The Heart of the Church
Children’s Message
“Souls” does not exclude children, especially in view of “your children” in v. 39 and of the entire Old Covenant which included children. In 7:14, where the family of Jacob is mentioned, “souls” positively includes every child. The effort to take “your children,” τέκνα, in the sense of adult descendants only is ineffectual.
They were one spiritual body, inwardly one by faith in Christ, inwardly and outwardly one by confessing Christ and by adhering to the one doctrine of Christ that was taught by the apostles. And so they kept together as one body and treated each other accordingly. One faith and one teaching, and thus one body in one fellowship. No parties, schisms, inwardly.
Even then the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper would be involved, since at this early time it was always celebrated at the end of a meal (
They adhered “to the prayers,” i. e., to the worship in their own gatherings, 4:24, etc., and to the stated devotions in the Temple, 3:1, etc. It seems that this word is used to designate the entire service or worship and not merely the praying.
Were these “prayer meetings” in the modern sense of that term? We shall see that only on special occasions were gatherings for the purpose of praying held. The dominating feature is the teaching (Word) and the Sacrament.
The old Mosaic law provided ways and means for taking care of all cases of poverty among the Jews; but the number of beggars referred to in the New Testament shows that these laws were no longer enforced. This old spirit was revived in the first congregation in Jerusalem and chose this means for letting no fellow believer suffer need.
The Lord alone can add new members. Those who lay stress on numbers bring in many in ways which they devise. We want numbers, but such as the Lord adds and records in his book, and none, if we can help it, whose names would be only on our books. He adds only by filling the heart with the gospel.
