Today the gospel faces multiple challenges in Britain. The institutional Church is being shaken and marginalised, with a voice that has less and less influence on the nation. The Christian moral basis on which Britain depended for many years has been laid aside and forgotten.
Of course, we know that churches are not alone in experiencing difficult times; all our social institutions are being shaken, from the economy to the family. In just one generation, the personal and corporate values of the nation have changed fundamentally.
Further afield, we hear daily of wars and political crises, turmoil in the Middle East, economic chaos and instability in the environment, affecting millions. And the pace of change appears to be accelerating, not slowing down.
Studying the New Testament community of believers helps give us a deeper understanding of God’s desires for his ekklesia, his Church, at this time. In this first article we will look at the model picture of the early Church in Acts 2:42-47, a passage which has inspired the planting of more new churches and expressions of ekklesia than any other.
The Community of Believers
The description in Acts 2 reveals a picture of a community of believers, rather than ‘a church’ in an institutional or organisational sense. The believers were still worshipping in the Temple, although they were also meeting in one another’s houses. Luke summarises in Acts 2:42 four of the key elements in the common life of believers in the earliest days: “They devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”
It was the Apostles who were primarily responsible for teaching the community. Peter’s speech to the crowd in Jerusalem (Acts 2:14-36) indicates the content of this teaching. The task of the Apostles was to recall the teaching of Jesus and bear witness to his life and ministry. Their teaching also emphasised the significance of his death and resurrection, which they set in the context of the religious heritage of Israel, drawing in particular upon Messianic prophecies.
The koinonia, or fellowship, was the major characteristic of the community - their common belonging to Christ and therefore to each other. Belief in Jesus as Lord and Messiah brought the people together and gave them a shared identity. This belief created the community, transforming them from a collection of individuals from different tribes, families and backgrounds, with differences in social status, sex and age, into a single body with a corporate identity, a common commitment and a shared purpose.
The belief in Jesus as Lord and Messiah transformed the early believers from a collection of disparate individuals into a single body with a corporate identity and a shared purpose.
They ate their meals together in one another’s homes and these community meals became times of great rejoicing, worship and praise as “they ate together with glad and sincere hearts” (Acts 2:46). The meals were not only times of sharing their food with each other but also times of sharing their joys in the Lord Jesus. These common meals where they broke bread together, praised God and remembered the Lord Jesus, were developed by the ‘Early Church Fathers’ into the earliest forms of the Eucharist.
Prayer had already become an important part of the common life of the believers before the Day of Pentecost, while they were waiting for the fulfilment of the promise of Jesus. We read: “they all joined together constantly in prayer along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers” (Acts 1:14). It was this praying together that created the unity that existed among the 120 believers who were together on the Day of Pentecost.
After Pentecost, prayer took on an even greater importance in the face of mounting opposition from the authorities; hence we find the believers raising their voices to God in prayer when Peter and John reported what the chief priests and elders had said to them following their arrest for healing the cripple at one of the gates of the Temple (Acts 4:24). Their time of prayer ended with intercession: “Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus” (Acts 4:30).
Further Principles
There were a number of other elements which characterised the common life of the believers in the earliest days, one of which was an experience and expectation of the miraculous.
The believers were familiar with signs and wonders wrought by Jesus and his disciples during his ministry and also from the time the Holy Spirit had come upon them at Pentecost. Miracles were a regular part of the ministry of the Apostles (Acts 2:43). The healing of the crippled man recorded in Acts 3 must have drawn the attention of the whole of Jerusalem to the Apostles and their teaching concerning Jesus.
One of the consequences of the presence of signs and wonders was an increased sense of awe. The sense of awe shared by the whole community of believers stemmed from the knowledge of the constant presence of the Lord Jesus among them. They were actually seeing the fulfilment of his promise not to leave them alone but to come to them and abide with them for ever (John 14).
This awe was particularly noticeable following the sudden deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, who had each lied to the Apostles about the gift of money they had given to the community following the sale of a piece of land, when they pretended that they had given the whole amount (Acts 5). This husband and wife had turned their thinking to personal gain rather than towards benefiting the whole community - a trait that would show itself time and again as the Church expanded. Human wisdom so easily begins to take over from heavenly wisdom and must always be fought against – retaining full allegiance to the Lord in all ways.
Another characteristic of the common life of the believers in the earliest days was an experience and expectation of the miraculous.
But despite this setback (or perhaps even because of the reaction from the believers in their return to total obedience), the evidence of the presence of the Lord Jesus and the blessing of God upon the community of believers was a powerful witness in Jerusalem. It no doubt accounts for the fact, recorded by Luke in Acts 2:47, that they “enjoyed the favour of all the people”. This statement is immediately followed by “and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” People wanted to come and join them so that they too might be in the place of God’s blessing.
The sharing of possessions recorded in Acts 2:45 was an outcome of the love the members felt for each other. They could not see others in need without sharing. The believers were “selling their possessions and goods” so that they were able to give to any of the believers according to each one’s need. This sharing of goods was a consequence of their love for one another and a practical demonstration of their belief that they were members of one family, under the headship of Christ.
It is no surprise, then, to see Paul using the analogy of a human body, and the relationship of parts of the body to each other, to describe the characteristics of the community of believers.
Next week, we will look at this analogy more closely. In the meantime, if you would like to think and pray through some of these concepts – whether or on your own or as part of a group – why not consider the following questions and post your responses below?
- Acts 2:42-47 gives a picture of life in the early Church which is often idealised. But we read in Paul’s accounts of the challenges the Church also faced, particularly the church in Corinth when this did not seem to work. Therefore, should this be regarded as the ideal pattern for the Church today?
- What are the implications of the concept of koinonia (Acts 2:42) for the Church today? Does this only apply to local fellowships or can it also be applied to the worldwide Body of Christ?
This teaching series is based on a booklet, 'The Community of Believers: Then and Now', first published in 1989 and revised in 2014.