"God's Household of Faith: The Formation of the Christian Community"

Propositional Argument

The household of faith is a learning, loving, worshiping, and evangelistic community that the modern church should pattern itself after is they desire to bring in the harvest of souls for the kingdom of God.

Church Then and Now...

Church was not an option on Sunday; it was the standard for the typical African American household. There was no debate or discussion about church, you were going to church and it was for some an all day event. Typically, the day started at 9:00 am, for Sunday School, 10:30 am for morning worship, 3:00pm and close the day with 6:00pm service. Going to church was a full time job with a promise of payment in the sweet by and by, when the morning comes, which made no sense to me because I should have at least got a hamburger out the deal. Monday was for mission, Tuesday was for BTU, Wednesday was prayer meeting, Thursday was choir rehearsal, Friday was an off day, Saturdays were youth meetings and YPWW, and then we were back to Sunday. Church was all we had at one point because it was the church that got us through rough patches and tough times. It was the church were fellowships were forged and faith was taught. It was at church that many of saw “the light” that rolled our burdens away...It was at church where many met the Lord and developed their concept of God and the church…It was at the church where pastor married couples and funeralized family and friends...It was at church where the concept of commitment developed and the idea that it takes a village to raise a child was real… It was at church where everyone was treated like family…It was at church where people were demonstrative in their praise because they knew what the Lord had done for them. People praised in such a way that it would spread like wildfire across the congregation because then everyone had a reason to celebrate the Lord. People didn’t have to be pumped and primed with spiritual jargon to stoke their emotional fire, but the people came with a mind for honoring God through fellowship, praise, and worship. The church would take the time and go door to door and share their faith with non believers because they believed that Jesus was the answer for the world today.

Well, now the church is an option for Sunday as AAU sports and others events take priority over fellowshipping with one another. For some, the church is not the standard for the family as now there is debate and discussion about going to church, and if they go, they don’t want to be there all day. Church services are shorter because people have “other things” to do after church, so their minds are already out of church while sitting in church. It is rare to find a church that holds service past an hour and fifteen minutes…People look for their “pay now” and are unwilling to keep a pay it forward attitude…Sunday School is a thing of the past and afternoon and evening services are just about extinct…Church ministries are combined into one day to maximize parishioner time at the church because life is full of priorities…Church is now is part of a weekend choice that doesn’t get chosen…Choirs perform for the people instead of inviting God’s presence into the worship experience…Exaltation is sought after, while edification is excluded from church vernacular…people who’ve been saved for a couple of seconds feel they are most spiritual in the church…Some want to go from the pew the pulpit because in this day every one has a “word...” Discipleship is now new membership orientation that teaches new members “about the work” and …We now have to have “National Back to Church Sunday” and yet people still find other places to go…Some churches exhibit childish, immature and toxic traits that turn people away from the church…Some church create dysfunction through people not understanding their place and role in the church…let me say that again…some church exhibit dysfunctional tendencies when people operate outside their given assignment, and when they are held accountable for their actions, it becomes problematic and they assume they are being targeted…Church now is a concert where the pastor/preacher star and Jesus is the best supporting actor…The Holy Spirit has been replaced with emotionalism and Jesus as the light of the world has been replaced with strobe lights…Church now is not the church your dad, mom, grammy, grandma, or your paw paw experienced…it is something very, very different…

The Acts Continue

The Day of Pentecost brought the fulfillment of the Jesus’ prophecy concerning the descent of the Holy Spirit that would fall on all flesh, and imbue the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ with the authority and power to continue the work Jesus begun in the Gospels. As the Spirit descended on them as cloven tongues of fire, and they began to speak with unknown tongues while other outside heard them. Peter rises and preaches the first message to those present in the upper room, quoting from the prophet Joel about the coming of the Spirit, then transitioning to his account of Christ’s earthly ministry. Peter hits the highlights: (1) Jesus was sent by God, (2) Jesus was crucified, and (3) Jesus was resurrected by God as foretold by king David. Peter sums up his sermon that God made Jesus both Lord and Christ, and it brought conviction to those listening, leading them to ask “what shall we do.” Peter provides road to salvation: (1) repent, (2) baptism, (3) forgiveness of sins, and (4) receive the Holy Spirit. Three thousand accepted the gospel that day and from this one sermon, a community of faith was born that would carry on the work of the kingdom. The early church is the best version of the church as the modern church seems to operate with a distorted view of God which creates a distorted view of the church.

A Learning Community

The church motto encourages people to come as they are because Jesus accepts us just as we are, yet, I think many still come as they are without becoming Christlike. Salvation introduces fallen humanity to the faithful God; discipleship develops the redeemed to reflect Christ. Simon Peter’s sermon laid the foundation for this new community of faith, or in the vernacular, the church that would carry on the ministry of Jesus through the apostle’s leadership. The community of faith was built on Christ, just as Jesus told Peter in Matthew 16:18, and this new community of faith began the journey to be Christlike. The community of faith today would do well to follow the early church’s pattern so that we can experience the results the early church experience. The early church is described as devoted, or eimi, to possess certain characteristics, whether inherent or transitory. The community’s goal was not to build their kingdom, but to become like Christ. Since both the apostles and these new converts had never been a community, Luke provides the pattern through which this community develop:

Devoted to the apostles’ teaching (the message that transforms)—They passed along the instructions of Christ to this new community of faith, and that would have included such subjects as his resurrection, the Old Testament Scriptures, the Christian witness, and surely their own reminiscences of Jesus’ earthly ministry and teachings.

Fellowship (koinonia) — close association involving mutual interests and sharing. They were devoted a fellowship that was expressed in their mutual meals and in their prayer life together. The presence of the article in the Greek text before prayers has led some interpreters to see this as a reference to their keeping the formal prayer hours of Judaism in the temple. They may well have done so to some extent, for their faithfulness in attending temple worship is noted in 2:46 and 3:1. The reference, however, is probably much broader and involves primarily their sharing in prayer together in their private house worship.

Breaking of bread — 2 Corinthians 10:17-23

Prayer — The community interceded for one another...

Witnessed marked by signs and wonders—The witnessing of the Spirit’s power created a reverent fear of God...Since the teaching of the apostles has come down to us in its definitive form in the New Testament, contemporary devotion to the apostles’ teaching will mean submission to the authority of the New Testament. A Spirit-filled church is a New Testament church, in the sense that it studies and submits to New Testament instruction. The Spirit of God leads the people of God to submit to the Word of God.

John R. W. Stott, The Message of Acts: The Spirit, the Church & the World, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 82.

K. Green said:

“Fellowship is not merely a coming together. Men come together in battlefields to kill everyone; in gambling dens to rob everyone; on political platforms to oppose everyone! Fellowship is experienced by those who come together to experience a common faith, a common purpose and joy.”

A Loving Community

Pastor Marc James said:

“A loving community exhibits the love of God that runs from heart to heart.”

There is a dangerous distinction arising within the church that “segregates” membership based their financial contribution to the church. The early church avoided this pitfall because of the strength of unity seen within the community of faith because of the unity that bound the community. Their new found faith in the resurrected Christ and through the words of Peter and the other apostles brought individuals that gathered and had everything in common. Today, the community of faith has more differences, disagreements, and dysfunction than unity…the early church exhibited the type of care the community needs today. Instead of the church being a community of faith, it has become a subdivision where people keep to themselves and the “HOA” rides around looking to see who’s “house” is in violation.

Acts 9. The Common Life of the Community (2:42–47)

Here two ideals for a community of goods seem to be combined. First is the Greek ideal of a community in which everything is held in common and shared equally. It is a basically utopian concept, which can be traced as far back as the Pythagorean communities and is often expressed by the same phrase Luke employed in v. 44, “holding all in common” (echein hapanta koina). Verse 45, however, speaks against the early Christian community adopting a practice of community ownership. The imperfect tense is used, indicating that this was a recurrent, continuing practice: their practice was to sell their property and goods and apportion the proceeds whenever a need arose. This is much more in keeping with the Old Testament ideal of community equality, of sharing with the needy so that “there will be no poor among you” (Deut 15:4f.).

They devoted themselves … to the fellowship (koinōnia). Koinōnia (from koinos, ‘common’) bears witness to the common life of the church in two sense. First, it expresses what we share in together. This is God himself, for ‘our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ’, and there is ‘the fellowship of the Holy Spirit’. Thus koinōnia is a Trinitarian experience; it is our common share in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But secondly, koinōnia also expresses what we share out together, what we give as well as what we receive. Koinōnia is the word Paul used for the collection he was organizing among the Greek churches, and koinonikos is the Greek word for ‘generous’. It is to this that Luke is particularly referring here, because he goes on at once to describe the way in which these first Christians shared their possessions with one another: all the believers were together and had everything in common (koina). Selling their possessions and goods (probably meaning their real estate and their valuables respectively), they gave to anyone as he had need (44–45). These are disturbing verses. Do they mean that every Spirit-filled believer and community will follow their example literally?

It is important to note that even in Jerusalem the sharing of property and possessions was voluntary. According to verse 46, they broke bread in their homes. So evidently many still had homes; not all had sold them. It is also noteworthy that the tense of both verbs in verse 45 is imperfect, which indicates that the selling and the giving were occasional, in response to particular needs, not once and for all. Further, the sin of Ananias and Sapphira, to which we shall come in Acts 5, was not greed or materialism but deceit; it was not that they had retained part of the proceeds of their sale, but that they had done so while pretending to give it all. Peter made this plain when he said to them: ‘Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal?’ (5:4).

At the same time, although the selling and the sharing were and are voluntary, and every Christian has to make conscientious decisions before God in this matter, we are all called to generosity, especially towards the poor and needy. Already in the Old Testament there was a strong tradition of care for the poor, and the Israelites were to give a tenth of their produce to ‘the Levite, the alien, the fatherless and the widow’. How can Spirit-filled believers possibly give less? The principle is stated twice in the Acts: they gave to anyone as he had need (45), and ‘there were no needy persons among them … the money … was distributed to anyone as he had need’ (4:34–35). As John was to write later, if we have material possessions and see a brother or sister in need, but do not share what we have with him or her, how can we claim that God’s love dwells in us? Christian fellowship is Christian caring, and Christian caring is Christian sharing.

Chrysostom gave a beautiful description of it: ‘This was an angelic commonwealth, not to call anything of theirs their own. Forthwith the root of evils was cut out.… None reproached, none envied, none grudged; no pride, no contempt was there.… The poor man knew no shame, the rich no haughtiness.’ So we must not evade the challenge of these verses. That we have hundreds of thousands of destitute brothers and sisters is a standing rebuke to us who are more affluent. It is part of the responsibility of Spirit-filled believers to alleviate need and abolish destitution in the new community of Jesus.

A Worshiping Community

They devoted themselves … to the breaking of bread and to prayer (42). That is, their fellowship was expressed not only in caring for each other, but in corporate worship too. Moreover, the definite article in both expressions (literally, ‘the breaking of the bread and the prayers’) suggests a reference to the Lord’s Supper on the one hand (although almost certainly at that early stage as part of a larger meal) and prayer services or meetings (rather than Private prayer) on the other. There are two aspects of the early church’s worship which exemplify its balance.

First, it was both formal and informal, for it took place both in the temple courts and in their homes (46), which is an interesting combination. It is perhaps surprising that they continued for a while in the temple, but they did. They did not immediately abandon what might be called the institutional church. I do not believe they still participated in the sacrifices of the temple, for already they had begun to grasp that these had been fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ, but they do seem to have attended the prayer services of the temple (cf. 3:1), unless, as has been suggested, they went up to the temple to preach, rather than to pray. At the same time, they supplemented the temple services with more informal and spontaneous meetings (including the breaking of bread) in their homes. Perhaps we, who get understandably impatient with the inherited structures of the church, can learn a lesson from them. For myself, I believe that the Holy Spirit’s way with the institutional church, which we long to see reformed according to the gospel, is more the way of patient reform than of impatient rejection. And certainly it is always healthy when the more formal and dignified services of the local church are complemented with the informality and exuberance of home meetings. There is no need to polarize between the structured and the unstructured, the traditional and the spontaneous. The church needs both.

The second example of the balance of the early church’s worship is that it was both joyful and reverent. There can be no doubt of their joy, for they are described as having glad and sincere hearts (46), which literally means ‘in exultation [agalliasis] and sincerity of heart’. The NEB unites the two words by translating ‘with unaffected joy’. Since God had sent his son into the world, and had now sent them his Spirit, they had plenty of reason to be joyful. Besides, ‘the fruit of the Spirit is … joy’,67 and sometimes a more uninhibited joy than is customary (or even acceptable) within the staid traditions of the historic churches. Yet every worship service should be a joyful celebration of the mighty acts of God through Jesus Christ. It is right in public worship to be dignified; it is unforgivable to be dull. At the same time, their joy was never irreverent. If joy in God is an authentic work of the Spirit, so is the fear of God. Everyone was filled with awe (43), which seems to include the Christians as well as the non-Christians. God had visited their city. He was in their midst, and they knew it. They bowed down before him in humility and wonder. It is a mistake, therefore, to imagine that in public worship reverence and rejoicing are mutually exclusive. The combination of joy and awe, as of formality and informality, is a healthy balance in worship.

An Evangelistic Community

Pastor Marc said:

“The church remains empty due to the lack of people in the highway and the hedges who lack the compulsion to go into the highway and the hedges and tell men to come to Christ.”

So far we have considered the study, the fellowship and the worship of the Jerusalem church, for it is to these three things that Luke says the first believers devoted themselves. Yet these are aspects of the interior life of the church; they tell us nothing about its compassionate outreach to the world. Tens of thousands of sermons have been preached on Acts 2:42, which well illustrates the danger of isolating a text from its context. On its own, verse 42 presents a very lopsided picture of the church’s life. Verse 47b needs to be added: And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. Those first Jerusalem Christians were not so preoccupied with learning, sharing and worshipping, that they forgot about witnessing. For the Holy Spirit is a missionary Spirit who created a missionary church. As Harry Boer expressed it in his challenging book Pentecost and Missions, the Acts ‘is governed by one dominant, overriding and all-controlling motif. This motif is the expansion of the faith through missionary witness in the power of the Spirit.… Restlessly the Spirit drives the church to witness, and continually churches rise out of the witness. The church is a missionary church’.

From these earliest believers in Jerusalem, we can learn three vital lessons about local church evangelism. First, the Lord himself (that is, Jesus) did it: the Lord added to their number. Doubtless he did it through the preaching of the apostles, the witness of church members, the impressive love of their common life, and their example as they were praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people (47a). Yet he did it. For he is the head of the church. He alone has the prerogative to admit people into its membership and to bestow salvation from his throne. This is a much needed emphasis, for many people talk about evangelism today with reprehensible self-confidence and even triumphalism, as if they think the evangelization of the world will be the ultimate triumph of human technology. We should harness to the evangelistic task all the technology God has give us, but only in humble dependence on him as the principal evangelist.

Secondly, what Jesus did was two things together: he added to their number … those who were being saved (the present participle sōzomenous either being timeless or emphasizing that salvation is a progressive experience culminating in final glorification). He did not add them to the church without saving them (no nominal Christianity at the beginning), nor did he save them without adding them to the church (no solitary Christianity either). Salvation and church membership belonged together; they still do. Thirdly, the Lord added people daily. The verb is an imperfect (‘kept adding’), and the adverb (‘daily’) puts the matter beyond question. The early church’s evangelism was not an occasional or sporadic activity. They did not organize quinquennial or decennial missions (missions are fine so long as they are only episodes in an ongoing program). No, just as their worship was daily (46a), so was their witness. Praise and proclamation were both the natural overflow of hearts full of the Holy spirit. And as their outreach was continuous, so continuously converts were being added. We need to recover this expectation of steady and uninterrupted church growth.

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. Secondly, 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. Thirdly, they were related to God (in worship). They worshipped 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 worshipping church. Fourthly, they were related to the world (in outreach). They were engaged in continuous evangelism. No 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.

There is no need for us to wait, as the hundred and twenty had to wait, for the Spirit to come. For the Holy Spirit did come on the Day of Pentecost, and has never left his church. Our responsibility is to humble ourselves before his sovereign authority, to determiner not to quench him, but to allow him his freedom. For then our churches will again manifest those marks of the Spirit’s presence, which many young people are specially looking for, namely biblical teaching, loving fellowship, living worship, and an ongoing, outgoing evangelism.