Friday
Friday
Evangelism
And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Acts 2:47
So far we have considered the study, fellowship, and worship of the early church, for it is to these three activities that Luke says they devoted themselves. Yet these are aspects of the church’s interior life; they tell us nothing about its outreach to the world.
This illustrates the great danger of textual preaching, that is, of isolating a text from its context. Acts 2:42 is a very popular text for preachers. Millions of sermons have been preached on it, as if it gave a comprehensive account of the church. But on its own it presents a disastrously unbalanced picture of the church. Verse 42 gives the impression that the early church was interested only in studying at the feet of the apostles, caring for its own members, and worshiping God. In other words, it was living in a ghetto, preoccupied with its own domestic life and ignoring the plight of the lonely and the lost outside.
But this was not the case. The early Christians were also committed to mission. But it is not until verse 47 that we learn this. Verse 47 corrects the imbalance of verse 42, for it teaches us three lessons about the early church’s evangelism. Firstly, the Lord Jesus himself did it. “The Lord added to their number.” Doubtless he did it through the preaching of the apostles, the everyday witness of church members, and their common life of love. But he did it. Only he can open the eyes of the blind, unstop the ears of the deaf, give life to the dead, and so add people to the church.
Secondly, Jesus did two things together: “The Lord added to their number … those who were being saved.” He did not add people to the church without saving them, nor save them without adding them to the church. Salvation and church membership still go together.
Thirdly, he did both daily. Those early Christians did not regard evangelism as an occasional activity. Day by day people were being added to the church. We need to recover this expectation today.
For further reading: 1 Thessalonians 1:1–10