1IN MY FORMER book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
6So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
7He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Original Meaning
ACTS 1 INTRODUCES many themes that are important to the whole book: Jesus’ life and ministry, his sufferings as a fact predicted in the Old Testament, the importance of and evidence for the resurrection, the importance and power of the Holy Spirit, the priority of witness, the Great Commission with its scope extending to the ends of the earth, the missionary attitude as opposed to parochialism, the kingdom of God, the importance of truth and of Scripture in the Christian life, the role of the apostles, the ascension and second coming of Christ, and the importance of prayer and fellowship. As such it is a key to understanding the book of Acts. Because of this we will devote comparatively more space to it even though it is one of the shorter chapters.
The Former Book (1:1–2a)
THE OPENING SECTION of Acts contains a prologue along with a historical introduction. The author begins by referring to his “former book,” gives the name of the recipient (Theophilus), and summarizes the contents of the earlier book (the Gospel of Luke). Theophilus means “friend of God” or “loved by God,” but it is unlikely, as some (e.g., Origen) have suggested, that this name is a symbol for an anonymous person or group of people. This particular name was in use at that time, and the description of Theophilus as “most excellent” (see Luke 1:3) suggests that a real person is meant. “Most excellent” could suggest that a high government official is being addressed, but that is not a necessary inference as it was also used as a “form of polite address.”1 In those days, it was common for books to be dedicated to distinguished persons.2
If Luke’s first volume describes “all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven,” we can assume that this second volume describes what he continued to do and to teach (through his Spirit) after he was taken up.3 Luke uses the word “all” in both the Gospel and Acts in a general way that the context must define. Thus, “we cannot assume he meant his Gospel to be any more exhaustive than Acts.”4
Teaching and Instructions Before the Ascension (1:2b–8)
IN THE FORTY days before Jesus’ ascension, his primary ministry related to the truth of the gospel (vv. 2b–3). (1) He gave “instructions . . . to the apostles” (v. 2). The verb for instructing (entellomai) has the idea of commanding or giving orders. This must refer to the commands given in verses 4 and 8 not to leave Jerusalem until the Spirit comes and to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth (cf. Luke 24:46–48). These instructions were given “through the Holy Spirit” (v. 2), which introduces a key theme of Acts: All Christian ministry depends on the activity of the Spirit in the minister and in the ones ministered to.
(2) Luke then reports that Jesus’ appearances were proof of his resurrection (v. 3a). The objective reality of the resurrection was the ultimate proof of the amazing claims that the apostles were to make about Jesus (17:31). The fact that the apostles were witnesses to this resurrection was a key to their preaching.5 So right at the start of his book, Luke presents the resurrection as an event attested by “many convincing proofs.”
(3) Jesus “spoke about the kingdom of God” (v. 3b), which refers to the reign or rule of God and was a key to his teaching. There are fewer references to the kingdom in Acts (8:12; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31), but they are important, considering that “the book begins (1:3) and ends on that theme (28:31).”6 In the New Testament letters, while the kingdom is mentioned, what receives emphasis is the church, the body of Christ. But there is a close connection between the church and the kingdom (Matt. 16:18–19). According to the Gospels, the kingdom of God came with the events of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and it finds its consummation in the return of Christ as Judge and King. In our discussion of 2:14–41 we will show why the biblical teaching on the reign of Christ should be an important ingredient of our evangelistic message.
Verses 4–5 present the crucial promise of the gift of baptism with the Holy Spirit.7 The word baptizō basically means dip or immerse.8 But it can take different meanings that must be determined by considering the context in which the word appears. It can mean “to wash . . . with a view to making objects ritually acceptable,” and can thus be translated “wash” or “purify.” It can also mean “to employ water in a religious ceremony designed to symbolize purification and initiation on the basis of repentance—‘to baptize.’ ” And in a figurative extension of the idea of immersion, it can mean “to cause someone to have a highly significant religious experience.”9 Related to this last definition is Jesus’ question to James and John in Mark 10:38, “Are you able . . . to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized” (NASB). This extends the meaning of immersion to a deluge or an overwhelming flood of suffering.10
Some of the other places where the baptism with the Holy Spirit is mentioned suggest an experience akin to the third use of baptizō. When Luke records this promise in his Gospel, Jesus says, “Stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). Acts 1:8 also says that when the Holy Spirit comes, the disciples will receive power. Describing what happened when this promise was fulfilled, Luke writes that the disciples “were filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4). The words “power” and “filled” in these verses suggest that the baptism with the Holy Spirit involves an experience of God’s fullness.
It must have saddened the heart of Jesus to hear his disciples ask about the time of restoring the kingdom to Israel (v. 6). He had taught them about the kingdom of God, but they talk about the kingdom of Israel. John Stott points out that
the verb, the noun and the adverb of their sentence all betray doctrinal confusion about the kingdom. The verb restore shows that they were expecting a political and territorial kingdom; the noun Israel that they were expecting a national kingdom; and the adverbial clause at this time that they were expecting its immediate establishment.11
Jesus’ answer about not knowing times and dates set by the Father (v. 7) is consistent with what he said elsewhere on the topic of the timing of the last things (cf. Matt. 24:36, 42, 44; 25:13; Luke 12:40).
Verse 8 begins with “but” (alla), suggesting that Jesus is presenting an alternative aspiration for the disciples. Their primary concern should not be the political power that will come with the restoration of Israel’s kingdom. It should be the spiritual power that will come through the baptism with the Holy Spirit, which will enable them to be witnesses “to the ends of the earth.” This verse presents an outline and summary of Acts. The Holy Spirit’s power and witness is the theme of the book. “The geographical terms provide a sort of ‘Index of Contents’ . . . ‘in Jerusalem’ covers the first seven chapters, ‘in all Judea and Samaria’ covers 8:1 to 11:18, and the remainder of the book traces the progress of the gospel outside the frontiers of the Holy Land until it at last reaches Rome.”12
In a sense the disciples were already witnesses for they had seen the risen Lord; that was the key to their witness (1:22). But they also needed “power” to be effective witnesses, power that would come from the Holy Spirit. The way the Holy Spirit makes witnesses and empowers witness must cover the entire witnessing process, and this is well illustrated in Acts.13
Bridging Contexts
THE BOOK OF ACTS has been aptly called the “Acts of the Holy Spirit,” for all that the church achieves is through the Spirit. In this first chapter Luke shows how the church prepared for the reception of the Spirit. For us today it gives essential ingredients for Spirit-anointed ministry.
Objective facts and subjective experience. The first few verses of Acts show an important factor in all of Acts—that the combination of the objective and the subjective are important aspects of the Christian religion. The mention of “many convincing proofs that he was alive” (1:3a) shows that Christianity is based on objective facts. The teaching “about the kingdom of God” (1:3b) must also have included much that came under this category. The evangelistic preaching in Acts certainly contained many objective facts about the nature of God and the life and work of Jesus (see the chart on “Evangelistic Preaching in Acts” in the Introduction). Becoming a Christian involves assenting to those facts, and growing in the Christian life involves growing in the knowledge of those facts.
But Acts 1 also stresses the subjective experience of Christians. Thus, verses 4–5 refer to the baptism with the Holy Spirit, which, as noted above, includes a subjective experience of the power of the Spirit. To prepare to be witnesses of these great objective truths, one must have power coming from the indwelling Holy Spirit (v. 8). Peter’s sermon at Pentecost climaxed with a statement of the objective truth: “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (2:36). But in response to the people’s query about what they are to do, he says that if they repent and are baptized in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins, they “will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (2:38). The context indicates that the gift of the Holy Spirit includes, among other things, a subjective experience of him.
Acts, then, shows a church that was able to integrate the subjective and the objective aspects of Christianity.
Teaching and revival. From what we read in verses 2–5, we can infer that one of the key ways Jesus prepared his apostles for the revival that followed at Pentecost was to give them sound teaching. The place of biblical teaching in revival has been debated, and sometimes great outpourings of revival have been criticized for being low on preaching and teaching the Word. This was not the case with Peter’s speech at Pentecost, and several spiritual awakenings have been recorded where the Word was uncompromisingly taught.14 Whatever may have happened during a revival, it is well established that, as in Acts, Bible teaching has always been done before a revival. The great historian of revival, J. Edwin Orr, has said that a theological awakening must precede a revival of religion. Dr. John Mackay writes, “First the enlightened mind, then the burning heart. First a revival of theological insights, and then the revival we need.”15
This is what happened under King Josiah when a newly discovered Book of the Law was read and a mighty revival was sparked (2 Kings 22–23). The principle we glean, then, is that if we wish to prepare for revival today, we must be faithful in teaching the Word to our people.
Baptism with the Holy Spirit. As already noted, the references to the baptism with the Holy Spirit suggest an experience of fullness with the Spirit. When does this take place? And what type of experience is it? Over these two questions there has been much debate in the church. Part of the problem is that the experience promised to the disciples and its fulfillment were in many ways unique, unrepeatable events. The same can be said of some of the other experiences of the coming of the Spirit to new believers in Acts. As a result, we have in the church an array of interpretations of what this means today.
A traditional evangelical explanation is that, while in Acts there were unique experiences of this baptism with the Holy Spirit, for us today such a baptism takes place at conversion, and the term baptism is used for initiation into the body of Christ and the resultant experience of the Spirit.16
But there are also many evangelicals who see this baptism as a second definite work of grace, distinct from conversion, one that usually takes place some time after conversion. It raises Christians to a higher plane in their experience and enables them to enjoy the fullness of the Spirit. Different emphases are found within this particular interpretation. The Wesleyan holiness movement has emphasized holiness of heart and life, or entire sanctification, as resulting from this baptism.17 The Charismatics and Pentecostals have emphasized the power for witness and the sign gifts, such as tongues.18 Evangelicals like D. L. Moody and R. A. Torrey emphasized power for service, especially for witness, as the result of this baptism.
Somewhat similar to the view of Moody and Torrey is that of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who wrote that while the baptism with the Holy Spirit may take place at conversion, it usually takes place later and lifts a person to a higher level of spiritual experience.19 But Lloyd-Jones seems to have left room for subsequent baptisms with the Holy Spirit. In fact, he seems to use this expression also to refer to what we usually call revival, when the power of God comes on groups of people through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.20 This seems to have been the view of some Puritans as well. “Apparently detecting in the phrase no consistent, technical meaning, they took it to mean ‘effusion in Spirit’ or ‘inundation in Spirit’ and felt free to pray for revival in the terms, ‘Oh, baptize us afresh with the Holy Spirit!’ ”21
One of the strongest arguments for the conversion-initiation position is the apparent use of this expression for everyone in the church in 1 Corinthians 12:13: “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”22 Others, however, have countered this claim. Howard Erwin argues that the first part of this verse refers to the Spirit’s work of incorporating believers into the body as expressed by water baptism, while the second part refers to a subsequent experience, a Pentecostal-type baptism in the Spirit. According to this interpretation, “the parallelism [between the first and second parts of this verse] is not synonymous; it is synthetic in which the second metaphor supplements the first.”23 The question of how Paul could say that “all” have had this experience is answered by stating that “in the apostolic age, the baptism in the Spirit, in a Pentecostal sense, was the norm.” But what of the fact that many of these supposedly Spirit-baptized people were carnal and babes in Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 3:1–2)? Erwin answers that “the Pentecostal baptism in the Spirit is for power-in-mission. . . . The manifestations of the Spirit’s charisms are neither evidence of, nor contingent upon, spiritual maturity.”24
What do we do with such differences of interpretation? Note first that there is little explicit teaching about how one enters into this baptism in the more didactic segment of the New Testament, the letters. But there are certain things we can be sure of. The baptism with the Holy Spirit implies a full experience of the Spirit, which among other things empowers us for witness. Paul makes fullness of the Spirit mandatory for Christians with the imperative: “Be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18).25 Here, however, the result of the fullness is true, heartfelt worship (5:19–20).
The early church showed that being filled with the Spirit was mandatory for Christians by making it a basic qualification for those who were to administer the distribution of food (Acts 6:3). Therefore, even if this baptism refers to conversion-initiation, Christians who are not experiencing God’s fullness in their lives are a scandal, an anomaly. The baptism with the Holy Spirit should open the door to their moving on to experience all that it implies: God’s fullness. And they must seek this fullness with all their heart. The entrance into that experience may be through a crisis or a process. We know that, given the human make-up, we often take leaps forward in our spiritual lives through crisis experiences. Therefore, whether a crisis is mandatory or not, it is a genuine experience of growth to many Christians.
Whatever one may call it and however one may enter it, what is important is for all Christians to experience what the baptism with the Spirit implies: the fullness of God’s Spirit and power in witness. The supreme place the Holy Spirit has in ministry in Acts is evidenced right from chapter 1. The ministry that the apostles will have can be fulfilled only with the Spirit’s power (1:8). So important was this that they were not to launch out on the urgent mission for which they had been so consistently prepared by Christ (1:4–5) until they received this power. More urgent than the mission at this time was having the right equipment to carry out the mission. This, then, is the abiding principle we glean from the emphasis on baptism with the Spirit in Acts 1: The fullness of the Spirit is essential for Christian life and ministry.
Two implicit rebukes. The question that the disciples asked about the time of restoring the kingdom to Israel elicits two implicit rebukes from Christ (vv. 6–8): about eschatological inquisitiveness and about parochialism.26 Despite his earlier statements that no one knows the time of the end events, they still ask him about it. And when Jesus is thinking about “the kingdom of God” (v. 3) and “the ends of the earth” (v. 8), they are thinking about their own nation. Twenty centuries later these two errors are still seen in the church.
The Great Commission. We have said that the Great Commission (1:8) gives something of an outline and summary of Acts. This is an indication how important this commission is. Acts 10:42 contains another form of this commission. “He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead.” Each of the four Gospels has a different form of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:46–49; John 20:21), and each one presents unique facets of the commission. We do not know when Acts 10:42 was uttered, but all the others were uttered between the resurrection and the ascension. We must, then, conclude that this commission was uppermost in Christ’s thinking during the days before his ascension.
This realization clearly implies that “his last command” should be “our first concern.” As the pioneer missionary to Muslims in India and Persia, Henry Martyn (1781–1812), said, “The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions, and the nearer we get to him, the more intensely missionary we must become.”
The concept of witness. None of us can be witnesses in the same sense as the apostles were, for we have not seen the risen Lord as they did. Yet even their preparation to be witnesses would not be complete until they received the Holy Spirit (1:8). On our part, when we believe their witness regarding what they had seen and heard and entrust ourselves to Christ based on that belief, we too can experience the risen Lord through the indwelling Holy Spirit. As the book of Acts unfolds, we see that not only the apostles but also the other Christians were active in witness (8:1, 4). In the same way we too must witness for him. Yet for our witness to be effective, it must be witness; that is, it must come out of a firsthand knowledge of the risen Christ. Like the apostles, we too must say, “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).
The Holy Spirit and mission. This passage shows us how important the Holy Spirit is to our understanding of mission and how important mission is to our understanding of the Holy Spirit (vv. 2, 5, 8). The rest of the book of Acts expounds this theme. The Spirit is the one who regenerates and sanctifies us so that we experience the risen Christ to whom we witness (vv. 4–5; cf. John 3:5–8). He fills individuals with special anointings to face special challenges in witness (Acts 4:8, 31; 6:10; 7:55; 13:9). He gives boldness in witness (4:9–13, 31; 13:9–11) and encourages his people in a way that helps them to grow in numbers (9:31). Just as the Spirit enabled the first Christians to speak in other tongues (2:4), he is the one who gives the words to speak in witness, in keeping with the promise of Christ (Mark 13:11). He directs people to special witnessing situations (10:19) and forbids them to go to some places they want to go (16:6–7). He calls people to their special mission (13:2) and sends them on their way (13:4). Finally, he directs the church to important doctrines relating to the mission of the church (15:28).27 The Christian mission and ministry, then, can only be done in the power of the Spirit.
Contemporary Significance
INTEGRATING THE OBJECTIVE and the subjective. How difficult we find integrating the subjective and the objective aspects of Christianity today. The early church, therefore, challenges us here. We have churches that are “strong on the Bible” but which show little vitality because they suffer from a dead orthodoxy. Segments of the evangelical movement were for many years weak on the experiential aspects of the faith, especially when it came to evangelism—until the charismatic movement burst into the scene.
This may well explain why, until recently, the gospel made such little inroads in Asia, despite years of missionary activity. Asia has a rich heritage of spirituality, and it found the rational and activist evangelical message unappealing and unfulfilling. Throughout the history of the church there were movements—like the charismatic, the Wesleyan holiness, and the Moravian movements—that brought back the subjective aspects of the basic Christian gospel. But often these churches lacked solid biblical teaching. I believe we are presently seeing, in far too many evangelical churches, a reaction to the dry orthodoxy of the earlier generations that is dangerously influenced by the postmodern mood of our day (see next section), which emphasizes the subjective at the expense of the objective.
Yet the history of the church is studded with beautiful examples of Christian leaders and movements that integrated the warm heart and the sound mind. From earlier centuries I think of the apostle Paul, Origen, John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, the Puritans, Blasé Pascal, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, and Charles Finney. In our century I can think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, E. Stanley Jones, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, J. I. Packer, Jack Hayford, Henri Nouwen, and John Piper. It would be good for us to linger with these giants so that something of their ability to integrate the warm heart and the sound mind might rub off on us.
However, we find it difficult to linger with such people because the demands of our rushed and specialized age make this difficult. The integration we are talking about comes from grappling with many areas of life at the same time, and that is difficult in our specialized world. We prefer to have our specialist scholars and specialist spiritual writers. As long as we permit such fragmentation of truth, we are going to have an anemic church that does not know the depth of what it means to know God out of a foundation of objective reality and an experience of deep spirituality. From Acts 1, then, we can infer that the ideal Christian teaching is done by Spirit-empowered individuals whose teaching is grounded on the objective facts of the gospel and should result in evangelism.
Truth and the postmodern mood. Verses 2–3 show us what an important place truth has in Christianity. But each of the three statements there runs counter to the thinking of what may be called the postmodern mood of the day. The onset of the postmodern era has been placed by different scholars at dates ranging from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. Some of its characteristics will emerge in the discussion below.28
(1) We said that the “instructions through the Holy Spirit” given by Jesus (v. 2) were primarily about the Great Commission—to make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them and teaching them (Matt. 28:19–20). Christ promised that such a ministry would result in people leaving their other religions in order to follow him. But this command runs directly counter to religious pluralism, which is a key postmodern emphasis. According to pluralism, no ideology can claim to possess absolute truth; all the religions are more or less equals in the universe of faiths. Veith points out that while modernists argued in various ways that Christianity is not true, postmodernists do not argue this way. Their main objection is to the Christian claim to have the only ultimate truth.29
Postmodernists are eager to share their beliefs with others so that people can learn from them. But as they see it, no group should attempt to convert others to their side out of a belief that they possess absolute truth. Yet this is precisely what Christians aim to do. Therefore two questions have become important for contemporary Christians: “Why do we still hold to the uniqueness of the Christian gospel?”30 and, “Why do we still proclaim Christ in this pluralistic age?”31
(2) Luke’s next statement about the truth of the gospel (v. 3a) gives the heart of our answer to these two questions: We can be so bold as to proclaim this message as unique, just as Paul was bold when speaking to the pluralists in Athens, because the resurrection is the ultimate proof of its uniqueness (17:31). Belief in the resurrection, which is the cornerstone of the gospel, has been well attested: “After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive” (1:3a). But the postmodern mind revolts against the idea that religious reality can be founded on objective facts. Into this environment we must go with the message that Christianity is absolutely true and that this assurance comes from Jesus’ resurrection, which attests all that he claimed for himself and his gospel. The resurrection, in turn, is attested by many infallible proofs.
The loss of trust in objective truth is one of the keys to understanding postmodernism. In the scientific realm, the idea of an ordered universe following the fixed laws of Newtonian physics with its absolutes of space and time has come under fire. Einstein’s theory of relativity showed that what was earlier regarded as absolute (space and time) was sometimes relative to the observer’s frame of reference. The theory caught on and triggered what came to be called a revolution in science. Einstein brought in a new absolute, the velocity of light. But many extended this idea of relativity to other spheres, such as to religion and morals—something that Einstein never intended. Relativity became relativism—there are no absolutes.
In other areas of science as well the idea of objective reality came under fire. In the Newtonian model the world was considered mathematically ordered, and mathematics, with its logical axioms, was considered an effective tool for gaining knowledge of the physical world. Euclidean geometry, which was considered an appropriate way to describe physical reality, was built on ten principles, such as the principle that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. These principles have also been questioned since the eighteenth century, and people have realized that there may be a chasm between what is mathematically true and what is physically true. Perhaps the most radical challenge has come from Quantum physics, which seems to violate the basic canons of logic or common sense.32 The result of all this is the devaluing of the importance of objective truth.
Philosophically there has also been a shift in focus. The Enlightenment, the mother of the modern era, focused on rationalism, championing cause and effect. But postmodernism is a child of existentialism, which focuses attention not on objective facts “out there” but the contents of our own minds, the ideas we have “in here.” Thus, truth is considered subjective, arising from you—the subject—rather than from something or someone outside you. In this environment personal truth is important: You have your truth coming from your particular experience, and I have mine. No one can claim to have truths that are absolute and should be universally applied.
The devaluing of the rational shows in the means used today to persuade people. My study of postmodernism was sparked off when I realized that it was influencing what people are watching on TV in Sri Lanka (mostly Western programs). As a youth worker and father of two teenage children, I felt I needed to look into this more closely. I was amazed to find out how many advertisements sought to persuade the viewers not by rational arguments about the value of the product but by emotional impressions that made people feel good about the product.
The postmodern existentialist mood has significantly influenced today’s church.33 I would go so far as to say that, in many segments of evangelicalism, experience is replacing the Bible as the supreme source of authority. If we examine books and teaching on practical topics, we often find that statistics, research, and testimonies of what people have experienced are given as authoritative guidelines. In much of Christian management teaching, the authorities are the management gurus. The Bible is used only as a quote book or a book out of which illustrations are found, only to buttress truths that have been found elsewhere. It should be the reverse: We should get our truths from the Bible and go to the world in order to find ways to illustrate those truths. David Wells says of those who theorize about Christian behavior primarily within North American evangelicalism: “While they tip their hats in the direction of the Bible, [they] quickly look the other way when they get down to the serious business of devising technique for the Church’s life. In a historic sense, theology is thus disappearing.”34
Many evangelical preachers, writers, and worship leaders today often prefer to focus almost entirely on the more soothing subjective and experiential aspects of the Christian religion. The devotional time of many evangelicals is confined to receiving some inspiring thoughts from a devotional book. Once again, the primary source of feeding is not the Bible but the inspiring story: “It feels good, so it must be from God.”
Unfortunately, much of evangelical preaching today caters to this feel-good mentality. The time devoted to preaching is getting less and less as elements like testimonies get more prominence. Entertainment has replaced passion for the truth as a major means of attracting people to the gospel. But a problem develops when we get used to associating feeling good with divine activity: We begin to think that something wrong is God’s will simply because it makes us feel good. Tragic statistics emerging from the West indicate, in terms of sexual morality, little difference between the behavior of Christians and of non-Christians; sad to say, in other words, the Bible is no longer the primary factor in determining Christian behavior.35
All the above are evidences that the evangelical movement has been markedly influenced by the postmodern emphases on feelings and on the subjective at the expense of absolute, objective truth. Such emphases may well lead to evangelicals opening the door to pluralism. When the experience grows stale or when “the dark night of the soul” comes (as it surely will), there is no solid ground to keep on affirming the uniqueness and absoluteness of Christianity. The experiences and testimonies we have relied on will not be sufficient to see us through these dark times. I fear that many within the evangelical movement, by their neglect of the truths of Christianity, have already slipped unawares to what may be called a proto-pluralist position. The challenge for us today is to find the means of proclaiming the objective truths of Christianity in ways that are relevant and attractive to postmodern society. What gives us hope is the knowledge that this postmodern quest for an authentic subjective experience can be only ultimately satisfied by God through Christ.
(3) The third aspect of the truth of the gospel presented in Acts 1 is the teaching “about the kingdom of God,” which includes the importance of submitting to the rule of the transcendent God. This is the last thing that postmodern people want to do. Rather than looking for a God out there, they are discovering the god within them. New Age analyst Theodore Roszak says that our goal is “to awaken the god who sleeps at the root of the human being.”36 This is one reason why the New Age movement has grown so rapidly in this era. There we have enough of the divine to satisfy the incurable religiosity of the human being (this is something that secular humanism of the modern era could not do). But the divine here is not a transcendent, supreme God, for such a god would be an affront to the quest for self-actualization that many are involved in. What we have instead is a pantheistic approach to reality, where everything, including ourselves, is part of the divine. Swami Mukthananda, who had a great influence on Werner Erhard (founder of EST and FORUM), captures this mood well: “Kneel to your own self. Honor and worship your own being. God dwells within you as you.”37 In other words, the message of the kingdom, of the rule of a supreme God, offends those influenced by New Age pantheism.
In summary, the gospel clashes with the pluralism, the subjectivism, and the pantheism of our day. Finding relevant and effective ways of presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ is a great challenge, to which we must devote ourselves with much vigor and commitment.38 On the one hand, we have an evangelistic responsibility to adapt our methods so that the unchanging gospel is communicated in a way that will make our people want to listen to it.39 On the other hand, we have the pastoral responsibility of helping develop Christians who know how to study and apply the Scriptures to their daily lives—that is, people who practice their belief in the supreme authority of Scripture in a postmodern world.
Bible teaching in preparation for revival. In a study of Josiah’s revival, Lewis Drummond writes, “A spiritual awakening always soars on the wings of the Word. No matter how long people neglect the truth of God, one day it will surface and accomplish its wonder work.”40 This should be an encouragement to ministers of the Word who yearn for revival. They toil in what seems like barren ground, see little visible fruit, and may be greatly tempted to shift the emphasis of their ministries from uncompromisingly proclaiming the Word of God to entertaining Christians with “feel-good” preaching.
Let us remember that Jesus also had the crowds leave him because of what he taught after his initial success. “This is a hard teaching,” they said. “Who can accept it?” (John 6:60). But he persevered with the few who remained. Acts 1 shows that even with the disciples, after more than three years of concentrated teaching, they had not really understood one of the central aspects of Jesus’ teaching—the kingdom of God. But what he had taught them finally blossomed in their lives. With the empowering of the Spirit they went out, proclaimed the good news, and sparked off the most powerful revolution the world has ever seen. The words of Paul, given in a different context, apply to the ministry of teaching too: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” (Gal. 6:9).
Unbalanced emphases. Each of the emphases within the church regarding the Holy Spirit can lead to unbalanced Christianity. The danger with the conversion-initiation interpretation is that it can take away a yearning for God’s fullness and create a class of half-baked Christians who are not experiencing everything that God wishes them to enjoy.
On the other hand, those who emphasize the idea that the baptism with the Spirit empowers one for mission can neglect the vitally important aspect of living holy lives and having the fruit of the Spirit. This is happening so often now that it should be a major concern that the charismatic movement must address. This is corrected by the Wesleyan emphasis on entire sanctification, on the fullness of the Spirit empowering us to live holy lives (1 Thess. 5:19–24).
The Wesleyan emphasis, however, can give rise to an unhealthy perfectionism, with unbiblical measures brought in to evaluate whether one is entirely sanctified or not. This I also see as a danger of those meetings where people tarry for the Holy Spirit. It is mandatory that we tarry until we know that we have all of God. But we should not identify with this fullness anything not given in the Bible as an essential accompaniment of the fullness. On our part, the question we should always be asking is: “Do I have all that the Scriptures say I should have?”
The priority of the Spirit for Christian ministry. The relationship between the Holy Spirit and mission was a factor that was neglected in the history of the church, as the South African missiologist David J. Bosch points out:
By the second century A.D. the emphasis had shifted almost exclusively to the Spirit as the agent of sanctification or as the guarantor of apostolicity. The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century tended to put the major emphasis on the work of the Spirit as bearing witness to and interpreting the Word of God. . . . Only in the twentieth century has there been a gradual rediscovery of the intrinsic missionary character of the Holy Spirit. This came about, inter alia, because of a renewed study of the writings of Luke.41
One of the pioneers here was an English Anglican clergyman, Roland Allen (1868–1947), who, after short tenures as a missionary in China and priest in England, came to some radical convictions that he wrote in several books and articles published between 1912 and 1930. Of particular interest is his book, Pentecost and the World: The Revelation of the Holy Spirit in the “Acts of the Apostles.”42 He stood up for indigenous churches that did not have to depend on foreign missions but which should depend on the Holy Spirit. When these writings were first published, his “ideas about ‘handing over’ responsibility to new Christians and trusting the Holy Spirit seemed not only radical but irresponsible.”43
Allen knew that his ideas were far ahead of their time and even predicted to his son that his work would not be taken seriously until about 1960. This prophecy was more than fulfilled, and today he is considered one of the most influential missiologists of the twentieth century. One of the earliest to pursue his emphasis on the link between the Holy Spirit and mission was an American Christian Reformed missionary to Nigeria, Harry Boer, whose influential book, Pentecost and Mission,44 was published in 1961. Today, thankfully, there is much thinking and writing on this topic, but it is one that we can never take for granted.
Acts 1 implies that ministry should not be done without the minister’s experiencing the Spirit. Often Christian workers with serious spiritual problems refuse advice to stop their work and spend some time alone with God, trying to get their spiritual life back together. Usually the reason given is that their work will crumble if they take such a break. But even more serious than that is to have people doing God’s work in the flesh, for then the most noble work is being done in an ignoble way and God’s name is being dishonored.
It is easy for us to get distracted and find security in other things that serve as substitutes to the power of the Spirit. Excellent programming using the best of modern technology, management techniques, and building facilities can produce impressive results. Someone once said that 95 percent of what happens in many evangelical churches could be done without the Holy Spirit. Many people will come to these churches attracted by the comprehensive program the church offers. People want a weekly religious dose, and, in our entertainment-oriented culture, a church that provides an entertaining program will attract people, just like a good concert or sporting event will attract people. But Christian ministry is ministry in the Spirit. Without the Spirit’s power, our excellent programs are ultimately futile.
So whoever we are and whatever we do for God, our great desire should be to be filled with God’s Spirit so that our work will spring from his resulting power. As Jacob did when he faced the challenge of meeting his brother Esau, we must cry out, “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Gen. 32:26). This attitude is well expressed in a story that Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones told about an old Welsh preacher who was preaching at a convention in a small town. The people were already assembled, but the preacher had not come. So the leaders sent a maid back to the house to fetch him. She came back and reported that he was talking to somebody and she did not want to disturb him. They said, “That is strange because everybody is here. Go back and tell him that it is after time and he must come.” She went again and returned with the same report: “He is talking to somebody.” The leaders asked, “How do you know that?” She answered, “I heard him say to this other person who is with him, ‘I will not go and preach to these people, if you will not come with me.’ ” The wise leaders replied, “Oh, it is all right. We had better wait.”45
Eschatological inquisitiveness. How curious it is that despite all the warnings about the inappropriateness of date-setting regarding the end times, Christians continue to make specific predictions and authoritatively pronounce that some event in world history is a sign that the end is near or that the end will come in a certain number of days, months, or years. How can Christians continue to do this when church history testifies to many specific predictions that were not fulfilled, leaving sincere believers bewildered in their wake? And how can Christians be so gullible as to be taken in by yet another such prediction?
There are many reasons for this. (1) Many of those who make these predictions are godly people, so we do not easily dismiss what they say. Some claim to have a gift of prophecy, which makes rejecting what they say appear like rejecting God’s special message. Yet Paul says that even if he himself or an angel preaches something different from the original revelation of the message that the Galatians received, the new message is to be rejected (Gal. 1:8). Our final authority is the Word of God. While what a godly person or someone with the gift of prophecy says should be regarded with utmost seriousness, if it contradicts Scripture, it must be rejected.
(2) The Bible predicts that certain things will happen in the end times, and we are seeing many of these things happening today. This heightens our sense of excitement over the possibility that we are living in the end times. The appearance of signs that seem to be definite fulfillments of such prophecies suggest that it can happen any day. The biblical attitude under such circumstances is for us to be ready and to be active in the work of the kingdom. This surely is the teaching of Christ in his eschatological discourses (e.g., Matt. 24–25). Matthew 24:44–46 summarizes this attitude well:
So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns.
Acts 1 also shows us that while eschatological inquisitiveness is not acceptable, eschatological expectation is—note that the angels say that Christ will come back in the same way as he went into heaven (1:11). This attitude to end-time events is well expressed in the answer John Wesley gave when asked what he would do if he knew this day was his last: “I would spend it just as I intend to spend it now.” He then read off his schedule for the day. We should always be ready for his coming, but we should never fall into the trap of date-setting.
Jesus’ answer to the disciples (1:8) suggests that our primary work should be evangelism. That is what prepares the world for the coming of Christ. Jesus himself said, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14). The great New Testament theologian George Ladd calls this “perhaps the most important single verse in the Word of God for God’s people today”; it “is the clearest statement in God’s Word about the time of our Lord’s coming.”46 In actuality, the signs and the teaching of the end time can be an effective tool in evangelism. There is a natural curiosity about what will happen in the future, which interests people in what the Bible has to say. But let us never fall into the trap of going beyond what the Bible allows us to teach.
Parochialism. The second implied rebuke in Jesus’ answer to the disciples’ question about restoring the kingdom to Israel is about their parochialism. His reply is in terms of “the ends of the earth.” According to the New Testament, there is no room in the Christian life for parochialism, racism, and prejudice. We will look at the issues of prejudice when we discuss Peter’s visit to the home of Cornelius (Acts 10). What we see in Acts 1 is a parochialism of such heightened interest in one’s own affairs that there was relatively no interest in the affairs of others. Jesus’ answer was to develop a mission orientation—a reminder to us that our responsibility does not stop until the gospel has reached “to the ends of the earth.”
At various times in its history, the church has lost its vision for the world. But God always called key servants and opened their minds to understand the Scriptures and what they have to say about the church’s mission to the world (Luke 24:45–48). When the Protestant movement was missing this emphasis, for example, God sent people like the Moravians and John Wesley (1703–1791)—who said, “The world is my parish”—to bring it back.
It is not always educated scholars like Wesley whom God uses to revive missionary interest in the church. He sometimes uses “provincials,” like the apostles. As a young man William Carey (1761–1834) tried to make the Baptists aware of this vision. He told a minister’s meeting to consider “whether the command given to the apostles to teach all nations [Matt. 28:19–20] was not obligatory on all succeeding ministers to the end of the world, seeing that the accompanying promise was of equal extent.” They rejected what he said, but he persisted. He wrote a tract entitled, An Inquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen. He himself responded to the call, and the Baptist Missionary Society was born.47 This type of story has been repeated countless times in the history of the church, including the ministry I have worked with these past twenty-one years, Youth for Christ/Sri Lanka.
The continuing need for revival of missionary interest arises because of our natural tendency to parochialism. The challenges at home can appear to be so great that we can lose sight of our responsibility to the world. The missionary vision is usually inconvenient, for it places on us many demands to which we must respond—and that not for our benefit but for others. We may have to make structural changes we are uncomfortable with. But under Spirit-empowered, visionary leadership, we can keep this vision of missions burning. William Booth was too old and sick to attend one of the important anniversaries of the Salvation Army. So he sent a telegram, which was not to be opened until the anniversary meeting. It contained only one word: “Others.” William Temple is credited with the statement: “The Christian church is the one organization in the world that exists purely for the benefit of non-members.” Mission!
Great Commission Christians. Like a good motivator, Jesus constantly kept before his disciples a vision of the work they had been entrusted with. This is a good model for all leaders. Often people in the rank and file can get so engrossed in their particular work that they lose sight of the grand vision. Some may become so involved in maintenance or fighting fires that they lose sight of the vision. Consequently, demotivation and stagnation set in, which result in slow death. As someone has said, “The church that lives for itself will die by itself.” Swiss theologian Emil Brunner once wrote, “A church exists by mission as fire exists by burning.”
Leaders have the responsibility to place this grand vision before the people. Jesus is our model here. He talked of the significance of this mission (Matt. 24:14); he presented the need and the challenge to the people (9:36–38); he responded to objections to it (John 4:35–38); he gave himself as the model to follow (20:21); he showed them where it should be done (Matt. 28:19; Mark 16:15; Acts 1:8) and how it should be done (Matt. 10:5–42; 28:19–20; Luke 24:46–48; Acts 1:8). Note how there was creativity, variety, motivation, and instruction in the way he presented this commission. Following this example is one of the greatest responsibilities of a leader. I have felt that, next to the call to pray for and enable my colleagues, my next most important responsibility is to place before the movement I lead (Youth for Christ) the vision, in all its glory, of our particular call to go to unreached youth with the gospel of Christ.
When we realize the important place that the Great Commission had in the early church, I think we can endorse the use of phrases like “Great Commission Christian” and “Great Commission Lifestyle.” Some object to these phrases, thinking that they will detract people from other aspects of Christian mission, such as fulfilling the social mandate. This can happen and has, alas, happened with Christians who have overemphasized the Great Commission. But it should not happen. The social mandate is clear in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament.48 We must never be afraid to be fully biblical. True, combining these two elements of mission is not easy, as we have found in our own ministry with the poor. But when was biblical ministry easy? Thank God that there is a noble history of evangelicals who put into practice this dual commitment to the social and evangelistic aspects of our mission.49
In view of the urgency of Jesus’ commission, we should all seek to be Great Commission Christians50 and endeavor to have all Christian organizations and churches to be Great Commission movements.51 We should constantly live under the influence of our mission, so that we are willing to pay whatever price is required in order to reach the lost. Mission, of course, includes involvement across the street and around the globe. It is the responsibility of Christian leaders first to burn with passion themselves for mission and to pay the price of such commitment (see 1 Cor. 9); then, out of the credibility won from such passionate commitment, they must constantly keep the vision of mission before the people they lead.
Witnessing Christians. On the strictly personal level, a Great Commission Christian is first and foremost a witness. E. Stanley Jones (1884–1973), an American missionary in India, had an effective evangelistic ministry with the intellectuals of India and through his writings became a mentor to many Christian ministers in Asia. In his youth he struggled with whether he was called to be a lawyer or a preacher. He finally decided that he would become a preacher and be “God’s lawyer”—“to present his brief for him, to plead his case.” Many relatives and friends came to hear the first sermon he preached in his home church. After six sentences he made a mistake, using a nonexistent word, “indifferentism.” He saw that it brought a smile to a young lady in the audience—and his mind went blank! After a long silence, he managed to blurt out, “Well, friends, I’m sorry to tell you, but I’ve forgotten my sermon!”
He began to walk back to his seat in the first row in shame when he heard God telling him, “Haven’t I done anything for you?” He replied, “Why, yes, of course you have.” “Then couldn’t you tell that?” came the question. “Perhaps I could,” he said. So, instead of taking his seat, he turned around in front and said, “Friends, as you see, I can’t preach, but you know my life before and after conversion; and while I can’t preach, I do love the Lord, and I will witness for him the balance of my days.” Jones says that he “said some more things like that to fill in the awful blank.” After the service, a young man came up to him and said, “I want to find out what you have found.”52
Jones did ultimately become God’s lawyer. He immersed himself in the Scriptures and also in India’s culture, and he effectively presented the claims of Christ to the intellectuals in that culture until he was almost ninety years old. But he always viewed preaching as witness: “As ‘all great literature is autobiography,’ so all real preaching is testimony.”53
If something that the Bible testifies about is not true in our lives, we must stop all our activity and grapple with God until we know that it is true for us, just as the disciples waited in Jerusalem, devoting themselves to prayer (1:14). To believe in the Bible is to believe that what it says works, does in fact work. Jones tells the story of a young preacher who said, “I’ve been perjuring myself. I’ve been preaching things not operative within me. I’m through with this unreality. I’ll give God till Sunday to do something for me. And if he doesn’t do something for me before Sunday, someone else can preach. I won’t.” He took Saturday off as a day of retreat. God met him, and he went into the pulpit a new man. That Sunday the congregation got the shock of their lives—they had a new minister! The congregation found themselves seeking what their young minister had found.54