Book of Acts (Part Three)

Part Three of the New Testament Survey Series

Khen Lim




Peter speaks to the crowd in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost (Image source: markmcmillion.com)

When it comes to the history of Early Christianity and the formation of the Church, it is hard to get past the Book of Acts because it plots its early roots as well as focuses on the importance of the Pentecost and of being empowered to be effective witnesses for Christ.

It is this Book that records the historical witnessing by the apostles in not just Jerusalem but also Judea, Samaria and the rest of the immediate world during that time. It sheds considerable light on the gift of the Holy Spirit who we learn empowers us as much as guides, teaches and serves as our inner counsellor, the voice from within or the spiritual conscience if you must.

Once empowered, the disciples Peter, John and Paul performed miracles that were recorded in the Book. To these events, the Christian reader will have been enlightened and suitably encouraged and inspired. As a basic instructional set for early Christians, the Book of Acts is very important as it stresses on the fundamental issue of obedience and submissiveness to the Word of God as well as the transformation that comes from knowing Christ.

In light of this, there are also many references concerning those who rejected the truth despite the disciples ministering to them about the Lord Jesus Christ. Some of these are evidenced by the lust of the flesh and greed for power and many other vices that are signs of the corrupt nature of the devil. Beyond just rejection, the Book gives account to the mounting opposition to our belief in Christ.

Against this background was the one faithful servant who spent the latter part of his life devoted to the preaching and teaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. While such devotion was evident in every other apostle, the Book of Acts is better known as an eye-opening introduction to Paul whose ministry to the Gentiles shaped much of the New Testament. 

Beginning with his conversion on the road to Damascus (9:1-31), the Book of Acts highlights Paul’s dramatic turnaround when he went to the opposite extreme in loving God and preaching His Word with intensity, fervency and imbued in the Spirit of the true and living God. Amongst the highlights centring on Paul were his epic missionary journeys (13:1-21:16), his trials in Jerusalem and Caesarea (21:17-26:32) and of course his final journey to Rome (27:1-28:31).

The Book of Acts reveals the dramatic transition from the Old to the New Covenant by juxtaposing Paul as one whose Jewish zealotry concerned “the righteousness of the law” (Php 3:6). He went to the extent of persecuting those who taught salvation was by grace through faith in Christ. But all that changed and by being born again, Paul was totally unrecognisable thereafter.

Destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD (Image source: markmillion.com)

In his transformation, he understood that all his legalism were worth nothing in light of what Christ offered. He considered his past legalistic efforts saying they were “rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that, which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith” (Php 3:8b-9).

Other than Paul, the Book of Acts also shows how Peter and the others were empowered by the Holy Spirit to be Christ’s witnesses in Jerusalem (1-8:3), Judea and Samaria (8:4-12:25) and then to the ends of the earth (13:1-28). Even as the change from the Old Covenant to the New was so dramatically espoused by the portrayal of Paul, Peter’s vision of the sheet (10:9-15) was yet another such sign in how the shift to the New (Covenant) united both Jews and Gentiles in one universal Church.

The old consideration of the ‘clean’ animals (symbolic of Jews) and the ‘unclean’ (representative of Gentiles) is now declared ‘cleansed’ by God by way of Christ’s sacrificial death at the cross. By moving away from the Old Covenant, Jews and Gentiles now find in Christ their opportunity to be divided under the New Covenant pervasive with grace through faith through the shed blood of the Son of God.

Although there is no visible authorship pertaining to the Book of Acts, it is commonly accepted that in Luke, we see the same penmanship from Luke 1:1-4 to Acts 1:1-3. This claim has been traditionally accepted since the days of the Early Church Fathers in which Luke was Paul’s companion who authored not just the Gospel of Luke but also Acts (Col 4:14, 2 Tim 4:11). It is said that he wrote it sometime between 61AD and 64AD.

If there is anything notable we can take from the Book of Acts, it is that when God empowers us through His Spirit, we can all do amazing things no matter how ordinary society thinks we are. If He can handpick a bunch of fishermen and used them to turn the whole world upside down (17:6), He can continue to do the same thing with all of us.

What makes all of this even more astonishing is that in Paul, we find a person whose hatred for Christians made him the most unlikely candidate for transformation but God could do what all of us considered not only reprehensible but impossible. Paul was a murderous Christian-hater. He was a persecutor who was willing to go to the ends of the earth to flush out every Christian he could find. Yet by such divine transformation, Paul became the most prolific author in which thirteen of his works are featured in the New Testament.

God performs all of this as a powerful example of how He can change our hearts and then empower us by the Holy Spirit to offer a passionate ministry in the spreading of the Good News of salvation through Christ. And by such an example, we are to realise that when left to our own device, we can but merely fail but if we act like the disciples and await the enablement of the Holy Spirit (1:8), we can achieve the unthinkable in fulfilling the Great Commission (Mt 28:19-20).


Part Four (Letter of James) will be available on December 30 2015