Why We Are Devoted to One Another | Acts 2:42-47
Introduction
The other day I read a fascinating thread on Twitter, written by someone claiming to work for one of the major Big Tech companies. The author described the toll that two years of COVID restrictions and work-from-home arrangements have taken on his colleagues.
“COVID/WFH [Work-from-Home] has totally broken people. They are fundamentally weak, often with no social support outside of work. They’re the people with no children, no spouse. Only a dog or cat for emotional support. … Everyone is demoralized. This may surprise you, since Big Tech is extremely well paid and has been able to WFH throughout the past 2 years. They’ve been given extra days off, extra stipends, bonuses, etc. They never had to fear being laid off.”
Apparently stipends and bonuses can’t replace people. He continues:
“[Work-from-home] can make it easy to overwork. You take fewer breaks, often work past normal working hours. You don’t feel connected …. Big Tech is often the only social life for people. … My company had all sorts of after-work activities. Sports leagues, game nights, different classes taught by employees. There was a rhythm and connectedness that’s gone.”
He goes on to describe how unproductive and emotionally unstable many of his colleagues are these days.
It turns out that when God said in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” he was telling us something fundamental about the way he designed human nature. And that was before the fall! Since the fall, just think what dysfunction sin has wreaked on our relational nature! Sin adds envy, malice, bitterness, pride, dishonesty, and disloyalty. Sin is anti-social. It complicates, distorts, and damages relationships.
But Jesus came to redeem humans completely, which means redeeming every aspect of our human nature, including our social, relational nature. Let’s look at Acts 2:42–47, where we see God’s remedy for a relationally ruined world.
Acts 2:42–47
“And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”
Acts 2:42–47 describes the result of God’s saving work. When people trust in Jesus and are saved from their sins and filled with the Spirit, what happens, what results?
According to this text, when God saves people, God forms those people into a dynamic community whose members share their lives together. God’s saving work produces a dynamic community in which those who share in the spiritual life of Christ together also share in the everyday stuff of life together.
There is an important order there: Your common faith in Christ produces your common life, or community. Fellowship with God is the foundation for fellowship with one another. Sharing your everyday lives is the expression of the life you share in Christ.
Now, Acts 2:42–47 is easily misread. It’s misread when it is taken as prescriptive rather than descriptive. In other words, Acts 2 is not prescribing a formula for building the perfect church. Neither was it given to you by God as a rubric for criticizing the believers around you for and all the ways they fail to live up to your idea of a perfect church. Rather, Acts 2 describes the kind of community God himself creates by his Spirit through the Gospel of his Son.
Luke’s purpose in describing this new covenant community is to prove that God’s end-time promises began to be fulfilled on the day of Pentecost. The dwelling place of God is now with man. In the past, God manifested his presence discernibly on earth in buildings like the tabernacle and the temple. But then the fullness of God dwelt in the body of a man, Jesus of Nazareth. Through the sinless and substitutionary death of Jesus, God made a way for sinful humans to enjoy full access to his glory. And after Jesus ascended into heaven, God poured out his Spirit on his people. Now the local church is the new covenant community through which the invisible God visibly manifests his presence on earth.
And the reason God wants you to know that is because God wants you to participate in that. God wants you to share in the spiritual life in Christ with one another and to express that joy by sharing your everyday lives with one another. Many of the particulars are going to look different from the Jerusalem church in Acts, but the deep realities and the broad themes will be the same.
“Sharing our everyday lives together is the expression of the spiritual life we share in Christ.”
This January, we’ve been preaching from various passages of Scripture that address some of the corporate “habits of grace” that we intentionally practice at Emmaus Road Church. The last two weeks we’ve covered why we preach and why we sing. This morning, we’re going to look at why we are devoted to one another, why we intentionally share our everyday lives with one another in spiritual community. Occasionally we hear comments from those who are new to Emmaus Road Church like, “Wow! Sundays, MCs, Huddles … You guys gather together a lot.” And that’s not even counting little league games or barbecues or game nights or a hundred other informal gatherings.
Why do we gather together so frequently? Why do we value life-on-life community? Why are we so devoted to one another that we would realign our calendars and priorities and rhythms of life? The truth revealed in Acts 2 is why: sharing our everyday lives together is the expression of the spiritual life we share in Christ. Let me show you where that comes from in Acts 2.
Sharing in the Spiritual Life of Christ
Acts 2:42 begins, “And they.” “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Who are they?
At the beginning of Acts 2, God poured out his Holy Spirit on a small group of disciples gathered in a house in Jerusalem. And because this happened during Pentecost—an annual Jewish harvest festival—Jerusalem was full of pilgrims and visitors from all over the known world, both Jews and foreign converts to Judaism. There were Egyptians, Persians, Africans, Romans, Arabs, and others (Acts 2:9–11). And that diverse crowd heard disciples of Jesus declaring “the mighty works of God” in their own languages (2:11), and they were “amazed and perplexed” (2:12).
So Peter stood up and preached a sermon declaring that Jesus of Nazareth is God’s anointed King—crucified, raised from the dead, and exalted to God’s right hand. And in fulfillment of God’s promises, Jesus poured out the Spirit of God on those who trusted in him.
Listen to the crowd’s response (Acts 2:37–38): “Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’” Then verse 41 says, “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”
So when Acts 2:42 says, “And they devoted themselves,” it’s talking about those who responded to the gospel in repentance, put their faith in Jesus, and received the forgiveness of their sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Acts 2:42–47 describes a spiritual community supernaturally formed through the saving work of God. The most fundamental thing about gospel community is that it is made up of people who trust Christ together. We see this again in v. 44, which says, “And all who believed were together.” Verse 47 says, “And the Lord added to their number … those who were being saved.”
The new covenant people of God are people who share in the spiritual life of Jesus. And when I say “spiritual life,” I mean life produced by the Holy Spirit of God. The center of Peter’s sermon was the resurrected Christ who pours out his Spirit.
One of the most damaging distortions American Christianity has introduced is the elevation of individual spirituality to the exclusion of corporate spirituality. Yes, you must trust in Jesus for yourself, but you never believe by yourself.
Verse 43 says, “And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.” The whole church experienced God together. They experienced spiritual affections together—awe, or fear or reverence. Luke uses that word (phóbos) five times in Acts, always to describe a corporate response to the discernible work of God.
“And great fear came upon all who heard of it.” (Acts 5:5).
“And great fear came upon the whole church” (5:11)
“And fear fell upon them all” (Acts 19:17).
“Christian community is not an ideal we have to realize, but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our community is in Jesus Christ alone, the more calmly we will learn to think about our community and pray and hope for it.”
Luke is describing a shared experience of the active presence of God. In the rest of the text, Luke describes the Jerusalem church praying together (v. 42), attending the temple together (v. 46), and worshiping together (v. 47). Clearly, at the heart of spiritual community is a shared experience of God, through the Spirit of God, by faith in Jesus, the Son of God. The foundation of spiritual community is sharing in the spiritual life of Christ.
Listen to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian: “Christian community is not an ideal we have to realize, but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our community is in Jesus Christ alone, the more calmly we will learn to think about our community and pray and hope for it.”
Because Jesus is the foundation, that takes all the pressure off you. Christian community does not require you to act more like an extrovert or become the next Joanna Gaines in order to show hospitality. So what does it look like to participate in that reality?
Sharing Our Everyday Lives
Acts 2 reveals that God forms his church through a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. The community described in Acts 2:42–47 is the result of the fullness of the Spirit promised in Acts 2:38. That’s what started it all.
However, do not make the mistake of thinking that spiritual community means unseen or intangible or imaginary. According to Acts 2, the spiritual presence of Christ is manifested physically in the observable life of the local church. In these six verses, Luke is able to sketch a vivid portrait of the life of the local church because it consisted of physical realities: eating bread and food (vv. 42, 46), sharing possessions and belongings (v. 45), and gathering in the temple and in their homes (vv. 44, 46).
Sharing Meals
Sharing in Christ led to sharing meals together. Luke mentions this twice: “And they devoted themselves … to the breaking of bread” (v. 42). And, “Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts” (v. 46).
“Breaking bread” eventually became a term applied to the Lord’s Supper, but it would be out of order for us to read in Acts 2 that they “broke bread together” and get a picture in our minds of Communion the way we practice it. Luke simply means that they ate everyday meals together. In one sense, these were ordinary meals, not formal, religious sacraments.
And yet, in another sense, these were not ordinary meals. Because of their shared life in Christ, their shared meals took on new spiritual significance. They partook of meals together as those who partook of Christ together. So they ate together frequently, not sporadically—“day by day” (v. 46). They opened their hearts and lives to one another by opening their homes. And they ate “with glad and generous hearts, praising God” (vv. 46–47). In short, they ate together like Christians.
It’s easy to fall into a gnostic mindset that separates the spiritual from the ordinary. A Bible study feels spiritual and productive; eating meals together feels … ordinary. Praying together feels spiritual; talking about work and parenting over table fellowship feels ordinary. But shared meals have always been a normal way for Christians to express their shared dependence on Jesus.
Sharing Burdens
Sharing in Christ also led to sharing one another’s burdens. In vv. 44–45, Luke says “And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.” Some take these verses to mean that the early church practiced a sort of “Christian communism,” but that is not what is going on here.
We can tell from later passages like Acts 4:37 and 5:7 that Christians continued to own property and turn a profit on their land and businesses. This is not a denunciation of stuff as unspiritual; this is a description of how Spirit-filled believers cared for one another with their stuff. Spirit-filled believers love one another tangibly. They meet material needs with material generosity, not with positive energy or good vibes.
This assumes that believers know each other and are known by each other. How can a body of believers meet one another’s needs unless those needs are known? And how can those needs be known unless they are told? It requires grace both to give and to receive. This material generosity is another tangible expression of sharing in the life of Christ, who gave himself for us.
Gathering Together
Sharing in Christ leads to gathering together. In verse 42, Luke says, “And they devoted themselves to … the fellowship.” Fellowship translates the Greek word koinōnia, which implies togetherness and shared life. It describes the closeness of relationships that involve mutual care.
There is simply no way to have koinōnia without being together, which is exactly what verse 44 says: “And all who believed were together.” Those words land with greater weight and significance after nearly two years watching churches suspend in-person gatherings and maintain distance. In a world where technology makes virtual meetings possible it seems more necessary to say now than ever: There is no such thing as a virtual church. The local church has always existed locally, inhabiting physical space and time and gathering in-person.
Verse 46 says they were “attending the temple together.” But “together” just doesn’t quite capture the weight of the Greek word there. The word is homothumadon, which comes from two words: homo, “the same,” and thumos, “desire”—same desire, same purpose, same longing. Elsewhere in Acts it’s translated “with one accord.”
Luke is not merely reporting that the disciples gathered in the same place, but that they were in the same place with the same purpose. Their gatherings were purposeful gatherings, tangible expressions of the life they shared in Christ. Because we have fellowship in Christ, we gather together—in person—in order to express that fellowship practically.
Devoted to the Word
All of this—sharing meals, sacrificially meeting needs, gathering in homes—simply fleshes out the very first characteristic mentioned in v. 42: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.” The apostles proclaimed the good news that your sins can be forgiven by God’s free grace through faith in Jesus, and they taught the implications of that Gospel. The teachings of the Apostles, preserved for us in the letters of the New Testament as God’s inspired Word, make it clear that shared life in Jesus has implications for our shared life in community. This is especially clear in the “one-another commands” that describe the implications of the gospel for our life together.
Listen to a few of the one another commands from the NT, and consider what these commands assume and imply about the nature of Christian community:
“Love one another with brotherly affection” (Romans 12:10).
“Greet one another with a holy kiss” (1 Cor. 16:20, 2 Cor. 13:12)
“Serve one another” (Galatians 5:13).
“Bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2).
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another” (Ephesians 4:32).
“Encourage one another and build one another up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).
“Always seek to do good to one another” (1 Thess. 5:15)
“Exhort one another every day” (Hebrews 3:13).
“Stir up one another to love and good works” (Heb. 10:24)
“Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another” (James 5:16).
“Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” (1 Peter 4:9).
The one another commands of the New Testament imply at least three things: First, you cannot live the Chrisitan life on your own. Second, the Christian life cannot be restricted to a once-a-week meeting. Third, your personal relationship with Jesus radically reorients your relationships with others. The one-anothers are not busy work or add-ons; they are the overflow and expression of the life you share with one another in Christ.
Devotion to the Word of God means far more than being in a Bible study with others; it means belonging to a community where you have the opportunity to live out the Word. Bible studies can be great. But if the extent of your interaction with those people does not include living out what you learned from the Word, you're missing something. Studying the Bible should result in showing hospitality, bearing burdens, serving, loving generously sacrificially, and more. Those who share in the spiritual life of Christ share in the everyday stuff of life.
A Witness to the World
And if your shared life in community is the result of your shared life in Christ, then your life in community will be a powerful testimony to the world that Christ is alive in you. Verse 47: “And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”
When you love one another, God makes the truth and the power of the gospel observable to the world. Belonging to a community of believers with whom you share your time, your homes and your tables, your needs and your resources, your joys and sorrows—that is a vivid, tangible portrait of the gospel. As someone has said, the church is like a movie trailer that gives the world a preview of what eternal life with God looks like.
Jesus took on flesh. Jesus died a physical death, laying down his life for you. Jesus’ body was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven. And Jesus is coming back again personally, physically, and visibly (SGC SoF #13). That is why we are devoted to one another. We share together in the life of Jesus, the incarnate Son of God! How could we not share our very lives with each other?
Our Delivery System
We realize this will look different in different local churches, but at Emmaus Road, we have intentionally structured a delivery system that we think is easily reproducible. When we gather on the Lord’s Day, the preaching of the Word is central to the life of our church. We dig into the Bible in our Discipleship Huddles, where we focus on being hearers and doers of the Word (Jas. 1:22) and on applying the gospel to our lives. And in our Missional Communities, we share life together.
MCs really are the context for living out the spiritual life we share. MCs are not Bible studies, support groups, or prayer groups, though we do pray together, read the Word together, and support one another. MCs are made up of believers of all ages—old and young, singles and married couples, children and teens. MC Gatherings look and feel a lot like extended family gatherings and the rhythms and routines of an MC reflect the seasons of life of its members.
“The more we delight in Jesus, the more we give ourselves to his people. The more we give ourselves to his people, the more we delight in Jesus.”
MCs do what families do together: we eat, celebrate, lament, serve, recreate, and communicate together. And as we engage in the everyday rhythms of life together, the Spirit of God weaves our lives together. The more we delight in Jesus, the more we give ourselves to his people. The more we give ourselves to his people, the more we delight in Jesus. And that’s how the Spirit of God produces vibrant gospel culture, which is a witness to the world.
So that’s our delivery system. We sit under the preaching of the Word on Sunday. We respond to that Word and apply the gospel in Discipleship Huddles. And in our MCs, we share our very lives with one another because we share together in the life of Christ.
Response
“Imperfect as it is, it is the dearest place on earth to us… All who have first given themselves to the Lord, should, as speedily as possible, also give themselves to the Lord’s people. How else is there to be a Church on the earth? If it is right for anyone to refrain from membership in the Church, it is right for everyone, and then the testimony for God would be lost to the world!”
You may know that you don’t share in the life of Christ. You are dead in your sins, alienated from the life of God and from others. God calls you to repent and rely on Jesus right now.
Some of you belong to Christ, but you don’t currently belong to a local church. We’ll never tell you that you have to commit yourself to this church, but we will encourage you to commit yourself to a gospel community, to a specific body of believers with whom you can regularly gather, eat, celebrate, lament, and experience the grace of God.
Charles Spurgeon once said of the Church, “Imperfect as it is, it is the dearest place on earth to us… All who have first given themselves to the Lord, should, as speedily as possible, also give themselves to the Lord’s people. How else is there to be a Church on the earth? If it is right for anyone to refrain from membership in the Church, it is right for everyone, and then the testimony for God would be lost to the world!”
And to the members of Emmaus Road Church, delight yourselves deeply in Christ. Find your fullness in him, and then participate freely and fully in this body of believers as the expression of the life of Christ that is in you.
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14).