God's Vision for His Church

From the whole week we spent with John Stott - below is what he simplifies as the vision of the Church.

1. God’s Vision for His Church

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” – Acts 2:42

What is God’s vision for his church? Luke tells us. Having described what happened on the Day of Pentecost, and having supplied an explanation of it through Peter’s Christ-centered sermon, Luke goes on to show us the effects of Pentecost by giving us a beautiful little cameo of the Spirit-filled church in Jerusalem. Of course, the church did not begin that day. It is incorrect to call the day of Pentecost the birthday of the church. For the church as the people of God goes back to at least four thousand years to Abraham. What happened at Pentecost was that the remnant of God’s people became the Spirit-filled body of Christ.

What then are the distinguishing marks of a living church? To answer this question we have to go back to the beginning and take a fresh look at the first Christian church in Jerusalem. At the same time, it is essential that we are realistic. We have a tendency to romanticize the early church. We look at it through tinted spectacles. We speak of it in whispers, as if it had no faults. Then we miss the rivalries, the hypocrises, the immoralities, and the heresies that troubled the early church as they trouble the church today.

Nevertheless, one thing is certain. The early church, for all its excesses and failures, had been deeply and radically stirred by the Holy Spirit.

So we come back to our question: What did that first-century church look like? What evidences did it give of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit? If we can answer these questions, we will be well on the way to discovering the marks of a living church in the twenty-first century.

2. Study

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.” – Acts 2:42

Luke focuses on four marks of the Jerusalem church. The first is very surprising; we would probably not have chosen it. It is that a living church is a learning church. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.” This is the very first thing Luke tells us. The Holy Spirit, we might say, opened a school in Jerusalem that day. The schoolteachers were the apostles, whom Jesus had appointed and trained. And there were three thousand pupils in the kindergarten. It was a truly remarkable situation.

We note that those new Spirit-filled converts were not enjoying a mystical experience that led them to neglect their intellect, despise theology, or stop thinking. On the contrary, they concentrated on receiving instruction. I do not hesitate to say that anti-intellecualism and the fullness of the Spirit are mutually incompatible. For who is the Spirit? Jesus called him “the Spirit of truth,” so that wherever he is at work, truth matters.

Notice also that those believers did not suppose that, because they had received the Holy Spirit, he was the only teacher they needed and they could get rid of human teachers. No, they sat at the apostles’ feet. They were eager to learn all they could. They knew that Jesus had appointed them teachers. So they submitted to the apostles’ authority, which was authenticated by miracles. For if verse 42 tells us of the apostles’ teaching, verse 43 tells us that the apostles did many signs and wonders. Similarly, some years later Paul referred to his miracles as “the things that mark an apostle” (2 Cor. 12:12).

How is it possible, then, for us to devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching and submit to their authority? For we have to insist that there are no apostles in the church today. To be sure, there are bishops, pioneer missionaries, and other church leaders, and we might perhaps call their ministries apostolic. But there are no apostles who have an authority comparable to that of the apostles Peter, John, and Paul. So the only way we can submit to the apostles’ authority is to submit to their teaching in the New Testament, for it is there that it has come down to us in its definitive form. Loyalty to the apostles’ teaching is the first mark of an authentic church.

Somehwere along the way we separated our minds from the Christian faith. This is not so in the early church. To be a true church meant the church was a studying church. They devoted themselves to learning the truth. Is it possible to suppose that spiritual hunger for knowledge comes as a result of truly being saved? If so, what does it say about someone if they do not desire to learn about Christ and his teachings?

To be Spirit-baptized means one has an interest in studying the Word. They have to use their mind to commit to being a disciple, or student, of Jesus Christ. Do you think the majority of churches exhibit this first mark of a true church?

3. Fellowship

“If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowhip with one another.” – 1 John 1:7

If the first mark of a living church is study, the second is fellowship, and we want to now focus on this topic. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship” (Acts 2:42). This is the well-known Greek word koinonia, which expresses our common Chrisitan life, what we share as Christian believers. It bears witness to two complementary truths, namely what we share in and what we share out.

Firstly, koinonia expresses what we share in together, especially the grace of God. “Our fellowship,” wrote the apostle John, “is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:13), and the apostle Paul added, “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. 13:14). So authentic fellowship is trinitarian fellowship, our common participation in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Many factors separate us – ethnicity, nationality, culture, gender, and age – but we are united in having the same heavenly Father, the same Savior and Lord, and the same indwelling Spirit. It is our common share in him and in his grace that makes us one.

Secondly, koinonia expresses what we share out together. Koinonia is the word Paul used to refer to the collection he was organizing among the Greek churches for the benefit of the poverty-stricken churches in Judea. And the adjective koinonikos means “generous.”

It is on this aspect of the word that Luke concentrates:

“All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.” – Acts 2:44-45

These are very disturbing verses. We tend to jump over them rather quickly in order to avoid their challenge. We will face them in a moment.

4. Sharing

“All the believers were together and had everything in common (koinonia).” – Acts 2:44

A few miles east of Jerusalem at that time the Essene leaders of the Qumran community were committed to the common ownership of property, and the members of the monastic community handed over all their money and possessions when they were initiated.

Certainly Jesus does call some to voluntary poverty, like the rich young ruler, Saint Francis of Assissi and his followers, and Mother Teresa and her sisters, maybe to witness to the truth that a human life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions. But not all Jesus’s followers are called to this. The prohibition of private property is a Marxist, not a Christian, doctrine. Besides, even in Jerusalem the selling and giving were voluntary, for we read in verse 46 that they “broke bread in their homes.” In their homes? But I thought they all had sold their homes and their furniture! Apparently not. And the sin of Ananias and Sapphira recorded in Acts 5 was not that they kept back part of their property but that they kept part while pretending to give it all. Their sin was not greed but deceit. The apostle Peter was clear in his words to Ananias” “Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal?” (Acts 5:4). In other words, all Christians have to make a conscientious decision before God how we use our possessions.

Nevertheless, we must not avoid the challenge of this passage. Those early Christians loved one another, which is hardly surprising, since the first fruit of the Spirit is love. In particular, they cared for their impoverished brothers and sisters, so they shared with them their goods. This principle of voluntary Christian sharing is surely a permanent one. Those of us who live in affluent circumstances must simplify our economic lifestyle, not because we imagine that this would solve the macroeconomic problems of the world, but out of solidarity with the poor.

So a Spirit-filled church is a generous church. Generosity has always been a characteristic of the people of God. Our God is a generous God; his people must be generous too.

-pcraig