger group and called them apostles. He then trained and prepared them for when they would be his official spokesmen. If you wanted to know what Jesus taught, you went to an apostle. For the Christians an apostle was an ambassador of King Jesus.[2] Today, if we want to know what it means to follow Jesus, we go to the apostles’ teaching, just as the first three thousand did. The apostles’ teaching is preserved for us in the New Testament. People who claim to be apostles today are either mistaken, or fraudsters, or have given the word a different meaning to what it has in the New Testament.
Second, the first Christians devoted themselves to “fellowship.” Fellowship means being friends with one another: we care, and share. It is not unusual today to find churches whose members do not know each other. Apart from seeing each other on Sunday, and perhaps a nod, there is no relationship. The first Christians were not like that. Jesus taught them to love one another. It is hard to love someone you hardly know. Fellowship leads naturally to the third thing—the breaking of bread. Breaking bread means simply sharing meals. They invited each other home. Breaking bread covers their special celebrations of the Lord’s Supper, but it is wider than this. Christians were hospitable.
The last thing Luke mentions is “the prayers.” This sounds like the community prayers, more than personal devotion, though this is also important. The first Christians in Jerusalem continued to participate in the temple prayers, and gathered to pray in smaller groups at other times.
We should pause here and compare this description with what Paul later wrote to Timothy about what sort of people should serve as ministers in churches. The Pastoral Epistles show us how church life looks like 25 – 30 years after Pentecost. Some things have been formalized, but the basics are still there. Earlier, he has stressed the importance of men leading the church’s prayers.
Teaching, prayer, hospitality, and fellowship are still fundamental to the life of a Christian minister.
Luke follows on his comment about their devotion with a description of the life of the first community. It is noticeable that he does not call it a church. Not until Act 5 will we encounter this word. We will discuss the importance of this later.
Awe: there was a holy fear that surrounded the first Christians; it was partly a result of the apostles’ miracle working. There was something supernatural about this community. I will discuss the meaning of this later.
There was also an unusual degree of sharing happening. This flowed naturally from Jesus’ teaching about money and possessions. In particular, they cared for the needy in their community. They also attended temple together. This is significant. Luke uses the same word “devotion,” to describe this as he does in verse 42. It seems they still valued the prayers of the Jewish leaders. There was no break at this point between Jews and Christians. They did not see themselves as a different religion.
After church, they invited one another home to eat. How important this must have been for the poor. Luke uses an unusual word that challenges translators. They ate their food with glad and “simple” hearts (apheloteti kardias). Aphelotes would mostly describe someone who was intellectually challenged: a simpleton) I am guessing what he means is the lack of scruple about what they were eating, and with whom they were eating it. Common meals presented a problem for Jews, and still do. Is the food kosher. I bought a house in Cape Town for the college I was leading; the agent came to the house, looked around, and said, “This is a Jewish home.” I asked how he knew. “Two kitchens,” he said. One was for milk dishes, the other for meat. Jews do not permit any contamination of meat with milk. Are the people you are eating with “clean”? Pharisees were a kind of dining club; you could trust another Pharisee that everything would be in order, and that you were not going to be defiled inadvertently by what you ate. Everything was tithed; everything was prepared by someone ceremonially pure. But eating with anyone else put you at risk. The first Christians followed Jesus and ignored all that. They did not ask questions about the food you served them, or get squirmy about who they were dining with. One result was an outpouring of joy.
Finally, Luke records the growth of the community. Many more people were added to the community, though Luke still avoids calling it church.
A Second Description of their Common Life
Acts chapter 3 tells of the healing of the cripple at the temple and the speech which followed. In chapter 4 we learn that the authorities are displeased and take Peter and John into custody. The following day there is a hearing—not at this point a trial; they have done nothing illegal. They are warned not to preach again in the name of Jesus, and released. The believers gather together to pray for boldness to continue their preaching. Luke records their prayer.
There follows another description of the community’s common life. Two accounts of the same thing signals its importance to Luke, so we will look at it again.
This phrase, hapanta koina, originated with Pythagoras, who had a formal commune, which practiced common ownership of possessions. However, it became a common expression among the Greeks to describe friendship. “Friends have everything in common,” was a common slogan. There were other slogans of friendship: “friends are ‘one soul’ (mia psuche)”; with friends “nothing is private” (ouden idion). To find all three of these common phrases of friendship clustered in Luke’s description of the Christian community is striking. There is one missing: “friendship is equality” (philotes isotes). Luke does not claim the early Christians pursued equality; nor does anything in the New Testament. What he describes is an unusual degree of friendship, which for Greeks and Romans was a social ideal. The puzzle is that he nowhere uses the word “friendship” (philia). The reason for this is probably to do with the way friendship had become formalized in Roman culture. Everyone wanted to be the friend of someone powerful. Important people wanted an army of lesser friends; it bolstered their importance and power. There were privileges and responsibilities attached to being someone’s “friend.” Pontius Pilate was Caesar’s friend; it doesn’t mean they were pally; he had to be careful. To avoid these connotations, Luke uses another word: “fellowship” (koinonia), which meant what friendship should have meant.
If you read the first four books of the New Testament you are in a very Jewish world. It is a surprise, then, in Acts to find yourself in contact with Greek and Roman culture. But, of course, looking at it from the viewpoint of a Greek like Luke, at a time when the gospel is spreading into the Hellenistic world, it is understandable. Luke wants to show people who are soaked in Hellenistic culture that the first Christian community, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, achieved some of their own ideals. He is not describing the abolition of private property.
You can see this even in the passage we are studying. Barnabas sold a field. Luke gives this as an example of what was happening. It wasn’t much of an example if people were selling up the houses they lived in and all their possessions.
The story of Ananias and Sapphira is also instructive. They sold a piece of property, and offered to donate the proceeds to the church. There would have been much thanks resulting, and reputation. When they achieved a higher price than they expected, they decided to hold back some of the money for themselves. Why shouldn’t they? we think, and this is precisely what Peter says:
Here is as good a definition of private property as one could ask. They didn’t need to give it to the church in the first place; it was their’s to do what they wanted. And when it was sold, they could do whatever they wished with the proceeds. The problem was their duplicity: saying they were doing one thing, and doing another. Lying to the church was lying to the Holy Spirit.
There is a story a little like this in the Old Testament. In both stories the same word “misappropriated” is used.[3] When Jericho was destroyed, Achan hid some of the devoted things in his tent. When it was found out, he and his family were stoned to death and burned. It seems incredibly harsh, but it happened just as the Israelite community was beginning its life in the promised land, and God gave an example of how serious a sin against God and his community it really was. Similarly, Ananias and Sapphira were about to treat the new messianic community with contempt. God stepped in and made an example. He does not strike everyone dead who perhaps deserves it.
Why does Luke tell this story, which seems to go against all the good things he has said? We see he is not airbrushing his picture of the first church; there was bad along with the good. But his real purpose is to illustrate the fear (awe) he mentioned in chapter 2. You can see this in verse 11. It is fear in the presence of the holy. Paul speaks of this in one of his letters. Whoever defiles the holy dies.
We conclude that Luke’s purpose in giving these two descriptions of the early church’s life was to make clear that the community that formed in Jerusalem did so under the hand of God. It was a supernatural community. It was the true people of God. It is in the story of Ananias and Sapphira that Luke uses the word “church” (ekklesia) for the first time.
Did Luke also wish to model what church life should be? It is clear that he had great admiration for the first church, and would therefore wish that its life should be imitated by others. However, he is not laying out a prescription or law about how things must be done. What happened in Jerusalem was God’s doing—“great grace was upon them all.”[4] Still we should expect that when the Spirit of God is active, similar things will happen. We should pray for God to work powerfully in his church.
Persecution
John the Baptist was beheaded, Jesus was crucified—both by the state. It is not surprising that once the activities of Jesus’ followers reached a certain level there would be pushback from the authorities. Peter healed a quadriplegic man; given the prominent place at the temple gate where each day he was left to beg, he was known to most of the people of Jerusalem,. Peter took the opportunity and proclaimed Jesus as “Servant,” “the Holy and Righteous One,” “the Author of Life,” and “the Prophet like Moses.” These are all pointers to the Old Testament prescription for the promised king. The authorities arrested Peter and John, and brought them before the Sanhedrin for a hearing the next day.
Luke mentions four names in the high priestly family: Annas, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander. He is well-informed on details. The first two are known to us from Josephus and the Fourth Gospel, the others not. John the Gospel writer was connected with the high priest’s family, so is probably the source of Luke’s information, though whether Luke ever met John and Peter is not known. A recent scholar has argued from the similarities in Luke and John that they must have met. I would guess Luke met with Peter at some time in Rome.
Peter’s speech is a formal defense, but we notice that really it is another presentation of the gospel. Peter and John will both be sources of what happened, and we have no reason to doubt that the speech is genuine.
It is striking that though a defense, Peter makes no attempt to deny anything. Rather, he meets the inquiry head-on with a declaration about Jesus and an accusation of criminal behaviour on the part of the authorities. When Nelson Mandela was on trial for his life at Rivonia, he chose not to defend himself, but to use the opportunity to attack the apartheid system. Today, Christians are threatened with litigation, as we have not been in our lifetimes. It may be that the lawcourt is the one place we can speak freely, at a time when it is increasingly difficult to speak for God in the public sphere. We should make up our minds that we will use such opportunities, if they come out way, to explain the Christian faith, whether or not this leads to our acquittal.
On this occasion Peter makes two claims about Jesus.
Peter says this for the authorities; Luke records it because he want readers and listeners to learn more about Jesus. He wants not-yet-Christians to believe.
Why do Christians say there is no salvation outside of Jesus, when all the religions of the world have some concept of salvation, and some formula for achieving it? The answer is that God is building a new world (the kingdom of God) and Jesus is its king. The world-leaders rejected him from their world-building designs, and still do, but God has recovered him and set him up as the cornerstone of the new world. There is no other future world, just as there is no other Creator, and no other king appointed to rule the coming kingdom. To belong to that world is salvation. Other religions may have their place in God’s providential care of the present world, but only in Jesus is salvation to be found. Citizens of the future world will all have been saved by Jesus. One is reminded of Jesus’ own warning that we build on the rock of his teaching; storms will come and sweep everything else away.[5] “All other ground is sinking sand.”
Acts gives us a lead here, if we ever have to deal with the law on a question of conscience. There are times when Christians must bow to God’s higher authority, and do what is deemed to be illegal. Of course, this means we must be willing to suffer whatever penalty the state may impose. In this case Peter and John are released. The healing was so widely known, that to move against them would result in a backlash from the people against the authorities. “These things did not happen in a corner,” Paul will say later to the Jewish king, and he expects the king will know what he is talking about.[6] Luke writes at a time when there are still living witnesses to a remarkable miracle in Jerusalem. He expected even the king to have knowledge of it.
Next time, we will look at the formal trial that took place when the apostles refused to be silent, and the meaning of the capital trial brought against Stephen.
Luke and the Church
I now wish to revisit the issue I have alluded to, that Luke avoids naming the church in his Gospel and the first part of Acts. More than once, when it would be natural for him to use the word, he uses an odd alternative. At the end of the Pentecost narrative, for example, he says that the Lord added those being saved day by day to the same [place] (Acts 2.47).[7]
The first time he uses the word ekklesia is at Acts 5.11 where it should be noted that the meaning is ambiguous. The word simply means a meeting, and since what he describes takes place in a meeting, an ordinary Greek reader would think fear came upon the whole meeting; “church” is a specialized meaning.
The next time we find it in Acts is in Stephen’s speech before the court of the Sanhedrin. Stephen tells the story of Moses in a way that highlights the similarities between him and Jesus. In Acts 7.38 he says of Moses: “he was in the assembly in the desert …” “Assembly” correctly translates our word “ekklesia,” but refers, of course, to the congregation of Israel. Luke wants us to make a connection between the church and the “church in the desert.”
There are two Hebrew words used of Israel in the wilderness, edah and qahal. Both mean assembly, or congregation, or community. The first is normally translated into Greek as sunagoge, the second as ekklesia, but their meaning is the same. The first was the name adopted for the normal weekly meetings of the Jews; the second was the name given to Christian meetings, but they mean the same.
So, what is Luke doing? He appears to be making a point. He identifies (or associates) the Christian community with the original Israelite community with Moses. There are a couple of clues in Acts as to why he is doing this. When Paul is before Governor Felix he is accused of being a ring-leader of the sect of the Nazareans.
By the time Luke writes Acts the Christian community is known as the ekklesia (church). The unbelieving Jews call it a sect. But Luke is sensitive to this and counters that actually it is the Sadducees who are a sect. The Christians are in a direct line with the church of Moses in the desert.
Acts, then, is in part what we call an apology, a defense of the church. Luke wants to preach Jesus, but he has also to answer a number of questions which prevent people, especially Jewish people, from becoming Christians. One of these problems is the church. People are saying it is a sect, a breakway from the historic people of God. No, says Luke, it is in direct continuity with Moses and the original Israelite community. It is unbelieving Judaism which is the breakaway. The original church in Jerusalem had all the marks of a community of God’s true people.
[1] Luke 3.8.
[2] Read Romans 1.1 where Paul calls himself an apostle of King Jesus set apart for the gospel.
[3] Joshua 7.1; Acts 5.3 (enosphisato).
[4] Acts 4.33.
[5] Luke 6.47–49.
[6] Acts 26.25–26.
[7] Compare Acts 2.1