Wednesday
Whenever
we talk about the early church, we have to be careful not to make two
common mistakes. On the one hand, we have to be careful not romanticize
or idealize the early church. The stories and letters in the New
Testament about the early Christians do not describe some perfect
utopia. They are about real people, flawed human beings just like us
who sometimes made mistakes and acted in ways that were outside of God’s
plan. The second mistake we must be careful to avoid is the temptation
to legalize the patterns we see in the early church. The stories in
the book of Acts are not meant to be exact prescriptions for our day.
We should not try to recreate the early church in our culture today; it
wouldn’t work even if we could. We can, and we should look for those
principles, values, and commitments, which can be applied in our own
context so that we can continue the “ripple effect” of spiritual
influence, which the early church started.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. – Acts 2:42
This
single verse gives us a window into what we might call the core
commitments of the very first Christians; in it we get a glimpse of the
character of the early Christian community. By all accounts, there was
something remarkably unique about this group of people. Their shared
life together was not like anything the world had ever seen. What was
it that made that first Christian community so unique? What
distinguishes Christian community from any other community or group of
like-minded people? Some of the unique and critical distinctions are
given right here in this verse.
The
first three words of verse 42 read, “they devoted themselves”, the
Greek actually means that they were continually devoting themselves.
This was an ongoing commitment. There is no true community without
commitment! You can have casual friends and acquaintances without much
commitment. You can smile and make small talk at church once a week
without much commitment. But you cannot have true community without
some level of sacrifice and commitment. Far too many American
Christians see church and community as an option, something to make
their life a little better, but not a central commitment of their
existence.
The
very first thing we see that these early Christians were devoted to is
the Apostle’s Teaching. The apostles were essentially the 12 disciples
that Jesus chose. In Luke 6:13 we read, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles. These
men were first hand eyewitnesses of Jesus. They heard Him teach, they
saw Him perform miracles, they watched Him die, and they saw Him raised
from the dead. The early church was devoted to the teaching of these
men. Notice that it does not say they were devoted to the
apostles themselves. What were these apostles teaching? In a
word–Jesus. When they read from and taught about the Old Testament law,
they did so knowing that it pointed to and prophesied about Jesus. The
apostles taught about the life, teaching, death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ. The early church was no cult of personality built around
the ego of a few superstars, it was built on the person of Jesus Christ.
This
might sound obvious to you, but it is absolutely crucial. More and
more churches today are drifting away from this central conviction.
They teach all kinds of interesting things, but they are fuzzy about the
person and the work of Jesus Christ. I cannot think of a better litmus
test for a church than what they believe and teach about Jesus Christ.
Wherever and whenever the church has had the most influence in the
world, it has taught Jesus. Not the Jesus of popular opinion or secular
myth, but Jesus as He is revealed to us in the gospels. The Messiah,
the Living Word made flesh, the Righteous Son of God, the Lamb of God
that takes away the sins of the world!
The
ripple effect of the church throughout history was not, and is not a
self-help movement or a humanitarian service movement, it was and will
always be a Jesus movement!
Jeff Frazier
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