Introduction
1. Introduction to Luke (Luke 1:1–4)
Before reading any book it is helpful to know the author’s purpose in writing it. The biblical books are no exception to this rule. So why did Luke write?
He actually wrote two books. The first was his Gospel, which ancient and unassailed tradition attributes to his authorship and which is almost certainly the ‘former book’ referred to at the beginning of Acts. So Acts was his second book. The two form an obvious pair. Both are dedicated to Theophilus and both are written in the same literary Greek style. Further, as Henry J. Cadbury pointed out many years ago, Luke regarded Acts as ‘neither an appendix nor an afterthought’, but as forming with his Gospel ‘a single continuous work’. Cadbury went on to suggest that, ‘in order to emphasize the historic unity of the two volumes . . . the expression “Luke–Acts” is perhaps justifiable’.
Returning to the question why Luke wrote his two-volume work on the origins of Christianity, at least three answers may be given. He wrote as a Christian historian, as a diplomat and as a theologian-evangelist.
a. Luke the historian
It is true that the more destructive critics of the past had little or no confidence in Luke’s historical reliability. F. C. Baur, for example, leader of the ‘Tübingen School’ in the middle of the nineteenth century, wrote that certain statements in Acts ‘can only be looked at as intentional deviations from historical truth in the interest of the special tendency which they possess’. And the very unorthodox Adolf Harnack (1851–1930), who could describe Acts as ‘this great historical work’, also wrote in the same book that Luke ‘affords gross instances of carelessness, and often, of complete confusion in the narrative’.
There are a number of reasons, however, why we should be sceptical of this scepticism. To begin with, Luke claimed in his preface to the Gospel to be writing accurate history, and it is generally agreed that he intended this to cover both volumes. For ‘it was the custom in antiquity’, whenever a work was divided into more than one volume, ‘to prefix to the first a preface for the whole’. In consequence, Luke 1:1–4 ‘is the real preface to Acts as well as to the Gospel’.
In this important statement Luke sets out five successive stages:
First came the historical events. Luke calls them certain things that have been fulfilled among us (1). And if ‘fulfilled’ is the right translation, it seems to indicate that these events were neither random nor unexpected, but took place in fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.
Next Luke mentions the contemporary eyewitnesses, for the things ‘fulfilled among us’ were then handed down to us by those who from the first were eye witnesses and servants of the word (2). Here Luke excludes himself, for although he was an eyewitness of much that he will record in the second part of Acts, he did not belong to the group who were eyewitnesses ‘from the first’. These were the apostles, who were witnesses of the historic Jesus and who then handed down (the meaning of ‘tradition’) to others what they had themselves seen and heard.
The third stage was Luke’s own personal researches. Although he belonged to the second generation who had received the ‘tradition’ about Jesus from the apostolic eyewitnesses, he had not accepted it without question. On the contrary, he had carefully investigated everything from the beginning (3).
Fourth, after the events, the eyewitness traditions and the investigation came the writing. Many have undertaken to draw up an account of these things (1), he says, and now I too decided to write an orderly account (3). The ‘many’ authors doubtless included Mark.
Fifth, the writing would have readers, among them Theophilus whom Luke addresses, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught (4). Thus the events which had been accomplished, witnessed, transmitted, investigated and written down were (and still are) to be the ground of the Christian faith and assurance.
In addition, the Luke who claimed to be writing history was well qualified to do so, for he was an educated doctor, a travelling companion of Paul, and had lived in Palestine for at least two years.
Even in those far-off days doctors underwent quite a rigorous training, and Luke’s stylish Greek is that of a cultured person. There is also some evidence in Luke–Acts of the vocabulary and powers of observation which one would expect to find in a member of the medical profession. In 1882 the Irish scholar W. K. Hobart wrote his book The Medical Language of St Luke, whose aim was to show that Luke was ‘well acquainted with the language of the Greek medical schools’ and that ‘the prevailing tinge of medical diction’ reveals a medical author throughout both Gospel and Acts. Adolf Harnack endorsed this theory. More recent critics have rejected it, however. H. J. Cadbury in several studies, after scrutinizing Hobart’s list of supposedly medical words used by Luke, pointed out that they belonged not so much to a technical medical vocabulary as to the repertoire of any educated Greek. The truth probably lies at neither of these extremes. Although Luke’s medical background cannot be proved by his vocabulary, yet some residue of medical interest and terminology does seem to be discernible in his writing. ‘Instinctively Luke uses medical words,’ wrote William Barclay, and proceeded to give examples in both the Gospel and Acts.
Another reason for accepting Luke’s claim to be writing history is that he was a travelling companion of Paul’s. It is well known that several times in the Acts narrative Luke changes from the third person plural (‘they’) to the first person plural (‘we’), and that by these ‘we-sections’ he unobtrusively draws attention to his presence, in each case in the company of Paul. The first took them from Troas to Philippi, where the gospel was planted in European soil (16:10–17); the second from Philippi to Jerusalem after the conclusion of the last missionary journey (20:5–15 and 21:1–18); and the third from Jerusalem to Rome by sea (27:1 – 28:16). During these periods Luke will have had ample opportunity to hear and absorb Paul’s teaching, and to write a personal travelogue of his experiences from which he could later draw.
In addition to being a doctor and a friend of Paul’s, Luke had a third qualification for writing history, namely his residence in Palestine. It happened like this. Luke arrived in Jerusalem with Paul (21:17) and left with him on their voyage to Rome (27:1). In between was a period of more than two years, during which Paul was held a prisoner in Caesarea (24:27), while Luke was a free man. How did he use this time? It would be reasonable to guess that he travelled the length and breadth of Palestine, gathering material for his Gospel and for the early Jerusalem-based chapters of Acts. He will have familiarized himself as a Gentile with Jewish history, customs and festivals, and he will have visited the places made sacred by the ministry of Jesus and the birth of the Christian community. Harnack was impressed by his personal knowledge of Nazareth (its hill and synagogue), Capernaum (and the centurion who built its synagogue), Jerusalem (with its nearby Mount of Olives and villages, and its ‘Synagogue of the Freedmen’), the temple (its courts, gates and porticoes), Emmaus (about 7 miles distant), Lydda, Joppa, Caesarea and other towns.
Since, for Luke’s understanding of the early history, people were even more important than places, he will surely also have interviewed many eyewitnesses. Some of them will have known Jesus, including perhaps the now-elderly Virgin Mary herself, since Luke’s birth and infancy narrative, including the details of the Annunciation, is told from her viewpoint and must go back ultimately to her. Others will have been associated with the beginnings of the Jerusalem church, like John Mark and his mother, Philip, the apostles Peter and John, and James the Lord’s brother; they will have been able to give Luke first-hand information about the ascension, the Day of Pentecost, the early preaching of the gospel, the opposition of the Sanhedrin, the martyrdom of Stephen, the conversion of Cornelius, the execution of the apostle James and the imprisonment and release of Peter.
We have good reasons, then, to have confidence in Luke’s claim to be writing history, and professional historians and archaeologists have been among the most enthusiastic defenders of his reliability. A. N. Sherwin-White, who was Reader in Ancient History at Oxford University and described himself as ‘a professional Graeco-Roman historian’, strongly affirmed the accuracy of Luke’s background knowledge. He wrote about Acts:
The historical framework is exact. In terms of time and place the details are precise and correct. One walks the streets and marketplaces, the theatres and assemblies of first-century Ephesus or Thessalonica, Corinth or Philippi, with the author of Acts. The great men of the cities, the magistrates, the mob and mobleader are all there . . . It is similar with the narrative of Paul’s judicial experiences before the tribunals of Gallio, Felix and Festus. As documents these narratives belong to the same historical series as the records of provincial and imperial trials in epigraphical and literary sources of the first and early second centuries ad.
Here is his conclusion: ‘For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming . . . Any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken it for granted.’
b. Luke the diplomat
The writing of history cannot have been Luke’s only purpose, for the history he gives us is selective and incomplete. He tells us about Peter, John, James the Lord’s brother and Paul, but nothing about the other apostles, except that James the son of Zebedee was beheaded. He describes the spread of the gospel north and west of Jerusalem, but writes nothing about its progress east and south, except for the conversion of the Ethiopian. He portrays the Palestinian church in the early post-Pentecost period, but then follows instead the expansion of the Gentile mission under the leadership of Paul. So Luke is more than a historian. He is, in fact, a sensitive Christian ‘diplomat’ in relation to both church and state.
First, Luke develops a political apologetic, because he is deeply concerned about the attitude of the Roman authorities towards Christianity. He therefore goes out of his way to defend Christianity against criticism. The authorities, he argues, have nothing to fear from Christians, for they are neither seditious nor subversive, but on the contrary legally innocent and morally harmless. More positively, they exercise a wholesome influence on society.
Perhaps this is why both Luke’s volumes are addressed to Theophilus. Although the adjective theophilēs, meaning either ‘loved by God’ or ‘loving God’ (BAGD), could symbolize every Christian reader, it is more likely to be the name of a specific person. And although the adjective kratistos (most excellent, Luke 1:3) could be either just ‘a polite form of address with no official connotation’ or the ‘honorary form of address used to persons who hold a higher official or social position than the speaker’ (BAGD), the latter seems more likely because it occurs later in relation to the procurators Felix (Acts 23:26; 24:3) and Festus (26:25). A modern equivalent might be ‘Your Excellency’. Some scholars have gone on to suggest that Theophilus was a specific Roman official who had heard anti-Christian slanders, while B. H. Streeter thought the word was ‘the secret name by which Flavius Clemens was known in the Roman Church’.
In any case, Luke repeatedly makes three points. First, Roman officials were consistently friendly to Christianity, and some had even become Christians, like the centurion at the cross, the centurion Cornelius, and Sergius Paulus, proconsul of Cyprus. Second, the Roman authorities could find no fault in either Jesus or his apostles. Jesus had been accused of sedition, but neither Herod nor Pilate could discover any basis for the accusation. As for Paul, in Philippi the magistrates apologized to him, in Corinth the proconsul Gallio refused to adjudicate, and in Ephesus the city clerk declared Paul and his friends to be innocent. Then Felix, Festus and Agrippa all failed to convict him of any offence – three acquittals corresponding to the three times Luke says Pilate had declared Jesus innocent.
In the third place, the Roman authorities conceded that Christianity was a religio licita (a lawful or licensed religion) because it was not a new religion (which would need to be approved by the state) but rather the purest form of Judaism (which had enjoyed religious freedom under the Romans since the second century bc). The coming of Christ was the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy, and the Christian community enjoyed direct continuity with the Old Testament people of God.
This, then, was Luke’s argument. He produced evidence to show that Christianity was harmless (because some Roman officials had embraced it themselves), innocent (because Roman judges could find no basis for prosecution) and lawful (because it was the true fulfilment of Judaism). Christians should always be able on similar grounds to claim the protection of the state.
The second example of Luke’s ‘diplomacy’ is that he was a peacemaker in the church. He wanted to demonstrate by his narrative that the early church was a united church, that the danger of division between Jewish and Samaritan Christians, and between Jewish and Gentile Christians, was fortunately avoided, and that the apostles Peter, James and Paul were in fundamental agreement about the gospel.
It was Matthias Schneckenburger in his Über den Zweck der Apostelgeschichte (1841) who made ‘the first elaborate investigation into the purpose of Acts’. He believed that Luke was defending Paul against Jewish Christian criticism of his mission to the Gentiles by emphasizing his Jewish practices and his good relations with the Jerusalem church. He was also at pains to demonstrate their ‘parallel miracles, visions, sufferings and speeches’, in order ‘to make Paul equal to Peter’.
F. C. Baur went much further. He saw Acts as having a precise, ‘tendentious’ purpose. On the rather flimsy foundation of the Corinthian factions (‘I follow Paul . . . I follow Cephas . . .’, 1 Cor. 1:12) he constructed an elaborate theory that the early church was torn apart by conflict between original Jewish Christianity represented by Peter and later Gentile Christianity represented by Paul. He regarded Acts as a second-century attempt by a ‘Paulinist’ (a follower and champion of Paul) to minimize, and even deny, the supposed hostility between the two leading apostles and so to reconcile Jewish and Gentile Christians to one another. He portrayed Paul as a faithful Jew, who kept the law and believed the prophets, and Peter as the evangelist through whom the first Gentile was converted. The two apostles are thus seen in harmony, not at loggerheads, with each other. In fact, Luke attempted to reconcile the ‘two opposing parties by making Paul appear as Petrine as possible, and, correspondingly, Peter appear as Pauline as possible’.
It is generally agreed that F. C. Baur and his successors in the Tübingen School carried their theory much too far. There is really no evidence that in the early church there were two Christianities (Jewish and Gentile) headed by two apostles (Peter and Paul) in irreconcilable opposition to each other. Baur was probably influenced by Hegel’s dialectical understanding of history in terms of a recurring conflict between thesis and antithesis. There certainly was tension between Jewish and Gentile Christians, and because of the activity of the Judaizers a serious split did seem possible until the issue was settled by the Council of Jerusalem. Luke does not hide this. Certainly too, in Antioch, Paul publicly opposed Peter to his face, because of his withdrawal from fellowship with Gentile believers. But this confrontation was exceptional and temporary; Paul wrote about it to the Galatians in the past tense. Peter recovered from his momentary lapse. The reconciliation between the two leading apostles was real, not fictitious, and the thrust of Acts, Galatians 1 and 2, and 1 Corinthians 15:11 is on the agreement of the apostles about the gospel.
Luke did not invent this apostolic harmony, as Baur argued: he rather observed it and recorded it. It is evident that he gives prominence in his story to Peter (chapters 1–12) and to Paul (chapters 13–28). It seems very probable as well that he deliberately presents them as exercising parallel rather than opposing ministries. The similarities are remarkable. Thus, both Peter and Paul were filled with the Holy Spirit (4:8 and 9:17; 13:9); both preached the word of God with boldness (4:13, 31 and 9:27, 29); both bore witness before Jewish audiences to Jesus crucified, risen and reigning, in fulfilment of Scripture, as the way of salvation (e.g. 2:22ff. and 13:16ff.); both preached to Gentiles as well as Jews (10:34ff. and 13:46ff.); both received visions which gave vital direction to the church’s developing mission (10:9ff.; 16:9); both were imprisoned for their testimony to Jesus and then miraculously set free (12:7ff. and 16:25ff.); both healed a lame man, Peter in Jerusalem and Paul in Lystra (3:2ff. and 14:8ff.); both healed other sick people (9:41 and 28:8); both exorcized evil spirits (5:16 and 16:18); both possessed such extraordinary powers that people were healed by Peter’s shadow and by Paul’s handkerchiefs and aprons (5:15 and 19:12); both raised the dead, Tabitha in Joppa by Peter and Eutychus in Troas by Paul (9:36ff. and 20:7ff.); both called down God’s judgment on a sorcerer/false teacher, Peter on Simon Magus in Samaria and Paul on Elymas in Paphos (8:20ff. and 13:6ff.); and both refused the worship of their fellow human beings, Peter that of Cornelius and Paul that of the Lystrans (10:25–26 and 14:11ff.).
It is true that these parallels are scattered through Acts and are not put next to each other. Yet there they are. They can hardly be accidental. Luke surely includes them in his narrative in order to show by his depiction of Peter and Paul that they were both apostles of Christ, with the same commission, gospel and authentication. It is in this way that he may be called a ‘peacemaker’, who demonstrated the unity of the apostolic church.
c. Luke the theologian-evangelist
The value of ‘redaction criticism’ is that it portrays the authors of the Gospels and of Acts not as unimaginative cut-and-paste editors, but as theologians in their own right, who conscientiously selected, arranged and presented their material in order to serve their particular pastoral purpose. It was in the 1950s that redaction criticism began to be applied to Acts, first by Martin Dibelius (1951), next by Hans Conzelmann (1954) and then by Ernst Haenchen (1956) in his commentary. Unfortunately, these German scholars believed that Luke pursued his theological concerns at the expense of his historical reliability. Professor Howard Marshall, however, who has built on their work (while at the same time subjecting it to a rigorous critique), especially in his fine study Luke: Historian and Theologian (1970), urges that we must not set Luke the historian and Luke the theologian in opposition to each other, for he was both, and in fact each emphasis requires the other:
Luke is both historian and theologian, and . . . the best term to describe him is ‘evangelist’, a term which, we believe, includes both of the others . . . As a theologian Luke was concerned that his message about Jesus and the early church should be based upon reliable history . . . He used his history in the service of his theology.
Again, Luke was
both a reliable historian and a good theologian . . . We believe that the validity of his theology stands or falls with the reliability of the history on which it is based . . . Luke’s concern is with the saving significance of the history rather than with the history itself as bare facts.
In particular, then, Luke was a theologian of salvation. Salvation, wrote Howard Marshall, ‘is the central motif in Lucan theology’, both in the Gospel (in which we see it accomplished) and in Acts (in which we see it proclaimed). Michael Green had drawn attention to this in his The Meaning of Salvation. ‘It is hard to overestimate the importance of salvation in the writings of Luke,’ he wrote. ‘It is astonishing . . . that in view of the frequency with which Luke uses salvation terminology, more attention has not been paid to it.’
Luke’s theology of salvation is already set out in the ‘Song of Simeon’ or Nunc Dimittis which he records in his Gospel. Three fundamental truths stand out.
First, salvation has been prepared by God. In speaking to God, Simeon referred to ‘your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations’ (Luke 2:30–31). Far from being an afterthought, it had been planned and promised for centuries. The same emphasis recurs throughout Acts. In the sermons of Peter and Paul, not to mention Stephen’s defence, Jesus’ death, resurrection, reign and Spirit-gift are all seen as the culmination of centuries of prophetic promise.
Second, salvation is given by Christ. When Simeon spoke to God of ‘your salvation’, which he had seen with his own eyes, he was referring to the baby Jesus whom he held in his arms and who had been born ‘a Saviour’ (Luke 2:11). Jesus himself later made the clear statement that he had come ‘to seek and to save the lost’ (Luke 19:10), and he illustrated it by his three famous parables of human lostness (Luke 15:1–32). Then after his death and resurrection his apostles declared that forgiveness of sins was available to all who would repent and believe in Jesus (Acts 2:38–39; 13:38–39). Indeed, salvation was to be found in no-one else (Acts 4:12). For God had exalted Jesus to his right hand ‘as Prince and Saviour that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins’ (Acts 5:31).
Third, salvation is offered to all peoples. As Simeon put it, it has been prepared ‘in the presence of all the peoples’ (literally), to be both a light to the nations and the glory of Israel (Luke 2:31–32). Without doubt it is this truth on which Luke lays his major emphasis. In Luke 3:6, in reference to John the Baptist, he continues his quotation from Isaiah 40 beyond where Matthew and Mark stop, in order to include the statement ‘all people will see God’s salvation’. In Acts 2:17 he records Peter’s quotation of God’s promise through Joel: ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all people.’ These two words stand as a signpost near the beginning of each of Luke’s two volumes, in both cases embedded in an Old Testament prophecy, to point to Luke’s principal message: Jesus is the Saviour of the world; nobody is beyond the embrace of his love. In his Gospel, Luke shows Jesus’ compassion for those sections of the community whom others despised, namely women and children, the poor, the sick, the sinful and the outcast, Samaritans and Gentiles, while in Acts Luke explains how Paul came to turn to the Gentiles, and describes the gospel’s triumphal progress from Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people, to Rome, the capital of the world.
The prominence given to the universal offer of the gospel comes with particular appropriateness from the pen of Luke. For he is the only Gentile contributor to the New Testament. Well educated and widely travelled, he is the only Gospel-writer who calls the Sea of Galilee a ‘lake’, because he is able to compare it with the Great Sea, the Mediterranean. He has the broad horizons of the Graeco-Roman world, its history as well as its geography. So he sets his story of Jesus and of the early church against the background of contemporary secular events. And he uses the word oikoumenē, ‘the inhabited earth’, more often (eight times) than all the other New Testament writers together.
But Luke the theologian of salvation is essentially the evangelist. For he proclaims the gospel of salvation from God in Christ for all people. This is why he includes so many sermons and addresses in Acts, especially by Peter and Paul. He not only shows them preaching to their original hearers, but also enables them to preach to us who, centuries later, listen to them. For as Peter said on the Day of Pentecost, the promise of salvation is for us too, and for every generation, indeed ‘for all whom the Lord our God will call’ (Acts 2:39).
2. Introduction to Acts (Acts 1:1–5)
After our general introduction to Luke, and to his reasons for writing, we come now more particularly to Acts and to its preface. We need to note carefully the way in which Luke understood both the relation between his two volumes and the foundation role exercised by the apostles.
a. Luke’s two volumes
He begins by telling us how he thinks of his two-volume work on the origins of Christianity, which makes up approximately one-quarter of the New Testament. He does not regard volume one as the story of Jesus Christ from his birth through his sufferings and death to his triumphant resurrection and ascension, and volume two as the story of the church of Jesus Christ from its birth in Jerusalem through its sufferings by persecution to its triumphant conquest of Rome some thirty years later. For the contrasting parallel he draws between his two volumes is not between Christ and his church, but between two stages of the ministry of the same Christ. In his former book he has written about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven (1–2), since he was ‘powerful in word and deed before God and all the people’; in this his second book (he implies) he will write about what Jesus continued to do and to teach after his ascension, especially through the apostles whose sermons and authenticating ‘signs and wonders’ Luke will faithfully record. So Jesus’ ministry on earth, exercised personally and publicly, was followed by his ministry from heaven, exercised through his Holy Spirit by his apostles. Moreover, the watershed between the two was the ascension. Not only did it conclude Luke’s first book and introduce his second (Acts 1:9), but it ended Jesus’ earthly ministry and launched his heavenly ministry.
What, then, is the correct title for Luke’s second volume? Its popular name, especially in the United States, is ‘the Book of Acts’, and this is justified by the fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus in which it is headed simply Praxeis, ‘Acts’. But this neither tells us whose acts Luke is writing about, nor helps to distinguish his book from the later apocryphal works like the second-century Acts of John, Acts of Paul and Acts of Peter, and the third-century Acts of Andrew and Acts of Thomas. These were pious romances intended to enhance the reputation of the apostle concerned, especially by legendary miracles, and usually to promote some unorthodox tendency in their name.
The traditional title since the second century has been ‘The Acts of (the) Apostles’, with or without the definite article. And certainly it is apostles who occupy the centre of Luke’s stage – first Peter and John (chapters 1–8), then Peter on his own (chapters 10–12), James as chairman of the Jerusalem Council (chapter 15) and especially Paul (chapters 9 and 13–28). Yet this title is too human-centred; it omits the divine power by which the apostles spoke and acted.
Others have proposed the title ‘The Acts of the Holy Spirit’ – for example, Johann Albrecht Bengel in the eighteenth century. He wrote that Luke’s second volume ‘describes not so much the Acts of the Apostles as the Acts of the Holy Spirit, even as the former treatise contains the Acts of Jesus Christ’. The concept was popularized by Arthur T. Pierson whose commentary (1895) was published with this title. He ends his book with a stirring challenge:
Church of Christ! The records of these acts of the Holy Ghost have never reached completeness. This is the one book which has no proper close, because it waits for new chapters to be added so fast and so far as the people of God shall reinstate the blessed Spirit in his holy seat of control.
This, to be sure, is a healthy corrective. Throughout Luke’s narrative there are references to the promise, gift, outpouring, baptism, fullness, power, witness and guidance of the Holy Spirit. It would be impossible to explain the progress of the gospel apart from the work of the Spirit. Nevertheless, if the title ‘the Acts of the Apostles’ overemphasizes the human element, ‘the Acts of the Holy Spirit’ overemphasizes the divine, since it overlooks the apostles as the chief characters through whom the Spirit worked. It is also inconsistent with Luke’s first verse which implies that the acts and words he reports are those of the ascended Christ working through the Holy Spirit who, as Luke knows, is ‘the Spirit of Jesus’ (Acts 16:7). The most accurate (though clumsy) title, then, which does justice to Luke’s own statement in verses 1 and 2, would be something like ‘The Continuing Words and Deeds of Jesus by his Spirit through his Apostles’.
Luke’s first two verses are, therefore, extremely significant. It is no exaggeration to say that they set Christianity apart from all other religions. These regard their founder as having completed his ministry during his lifetime; Luke says Jesus only began his. True, he finished the work of atonement, yet that end was also a beginning. For after his resurrection, ascension and gift of the Spirit he continued his work, first and foremost through the unique foundation ministry of his chosen apostles and subsequently through the post-apostolic church of every period and place. This, then, is the kind of Jesus Christ we believe in: he is both the historical Jesus who lived and the contemporary Jesus who lives. The Jesus of history began his ministry on earth; the Christ of glory has been active through his Spirit ever since, according to his promise to be with his people ‘always, to the very end of the age’.
b. The foundation ministry of the apostles
We have already noted that the ascension was the turning point between the two phases – earthly and heavenly – of the ministry of Jesus Christ. Now we need to note that he was not taken up to heaven until after he had given instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen (2). This is clearly emphasized in the Greek sentence, which reads literally: ‘until the day when, having instructed his chosen apostles through the Holy Spirit, he was taken up’. Thus, before ending his personal ministry on earth, Jesus deliberately made provision for its continuation, still on earth (through the apostles) but from heaven (through the Holy Spirit). Because the apostles occupied a unique position, they also received a unique equipping. Luke outlines four stages.
i. Jesus chose them
They were the apostles he had chosen (2). Luke has used the same verb, eklegomai, in his account of Jesus’ calling and choice of the Twelve, ‘whom he also designated apostles’, and he is about to use it again when two men are proposed to fill the vacancy left by Judas and the believers pray ‘Lord . . . show us which of these two you have chosen’ (24). Significantly, the same verb is also used later in connection with Paul. The risen Lord describes him to Ananias as ‘my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles’ (9:15), and Ananias conveys this message to Paul: ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you . . . You will be his witness’ (22:14–15). In this way Luke emphasizes that all the apostles (the Twelve, Matthias and Paul) were neither self-appointed, nor appointed by any human being, committee, synod or church, but were directly and personally chosen and appointed by Jesus Christ himself.
ii. Jesus showed himself to them
The other evangelists have indicated that Jesus appointed the Twelve ‘that they might be with him’ and so be uniquely qualified to bear witness to him. The foundation witnesses had to be eyewitnesses. Judas’s successor, Peter said, had to be someone who had been with the Twelve ‘the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us’ (1:21–22). And in particular he must be ‘a witness with us of his resurrection’ (1:22, cf. 10:41). So, after his suffering, the risen Lord presented himself to them (3). Luke stresses this. Jesus gave them many convincing proofs [tekmērion is a ‘convincing, decisive proof’ – BAGD] that he was alive, which continued over a period of forty days. During this time he appeared to them (becoming visible), spoke about the kingdom of God (so that they heard as well as saw him) and on one occasion at least was eating with them, which indicates that he was no ghost, but could be touched (10:41). He thus presented himself to their senses: their eyes, ears and hands. Such an objective experience of the risen Lord was an indispensable qualification of an apostle, which explains why Paul could be one and James another, and why there have been no comparable apostles since and can be none today.
iii. Jesus commanded or commissioned them
In addition to speaking to them about the kingdom of God (3) and the Holy Spirit (4–5), which we shall consider further in the next chapter, he gave them certain instructions through the Holy Spirit (who inspired all his teaching) (1). What were these instructions? It is interesting that the Bezan or Western text answers this question by adding ‘the apostles whom he had chosen and commanded to preach the gospel’. If this is correct, then the risen Lord’s instruction was none other than his Great Commission, which Luke has already recorded at the end of his Gospel in terms of preaching repentance and forgiveness in his name to all nations, and which Jesus will soon repeat in terms of being his witnesses to the ends of the earth (1:8). This, then, adds a further feature to the picture of an apostle. Apostolos was an envoy, delegate or ambassador, sent out with a message and carrying the authority of the sender. Thus Jesus chose his apostles, and showed himself to them after the resurrection, before sending them out to preach and teach in his name.
iv. Jesus promised them the Holy Spirit
In the Upper Room, according to John, Jesus had already promised the apostles that the Spirit of truth would both remind them of what he had taught them and supplement it with what he had not been able to teach them. Now Jesus commands them to wait in Jerusalem until the promised gift has been received (4). It was his Father’s promise (4a, presumably through such Old Testament prophecies as Joel 2:28ff.; Isa. 32:15; and Ezek. 36:27), his own (since Jesus had himself repeated it during his ministry, 4b) and John the Baptist’s, who had called the ‘gift’ or ‘promise’ a ‘baptism’ (5). Jesus now echoes John’s words and adds that the thrice-repeated promise (‘the promised Holy Spirit’, 2:33) is to be fulfilled in a few days. So they must wait. Not till God has fulfilled his promise and they have been ‘clothed with power from on high’ can they fulfil their commission.
Here, then, was the fourfold equipment of the apostles of Christ. There is of course a general sense in which all the disciples of Jesus can claim that he has chosen us, revealed himself to us, commissioned us as his witnesses, and both promised and given us his Spirit. But Luke is not referring to these general privileges here, but to the special qualifications of an apostle – a personal appointment as an apostle by Jesus, an eyewitness experience of the historical Jesus, an authorizing and commissioning by Jesus to speak in his name, and the empowering Spirit of Jesus to inspire their teaching. It was primarily these uniquely qualified men through whom Jesus continued ‘to do and to teach’, and to whom Luke intends to introduce us in Acts.