Acts
An Expositional Commentary
James
Montgomery
Boice
© 1997 by James Montgomery Boice
Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516–6287
Paperback edition published in 2006
ISBN 10: 0-8010-6633-6
ISBN 978-0-8010-633-7
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Boice, James Montgomery, 1938–
Acts : an expositional commentary / James Montgomery Boice
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 0-8010-1137-X (cloth)
1. Bible. N.T. Acts—Commentaries. 2. Bible. N.T. Acts—Homiletical use. I. Title.
BS2625.3.B58 1997
226.6’077—dc21 97–5128
Scripture quotations not otherwise identified are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Scripture marked kjv is from the King James Version.
To him who has called us to be his witnesses
in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth
A Model Church
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Acts 2:42–47 describes the early church. It is presented as a model church, but this does not mean that it was perfect. A few chapters further on, we are going to find that it was far from perfect. It had hypocrites in it, as our churches also have. It had doctrinal errors. It certainly had sinful human beings of all types, as our churches do. Yet it was a model in many important respects, and it is as such that it is described in Acts 2. These verses tell what developed in the church and how it functioned in those remarkable days after Pentecost. Obviously this description is intended as an example for us and our assemblies.
This was an inner-city church. It was a large church, and it had a multiple staff ministry. It needed the latter because of the 3,000 people who were added to the church at Pentecost, making the total number of believers 3,120 (the 120 of chapter 1 plus the additional 3,000). It began with the twelve apostles. But when the Twelve found that there still were not quite enough people to do the work, they asked the church to elect seven deacons. So they had nineteen officers at that time. And the success of the church, as we soon discover, was that all of the believers (and not just these nineteen) were doing the work of the ministry (see Eph. 4:11–13).
In this chapter we need to look at some of the things that are said about this model church. It was a Bible-studying church that practiced fellowship. It also worshiped and evangelized. The key verse is verse 42: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”
A Learning, Studying Church
The first phrase says that they devoted themselves to “the apostles’ teaching.” In other words, this was a learning, studying church. There were a lot of other things Luke could have said about it. As we go on, we find that it was a joyful church, also an expanding, vibrant church. These are important items. Nevertheless, the first thing Luke talks about is the teaching. He stresses that in these early days, in spite of an experience as great as that of Pentecost, which might have caused them to focus on their experiences, the disciples devoted themselves first to teaching.
It could have been a temptation for the early believers to look back to Pentecost and focus on the past. They might have remembered the way the Holy Spirit came and how he used them to speak so that those in Jerusalem each heard them in his or her own language. They might have longed to experience something like that again. They might have been praying, “Please, Lord, do something miraculous again.” This is not what we find. They are not revelling in their past experiences. Instead, we find them revelling in the Word of God.
I suggest that this is always the first mark of a Spirit-filled church.
A Spirit-filled church always studies the apostolic teaching. It is a learning church that grounds its experiences in and tests those experiences by the Word of God.
It is also interesting that the object of their study was the apostolic teaching. The apostles were people specifically chosen by Jesus Christ to remember, teach about, and authentically record the events and meaning of his ministry. The importance of this office is seen in the way the apostles went about choosing a replacement for Judas, who had betrayed Christ and then committed suicide. Peter led the way. He said that the replacement had to be, first, a person who was present with the Lord from the earliest days, who knew about his ministry and was a witness of the resurrection. Second, he also had to be one whom the Lord specifically appointed to the apostolic office. Many people had witnessed the events of Christ’s ministry, but the Lord did not choose all of them. He chose a certain number. And he chose those to remember and record an official, Spirit-inspired compendium of his teaching. Jesus said in the last discourses, recorded in John’s Gospel, that after he was gone he would send the Spirit to bring to their remembrance all that he had taught.
If somebody says, “But how do we know that these particular men were the true apostles of Christ and spoke with his authority?” the answer is by the “wonders and miraculous signs” mentioned in verse 43: “Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.” I do not think we need to conclude that the wonders and signs were done by the apostles alone and by no one else. Others may have been the agents of miraculous occurrences too. But what the text does say is that miracles were done by the apostles, and the reason they were done by the apostles (this is said explicitly) is that it authenticated them as Christ’s messengers and as bearers of the true Spirit-given teaching.
We find exactly the same case in 2 Corinthians 12:12. Paul is speaking: “The things that mark an apostle—signs, wonders and miracles—were done among you with great perseverance.” In other words, these were given so that those who looked on could say, “These men are God’s appointees. His blessing rests on them, and what they do, they do in God’s name.” When Peter and John and the other apostles spoke, saying that Jesus Christ did so-and-so and taught so-and-so, the early Christians could receive their words as an authentic record and interpretation of Jesus’ life and rightly devote themselves to studying it. They studied this teaching and tested it against the Old Testament.
We live in a different age, of course. We live thousands of years after this teaching. Peter is not with us. James was martyred. John has died. So have all the others. Even Paul, who came along later, has gone. How is it possible for us to focus on the apostolic teaching? These men gave us the New Testament. This is the deposit of their teaching. When it came time to collect the books that were to become our New Testament, the criterion by which that was done was whether they came from the apostles or bore the apostolic blessing. Moreover, the fact that we have our New Testament is a fulfillment of what Jesus Christ said he would do through these apostles. In order for us to copy the New Testament church at this point, as we should, we are to study the book these men have left us. It is in the New Testament that the authentic teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ is to be found.
Let’s put that in terms easy to understand: A Spirit-filled church is always going to be a Bible-studying church. Those two things go together. There have been periods in history when the Bible has fallen on hard times and been neglected by God’s people. These have been dry ages for the church. There have also been periods when the Bible was not always readily available, sometimes because of political pressures. Sometimes even church officials kept the Bible from God’s people. Nevertheless, wherever the church has been greatly blessed, where the Spirit of God has come upon God’s people and the gospel has gone forth in great power and people have responded to it, these have always been ages in which the Bible has been studied carefully. Why? It is because the closer men and women come to God the closer they want to get to where he speaks to their hearts, and that is in the Bible.
What is true of the church is true for individuals also. If you are Spirit-filled, then you will be drawn to this Book. If you are not drawn to this Book, if you do not really want to study it, if you say, “Well, you know, I look at the Bible from time to time, but it seems rather boring to me: it never really does much for me,” you ought to question whether you are really born again. Or if you are born again, you at least ought to question whether you are filled by the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit, whose chief task is to bear witness to Jesus Christ, inevitably draws the people of God to Jesus through the Scriptures.
This means, among other things, that evangelical, Spirit-filled, Bible-oriented churches should offer many ways for people to get to know the Bible. It must be done through the preaching. In fact, that is the preacher’s chief task: to expound the Word of God. He is to study it and then teach it to others. It may be done through Bible classes and home Bible studies. We are going to see that the early Christians worshiped in their homes. So I am sure they studied the Bible in their homes. If we had been there, we would have said, “They’re having home Bible studies.”
Christian Fellowship
Not only did it devote itself to the apostles’ teaching, but the early church also devoted itself to fellowship at many levels. Stott says that “the word ‘fellowship’ was born on the Day of Pentecost.”1 This is because Christian fellowship means “common participation in God,” which is what had drawn the early Christians together. The apostle John wrote, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3).
The Greek word for “fellowship” is koinonia, which has to do with holding something in common. The form of the Greek language spoken in the time of the apostles was not classical Greek but a kind of Greek called Koine. This is from the same root as the word for “fellowship,” and it means “common.” The Greek of the apostles’ time was “common Greek” because it was the universal language of the day. It is that language in which the New Testament is written. The fellowship of the church was a common fellowship because of the great spiritual realities the believers shared in together.
If you have a fellowship that you think is so special (perhaps with only two or three of you) that you do not want anybody else to be part of it, then you had better question whether it is really the fellowship of the people of God. These early Christians had all participated in God the Father and in Jesus Christ. They were one in God. So because they were one in Jesus Christ and in God the Father, they quite naturally participated in a common life and shared everything with one another.
Fellowship with God and true fellowship with others go together. That is why John said, in the verse I cited a moment ago: (1) we want you to have “fellowship with us” and (2) “our fellowship is with the Father.” Some people have said, “The stronger your vertical fellowship is, the stronger your horizontal fellowship will be.” If you find yourself out of fellowship with God, you will begin to find yourself out of fellowship with other Christians. You will say, “I don’t really like to be with other Christians very much. They all seem to be hypocrites.” You will begin to drift off. But if you come close to God, you will inevitably find yourself being drawn close to other Christians. And it works the other way, too. If you spend time with other Christians, if you share a great deal with them, that fellowship will help to draw you closer to the Father.
When we talk about our participation in God, we are talking about a “sharing in.” But this “sharing in” also results in a “sharing out.” In other words, these Christians, who enjoyed their close fellowship, inevitably shared what they had with one another.
A few paragraphs earlier I gave a brief study of the word koinonia, pointing out that it is based on the idea of having things in “common,” “participating in something together,” or “sharing.” Koinonia has a variant closely related to it, koinonikos, which means “generous.” Those who share in God inevitably share in God’s nature, which includes generosity, and they are generous with those around them. Verses 44–45 read, “All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to everyone as he had need” (italics mine).
Because their generosity extended to the sharing of their goods, some have regarded this as a biblical endorsement of communism. It is not communism. In fact, it is the opposite of communism. Communism is a sharing of goods, but it is an enforced sharing on the basis that no one has the right to own anything. Communism is compulsory; therefore it has nothing whatever to do with generosity. Peter himself endorses the right to private property (see Acts 5:3–4 and pages 97–98 of this study).
The sharing of possessions that went on in the early church was not socialism either. Socialism acknowledges the right of private property, but it compels individuals to give a percentage of, or everything above a certain figure, to others. Socialism does not deny a person a right to own things, but it denies him the right to have too many of these things as measured by somebody else’s standard. Most people would be astounded to hear that American life is socialistic, but it is very socialistic. Whenever there is a system that taxes those who have more at a higher rate than those who have less in order that the state can take these resources and redistribute them to those who have less, that is socialism, because it is being done not willingly but by force.
I am not saying we have full-blown socialism in America, only that we have a great deal of it. But the point I am making is not that socialism is bad or good or even whether or not we have it in America. My point is merely that this is not what was going on in the early church. The early Christians shared their possessions, not because they were communists or socialists—not because they were forced to share their things—but for a far better reason. They shared their goods because they were generous, and they were generous because they had learned generosity from God. God had been generous with them. So because God had been generous with them, they were determined to be generous with one another.
Sometimes we reason that because the early Christians were not forced to share their goods we are therefore justified in keeping what we have for ourselves. But we can’t get off the hook quite that easily. It is true that we are not forced to be generous. But if we are followers of Jesus Christ, if we have learned from him, then we know that “a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15), and that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). The standard set before us is the standard not of being served, but of serving. So our obligation is to use what we have for others, which is what the early church did. It is one measure of a Christian’s sanctification and maturity.
A Worshiping Church
The third characteristic of the early Christian church was worship. There was “the breaking of bread” and “prayer.” “Breaking of bread” stands for the communion service, and prayer, although it is something we can do individually and at different times, is in this passage actually the formal exercise of prayer in the assembly. In the Greek text the definite article occurs before the word “prayer.” The text actually says, “to the prayers.” They devoted themselves “to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.” Obviously, that is a reference to something formal—to worship in which the people got together and praised God.
There is also a reference to formal worship in verse 46: “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.” “Temple courts” probably refers to the courtyard of the Gentiles, which was a very large place. On feast days, when everyone packed into it, it could accommodate perhaps two hundred thousand people. It was the only place in Jerusalem where you could get such a large crowd together. Indeed, it may have been here that the large meeting on the day of Pentecost took place, and if it was, then it would have been natural that on set occasions the early Christians returned to the place so they could all enjoy the worship of God as they broke bread in the communion service and offered up prayers.
Then, not only did the Christians worship in a formal setting, perhaps in the large courtyard of the Gentiles, but they worshiped informally as well, as the very next phrase says: “They broke bread in their homes” (v. 46). That is a deliberate repetition. Verse 42 says, “They devoted themselves… to the breaking of bread.” Then verse 46 says, “They broke bread in their homes.” It means that they did both. They had formal worship and they had informal worship. And the informal worship included, and perhaps was largely centered on, the communion service.
How about their music? What did they sing when they got together in the temple courts? They must have sung the psalms, participating in the regular liturgical patterns of Jewish worship. Our equivalent might be the many hymns of the Christian past. What did they sing when they met together in their homes? In that setting their music was probably far less formal, perhaps the equivalent of our so-called praise music or choruses. The psalms were the best worship music. They were based on an inspired text, after all. But that did not exclude the use of other music in its place.
Should Christian worship be formal? Or should it be informal? The answer is certainly that Christian worship should be both. Why should we have to choose between the two? There are different kinds of people, different settings, and different occasions on which we worship. Why should there not be worship appropriate to each occasion?
A Witnessing, Evangelizing Church
There is one other characteristic of the church mentioned in this text. It was a witnessing or evangelizing church. That is why we find as we get to the end of these verses that the Lord added “to their number daily those who were being saved” (v. 47). This verse does not say specifically that they were out witnessing. But we know that the way God reaches people is through the spoken word and that when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, those who received the Spirit immediately began to speak about Jesus. If we find, as we do at the end of this second chapter, that the Lord was adding to their number daily those who were being saved, it must have been because they were out witnessing.
How could they do otherwise? They had experienced something wonderful, the ministry of God’s Son. They had been present in Jerusalem when Jesus had been arrested, tried, and killed. Some had been present when he died on the cross. They had in their number many who were witnesses of the resurrection. These were wonderful facts and theirs was a life-transforming message. They had to share it with other people. How could they not?
Yet, as they shared it, they did not make the mistake of saying, as some do, “We are the ones bringing in the kingdom. We are adding to the church. This is being accomplished by our skill, our eloquence, and our power.” They knew perfectly well that they were only channels for what God was doing, only means to the end that God himself had determined. So they did not say, “We are building the church” but rather, “The Lord added to [our] number daily those who were being saved.”
There is a sense in which both God and we do the work. God works through us, which means that we must work. If we do not work at witnessing, nothing happens. If we do not pray, little happens. But when we do and when it does, it is because God himself is working. To many people that sounds like a contradiction, but it is not a contradiction. It is good biblical theology. It is the way God operates. The apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians in a similar vein, saying to them, “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Phil. 2:12–13, italics mine).
Not only was God saving people, but he was also adding them to the church. These two things go together too. Sometimes we say, “Well, let’s get out and save people.” We do. But then we let them go off and do their own thing, forgetting about them. That is not the way God wants it. When a person is brought to the Lord Jesus Christ, he or she is not brought to him individualistically. People are saved individually. That is, people become Christians by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ themselves. They come one at a time. But when they come, they come into the company of God’s people. God saved many in these days following Pentecost, but when he did, he added them to the fellowship of the church—and the church grew.
Not only did God do the work of saving people and not only did he add them to the church, but he also did it daily. The text says, “The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (italics mine). That seems to have been a normal pattern then, and I assume it should be a normal pattern for us too. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every day we had reports of those who have come to the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior?
John Stott makes an interesting point in his recent commentary on Acts:
Looking back over these marks of the first Spirit-filled community, it is evident that they all concerned the church’s relationships. First, they were related to the apostles (in submission). They were eager to receive the apostles’ instruction. A Spirit-filled church is an apostolic church, a New Testament church, anxious to believe and obey what Jesus and his apostles taught. Second, they were related to each other (in love). They persevered in the fellowship, supporting each other and relieving the needs of the poor. A Spirit-filled church is a loving, caring, sharing church. Third, they were related to God (in worship). They worshiped him in the temple and in the home, in the Lord’s Supper and in the prayers, with joy and with reverence. A Spirit-filled church is a worshiping church. Fourthly, they were related to the world (in outreach). They were engaged in continuous evangelism. No self-centered, self-contained church (absorbed in its own parochial affairs) can claim to be filled with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a missionary Spirit. So a Spirit-filled church is a missionary church.2
The world does not really know what it needs. It does not even know what it wants. But what it needs and wants (or needs to want) are those relationships.
1 John R. W. Stott, “The Sovereign God and the Church,” in Our Sovereign God: Addresses Presented to the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology 1974–1976, ed. James M. Boice (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), 160.
2 Stott, The Message of Acts, 87.
Boice, J. M. (1997). Acts: an expositional commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
Exportado de Software Bíblico Logos, 08:06 18 de janeiro de 2018.
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