Church Life (Acts 2:42)
The preaching of the gospel had been blessed in Jerusalem and large numbers had been converted. Many of these converts were from other countries and eventually they would have returned home. It is not possible to know if any of them are included in the description of church life given in Acts 2:42, although the presence of such persons would require the practice of sharing meals in different homes which is mentioned in 2:46. In any case, eventually those from other countries would return home and the disciples would be mainly those who lived in the city. What did these disciples do? According to this verse, they went to church.
These early disciples had certain features of their lives that are common to all disciples, and that is that each of them lived in three worlds. First, a disciple of Jesus in Jerusalem lived in a personal Christian world (for example, his private devotions and his personal witness to Jesus). Second, the disciple of Jesus lived he lives in a non-Christian world (for example, his employment or his neighbours). Third, such a disciple lived in a corporate Christian world (his involvement in the meetings and activities of his church). Sometimes, these worlds overlap: for example, his neighbours may also be members of the same congregation or his personal Bible study may coincide with the topic preached by his pastor. These three worlds are still with us today.
In each of these worlds, he has to function as a disciple of Jesus, yet he may not function in the same way in these different worlds. Steady intellectual study is required in both his personal Christian life and in his corporate Christian life, but it may not occur in his non-Christian environment. Of course, the illustration should not be reversed: plenty study in the secular location, but little or none in the Christian locations. Sadly, I suspect this reversal may be very common today.
Luke here describes the third of these possible worlds – corporate Christian living. ‘And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.’ In this verse, he specifies four of their activities as well as indicating how they performed each of these interests.
Manner of their involvement
Luke records that they devoted themselves to church life. The terms that he uses point to utter dedication, almost to a sense of stubbornness, to the corporate activities of the church in Jerusalem. Nothing could prevent them attending its gatherings.
I wonder who told Luke about these early days. It is generally recognised that he probably engaged in some research when he was in Palestine along with Paul, about thirty years after the coming of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Perhaps Luke met with believers who recalled with gladness, but also with a measure of sadness, the attitude that was expressed in those early days of the Christian church. These believers would have been similar to those believers who have experienced revivals in the past – they know that the church can be better than it currently is.
The obvious question to ask is, ‘Why did they devote themselves to these activities?’ It was not because they happened to be the kind of people who would get deeply involved in whatever was going on. There are people like that; they treat a game of tiddlywinks with the same passion as when they are striving for a promotion at work. Such people have an incredible drive. No doubt, some of the converts on the Day of Pentecost would have had these characteristics. Yet they all had a more powerful incentive for getting involved. Each of them had met Jesus Christ and were beginning to discover that they had entered a new world. They had been religious before, steeped in Judaism, which was why they had been in Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of Pentecost. But now they had experienced a new and better situation in which they could encounter Jesus Christ in his church.
Marks of a healthy church
As we noted earlier, Luke mentions four regular features of the life of this congregation. It may be that Luke lists the features in the order in which they would have occurred in a Christian gathering. Their time together would have begun with teaching, followed by fellowship, then the Lord’s Supper, and finally a time of prayer. Whether this order was always followed cannot be proved. What is clear is that these were the four features of the corporate life of the early church.
The first feature is that these new disciples were devoted to the teaching of the apostles. This phrase does not mean that they believed the doctrines that the apostles also believed, although there is no doubt that they did so. Instead it means that they attended upon the teaching of the apostles. They came to the locations where one or more of the apostles was giving instruction to the church.
In passing, we should ask, ‘Why were the apostles significant?’ The reason is that these were the men that Jesus personally selected for the role of being the initial teachers of the church. They had spent three years with him, learning from him, and were also given the assurance by him that the Holy Spirit would bring to their recollection what they had been taught by Jesus (John 16:). Jesus had equipped them to fulfil his charge to them in Matthew 28:18-20: ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ Their ministry would have been greatly encouraged by Jesus’ reminder to them that he possessed universal control and by his promise to be permanently with them.
Although there have not been any apostles in this sense since the first century, we have their teachings in the New Testament. Every apostle did not write a book of the Bible (of the eleven original disciples, Thomas, Andrew, Philip, two James, Bartholemew, Simon the Zealot and Judas did not write such a book). Nevertheless, those books that were not written by an apostle – such as Mark, Luke, James and Jude – were composed by men who were in the company of the apostles and who accepted the teachings of the apostles. So while we do not have any apostles alive today, their teaching is still the only basis for the doctrines that we believe.
Their method of teaching described in Acts 2:42 reminds us that communication of the truth must be given by those who have been themselves instructed by Jesus. Such instruction is more than head knowledge of particular opinions. Rather there is an inbuilt conviction of the truth of the message, and this conviction comes by spending time with the Teacher. Although it is not possible for today’s preachers to spend time with Jesus in the way that the apostles did when he was on earth, it is the case that they interact with him today through the same means as they did – the Holy Spirit. By listening to the Spirit in the text, we can have true spiritual teaching.
Of course, it is possible to have spiritual teaching falling on deaf ears, just as it is possible sadly to have nonsense falling on spiritual ears. The ideal situation is a combination of spiritual teaching and spiritual listening. Luke highlights the fact that the members of the church were hungry for such teaching.
How did they maintain the hunger? Perhaps an illustration from today will help. It is natural to feel hungry. Yet there is more than one way to meet the hunger. One person may resolve his hunger pangs by eating junk food. This will have two effects: he will not maintain a healthy body and he will have no space for proper food. Our minds will always be hungry for knowledge and our hearts will always be eager for emotional experiences. These expressions are part of what it means to be human. Every day, our minds and heart will get provision. We will know that we have been eating spiritual junk food if we do not have an appetite for the teaching of the Word.
These early Christian did not regard listening to teaching as intellectually stifling. Instead they wanted their minds expanded by the truth, and there is no limit to the extent by which our minds can be gradually extended, and if we persevere, we will make great spiritual discoveries as we listen to biblical teaching. We can imagine them realising in deeper ways the amazing details of the plan of salvation.
In that they listened to the teaching of all the apostles, it is evident that the church in Jerusalem was not yet affected by the tendency to follow particular teachers. This problem raised its head in Corinth, and it has abounded ever since. Rather we are to be like the church in Jerusalem which was so hungry for teaching that they would listen eagerly to whichever of the apostles was explaining the faith. No doubt, these apostles would have differed in style and emphasis, because each would have communicated the truth through their own individual experience of Jesus.
We can imagine Thomas exhorting the congregation not to miss a meeting of the congregation without a valid reason, because he would remind them that on one occasion he stayed at home and missed out on the first corporate meeting that Jesus had with his disciples. With sadness, Thomas would say, ‘That meeting will never be repeated. It cannot be. I lost that opportunity, and I will never get that precise opportunity again. I missed seeing Jesus on the day that he arose from the dead.’ Yet we can also imagine him telling the disciples about the wonderful restoration that Jesus gives. He would say, ‘I made sure that I was present the next time the disciples met together. Jesus again came, and addressed me personally, and forgave my folly.’ Thomas would be able to challenge and comfort these new disciples out of his own experience as well as to instruct them about the truths he had learned from Jesus at other times. And the same could be said of all the apostles as they taught God’s people.
Secondly, the members of the church in Jerusalem engaged in fellowship with one another. Fellowship is more than meeting together, it is meeting together to share Christian realities. I suspect what Luke has in mind here is less formal, mutual edification. It would have involved practical expressions of brotherly love (after all, many of these converts were not from Jerusalem, but must have stayed on to learn more about their new faith before they returned home), and no doubt there were many expressions of thankfulness as those in need received from those who had plenty to give. Yet their fellowship was also verbal. We can imagine these disciples standing together after the address by an apostle and saying to one another, ‘That teaching did me good. It spoke to a situation I was facing this week. Let me tell you about it.’ And his friends, after hearing about it, would promise to pray for him. Or another might say, ‘I did not fully grasp what Peter said today.’ His friends would then try and explain it, or if they could not, they would say, ’Let’s go and ask Peter what he meant.’ Such interaction is a very effective means of writing biblical truth in our hearts.
Thirdly, these early Christians took part in the breaking of bread or the Lord’s Supper. It is quite clear from the Book of Acts that the early church took part in the Lord’s Supper every Lord’s Day. Indeed, it was by this particular function that Paul defined the regular Sunday service in Troas, although other features such a preaching and sharing also took place: ‘On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight’ (Acts 20:7) .
Right away we can see that we do not follow the practice of the early church in this regard. John Calvin noticed this in his day as well and said in a sermon on this passage: ‘One of our great faults is that we do not celebrate the Lord’s Supper with the zeal of the primitive church.’ It cannot but weaken our faith and love to have the Supper so infrequently. Of course, some people suggest that more frequent celebrations would cause us to be too familiar. That is a silly argument. If that is the danger, then we should apply it also to Bible reading and to prayer.
There are many uses of the Lord’s Supper, but I will mention two briefly. First, it is a reminder that we are pilgrims on a journey. At the Supper, we not only look back to what Jesus did on the cross, we also look forward to the return of Jesus in the future. At the Lord’s Table, we express our grateful love to Jesus for taking our place on the cross, and we increase our longing for the better world that is yet to be. And since these emotional responses are strengthened each time we sit at the Table, I cannot understand why the church has it so infrequently.
Second, the Lord’s Supper is a visible picture of the common bond that believers have with one another. It is a family meal in which the children of God meet under the loving eye of their heavenly Father, recall the activities of their Elder Brother, look ahead to their enjoyment of the family inheritance, and do so under the guidance of the Spirit of adoption.
The fourth feature of early church life was prayers. As with the Lord’s Supper, many things can be said about prayer. Prayer is an expression of dependence on God, and the degree we pray reveals the extent of our dependence. In addition, prayer is an expression of our expectation of God, of what we understand his promises and abilities to be. It is not a sign of unbelief to pray often for the same blessing; rather repetition is an expression of ardent desire to receive from God.
Obviously, we can pray by ourselves and receive answers to our prayers. Yet private prayer can never be a substitute for corporate prayer, and it is a sin to engage in private prayer if we should be at the corporate prayer meeting. It also seems to be the case that answers are given to corporate prayer quicker and in greater degree than with answers to private prayer.
Means of grace
In addition to these four features being the marks of a healthy church, they are also means of grace. By this term, we mean that Jesus is also active in each of them. Luke had indicated at the commencement of his account that Jesus was continuing to work among his people from heaven. He had worked on the Day of Pentecost by bringing all these converts into the church. And he continued to work on their behalf while they gathered together as the church.
Jesus is active in the teaching ministry of the church. When these believers gathered together, they heard one or more of the apostles preaching to them. Yet behind the scenes, Jesus was functioning as the Prophet of his church. Throughout their time of teaching, he was leading his servants as to what to say, and he would have something to say to each person that was gathered there. Sometimes, what he has to say is covered in the general teaching that was given, and the individuals may not have noticed anything particular. At other times, a listener could sense the address was so personal and so accurate that he or she concluded that the preacher had some private information about the situation. He did not, of course. What was happening was that Jesus was speaking to the person specifically. This does not mean that we should look out for specific messages. Normally, we should pay attention to the regular message because Jesus always speaks through it. In addition, we should pay attention to any specific message that we sense in a sermon.
Jesus is active in the fellowship of the church. Sometimes he prompts some of his people to share temporal provisions with other believers. At other times he leads disciples to ask particular questions to a fellow Christian in order to identify something that is wrong. Or he may lead them to quote encouraging promises to another believer without them being aware of the individual’s needs.
Jesus is also active in the Lord’s Supper. He is not absent from the occasion, although he is not physically in the room. He comes to meet with his people, to strengthen them spiritually with graces from heaven. There may not be a connection, but I wonder why churches which do not have frequent communion also have problems with lack of assurance. It is the case that failure to have a means of grace deprives us of occasions for receiving from Jesus.
Finally, Jesus is active during times of prayer. Like the conductor of an orchestra, he points to one member and gets him or her to pray about a particular thing. Jesus should be in control of the vocal and silent prayers of the church. Prayer that receives answers comes from the heavenly Conductor. We speak about individuals leading in prayer, which is the case when words are spoken. But we should pray to be led by Jesus, whether our prayers are vocal or silent. If we are not praying in the secret of our hearts during a prayer meeting, it means that the Conductor does not think we are in a fit state to contribute to the harmony of the occasion.
Sometimes we search for a definition of a Christian. Often the definition concerns his private Christian life or his involvement with the world. Seldom does a definition focus on how he relates to the church. Yet I think it is legitimate to say that a true Christian is a person who wants to meet with other Christians in order to learn, in order to share, in order to remember their Master, and in order to pray. Luke describes the church life in Jerusalem long ago. Does he describe ours today?