ONE OF THE ATTRACTIONS of the book of Acts is that it gives a picture of the church in action. It tells the story of early church leaders actually doing the work of ministry. It is an exciting story, a story that, if read carefully, allows us no chance of thinking that being a Christian is an armchair exercise. It is a book well named: Acts.
One of the attractions of this particular commentary on Acts is that it gives us repeated pictures of the church in action around the world by one who is intimately involved in the work of the church in the beautiful country of Sri Lanka. Ajith Fernando is a scholar of the Word. But he is also a frontline doer of the Word. As president of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka, he has lived his life in a way that mirrors many of the stories told of the early church in Acts. As Zondervan editor Jack Kuhatschek noted after reading Fernando’s work on Acts, “It gives the practical perspective of one who has lived through many of the items discussed in Acts.”
Knowing why we believe is extremely important. Feeling good about the faith that energizes us signals the powerful working of God’s Spirit within our lives. But unless our lives take on the Acts-like quality that this biblical book tells in narrative form—living out what it means to be a Christian—we have missed the essence of the faith.
What are the signs that we are responding in faith to God’s gracious actions toward us? The book of Acts seems to talk about three important things.
The first and perhaps the most important is personal evangelism. One occasionally hears that personal evangelism is the calling of a special few, while the rest of us have other callings, important but different. But even a cursory reading of the book of Acts belies that notion. The church leaders and church members who star in this story all do the work of evangelism. One comes away from reading Acts with a distinct notion that personal evangelism is a way of living out all the other vocations of life to which God calls us. It permeates our total being. The unevangelizing life is not worth living, at least from the perspective of Acts.
The second sign is Bible study. Personal evangelism is not a content-less sharing of feelings. In order to do it well, one must have something to talk about, a story to tell, a creed to espouse, a joy with which we can inspire a cynical world. The figures in Acts—Peter, Paul, and many others—articulate the gospel story in a way that betrays concentrated study and thinking. Bible study means more than sitting down and reading a good book. It means reading with the goal of doing something with the knowledge gained by that reading. It means studying not only with the mind of a scholar but with the heart of an activist. It means studying in order to teach what we learn to others who have not heard the story that surpasses all others.
The third sign is recognizing the people to whom we tell the story: not just people who have not heard, but people who have chosen to follow an alternate path—the way of magic and the occult. In his commentary, Fernando calls this the ability to do “effective contextualization.” Some aspects of evangelism are universal, “necessary for every place whatever the background.” But others have cultural features that must be discerned in order to show that the particular strength of the gospel story meet the needs of particular peoples. The listeners in Acts were lured by the false promises of major philosophies and occultism. Not surprisingly, people today are tempted by similar worldviews. We must learn how to tell the story to these people who need to hear it.
In short, we must act. We must let our actions be part of the long history of the acts of the Christian church. Make no mistake: Our acts are part of the larger story of the Christian church. When you read, study, and act on this biblical book, you make yourself a part of the story.
Terry C. Muck