Life in the Early Church

Transcript

And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation.” Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need.

So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.

Tares among the Wheat

Recently, I was reading through World magazine, and I read an article written by Gene Edward Veith commenting on the latest data supplied by a pollster. The poll gave an inventory of people who identified as “born-again Christians.”

The appellation born-again before the word Christian is not a designation that many churchgoers in the United States like to use for themselves. I also think it is a manifest redundancy. There is no other kind of Christian possible except a born-again Christian, and no one can be born again of God the Holy Spirit without being a Christian. If someone is born again, you do not have to say he is a Christian, and if he is truly a Christian, you do not have to say he is born again. The two are synonymous. But because there are so many schools of thought within the visible church and because of the widespread growth of nineteenth-century liberalism that categorically denies the essential truths of the Christian faith while still claiming to be Christian, some people have a certain allergy to using terms like regeneration or rebirth to define what a true Christian is.

In the poll, only those who identified as being “born-again” answered this survey. The only description I can give is to say that the results were terrifying. The majority of those identifying themselves as born-again Christians said they believed people get into heaven through good works. A vast number of them affirmed reincarnation. More than half argued that there were several ways to God apart from Christ.

I understand that many people can be truly regenerate and not have very much information about the content of the Christian faith. However, by a brief examination of the answers given to the essential questions, I do not see how we could possibly be more optimistic than to assume that maybe 10 percent of the people who identified themselves as regenerate Christians were in fact converted people.

That may be a dismal view of the matter through my eyes, which some might say would be jaundiced by too much theology. But it was scary to see, and it reminded me of our Lord’s warning that His church would always contain tares along with the wheat. I remember a little ditty I learned the first year I was a Christian that went something like this:

Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there;
And ’twill be found upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.

Revivalism and True Conversion

Why am I talking about all of this? In the record of what happened on the day of Pentecost after Peter’s sermon, we are told of an astonishing revival that took place right there in Jerusalem, where three thousand people were added to the church that day.

In terms of modern forms of mass evangelism, that kind of response may not appear to be all that great, but I had someone ask me recently: “R.C., about thirty years ago, I went to a Billy Graham crusade, and when the altar call was given and people were called to make a decision for Christ I went forward, but there was no change in my life, and I lived away from the Lord for the next thirty years. Do you think I was really converted back then, thirty years ago, when I listened to that sermon and responded by walking down the aisle? Or do you think my real conversion came thirty years later?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure,” I said, because it is possible that a person can be converted and fall into serious sin for a season, but thirty years is a long season. So, I said, “In all likelihood, it’s more probable that you originally made a false profession of faith.” False professions are regularly made at evangelistic meetings with a call to conversion. Often, this response is produced by our dependence upon human techniques and methods to prime the pump and convince people to convert through the power of our “program.”

I am afraid that though many real conversions take place, the statistics cannot be trusted. Sometimes you may hear the cynical statement about inflated evangelistic statistics that if as many people in the United States were actually converted who claim to be born again, it would mean America is in the greatest revival in the history of the church, one that would make the Reformation pale into insignificance. It would dwarf the first and second Great Awakenings. But the reality is something different.

I am laboring this point for a reason. In the revival that took place on the day of Pentecost it was the Lord who added three thousand people to the church. Reading between the lines, I assume that every last one of them was converted and regenerated by God the Holy Spirit. God built His church initially with people He converted, who were the fruit of His action in their lives, not because of the things people do to try to prime the pump.

This is significant because what we see now is a bird’s eye view of how this group of people in the early church, who were brought into the church by God Himself, behaved. We get insight into their pattern of Christian activity. So, let us look at that now.

Studiers of Apostolic Doctrine

The first thing said of the early church is this: “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship.” They did not stop studying the Word of God, but they were continuously, on a regular basis and in a diligent manner, applying themselves to doctrine, which is one of the most politically incorrect words in the church today. People often say: “Don’t talk to me about doctrine. I don’t need any doctrine. All I need to know is Jesus.”

This is how far we have come from the first-century church, which focused its attention steadfastly, continuously coming together to study doctrine. Whose doctrine? The doctrine of the Apostles—Apostolic doctrine. This doctrine was not the invention of the Gnostics or those who were outside the heart and soul of the orthodox Christian community; this was Apostolic doctrine.

Where is Apostolic doctrine today? It is in Scripture. The early church was a Bible-studying church, steadfastly, continually devoting themselves to devouring the Word of God that came from the Apostles.

Rooted in the Word

Back in the sixties, the charismatic movement, which previously had been confined mostly to Pentecostal, Church of God, and Assemblies of God communities, exploded onto center stage in mainline churches in America. But suddenly, revival broke out at Notre Dame, at Duquesne University, in the Lutheran church, in the Episcopal church, in the Methodist church, and in the Presbyterian church.

I came home from studying in the Netherlands and started teaching ministerial students at a Presbyterian college, and all they wanted to talk about were the charismatic gifts. I have said since those days that if I wanted to find somebody who loved to pray, I would look for a charismatic. Those students used to come to our house every night and pray for hours, sometimes all night until the next morning. They loved to pray. I was involved in that for a little while, but what I found was a terrible tendency and trend where people were so excited about getting Spirit-filled, manifesting the gift of tongues, and other such phenomena that it was taking them away from the Scriptures. I have heard at least one hundred specific prophecies uttered under the so-called influence of the Holy Spirit, none of which came to pass.

We once had a group of people from France come to our study center in Pennsylvania, about thirty charismatic Christians from every conceivable denomination. They were so excited about the fellowship they were enjoying in the Spirit, and they talked about being one in the Spirit, and we welcomed them. I asked their leader a question: “You have a Roman Catholic, a Lutheran, a Methodist, and people from many other denominations with you. How is it that you can have unity and lay aside issues like justification, the atonement of Christ, and so on?”

Within five minutes of my asking this question, they were all arguing with each other. The only way they could keep their unity was to leave their doctrine behind. So, they began to enjoy a fellowship without doctrine, without the Word, and they called their fellowship “Spirit-filled.”

There is no such thing as a Spirit-filled Christian who neglects the study of the Word of God. There is no such thing as a Spirit-filled church that does not give itself continually and steadfastly to the study of sacred Scripture. That is the first sign of a Spirit-filled church. Spirit-filled people do not flee from the Scripture and seek a substitute. Rather, they are driven to Scripture to have their spiritual lives rooted and grounded in the Word of God.

Close in Fellowship

We are told, “They continued steadfastly in the apostle’s doctrine and fellowship.” There is a popular saying that you have likely heard: “The family that prays together, stays together.” I like to change it a little bit and say this: “The family that prays and plays together, stays together.” That is one of the things the early church did. In addition to their diligent study of the things of God, they had tremendous time of fellowship. They experienced koinōnia in that the people became close-knit friends with each other, enjoying the love of God and the peace of Christ, sharing in the joy and delight of what they were learning in the Apostolic teaching.

There is no reason for any group of Christian people ever to be known as “the frozen chosen.” I heard a televangelist one day say, “There are some Christians who are the worst thieves in the world because they steal the joy of the Lord, which should be the possession of every Christian.” We should be excited in getting together for what is called koinōnia or fellowship, enjoying each other’s company.

I must give a word of caution. The primary reason we are supposed to come to church on Sunday morning is to worship God. We are told by the polls that the primary reason people come to church on Sunday morning is to enjoy fellowship with their Christian friends. So, what motivates some people to come to church is not worship but fellowship.

Hearing those statistics, it is tempting to think, “If we are going to be truly Christian, then we ought to do away with fellowship since it competes so strongly with worship.” But that would be an error in the opposite direction, because we see in the early church the model of how the church functions. They came to hear and study the Word of God, but they also came to enjoy the friendship and camaraderie in the fellowship of believers in the church.

I hope that the enjoyment of fellowship is a strong motivating factor for people to come to church. I hope the people who come to our church are regarded with the same warmth, love, and excitement of those who experienced it in that first century community.

Participants in the Breaking of Bread and Prayers

“And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.” The breaking of bread has two significances in this text. On the one hand, the breaking of bread referred simply to mealtimes and not always exclusively to the breaking of bread that we speak of with respect to the Lord’s Supper. But we know church dinners were a big part of the early church.

There really is no warmer experience of friendship than sharing meals together. There is just something about it. We sit around a table. We go out to dinner. We invite people into our homes. There is a certain warmth, a certain intimacy, a certain empathy experienced when people gather around a meal. So, the early church was eating meals together, but also incorporated in those meals, as we will see, they also celebrated the Lord’s Supper.

We see the study of the Word, the proclamation of the Word, the enjoyment of fellowship, the breaking of bread, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and what else? Prayer. Jesus Himself designated the church, the temple, His Father’s house as a house of prayer, and the first-century community was a praying church.

We have just scratched the surface on learning how to pray at Saint Andrew’s. We are looking in the years to come to emphasize even more strongly ways to become prayer warriors, to band together as the fellowship of believers who corporately bring their prayers before the Lord our God, as well as praying as individuals.

Engaged in Christian Generosity

That was the early church: doctrine, fellowship, the Lord’s Supper, and prayer. What else? Luke continues: “Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need.”

That one sentence is one of the most controversial sentences in the whole New Testament. Almost everyone who has argued the case for communism has used this verse to support it. They say true Christianity really echoes the theme, “From each according to his ability to each according to his need,” where no one has private property and no one owns personal goods. That, despite the fact the whole law of God in the Old Testament is designed to protect private property. That, despite the fact the rest of the New Testament, as soon as the fifth chapter of Acts, endorses the legitimacy of private property. Notice what is distinctly absent from this description: there is no government, either secular or ecclesiastical, that enforced this activity in the early church. This was not an economic necessity for the Christian to practice. Nowhere does the New Testament require that everybody have their goods in common.

A friend of mine had this verse in mind when he came to me some years ago and said: “We have a band of brothers here as Christians. Let’s all empty our savings accounts, put it in a pot, and use it for the kingdom.” I responded: “Let me ask you a question. Do you own your house?” He said, “Yes.” I asked, “Do you have equity in your house?” He answered, “Yes.” I asked, “Are you willing to sell your house, take your equity from your house, and put it in the common pot?” He answered, “No.” I said to him: “Right now, I’m living in a manse, so my house is provided for me rent free. During the last job I had, I owned my own home, and every penny that I have in my savings account is from the sale of my house. So, all the money I have comes from that house, and it’s now in the bank, and you want me to put my equity in the pot, but you don’t want to put your equity in the pot.”

Before you knew it, we had a band of brothers arguing with one another. They would say, “You don’t need to have this or that.” Is it not nice that the Lord gives us prosperity that we can enjoy beyond our needs? Who is it that determines what you need? What is it that determines how you should desire to use your earthly resources?

We know that there is no more miserable affliction of human beings than totalitarian governments that impose communism, and in second place is government-imposed socialism, which we are living under in America right now, a transfer society where wealth is redistributed via coercion by government. That is as far removed from the New Testament principle as could be.

In the initial experience of the local church in Acts, some of the people converted in that church were in desperate poverty, and there were people prospering under the hand of providence. What was driving this milieu of the first century was something that should drive the church of every century, and that is generosity. Christians are not required to give up all their private property, but they are required to be generous. Why? Because we live under the hand of the most generous God imaginable.

Cheerful Givers

The Old Testament principle of giving was the tithe. Think of how beautiful the tithe is, how great it was in the Old Testament that everybody in Israel had the same proportionate responsibility. If ever there was a flat tax, this was it. If a man was wealthy, he had to give 10 percent of his wealth to the work of God. If a man was poor, he had to give 10 percent of his poverty to the work of God.

Not everybody gave the same amount of money. The wealthy gave much more money than the poor, but everybody gave the same percentage. Everybody had the same responsibility, so that after you met your responsibility, nobody could come along to you and say: “Why are you driving a chariot? You don’t need that.” There was no room for the politics of envy. There was no room for the politicization of economics, where people could vote a tax on other people and not vote it upon themselves.

Say, for instance, that you want to have a new zoo in Orlando, and three of you are talking about it, and the zoo will cost one million dollars. One person says, “I have an idea.” You say, “What’s that?” He says, “I’m going to give $10,000 to the zoo, and my friend over here is going to give $10,000, and you have to give $980,000 to it.” They say, “We’re going to have a vote on it.” Guess what? The vote is two to one. Guess who loses? The man who is to pay $980,000. That is the way we do it in this country, and we call it social justice. There is nothing just about it, and it is not driven by generosity.

Forms of socialism undermine the principle of what was going on in the early church because at the heart of it, the giving of the early Christians was voluntary. They gave because they wanted to give.

It has become a cliché that the Lord loves a cheerful giver, but it is true. What does the Lord love? He does not love just givers. Anybody can be a giver. He loves cheerful givers. He loves people who desire to express their gratitude to Him by building the kingdom of God.

One of the greatest legacies my father left with me as a boy growing up, before I was ever a Christian, was that I watched my father, day in and day out, week in and week out, and he could not be beaten in terms generosity. I watched the joy and delight that filled his life with that spirit of generosity.

I have seen my father’s generosity in stark contrast to the spirit of selfishness that rules the hearts of so many in this world. Let it never be said of us that our hearts are cold or turned inward, and our eyes turned away from those who are in need. Let us be known for our generosity as Christians, as the first century church was known.

A Model for the Church

“So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house”—that meant they did not just come to the temple for the celebration of the sacrament, but they went from house to house. The first Christians had ekklesiola, house churches. They did not have a building big enough to accommodate these three thousand converted people, so they went from house to house and to different people at different times in different homes where they shared their faith together.

“They ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.” It is a bird’s eye view. In this brief glimpse of life in the early church, we have a model of what the church is supposed to look like. We are two thousand years removed from the Apostolic church, but we need to have the vision of the Apostolic church, blowing the cobwebs and assumptions from our minds so that when we come together, we do so with delight, rejoicing, and praising God for what He has done for us in Christ.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.