Acts 1:1

In these verses, I. Theophilus is put in mind, and we in him, of St. Luke's gospel, which it will be of use for us to cast an eye upon before we enter upon the study of this book, that we may not only see how this begins where that breaks off, but that, as in water face answers to face, so do the acts of the apostles to the acts of their Master, the acts of his grace.

1. His patron, to whom he dedicates this book (I should rather say his pupil, for he designs, in dedicating it to him, to instruct and direct him, and not to crave his countenance or protection), is Theophilus, Act 1:1. In the epistle dedicatory before his gospel, he had called him most excellent Theophilus; here he calls him no more than O Theophilus; not that he had lost his excellency, nor that it was diminished and become less illustrious; but perhaps he had now quitted his place, whatever it was, for the sake of which that title was given him, - or he was now grown into years, and despised such titles of respect more than he had done, - or Luke was grown more intimate with him, and therefore could address him with the more freedom. It was usual with the ancients, both Christian and heathen writers, thus to inscribe their writings to some particular persons. But the directing some of the books of the scripture so is an intimation to each of us to receive them as if directed to us in particular, to us by name; for whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning.

2. His gospel is here called the former treatise which he had made, which he had an eye to in writing this, intending this for a continuation and confirmation of that, ton prōton logon - the former word. What is written of the gospel is the word as truly as what was spoken; nay, we now know no unwritten word that we are to give credit to, but as it agrees with that which is written. He made the former treatise, and now is divinely inspired to make this, for Christ's scholars must go on towards perfection, Heb 6:1. And therefore their guides must help them on, must still teach the people knowledge (Ecc 12:9), and not think that their former labours, though ever so good, will excuse them from further labours; but they should rather be quickened and encouraged by them, as St. Luke here, who, because he had laid the foundation in a former treatise, will build upon it in this. Let not this therefore drive out that; let not new sermons and new books make us forget old ones, but put us in mind of them, and help us to improve them.

3. The contents of his gospel were that, all that, which Jesus began both to do and teach; and the same is the subject of the writings of the other three evangelists. Observe, (1.) Christ both did and taught. The doctrine he taught was confirmed by the miraculous works he did, which proved him a teacher come from God (Joh 3:2); and the duties he taught were copied out in the holy gracious works he did, for he hath left us an example, and that such as proves him a teacher come from God too, for by their fruits you shall know them. Those are the best ministers that both do and teach, whose lives are a constant sermon. (2.) He began both to do and teach; he laid the foundation of all that was to be taught and done in the Christian church. His apostles were to carry on and continue what he began, and to do and teach the same things. Christ set them in, and then left them to go on, but sent his Spirit to empower them both to do and teach. It is a comfort to those who are endeavouring to carry on the work of the gospel that Christ himself began it. The great salvation at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, Heb 2:3. (3.) The four evangelists, and Luke particularly, have handed down to us all that Jesus began both to do and to teach; not all the particulars - the world could not have contained them; but all the heads, samples of all, so many, and in such variety, that by them we may judge of the rest. We have the beginnings of his doctrine (Mat 4:17), and the beginnings of his miracles, Joh 2:11. Luke had spoken, had treated, of all Christ's sayings and doings, had given us a general idea of them, though he had not recorded each in particular.

4. The period of the evangelical story is fixed to the day in which he was taken up, Act 1:2. Then it was that he left this world, and his bodily presence was no more in it. St. Mark's gospel concludes with the Lord's being received up into heaven (Mar 16:19), and so does St. Luke's, Luk 24:51. Christ continued doing and teaching to the last, till he was taken up to the other work he had to do within the veil.

II. The truth of Christ's resurrection is maintained and evidenced, Act 1:3. That part of what was related in the former treatise was so material that it was necessary to be upon all occasions repeated. The great evidence of his resurrection was that he showed himself alive to his apostles; being alive, he showed himself so, and he was seen of them. They were honest men, and one may depend upon their testimony; but the question is whether they were not imposed upon, as many a well-meaning man is. No, they were not; for, 1. The proofs were infallible, tekmēria - plain indications, both that he was alive (he walked and talked with them, he ate and drank with them) and that it was he himself, and not another; for he showed them again and again the marks of the wounds in his hands, and feet, and side, which was the utmost proof the thing was capable of or required. 2. They were many, and often repeated: He was seen by them forty days, not constantly residing with them, but frequently appearing to them, and bringing them by degrees to be fully satisfied concerning it, so that all their sorrow for his departure was done away by it. Christ's staying upon earth so long after he had entered upon his state of exaltation and glory, to confirm the faith of his disciples and comfort their hearts, was such an instance of condescension and compassion to believers as may fully assure us that we have a high priest that is touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

III. A general hint given of the instructions he furnished his disciples with, now that he was about to leave them, and they, since he breathed on them and opened their understandings, were better able to receive them. 1. He instructed them concerning the work they were to do: He gave commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen. Note, Christ's choice is always attended with his charge. Those whom he elected into the apostleship expected he should give them preferments, instead of which he gave them commandments. When he took his journey, and gave authority to his servants, and to every one his work (Mar 13:34), he gave them commandments through the Holy Ghost, which he was himself filled with as Mediator, and which he had breathed into them. In giving them the Holy Ghost, he gave them his commandments; for the Comforter will be a commander; and his office was to bring to their remembrance what Christ had said. He charged those that were apostles by the Holy Ghost; so the words are placed. It was their receiving the Holy Ghost that sealed their commission, Joh 20:22. He was not taken up till after he had given them their charge, and so finished his work. 2. He instructed them concerning the doctrine they were to preach: He spoke to them of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. He had given them a general idea of that kingdom, and the certain time it should be set up in the world (in his parable, Mk. 13), but here he instructed them more in the nature of it, as a kingdom of grace in this world and of glory in the other, and opened to them that covenant which is the great charter by which it is incorporated. Now this was intended, (1.) To prepare them to receive the Holy Ghost, and to go through that which they were designed for. He tells them in secret what they must tell the world; and they shall find that the Spirit of truth, when he comes, will say the same. (2.) To be one of the proofs of Christ's resurrection; so it comes in here; the disciples, to whom he showed himself alive, knew that it was he, not only by what he showed them, but by what he said to them. None but he could speak thus clearly, thus fully, of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. He did not entertain them with discourses of politics or the kingdoms of men, of philosophy or the kingdom of nature, but pure divinity and the kingdom of grace, the things which most nearly concerned them, and those to whom they were sent.

IV. A particular assurance given them that they should now shortly receive the Holy Ghost, with orders given them to expect it (Act 1:4, Act 1:5), he being assembled together with them, probably in the interview at the mountain in Galilee which he had appointed before his death; for there is mention of their coming together again (Act 1:6), to attend his ascension. Though he had now ordered them to Galilee, yet they must not think to continue there; no, they must return to Jerusalem, and not depart thence. Observe,

1. The command he gives them to wait. This was to raise their expectations of something great; and something very great they had reason to expect from their exalted Redeemer. (1.) They must wait till the time appointed, which is now not many days hence. Those that by faith hope promised mercies will come must with patience wait till they do come, according to the time, the set time. And when the time draws nigh, as now it did, we must, as Daniel, look earnestly for it, Dan 9:3. (2.) They must wait in the place appointed, in Jerusalem, for there the Spirit must be first poured out, because Christ was to be as king upon the holy hill of Zion; and because the word of the Lord must go forth from Jerusalem; this must be the mother-church. There Christ was put to shame, and therefore there he will have this honour done him, and this favour is done to Jerusalem to teach us to forgive our enemies and persecutors. The apostles were more exposed to danger at Jerusalem than they would have been in Galilee; but we may cheerfully trust God with our safety, when we keep in the way of our duty. The apostles were now to put on a public character, and therefore must venture in a public station. Jerusalem was the fittest candlestick for those lights to be set up in.

2. The assurance he gives them that they shall not wait in vain.

(1.) The blessing designed them shall come, and they shall find it was worth waiting for; You shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost; that is, [1.] "The Holy Ghost shall be poured out upon you more plentifully than ever." They had already been breathed upon with the Holy Ghost (Joh 20:22), and they had found the benefit of it; but now they shall have larger measures of his gifts, graces, and comforts, and be baptized with them, in which there seems to be an allusion to those Old Testament promises of the pouring out of the Spirit, Joe 2:28; Isa 44:3; Isa 32:15. [2.] "You shall be cleansed and purified by the Holy Ghost," as the priests were baptized and washed with water, when they were consecrated to the sacred function: "They had the sign; you shall have the thing signified. You shall be sanctified by the truth, as the Spirit shall lead you more and more into it, and have your consciences purged by the witness of the Spirit, that you may serve the living God in the apostleship." [3.] "You shall hereby be more effectually than ever engaged to your Master, and to his guidance, as Israel was baptized unto Moses in the cloud, and in the sea; you shall be tied so fast to Christ that you shall never, for fear of any sufferings, forsake him again, as once you did."

(2.) Now this gift of the Holy Ghost he speaks of,

[1.] As the promise of the Father, which they had heard of him, and might therefore depend upon. First, The Spirit was given by promise, and it was at this time the great promise, as that of the Messiah was before (Luk 1:72), and that of eternal life is now, Jo1 2:25. Temporal good things are given by Providence, but the Spirit and spiritual blessings are given by promise, Gal 3:18. The Spirit of God is not given as the spirit of men is given us, and formed within us, by a course of nature (Zac 12:1), but by the word of God. 1. That the gift may be the more valuable, Christ thought the promise of the Spirit a legacy worth leaving to his church. 2. That it may be the more sure, and that the heirs of promise may be confident of the immutability of God's counsel herein. 3. That it may be of grace, peculiar grace, and may be received by faith, laying hold on the promise, and depending upon it. As Christ, so the Spirit, is received by faith. Secondly, It was the promise of the Father, 1. Of Christ's Father. Christ, as Mediator, had an eye to God as his Father, fathering his design, and owning it all along. 2. Of our Father, who, if he give us the adoption of sons, will certainly give us the Spirit of adoption, Gal 4:5, Gal 4:6. He will give the Spirit, as the Father of lights, as the Father of spirits, and as the Father of mercies; it is the promise of the Father. Thirdly, This promise of the Father they had heard from Christ many a time, especially in the farewell sermon he preached to them a little before he died, wherein he assured them, again and again, that the Comforter should come. This confirms the promise of God, and encourages us to depend upon it, that we have heard it from Jesus Christ; for in him all the promises of God are yea, and amen. "You have heard it from me; and I will make it good."

[2.] As the prediction of John Baptist; for so far back Christ here directs them to look (Act 1:5): "You have not only heard it from me, but you had it from John; when he turned you over to me, he said (Mat 3:11), I indeed baptize you with water, but he that comes after me shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost." It is a great honour that Christ now does to John, not only to quote his words, but to make this great gift of the Spirit, now at hand, to be the accomplishment of them. Thus he confirmeth the word of his servants, his messengers, Isa 44:26. But Christ can do more than any of his ministers. It is an honour to them to be employed in dispensing the means of grace, but it his prerogative to give the Spirit of grace. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, shall teach you by his Spirit, and give his Spirit to make intercession in you, which is more than the best ministers preaching with us.

(3.) Now this gift of the Holy Ghost thus promised, thus prophesied of, thus waited for, is that which we find the apostles received in the next chapter, for in that this promise had its full accomplishment; this was it that should come, and we look for no other; for it is here promised to be given not many days hence. He does not tell them how many, because they must keep every day in a frame fit to receive it. Other scriptures speak of the gift of the Holy Ghost to ordinary believers; this speaks of that particular power which, by the Holy Ghost, the first preachers of the gospel, and planters of the church, were endued with, enabling them infallibly to relate to that age, and record to posterity, the doctrine of Christ, and the proofs of it; so that by virtue of this promise, and the performance of it, we receive the New Testament as of divine inspiration, and venture our souls upon it.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1. The former treatise] In the original we have the superlative adjective used, but the idiom which speaks of the first of two is common to Greek with many other languages. An example is found 1Co_14:30. So Cicero, de Inventione, in his second book (chap, iii.) calls the former book primus liber.

treatise] The original (λόγος) indicates rather an inartistic narrative than a history. It is a book more like a piece of Herodotus than Thucydides.

have I made] Better, I made. The time is indefinite, and we have no warrant in the text for that closer union of the two books, in point of date, which is made by the language of the A. V.

Theophilus] Nothing is known of the person to whom St Luke addresses both his Gospel and the Acts, but the adjective “most excellent” applied to him in Luk_1:3 is the same which is used in addressing Felix in a letter and in a speech (Act_23:26; Act_24:3), and Festus (Act_26:25) in a speech; from which we are perhaps warranted in concluding that Theophilus was a person of rank, and it may be a Roman officer. Josephus uses the same word in addressing Epaphroditus, to whom he dedicates the account of his life (Vit. Josephi, ad fin.). The suggestion that Theophilus (= lover of God) is a name adopted by the writer to indicate any believer, is improbable. Such personification is unlike the rest of Scripture, and is not supported by evidence.

began] for the Gospel is not a history of all that Jesus did, but only an account of the foundations which He laid and on which the Church should afterwards be built So this book is still an account of what the Lord does and teaches from heaven.

to do and teach] As in the Gospel (Luk_24:19) the disciples call Jesus “a prophet mighty in deed and in word.” The acts and life spake first, and then the tongue.

Act_1:1-14. Link connecting this book with St Luke’s Gospel. Detailed account of the Ascension

The Title. According to the best MSS. this should be simply “Acts of Apostles.” The Cod. Sin. gives only “Acts.” The former of these titles, while having most authority, also most fitly describes the character of the composition. The book is not The Acts of the Apostles, but merely some Acts of certain Apostles which are related by the author, intermixed with the acts of others among the Christian community, where such additions were needful to make the story clear. The writer tells us in the introduction how Christ, when ascending in glory, declared what should be the course which His doctrine should take in its extension, “Ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judæa and Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the earth” (Act_1:8). To describe the fulfilment of this departing prophecy is that on which the whole book is engaged. It is natural, therefore, to find that the two chief actors are the energetic Peter, and, after his conversion, the enthusiastic Apostle of the Gentiles. But even they are only used as representative characters. The writer does not aim at giving us full details of the work of either of these Apostles. We see most of Peter and John while the preaching is confined to Jerusalem, but the narrative leaves them to recount some acts of Philip, because he was the pioneer of the Gospel in Samaria. Peter is again brought before us engaged in preaching in Judæa and Samaria and confirming the work which Philip and his companions had begun; and because the conversion of Cornelius was the beginning of the proclamation of Christ’s message beyond the Jewish race, we have a full account of St Peter’s mission to this first Gentile convert and of the debate which arose among the Jews in consequence. But when Peter has been present at the council of Jerusalem, at which was finally settled the relation between the Jews and Gentiles who became Christians, we lose sight of him, and the further spread of the Gospel is summarized in a description of some of the labours of St Paul; and when he has reached the capital of the west, to shew us that the writer contemplated no biography of St Paul, the history comes to what some have thought an abrupt close. But the writer’s task was done when he had told how the great Apostle brought Christ’s message to the capital of the Gentile world. See Introduction.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The former treatise - The former book. The Gospel of Luke is here evidently intended. Greek: the former λόγος logos, meaning “a discourse,” or “a narrative.”

O Theophilus - See the notes on Luk 1:3. Since this book was written to the same individual as the former, it was evidently written with the same design to furnish an authentic and full narrative of events concerning which there would be many imperfect and exaggerated accounts. See Luk 1:1-4. Since these events pertained to the descent of the Spirit, to the spread of the gospel, to the organization of the church, to the kind of preaching by which the church was to be collected and organized, and as the facts in the case constituted a full proof of the truth of the Christian religion, and the conduct of the apostles would be a model for ministers and the church in all future times, it was of great importance that a fair and full narrative of these things should be preserved. Luke was the companion of Paul in his travels, and was an eye-witness of no small part of the transactions recorded in this book. See Act 16:10, Act 16:17; Act 20:1-6; Acts 27; Acts 28. As an eye-witness, he was well qualified to make a record of the leading events of the primitive church. And as he was the companion of Paul, he had every opportunity of obtaining information about the great events of the gospel of Christ.

Of all - That is, of the principal, or most important parts of the life and doctrines of Christ. It cannot mean that he recorded all that Jesus did, as he had omitted many things that have been preserved by the other evangelists. The word “all” is frequently thus used to denote the most important or material facts. See Act 13:10; 1Ti 1:16; Jam 1:2; Mat 2:3; Mat 3:5; Act 2:5; Rom 11:26; Col 1:6. In each of these places the word here translated “all” occurs in the original, and means “many, a large part, the principal portion.” It has the same use in all languages. “This word often signifies, indefinitely, a large portion or number, or a great part” (Webster).

That Jesus - The Syriac Version adds, “Jesus our Messiah.” This version was probably made in the second century.

Began to do ... - This is a Hebrew form of expression; meaning the same thing as that Jesus did and taught. See Gen 9:20, “Noah began to be a farmer,” that is, was a farmer. Gen 2:3, in the Septuagint: “Which God began to create and make”; in the Hebrew, “which God created and made.” Mar 4:7, “began to send them forth by two and two,” that is, sent them forth. See also Mar 10:32; Mar 14:65, “And some began to spit on him”; in the parallel place in Mat 26:67, “they did spit in his face.”

To do - This refers to his miracles and his acts of benevolence, including all that he did for man’s salvation. It probably includes, therefore, his sufferings, death, and resurrection, as a part of what he has done to save people.

To teach - His doctrines. As the writer had given an account of what the Lord Jesus did, so he was now about to give a narrative of what his apostles did in the same cause, that thus the world might be in possession of an inspired record respecting the establishment of the Christian church. The record of these events preserved in the sacred narrative is one of the greatest blessings that God has conferred on mankind; and one of the highest privileges which people can enjoy is that which has been conferred so abundantly on this age in the possession of the Word of God.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Act_1:1-12

The former treatise have I made.

A true commencement must have respect to what has gone before

In any new beginning of study or work, it is important to have in mind what has been done before in the same line. No one can learn or do to advantage, unless he avails himself of what others have learned and done before him. Any other plan would utterly forbid progress. The world would be full of new beginnings--and nothing else. He who would study the New Testament wisely, must know what the Old Testament has disclosed. He who would get good from the Book of Acts must have in mind at the start the facts and teachings of the former treatise by the same author. (H. C. Trumbull, D. D.)

The Gospels and the Acts

I. Their relation. In determining this it is not enough to say that while the Gospels contain the history of the Masters ministry, the Acts record that of the apostles. Both alike narrate the work of the Lord: the Gospels what He did in Person, the Acts what He did by His chosen witnesses. This relation is marked at its outset. If the former treatise records all that Jesus began, then the present relates what Jesus continued. His incarnation, death, etc., were only the foundation. In the Acts He rears a lofty temple on that foundation. Nor does the work cease with the abrupt conclusion of the Acts. In a city map you mark the road which leads to another city a little beyond the wall, when it breaks off. To trace it further you require another map. So our Lords path breaks off on the map of inspiration and is continued on the map of providence.

II. Their point of union. The latter treatise does not begin precisely where the former ends. By design they overlap each other--both recording the Resurrection and the Ascension. Thus where a bridge of two arches spans a river, both arches lean on one pillar which rises in the middle of the flood. In the midst of the gulf which separated God and man, and in the midst of the tide of time stood Jesus--on Him rests the Old Dispensation and the New. In the end of the Gospel history we found the first hemisphere of the Divine dispensation terminating in Christ crucified and ascended. Here we find the second arch springing where the first was finished. Resting there, it rises into heaven, and stretches away into the future. We lose sight of it as we lose sight of the rainbow, in mid-heavens; but we know assuredly that it will traverse all the intervening space, and lean secure on the continent of a coming eternity. (W. Arnot, D. D.)

St. Luke a model for the Bible student

I. He collected his facts with care and diligence (Luk_1:1-3). This complete knowledge of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach suggests the importance of endeavouring to gain a more perfect knowledge of the Word of God. There is a great readiness in quoting certain texts or favourite portions, but the fulness of which St. Luke speaks is rare. The Word of God cannot be said to be unknown, but it does not dwell richly in us in all wisdom. Hence truths are magnified into undue proportions, and important doctrines are passed over slightly, because they do not well enter into some peculiar system.

II. His collection was limited by the boundaries of revelation. It did not go beyond what God made known by His Son. Here, again, we may learn the importance of not going beyond the revealed Word whenever we attempt to review Gods dealings with mankind, anti especially of the redemption of the world by Christ. If there be danger in a partial knowledge of Gods truth, there is perhaps more in adding to the things which God has revealed. It is this which has caused so much superstition.

III. He recognised that a knowledge of all that Jesus began to do and to teach, however comprehensive and however free from mixture, will not prove a saving knowledge unless it be conveyed to the soul by the power of God. St. Luke describes the commandments of Jesus as given unto the apostles by the Spirit. It is possible for any man to learn these commandments. The letter of the law and the facts of the gospel are within the reach of the poorest capacity. But, in order to make the knowledge available, the Spirit of God must take of the things so learnt, and show them to the soul. No man can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Ghost. It is impossible to read the Acts without seeing that the Holy Spirit was the acting Guide of all the sayings and actions of the first teachers of Christianity. Looking upon the doctrines of the gospel as a medicine to heal our spiritual sickness, we must suppose that the medicine is taken, and that it penetrates through the constitution of the sick soul.

IV. It requires strong convictions of the truths we believe in order to be diligent in the propagation of them. Our zeal for the cause of the Redeemer, our desires for the advancement of His glory, our prayers for the prevalence of His truth, will all be in proportion to the depth of our conviction that this is the Word of God. The earliest impressions are liable to be effaced by time, by the world and its cares, by the changes of our own views, by the speculative views of others, etc. We have need, therefore, of watchfulness, lest that which is within us lose its power and freshness, and we begin in the routine of duty and form to think less and less of the power of godliness. (R. Burgess, B. D.)

Literary histories

Luke was the Haydon of the sacred scribes; he sketched the perfect Man and drew in heroic size the figures and scenes of the new kingdom. Historians often become interested in a single character and turn aside to give us a monograph or biography on the object of their enthusiasm. Motley, after writing The Rise of the Dutch Republic and The History of the United Netherlands, published John Barneveld. Bancroft left his chosen field, the History of the United States, to make us better acquainted with Abraham Lincoln. Froude has added to his History of England a Life of Lord Beaconsfield. Writers of history describe the movements of an age as centring about their heroes. The records of a given period are seen to bear the stamp of a distinct personality. But Luke begins with a great character. His biography precedes his history and is the inspiration of it. There was a life which was the key to the Acts, and our writer was in touch with it. He did not gild an earthly tyrant and set him up like Nebuchadnezzars image in the plain of Dura to fill the wastes of godless history, but he traces the way of the Church through the fiery furnace of events with a form like a son of the gods. Gulzot wrote a History of Civilisation in Europe and in France, and gave to the world as one of his latest works Meditations on the Christian Religion. Edwin Arnold, after following the Light of Asia till it led him to a dim Nirvana, came back for another guide and traced the path of the Light of the World. Gounod composed operas in his youth, and afterward turned his attention to such serious works as the oratorios of The Redemption and St. Paul. It thus not infrequently happens that in later life men are led to dwell upon and portray that great personality they have passed by in search of the worlds truth; but the Bible writers all had their study fires kindled by the rays of that Sun which illuminates the past and future, before they became scribes of Divine truth. The ancient penmen were friends of God, and those of the New Testament were disciples of His Son Jesus Christ before they essayed to describe the powers, the laws, and the institutions of redemption. (W. R. Campbell.)

The Gospels the living picture of Christ

The whole value of the Gospels to Erasmus lay in the vividness with which they brought home to their readers the personal impression of Christ Himself. Were we to have seen Him with our own eyes, we should not have so intimate a knowledge as they give us of Christ, speaking, healing, dying, rising again, as it were in our very presence. If the footprints of Christ are shown us in any place, we kneel down and adore them. Why do we not rather venerate the living and breathing picture of Him in these Books? It may be the safer course, he goes on, with characteristic irony, to conceal the state mysteries of kings, but Christ desires His mysteries to be spread abroad as openly as was possible. (Littles Historical Lights.)

The Memorabilia of Christ

Xenophon, the loving disciple of Socrates, has given an account of the last sayings of that great man, after he was imprisoned and condemned to death; and in all ages the Memorabilia has been regarded as one of the most precious records which classical antiquity has sent down to us. But sublime and heroic as they were, how immeasurably do these last utterances of the Grecian stage fall below the moral grandeur and the deathless interest inspired by the last words of Jesus. The nearer we stand to the Cross, and the more we enter into the spirit of its great central character, the more do we feel the force of Rousseaus eloquent eulogium, Socrates lived and died like a philosopher; but Jesus Christ like a God.

The pre-eminence of the doctrine of Christ incarnate

We have seen in mountain lands one majestic peak soaring above all the rest of the hills which out the azure of the horizon with their noble outline, burning with hues of richest gold in the light of the morning sun; and so should the doctrine of Christ incarnate, crucified, risen, and reigning, be pre-eminent above the whole chain of fact, doctrine, and sentiment which make up the sublime landscape--the magnificent panorama--which the Christian preacher unfolds, and makes to pass in clear form and brilliant colour before the eye of his peoples faith. (Evangelical Magazine.)

Theophilus.--

Theophilus

Not an ideal person with a name expressive of his religious character. That must have been Philotheus (cf. 2Ti_3:4). Probably a Gentile convert, not resident in the Holy Land, or he would not have needed the many explanations of places and usages. He is said by Theophylact to have been of senatorial rank; and the title prefixed in the Gospel has been thought to imply that he was a provincial governor (cf. Act_23:26; Act_24:3). The address here is less ceremonious, indicating that Lukes friendship had become more intimate. (Bp. Jacobsen.)

Of all that; Jesus began.--

Teaching to be combined with doing

If it were not for the fact of a Christian life manifested in the holy lives of believers, Christian doctrine would command no attention beyond that of a speculative system. God begins, but never finishes. His works and His teachings are only movements in the march of infinite advance. But one thing we know is finished, and that is the redemption work of Christ, which He declared accomplished when He bowed His head and gave up the ghost; but even this gives birth to a progressive work of salvation, based upon, and springing out of, that foundation. Jesus intimated to His disciples that, through them, He would do greater works after He went to the Father than while He was on the earth, and that, as they became able to bear them, He would give them other teachings. In the Acts of the Apostles we find both of these promises being literally fulfilled. (Gf. Pentecost.)

Aspects of Christ on the earth

1. A Founder. He began to do and teach, like an architect who draws the plan of a magnificent cathedral, and lays its foundations, then leaves it for others to finish. The Church of to-day at its best is only carrying out the purpose of its Founder.

2. A Lawgiver. Giving His commandments through the Holy Ghost to His apostles. His laws were not written on tables of stone, like those of Mount Sinai, but on the hearts of His disciples. Whoever becomes a follower of Christ pledges himself to obey His commands.

3. A Sufferer. His Passion is not omitted from this summary, brief as the summary is, for the death of Christ is far more important to us than was His life. His Passion brought to us our salvation.

4. A Conqueror. He was dead, He was buried, but He lived again; He showed Himself alive after His Passion. Bug for the resurrection of Jesus the world would never have heard of His name.

5. A Revealer. Speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. Notice what was the theme of conversation during those forty days. The same subject is the object of all Christs interest on the earth now. He cares little for the rise and fall of empires, except as they affect the salvation of men. One soul outweighs all the politics of a continent.

The unchanged plan

The lines of the kingdom run before the crucifixion were not changed. Christs assumption of authority was the same as of old. His words were those of command. He had no mistakes to rectify, nor did He withdraw any offer or retract any promise. The scenes He had passed through had not shaken His mind in its loves, its powers, or its purposes. The old commissions were renewed, but there must be halt, not for orders or drill, but for power. Not as the heathen legionaries waited for the auguries from dead beasts, but for a descent of the Spirit from on high were these men to linger at Jerusalem. The moulds were set and the wicks were already dipped for the men who were to be the candles of the Lord, and only the spark of the Spirit was needed to light them. (W. R. Campbell.)

The ministry of Jesus a beginning

I. It was a new thing among men.

1. His miracles. We have seen strange things to-day.

2. His teaching. Never man spake as this Man.

3. His character. Which of you convinceth Me of sin? This originality presents--

(1) An example for all time.

(2) An argument for the Divine origin of Christianity.

II. It was introductory to the work of the apostles.

1. He prepared them for their work by instruction. He made them to feel that they could have no other Master. They were assured that to learn of Him was to find the truth. This relation continued during His presence, but they had to be prepared for His absence.

2. Accordingly He brought them to a conviction of His abiding supremacy in the Church. Though when with Him they in a degree lived by sight, even then faith was required; and after His departure faith was their chief directive principle. And Low realising was the faith in which they carried on their work (Act_2:33; Act_4:10).

III. It was introductory to the work of the Church in succeeding ages. Centuries have rolled by, and Christianity has not fulfilled all the desires of its friends. Yet the name of Jesus has never ceased to be spoken, and His Holy Spirit has wrought by means of the truth however partially known. Of His living ministry we have abundant proofs in buildings, institutions, and saved souls. And provision is made for the perpetual continuance of the work of Jesus. The Gospel history furnishes--

1. An inexhaustible theme.

2. An all-powerful motive.

Conclusion: See here--

1. How to understand the history of the Christian Church. It presents the truth of Jesus in incessant contention with error, the world, and Satan, and it points hopefully to the time when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our God, etc.

2. The magnificence of a right influence. The work which Jesus began has never ceased. Some of His followers have begun movements which have continued So bless the world ages after they have gone. If your life is short and sphere narrow you have the opportunity of beginning what may bless many.

3. The dignity of Christian effort. It is an honour to have distinguished associates, how much more to have your name in the long list headed by Jesus! (W. Hudson.)

The ever-active Christ

1. Lukes Gospel is confessedly but an imperfect sketch of an absolutely perfect life. Yet, in his Gospel, every beneficent act seems well-rounded off, every miracle seems complete, every parable seems to have received its finishing touches. And yet Luke says that his Gospel is only a narrative of what Jesus began both to do and teach. There were greater things to follow--miracles of grace far surpassing the opening of blind eyes, the cleansing of lepers, or even the raising of the dead to life again.

2. The Acts of the Apostles contains an account of those greater works which were done in the name of Christ. In the Gospels Christ begins to do and teach; in the Acts of the Apostles He continues to do and teach; but His doing and teaching are not now restricted and limited, but assume larger and grander proportions.

3. Our Lords beneficient activity did not cease when the last of the apostles fell asleep. Christ has been doing and teaching ever since, and never more than during the last hundred years. Christ is with us still, and He is not inactive. He is keenly alive to all that goes on in His Church. Indeed, it is the Christ in you that prompts to that noble deed, or to lay upon His altar that costly sacrifice. Apart from Christ you can do nothing. The Gospels are full of beginnings. The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles are also full of beginnings. Now, if the beginnings are so glorious, what will the endings be? If the Spirit of Christ abides in the Church, leading us into all truth, then we ought to possess a larger and richer spiritual heritage than our forefathers possessed. The Churches of the New Testament were only the beginnings of Christs redemptive activity. His influence on the world is immeasurably greater than it was when He died upon the cross, and immeasurably greater than it was when the Books of the New Testament were written. We know that He who in the time of His humiliation began to do and teach, until the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together, and the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the mighty deep. Mr. Beecher somewhere speaks of a Christ a thousand times more glorious than Jerusalem ever saw; a Christ a thousand times freer and fuller of the manifestation of love than any historical Christ; a Christ larger in every way than the Christ of the past; a Christ enwrapping every soul as the whole atmosphere of a continent broods over each particular flower; a Christ conceived of as living near, as overhanging, as thinking of each one, and as working for Him. Do we know anything of this Christ? The same Christ as we have in the Gospels, and yet not the same: for a man may know the Christ of history and yet be unsaved, but to know the risen, ascended, ever-present Christ is salvation itself. (A. Verran.)

The beginning of apostolicity (1.)

1. This Book is a letter addressed to one man. God always speaks to individuals. He does not address the great seething throng. He made Adam, called Abram, selected Mary; all through history God has called out the one person, and has started His kingdom oftentimes from very insignificant beginnings.

2. But great letters cannot be kept private: where there is anything in a letter it burns its way out. There are some letters which exercise a secret and wonderful power over the receiver, and he says the whole world must be taken into his confidence; to keep it back from others would amount to practical felony. We cannot hide gospels permanently. What is in a book and not what is said about it, determines its fate in the long run. Luke wrote a long account of Christs ministry to Theophilus, and the whole world has Lukes narrative in its hand to-day! So Luke undertook further to write the Acts to this same man, and to-day the Acts are read in every school, perused by all students of history, and in it are the fundamentals of the most influential commonwealths.

3. Luke divides the great life into two portions--action and doctrine, miracles and truth. All Christian life admits of precisely the same division. If we do, but fail to teach, we shall be but barren puzzles. If we teach, and fail to do, we may incur the just imputation of being theorists and fanatics, or devotional sentimentalists.

I. And yet Jesus Christ only began.

1. There can be no ending in anything that God does. Though it may appear to end in itself, yet itself is related to some other and broader self, and so the continuity rolls on in ever-augmenting accretion and proportion. There are no conclusions in truth; there may be resting-places, a punctuation of statement, so that we may take time to turn it into beneficent action, but Gods hand never wrote the word finis; though the Bible be, in point of paper and print, a measurable quantity, it opens a revelation that recedes from us like the horizon.

2. So then life becomes a new thing from this standpoint. Men talk about formulating Christian truth: you might as well attempt to formulate the light or the atmosphere. You cannot formulate quantities that are infinite. We have organised geology, botany, astronomy, why not theology? The answer is that geology, etc., represent finite and therefore measurable quantities. We can begin a theology, and in doing so we shall do well, provided that we never mistake beginnings for endings. As to verbal statements, we may never agree; the action of the mind is in advance of the action of the tongue. We know always more than we can tell.

3. So we may well be charitable. If Jesus only began, men can only do the same. No man has the whole truth. The Book itself is not a full grown garden, it is a seed-house. We are all beginners. The old grey-haired student lifts up his wrinkled brow from the glowing page and says, I have hardly begun it. Who, then, are we, fifty years his juniors, who should start up and say, We have reached the goal? Let us not account ourselves to have attained, but let us press forward, and ever say, God hath yet more light and truth to bring forth from His Holy Word.

II. Though Jesus Christ only began, His beginnings have all the force and urgency of complete endings. He gave commandments, He did not offer mere suggestions for their consideration, to adopt or reject on further inquiry. Jesus Christ was never less than royal. Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. We are then the slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the Lords freemen. We do not make the commandments, we obey them--we do not walk under the loose rule of license, we are kept within the limits of a specific moral gravitation, and we have come to know that there is no liberty without law, that life without law is chaos.

III. These beginnings pertain to the Kingdom of God. Jesus Christ had but one subject. He never talked about anything less than a kingdom that rose above all other empires and enclosed them in its infinite sovereignty. The disciples never could get away from their little kingdom any more than Christ could detach Himself from His great royalty. So we often find ourselves talking Christian language without the full Christian meaning. The terms are identical with those Christ used, and yet the meanings are separated by the diameter of infinity. Let us know that the larger meaning is always the right one. Yet Jesus chided the apostles very gently. He told them that they were as yet incomplete men; but ye shall receive power, etc. They were unbaptised in soul: the symbolic water had done its initial work, but they stood there without the sacred fire, the inspiring afflatus. Into what baptism have we been baptised? We have not received the Holy Ghost if we are conducting a narrow ministry. Jesus Christ said so much when He added, Ye shall be witnesses both in Jerusalem, etc. No power but the Holy Ghost could take a man through those regions. The man who has been baptised with water only will choose his own parish, but the man in whom is the burning of the Holy Ghost will say with Wesley, My parish is the world. You will know whether you are inspired or not by the vastness of your labours. If we are waiting until we be properly equipped and duly sent out, then know that we have been baptised with ice.

IV. We now pass from the visible ministry of Christ--a cloud received Him out of their sight. Nothing more. Not out of hearing, sympathy, nor helpful ministry--only out of sight. We are not out of His sight, nor out of His memory! (J. Parker, D. D.)

The beginning of apostolicity (2.)

1. Who could have told beforehand that Christ would be the first to go? Our conception would rather have been that He would remain until the last lamb had been enfolded and the last pilgrim entered into rest. Instead of this, He Himself said, It is expedient for you that I go away.

2. Being about to go, His last interview with the apostles took place. Last interviews are notably pathetic. The words that would be common on any other occasion acquire a new and significant accent. Little things that would not be noticed under ordinary circumstances, start up into unusual prominence. We should always listen as if in a last interview. What I say unto one, I say unto all--Watch. We lose so much through inattentiveness.

3. Jesus Christ is about to go--how will He go? He cannot be allowed to die: that would be a fatal disappointment to the attention which He has strained and to the expectation He has excited. Dogs die: and if this Man die, He will contradict by one pitiful commonplace all that was phenomenal in His life. How will He go? Luke tells us that He was taken up. In other places we learn that He ascended. He entered within the action of another gravitation, into His own place in the heavens. It is enough: the mind is satisfied by the grand action. Were I reading this upon a poets page, I would applaud the poet for one of the finest conceptions that ever ennobled and glorified human fancy.

4. Jesus Christ then ascended, and in doing so He but repeated in one final act all the miracles which had made His previous ministry illustrious. From the very beginning He had been ascending, so that when He took the final movement, it was but completing that which He had been continuing for years. Our life should be an ascent! We should not be to-day where we were ten years ago. Not that we are to ascend by sharp steeps that attract the attention. There are ascents so gradual that they do not seem to be ascents; yet looked at as from the beginning to the end, we see that the gradient has evermore lifted itself up until the very next thing to do is to step into heaven! You may know how you will die by knowing how you really live. If your life is a life of faith in the Son of God marked by, at all events, the desire to be Christ-like, then you shall ascend. All that drops away from you will be the flesh and the bones, that have been a distress to you for many a day. Your self, your liberated spirit, shall ascend. Who ever saw fire going downward? It is in fire to go up, to seek the parent sun out of which it came. We, too, living, moving, and ever having our being in God shall not die as the dogs die, but rise to our fount and origin with Christ.

5. If the final interview was pathetic to Christ, it was also pathetic to the disciples. They had their question to ask as certainly as He had His commandments to give. Lord, wilt Thou? etc.

(1) Mark how, after His resurrection, He had become Lord and the Restorer of kingdoms. Everything rests upon the resurrection of Christ: if Christ be not risen, etc. No matter what He did, taught, or appeared to be: if it was in the power of men to kill and keep Him in the grave, all His protestations were lies and His promises vanity. Hence, Luke and all the apostolic writers insist that Jesus showed Himself alive by many infallible proofs. The inquiry, then, that was put to Christ in this instance was put to a Man who had risen. It was this--Wilt Thou restore? etc. There are times when everything depends upon one man, crises which sum themselves up in the judgment of one thinker--we look to him, he carries the keys, he speaks the final word, and from him we expect the policy which alone can ennoble and save the life.

(2) We learn from this inquiry how long-lingering and ineradicable is the influence of first impressions. The disciples had got it into their minds very early that this Man had come to liberate the Jews and to give them back their lost kingdom. What is so long-lived as prejudice? Therefore take care what impression you make upon the young mind about the Christian Sabbath, Book, Church, idea. Who can wonder that some men can hardly open the Bible with sympathy or hopefulness, because they remember that in early days it was the task-book? Are there not those who dread going to church, because their action is associated with early impressions of gloom and dreariness?

6. Christs answer may be read in a tone of rebuke, but it was not spoken in that tone. You cannot report a tone--hence it is possible to express the very words the speaker said and yet entirely to misrepresent him! Features can be photographed, but not life. Jesus Christ spoke in a tone that was instructive, and followed with utterances of the largest and tenderest encouragement. Ye shall receive power, etc. There is no gift equal to the gift of power. When a man in distress comes to you, if, instead of answering his immediate necessity, you could give him power to answer his own, you would bestow the most precious of treasures.

(1) The gift of Christ to the Church is a gift of power--

(a) Not intellectual only, though Christ has indeed sharpened every faculty of the mind, and blessed the Church with penetrating insight--but that is not the power referred to here.

(b) Nor social power--the power usually associated with the idea of kingdom, rule, and authority.

(c) But the power of holiness--after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you. Know yourselves to be powerful by the measure of your holiness, and contrariwise know yourselves to be weak, though your mind covers the whole register of intellectual possibility. We have lost the Holy Ghost. We betake ourselves now to Church questions and not to soul inquiries. The problem of to-day is ecclesiasticism, not evangelisation. We are building structures, arranging mechanics, instead of being carried away with the whirlwind of Divine inspiration, and displaying what the world would call supreme madness in consecration of heart. A grand, or learned, or rich Church--these may be but contradictions in terms, but a holy Church, an inspired Church, would go forth fair as the moon, etc. The world can answer our argument so as to confuse the listener, but it can have no reply to an unimpeachable purity.

(2) The power which Christ gave was to be used. When He puts the staff into my hand, He means me to walk with it; when He gives me opportunities, He means me to use them.

(3) This power was to be used gradually--Ye shall be witnesses unto; Me both in Jerusalem, etc. Do not begin at the end: grow little by little, but see to it that your motion is constant. It is not some dashing triumph that strikes beholders, but that subtle, quiet, imperceptible growth that proceeds night and day until a culmination is reached that surprises not by its violence but by its completeness and tenderness of its working.

(4) The power was to be used enlargingly, from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the earth, until there was no more ground to be covered. This is our Christian mission, and nothing so enlarges and emboldens the mind as sympathy with Christ. The Christian man cannot be a small-minded man. Find a sectarian and you find no Christian; pick out a man who says the kingdom of heaven ends here, and he is a man who has stolen his position in the sanctuary. All Christians are great men, great souls; all who are crucified with Christ see all men drawn to the Cross. Christianity never bends the head downward towards little and dwindling spaces: it always says, The whole world for Christ. If men would have their minds enlarged, ennobled, inspired, it can only be by direct fellowship with Him who is the Head of all things, who fills all things, who ascended that He might rule by a longer line and by a more comprehensive mastery.

7. Christs last words were about Himself. Ye shall be witnesses unto Me. What sublime audacity! What magnificent confidence! The Church has one Lord, one thing to say--Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and went out of the world to pray for His Church and sustain His servants in all the stress of life and in all the anxiety of service. (J. Parker, D. D.)

Christs finished and unfinished work

Compare Act_28:30-31. So begins and so ends this Book. The reference to the former treatise implies that this Book is to be regarded as its sequel. Is not the natural inference that the latter treatise will tell us what Jesus continued to do and teach after He was taken up? I think so. And thus the writer sets forth at once, for those that have eyes to see, what he means to do, and what he thinks his Book is going to be about. So, then, the name The Acts of the Apostles, which is not coeval with the Book itself, is somewhat of a misnomer. Most of the apostles are never heard of in it. But our first text supplies a deeper reason for regarding that title as inadequate. For, if the theme of the story be what Christ did, then the Book is, not the Acts of the Apostles, but the Acts of Jesus Christ through His servants. He, and He alone, is the Actor; and the men that appear are but the instruments in His hands. It is the unfinished record of an incomplete work. The theme is the work of Christ through the ages, of which each successive depository of His energies can do but a small portion, and must leave that portion unfinished, the Book does not so much end as stop. It is a fragment because the work of which it tells of is not yet a whole. If, then, we put these two things--the beginning and the ending of this Book--together, I think we get some thoughts about what Christ began to do and teach on earth; what He continues to do and teach in heaven; and how small and fragmentary a share in that work each individual servant of His has. Let us look at these things briefly.

I. We have here the suggestion of what Christ began to do and teach on earth. Now, at first sight, the words of our text seem to be in startling contradiction to the solemn cry which rang out of the darkness upon Calvary. Jesus said, It is finished! and gave up the ghost. Luke says He began to do and teach. Is there any contradiction between the two? Certainly not. It is one thing to lay a foundation; it is another thing to build a house. And the work of laying the foundation must be finished before the work of building the structure upon it can be begun. It is one thing to create a force; it is another thing to apply it. It is one thing to compound a medicine; it is another thing to administer it. It is one thing to unveil a truth; it is another to unfold its successive applications, and to work it into a belief and practice in the world. The former is the work of Christ which was finished on earth; the latter is the work which is continuous throughout the ages. He began to do and teach, not in the sense that any should come after Him and do, as the disciples of most great discoverers and thinkers have had to do: systematise, rectify, and complete the first glimpses of truth which the master had given. But whilst thus His work is complete His earthly work is also initial. And we must remember that whatever distinction my text may mean to draw between the work of Christ in the past and that in the present and the future, it does not mean to imply that when He ascended up on high, He had not completed the task for which He came. The revelation is complete, and He that professes to add anything to, or to substitute anything for, the finished teaching of Jesus Christ concerning God, and mans relation to God, and mans duty, destiny, and hopes, is a false teacher, and to follow him is fatal. In like manner that work of Christ, which in some sense is initial, is complete as redemption. This Man has offered up one Sacrifice for sins for ever. And nothing more can He do than He has done; and nothing more can any man do than was accomplished on the Cross of Calvary as a revelation, as effecting a redemption, as lodging in the heart of humanity, and in the midst of human history, a purifying energy, sufficient to cleanse the whole black stream. Resurrection and Ascension needs no supplement, and can have no continuation, world without end.

II. But we have to notice what Christ continues to do and to teach after His ascension. The theme of this Book of the Acts is the continuous work of the ascended Saviour. There is nothing more remarkable than the way in which, at every turn in the narrative, all is referred to Jesus Christ Himself. For instance, to cull one or two cases in order to bring the matter more plainly before you. When the apostles determined to select another apostle to fill Judas place, they asked Jesus Christ to show which of these two Thou hast chosen. When Peter is called upon to explain the tongues at Pentecost, he says, Jesus hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear. When the writer would tell the reason of the large first increase to the Church, he says, The Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved. Peter and John go into the Temple to heal the lame man, and their words to him are, Do not think that our power or holiness is any factor in your cure. The Name hath made this man whole. It is the Lord that appears to Paul and to Ananias, the one on the road to Damascus and the other the city. The same point of view is suggested by another of the characteristics of this Book, which it shares in common with all Scripture narratives, and that is the stolid indifference with which it picks up and drops men, according to the degree in which, for the moment, they are the instruments of Christs power. As long as electricity streams on the carbon point it glows and is visible, but when the current is turned to another lamp we see no more of the bit of carbon. As long as God uses a man, the man is of interest to the writer of the Scripture. When God uses another one, they drop the first, and have no more care about him, because their theme is not men, and their doings but Gods doings through men. On us, and in us, and by us, and for us, if we are His servants, Jesus Christ is working all through the ages. He is the Lord of Providence, He is the King of history. And thus He continues to teach and to work from His throne in the heavens. He continues to teach, not by the communication of new truth. That is done. But the application of the completed revelation is the work that is going on to-day and that will go on till the end of the world. Now these truths of our Lords continuous activity in teaching and working from heaven may yield us some not unimportant lessons. What a depth and warmth and reality the thoughts give to the Christians relation to Jesus Christ. We have to think, not only of a Christ who did something for us long ago in the past, and there an end, but of a Christ who to-day lives and reigns to do and to teach according to our necessities. What a sweetness and sacredness such thoughts impart to all external events, which we may regard as being the operation of His love, and moved by the hands that were nailed to the cross for us, and now hold the sceptre of the universe for the blessing of mankind! The forces of good and evil in the world seem very disproportionate, but we forget too often to take Christ into account. Great men die, good men die, Jesus Christ is not dead. He lives; He is the Anchor of our hope. What a lesson of lowliness and of diligence it gives us! Be not wise in your own conceits. You are only a tool, only a pawn in the band of the great Player. If you have anything, it is because you get it from Him.

III. Lastly, we note the incompleteness of each mans share in the great work. As I said, the Book which is to tell the story of Christs continuous work from heaven must stop abruptly. There is no help for it. If it was a history of Paul, it would need to be wound up to an end; but as it is the history of Christs working, the web is not half finished, and the shuttle stops in the middle of a cast. The Book must be incomplete because the work of which it is the record does not end until He shall have delivered up the kingdom to the Father, and God shall be all in all. So the work of each man is but a fragment of that great work. Every man inherits unfinished tasks from his predecessors, and leaves unfinished tasks to his successors. It is, as it used to be in the Middle Ages, when the men that dug the foundations or laid the first courses of some great cathedral were dead long generations before the gilded cross was set on the apex of the needlespire, and the glowing glass filled in to the painted windows. Enough for us, if we lay a stone, though it be but one stone in one of the courses of the great building. (A. Maclaren, D. D)

The permanence of Christ in history

The mists of gathering ages wrap in slowly-thickening folds of forgetfulness all other men and events in history, and make them ghostlike and shadowy; but no distance has yet dimmed or will ever dim that human form Divine. Other names are like those stars that blaze out for a while, and then smoulder down into almost complete invisibility; but Christ is the very Light itself, that burns and is not consumed. Other landmarks sink below the horizon as the tribes of men pursue their solemn march through the centuries, but the cross on Calvary shall stand for an ensign of the people, and to it shall the Gentiles seek. (A. Maclaren, D. D)

The uniqueness of Christs earthly ministry

Two facts here mark it off from every other.

I. It was original.

1. His works were original--done in His own strength. The best deeds of the holiest men are done in the strength of heaven.

2. His teaching was original, not derived from others. He was the Truth. His doctrines emanated from Him as living streams from a fountain of life.

3. His life was original. Such a life was never lived before; so blending the weak with the strong, the fleeting with the eternal, the human with the Divine. His whole life was a new fountain in earths desert, a new light in earths darkness.

4. His ministry was initiatory. Lukes Gospel was the commencement of a life here developed. Christ, absent corporeally, is with us always by His Spirit.

II. It was posthumous. Christ did not leave the world before He had made effective arrangements for the working out of His grand purpose. What He did He did through the Divine Spirit. It was in this might that He rose and continued for forty days. The ministry after the Passion was--

1. An undoubted reality (verse 3).

(1) His appearances were themselves infallible proofs. Nothing is better attested. They took place at ten different times, and before single disciples and hundreds, and in a veritable corporiety who could be touched, and could eat and drink.

(2) The witnesses of these appearances were indisposed to belief in the resurrection (Joh_20:9; Luk_24:11; see also the case of Thomas). Yet in spite of this they were thoroughly convinced. They proclaimed it publicly and before the very Sanhedrim.

2. Confined to the disciples. Before His death He spoke to promiscuous crowds; hut now only to those between whom and Himself there was a vital spiritual connection. Henceforth He would deal with the unconverted world through them. Observe here:

(1) The grand subject of His ministry was the kingdom of God. Science, philosophy, politics, were left behind for things of a higher type; things compared with which the greatest realities of earth are but as passing shadows; things which restore apostate spirits to God. Before His death He spoke much of His kingdom, and death had not changed His views.

(2) The grand endeavour of His ministry was to prepare propagandists.

(a) By giving them distinct impressions of the work He required them to discharge (Mat_28:19-20; Mar_16:15-16).

(b) By giving them an immovable conviction of His resurrection.

(c) By preparing them for the reception of their great Helper, the Holy Spirit. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Until the day in which He was taken up.--

Jesus lives

We can never forget a long corridor in the Vatican Museum, exhibiting on the one side epitaphs of departed heathens, and on the other mementoes of departed Christians. Opposite to lions leaping on horses, emblems of destruction, are charming sculptures of the Good Shepherd bearing home the lost lamb, with the epitaph, Alexander is not dead, but lives above the stars. (J. Stoughton.)

The ascension: its central position

Luke narrates the ascension twice--showing the importance of the event. The first mention is at the end of the Gospel--forming the keystone to the life of Jesus; the second at the beginning of the Acts--forming the keystone for the edifice of the Church. (Nesselmann.)

The Ascension of Christ

I. The fact. Seneca said: The ascent from earth to heaven is not easy. But Seneca was an atheist, if we may believe his adversaries. The atheist will not receive the witness of men. And Jesus said: How shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? The difficulties concerning supernaturalism are all difficulties of disbelief. To the mind of the believer there appears nothing that is difficult to Jesus in His miracles. The ascension of Jesus, like the resurrection or birth of Jesus, was only natural supernaturalism. It was a necessary consequence of the resurrection, as it was the consummation of the series of His redemptive miracles. It was natural with Him; it would have been unnatural with His disciples. The time, the place, the nature, and the witnesses of the ascension will corroborate the supernatural claim. The time was opportune. After having lived awhile on earth; after having offered His body as a sacrifice for sin; after having been raised from the dead; after having shown Himself alive to His disciples by many infallible proofs, then He led them out as far as Bethany, and in the presence of the whole Church then collected together He was taken up into heaven. Equally interesting, fitting, and convincing was the locality of the ascension. The nature of the ascension is evidence of the fact of the ascension. Jesus simply arose from the earth to go into the heavens. He had brought His body from the grave, and it belonged no more with corruptible things. It was not subject to the conditions or limitations of the earth. To go away was all that remained to be done. There was nowhere else to go but into the heavens. The witnesses of the ascension were not deceived, and could not be deceivers. They were the friends of Jesus. It accorded with their faith to expect that, like Enoch and Elijah, He should be caught up in the air. They were overcome with their sorrow when He was crucified. But now they had returned to Jerusalem with great joy. The angels who had announced His birth and proclaimed His resurrection were present to confirm His ascension. Stephen, when permitted to answer to the accusation of blasphemy in his apology, uttered in the very article of death, said: Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God. And among his last words were: Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And John, from the isle of Patmos, saw in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks the Son of Man, whom he heard saying: I am the First and the Last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. So also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath sent, is a witness. His presence in the hearts of men is the greatest witness. He shall testify of Me. If Jesus had not ascended the Holy Spirit would not be here.

II. The doctrine. The ascension of Jesus was essential to the plan and work of redemption. It was necessary to relate again the work which Jesus had come to do in the earth with the world from whence He came. He had accomplished a virtual redemption. He was thenceforth to make it actual. It was prophesied that He would ascend on high, lead captivity captive, and receive gifts for men. He himself had foretold that He should go away. The ascension was the fulfilment of prophecy and the verifiaation of His own words. Without the ascension the world could not have understood Him. It was the explanation of His character and work on the earth. Christianity was triumphant at the ascension. Sin was mastered, death was dead, and man was free. In the ascension of Jesus there was given to all believers the surety of their ascension. The heavens are now the pledge of another advent of the Son of Man.

III. The results. There were both direct and indirect results of the ascension. The ascension was the dividing point between the gospel and the apostolic histories. It concluded the one and introduced the other. The peasant becomes a prince. He is given a name which is above every name. He is returned to the honours which He had with the Father before the world was. The last act of Jesus as He ascended was to lift up His hands and bless. In the very sight of Gethsemane and Calvary, with malice toward none and charity for all, He went away blessing the cruel world which had received Him not, and dispensing gifts not to His friends only, but to the rebellious also. Of the great gift, in which all other gifts are included--the gift of the Holy Ghost which came on all men-we are all witnesses and partakers. The indirect influences of the ascension have been and are multifarious as the intellections and emotions of men. With the ascension the personal element of the Christ who had gone about doing good was taken from the earth, and it no longer excited malefactors to persecute Him. His disciples were exalted with Him. They were raised into union and fellowship with a higher nature. The Father and the heavenly world were brought nearer and made dearer to the children of men. It is now the aspiration of all Christians to explore with the Son of Man the heavenly spaces. (J W. Hamilton.)

The ascending Lord

I. The preparation of the witnesses. You cannot lay hands on any man at random, and ask him to bear testimony even to undisputed facts. He must have seen the things, and be a man of truthful spirit. What Christ did that day before their eyes gave them knowledge of the final fact which was to complete the circle of their testimony. It is the consummation of His resurrection. But what He said was needful, too. It was essential that their spiritual vision should be illumined, and so the Holy Spirit was promised to complete what their outward vision had begun. Through the mere vision they might have light: only through the spiritual baptism could they have power; but not to be warriers, but witnesses. All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth, go ye, therefore, and--not fight, not reign, but--teach. This is ever the divinest thing that men can do, and is the work of the disciples in every age. For this the Master Himself came into the world.

II. The limitation of the witnesses. While they beheld, a cloud received Him out of their, sight.

1. There was clear vision for a while, and then a mystery. So all our knowledge ends. The strength of the witnessing of the early disciples lay in this that they testified up to the limits of their knowledge, and then relapsed into utter silence. It will be well for the later witnesses to follow their example. Many an earnest witness has lost his power because there was no clear line between things known and things fancied; because the unfaltering testimony was not contrasted with the emphasis of silence, but dribbled off into vague surmisings.

2. But because a cloud hides, it need not cast a shadow upon us. The cloud which underlies the mysteries of heavenly truth is not black with thunder, nor scarred with lightning, but edged at least with the silver glory which it hides, and only laden for us with showers of peace and plenty. The cloud is the condescension of Divine love to our weak sight. As the rainbow repeats the promise of the early covenant, so the cloud tells us of hope and reminds us of our risen and returning Lord.

III. The attitude of the witnesses. They stand gazing after Him up into heaven; long enough, it is evident, to lead to the rebuke and reassurance of the two angels. While they could look at Jesus they were best fitting for their witnessing; but gazing at the cloud would only make them less strong and confident, Note--

1. Their obedience. Christ had told them to go to Jerusalem and witness first where it is hardest and most perilous to do so; and where their testimony will reach the thousands of Pentecost. It is not by peering into mysteries that we gain grace to be faithful witnesses, but by unquestioning obedience to plain commands. They who are willing to do His will shall know His teaching.

2. Their fellowship. Christ had appointed them a common mission and promised a common gift. And so they stayed together till it should come. As it is in the way of obedience that we learn the truth, it is in the way of fellowship that we most often receive the richest spiritual gifts.

3. And then, of course, they prayed; not of necessity only for that which He had promised, but quite as much, perhaps, for patience to wait for it, and then for grace to use it. Obedient souls, waiting together for the promised gift of Christ, will always pray. These three things shall make you strong to be witnesses, martyrs if need be, unto Him. (Monday Club.)

The resurrection and ascension of Christ

I. The resurrection.

1. The proofs of the fact. They are said to be not only many, but of infallible certainty.

(1) The number of the witnesses was very sufficient (1Co_15:5-6).

(2) They had all proper advantages and opportunity of knowing the certainty of the matter.

(3) They were very unwilling to be deceived (Luk_24:11).

(4) They published it as soon as the thing was done.

(5) The effect which their testimony had.

(a) Upon themselves: they gave the best proofs that they firmly believed it; for they preached it at the hazard of their lives, and many sealed their testimony with their blood.

(b) On others. Though these witnesses were but poor illiterate fishermen, and the story which they told ungrateful to the Jews, and contemptible to the Gentiles. Yet their testimony was presently received by many thousands, and nothing could possibly give a check to it.

2. The manner and circumstances of His resurrection.

(1) The time is particularly recorded--the third day; not immediately, lest any should doubt whether He had been quite dead. Therefore, when He had lain in the grave long enough to satisfy everybody that His death was real, He arose (Act_10:40; Mat_12:40).

(2) The ministry of angels in the affair (Mat_28:2).

(3) Christ was accompanied in His resurrection by several of the saints departed (Mat_27:52-53).

3. The uses:

(1) To establish our faith in Christs doctrine and religion (Mat_12:39-40).

(2) To encourage our trust in Him, and our hope of salvation by Him (1Pe_1:21; Rom_4:25; 1Th_4:14; 1Co_15:16; 1Pe_1:3-4).

II. The time of Christs stay in this world after His resurrection, and of what He did during that time. Our Saviours ascension was delayed so long:

1. To confirm the truth of His resurrection. When He first appeared to His disciples they were so transported that they hardly believed the thing was real (Luk_24:41), and therefore, if they had not seen Him again and again, very likely it would have passed for a vision only.

2. His love to and care of His disciples detained Him with them.

III. The ascension.

1. The manner and circumstances.

(1) Where He ascended unto--Heaven (verses 9, 11; Eph_4:10).

(2) From whence He ascended--Olivet (verse 12).

(3) The manner was very honourable--as a triumphant Conqueror (Psa_68:17-18; Eph_4:8).

(4) The witnesses who, besides the angels, were His own disciples. There was no need of their seeing Him rise, for it was proof enough of His resurrection, that they saw Him alive; but as they could not see Him in heaven, it was more necessary that they should see Him ascending.

(5) He departed with a blessing (Luk_24:50-51).

2. The ends and purposes.

(1) That He might receive the due reward of His own past labours and sufferings (Php_2:8-9).

(2) For the encouragement and comfort of His disciples. Ye cannot follow Me now, but ye shall follow Me afterwards; and where I am, there shall My servant be.

(3) As the Forerunner (Heb_6:20; Joh_14:2).

(4) To appear in the presence of God for His people, and to be their Advocate with the Father.

3. Inferences. Since Christ is ascended into heaven--

(1) It is an absurd thing to look for His bodily presence anywhere in this world.

(2) Let us follow our dear Saviour with our frequent thoughts, and with our warmest affections. (D. Jennings.)

The coronation of Christ

Jesuss resurrection might have been regarded as a private return to a select circle, had it not been followed by the assumption of the symbols of world-wide and heavenly authority. The Czar of Russia began to reign on the death of his father, but there was an interval of two years before he was crowned. Then it was at Moscow, the ancient seat of the rulers of the realm, where representatives of the empire and the world were gathered in unwonted splendour. The coronation signifies something. It is a time for renewing old constitutions and cementing the different parts of the dominion. Christ was formally to connect the dispensation of the chosen people with that of a universal sovereignty. There were new states to be added to His rule. Instead of remaining an illustrious citizen, He receives and wields an imperial sceptre. (W. B. Campbell.)

Christ preceding His apostles to heaven

As one who precedes a mighty host, provides and prepares rest for their weariness, and food for their hunger, in some city on their line of march, and having made all things ready, is at the gates to welcome their travel-stained ranks when they arrive, and guide them to their repose; so Christ has gone before, our Forerunner, to order all things for us there. (A. Maclaren, D. D)

Christ directs thought to heaven

It is said that Socrates brought men down from heaven to earth because he diverted attention from astronomy to a philosophy that considered the duties and relations of man in this life. Christ, on the other hand, exalts the thoughts and purposes of men from earth to heaven.

The last days of the Gospel period

The crucifixion had seemed to put an end to Jesuss ministry. But not so: the period of Gospel history was yet forty days from its end. Consider--

I. How they resembled previous days.

1. In the visible presence of Jesus.

2. In the personal ministry of Jesus. No one else could have done what was required.

3. In the verbal instruction of Jesus. The things pertaining to the kingdom of God had been Christs themes at the commencement (Mat_4:17; Joh_3:3), and throughout His public life.

4. The exercise of the authority of Jesus. Long ago He had chosen them, now He gave them commandments. They were to understand that death had not broken His authority.

5. In the mysterious agency of the Holy Ghost (Mat_3:16; Joh_3:34; Heb_9:14).

II. How they differed.

1. He who was now seen had been hidden in the grave. Here was a testimony to the reality of the invisible. Then He could be present with them in thought, though not to sense when He returned again to the unseen.

2. The voice now heard had been silent in death. Surely then His words must have been listened to with the deepest reverence.

3. Strange experiences had increased the fitness of the disciples to receive Christs instructions. Their misunderstandings had been rectified, and their attachment deepened. When attention has been secured a speaker can say more in a minute than in an hour otherwise.

4. The visible presence of Jesus was not constant. To give His disciples--

(1) Intervals for reflection.

(2) Evidences of His permanent interest in them.

III. Their leading impression. That Jesus was alive. He still lives, and because of that we shall live also. (W. Hudson.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Act 1:1-3. The former treatise have I made, &c. — The treatise here referred to is undoubtedly the gospel, which was written by Luke, and dedicated by him to Theophilus. See note on Luk 1:1-2. That treatise ends, and this begins, in that important season, which reached from the resurrection of Christ to his ascension; this describing the acts of the Holy Ghost, (by the apostles,) as that does the acts of Jesus Christ; of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach — That is, of all things, in a summary manner, or of the most considerable things which Jesus did and taught from the beginning of his ministry. The reader will readily allow, that all, in this verse, cannot mean every single one of the miracles and sermons which Jesus wrought and preached. For to suppose Luke asserted that, would be to make him contradict the testimony of John. See his gospel, Joh 20:30-31; Joh 21:25. By all, here, we must understand, only all that was necessary or expedient to be related, in order to establish the divine mission of Christ, to convince mankind thereof, and to awaken their minds to a deep sense of the importance of it, in order to their salvation, that it might be duly improved, and so answer its intended end upon them. Until the day in which he was taken up — This implies, that Luke considered himself as having given, in his former treatise, an account of the manner in which Christ had opened the gospel, and confirmed it, from his first appearance on earth, to the last period of his abode upon it; including also an account both of his life and doctrine; after that he through the Holy Ghost — With which, as man, he was endowed without measure, to qualify him for the important offices he had to sustain, and the work he had to perform, in order to the redemption and salvation of mankind; had given commandments to — Greek, εντειλαμενος, had solemnly charged; the apostles whom he had chosen — To be the prime ministers of his kingdom, and the chief instruments of extending it in the world. To whom also — In order to fit them more completely for the discharge of their important office, and to enable them to bear witness to his resurrection from their own certain knowledge of its being a fact; he showed himself alive, after his passion, by many infallible proofs — Proofs that amounted to a demonstration, and could not possibly deceive them; for, “by speaking to, by walking, and by eating with them, he gave them a certain indication that he lived; his being seen and handled by them was a sure evidence that he had a true and natural body; and his permitting Thomas to view the scars of his feet and hands, and put his hand into his side, was a certain token that the body, which was raised, was the same that was crucified and pierced by the soldier’s lance.” Being seen of them forty days — That is, many times during that space. He continued on earth forty days after he rose, and in the several interviews which he had with his disciples during that period, he gave them convincing proofs of his resurrection; and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God — Discoursing to them from time to time concerning that divine kingdom, or dispensation of religion, which he was going to erect in the world by their ministry. He discoursed to them, doubtless, “of teaching the doctrine of this kingdom to all nations, and receiving them into it by baptism who believed and professed to own it; of the benefits which were promised to them who cordially believed their doctrine; and the condemnation which belonged to them who would not believe it; of the encouragements and assistances he would afford them in the propagation of it by his continual presence with them, and the assistance of his Spirit; and by the miracles by which their doctrine should be confirmed by them and others who believed it.” — Whitby.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Establishment and Progress of the Church at Jerusalem (Act_1:1 to Act_8:3)

The Acts of the Apostles] A more adequate title would be 'The Acts of Peter and Paul,' the Acts of Peter extending from Acts 1-12, and the Acts of Paul from Acts 13-28.

The Ascension. Election of Matthias

1-5. St. Luke's Introduction. He recapitulates the general contents of his Gospel, adding, however, this additional information, (1) that the appearances of the risen Lord were numerous, and (2) that forty days elapsed between the Resurrection and the Ascension. If we possessed St. Luke's Gospel only, we might possibly conclude that the risen Lord appeared only three times, and that He ascended on the very day of His Resurrection.

1. The former treatise] i.e. St. Luke's Gospel: see Intro. Theophilus] see on Luk_1:3.

Began] The Gospel records the work that Jesus began to do. Acts records its accomplishment. The chief agent in this book is the Ascended Christ Himself, operating through His Spirit, and performing works which were not possible while He was still in the flesh (Joh_14:12).

2 Through the. Holy Ghost] St. Luke represents all the actions of Christ's ministry as performed by the power of the Holy Spirit, which He received at His Baptism to consecrate Him to His office of Messiah: see Act_10:38. Commandments] viz. to preach repentance and remission of sins to all nations beginning at Jerusalem, and to tarry in the city until they should be endued with power from on high (Luk_24:47.).

3. Many infallible proofs] RV omits 'infallible,' but the Gk. implies that they were reliable and convincing. The 'many' is important, for St. Luke records only four appearances, all in Judaea: see art. 'The Resurrection.'

Forty days] i.e. at intervals during forty days. The kingdom of God] Sometimes 'the Kingdom of God' denotes the inward and spiritual aspects of Christianity, sometimes Christianity as organised into a visible Kingdom or Church. Both meanings are here blended. The departing Lord doubtless wished to give the Apostles spiritual instructions to prepare them to receive the Holy Spirit, and also special directions for the future government of His Church: see intro. to Mt, § 6 (5), and prefatory remarks to Matthew 5.

4. And, being assembled] rather', 'and while sitting at meat with them': see RM and cp. Mar_16:14. The fact of the risen Lord's eating is attested also by Luk_24:42, where Jesus eats 'before' the disciples; and the sitting at table by Act_10:41.

The promise of the Father] i.e. the promised gift of the Holy Ghost which was to be bestowed at Pentecost: see Luk_24:49.

5. Baptized with the Holy Ghost] There can be little doubt that the Apostles had already received baptism, not only from John, but also from Jesus Himself: see Joh_3:22, Joh_3:26; Joh_4:1, Joh_4:2. But Christian Baptism was not yet, in the full sense, a Baptism 'with the Holy Ghost and with fire,' because, Jesus being not yet glorified, the Holy Ghost could not yet be fully given (Joh_7:39).

6-11. The Ascension. Belief in the Ascension of Jesus follows necessarily from belief in His resurrection. If Jesus rose from the dead not with a natural, but with a spiritual body (and this is undoubtedly the doctrine of Holy Scripture), then it was impossible for Him to remain permanently on earth. The translation of His body to that sphere of existence to which it now properly belonged, was both natural and necessary. The Ascension is only described in detail in the present passage. The allusion to it in Luk_24:51, though probable, is not certain, and that in Mar_16:19 is not by the writer of the Second Gospel. The paucity of allusions to the Ascension in the NT. is probably due to the fact that it was not accompanied by any change in the condition of Jesus. It was on the first day of His Resurrection, not on the fortieth, that Jesus was glorified and invested with all authority in heaven and on earth (Mat_28:18); hence the event of Act_1:9 was regarded by the Apostles as of secondary importance. In the Ascension, as in the Resurrection, Christ is the firstfruits of the human race, opening the Kingdom of heaven to all believers. He is also, as ascended, the high priest and intercessor of humanity, pleading on man's behalf, before the eternal Father, His completed sacrifice (Hebrews 7, 8).

6. They therefore] These words imply that at the common meal which the risen Lord shared with His Apostles (Act_1:4), He made an appointment with them to meet Him on the day of His Ascension. The Galilean meeting described by St. Matthew (Mat_28:16.), and mentioned by St. Mark, was also by appointment.

Restore.. the kingdom] i.e. make the Jewish nation independent of Rome, and dominant, politically and religiously, over all the nations of the earth. This was the current Messianic expectation of the Jews, and the fact that the author represents the Apostles as still entertaining it, is a mark of the historical truth of his narrative. It needed the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit to teach the Apostles that the Christ's Kingdom is not of this world. The answer of Jesus implies that He will restore the Kingdom to Israel; not, however, to 'Israel after the flesh,' as the Apostles imagined, but to 'the Israel of God,' i.e. to Christian believers of every nation, by making Christianity the dominant religion throughout the world.

7. It is not for you] The Apostles were to be not so much prophets of the future, as witnesses of the past. Hath put in his own power] see on Mar_13:32; There is another possible translation of these words: 'which the Father appointed by His own power.'

8. Samaria, etc.] Jesus here revokes the temporary limitation of the mission of the Apostles to the Jews (Mat_10:5-6). This passage is one of the many proofs that Jesus intended to found a universal religion.

9. A cloud received him] The visible and corporal Ascension does not necessarily imply that heaven is a place situated above the clouds. The object of the Ascension was not to indicate where or what heaven is, but to assure the Apostles by an unmistakable sign that Jesus had entered it. It is possible that heaven is not, strictly speaking, a place, but a condition.

10. Two men] certainly angels, as in Luk_24:4.

11. Why stand] It is fruitless to gaze. Go rather and labour, that when He comes again in judgment He may approve your work. In like manner] i.e. in glory, and in His human nature: cp. 'this Jesus' above.

12-14. waiting Church.

12. Olivet] lit. 'the olive-orchard'; called usually The Mount of Olives. This, the scene of Christ's agony and betrayal, is now made the scene of His triumph. A sabbath day's journey] i.e. 2,000 cubits, or 6 furlongs.

13. An upper room] RV 'the upper chamber,' probably that in which the Last Supper had been eaten; not, as some have argued from Luk_24:53, a chamber in the Temple. It may have been in the house of Mary the mother of Mark: see Act_12:12. Peter, etc.] see on Mat_10:2.; The brother of James] RV correctly, 'the son of James.'

14. With one accord] Unanimity and common action distinguish the Christian community in Acts. This characteristic expression (Gk. homothumadon) occurs again Act_2:46; Act_4:24; Act_5:12; Act_7:57; Act_8:6; Act_12:20; Act_15:25; Act_18:12; Act_19:29, and nowhere else in the NT. except in Rom_15:6. In prayer] add (from Luk_24:53) 'and praise.' The women] viz. those which had accompanied Jesus in Galilee, and ministered to Him of their substance. Among them probably were Mary of Magdala, Joanna, and Susanna (Luk_8:2-3); Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome the wife of Zebedee (Mar_15:40); possibly Martha and Mary of Bethany; and almost certainly Mary the mother of Mark (Mar_12:12), who, perhaps, was hostess. Mary the mother of Jesus] The last mention of the Blessed Virgin in the sacred history. Of her subsequent life nothing certain is known. His brethren] see on Mat_12:46-50.

15-26. The election of Matthias. As the Church was about to be established on a durable and permanent basis, it was necessary that the twelve foundations on which it was to rest (Eph_2:20; Rev_21:14) should be made complete. Matthias, therefore, was chosen to fill the place of the traitor Judas; the twelfth Patriarch of the new Israel of God.

15. Peter] Peter, having been restored by Jesus to the office forfeited by his triple apostasy (Joh_21:15.), resumes his old rank as leader of the Apostles. This leadership was probably personal, not official: see on Mat_16:18.

16. Must needs] RV 'It was needful that the scripture should be fulfilled.' Just as the scandal and stumbting-block of the death of Jesus was diminished by the discovery that it was foretold in the OT., and was part of the determinate counsel of God (Luk_24:26, Luk_24:46; Act_2:23; Act_3:17-18, etc.), so the scandal of the fall of an Apostle was relieved by the discovery that David had foretold it in the Psalms: cp. Joh_13:18; Mat_26:24; Peter quotes Psa_69:25 and Psa_109:8; David really spoke of his own enemies, perhaps (in Psalms 109) of Ahithophel, but Peter regards the words as a typical prophecy of the treachery of Judas.

17. Part] RV 'his portion' (lit. 'lot,' Gk. klçros). In Patristic Greek the word designates the clergy.

18, 19. These vv. are, of course, a note by St. Luke, not a part of St. Peter's speech. For the historical difficulties see on Mat_27:3-10.

20. Bishopric] RV 'office' (Psa_69:25; Psa_109:8).

21, 22. St. Peter names two qualifications of an Apostle, (1) to have followed Jesus from the day of His Baptism by John to the day of His Ascension; (2) to have been a witness of His Resurrection. The former of St. Peter's requirements excludes St. Paul, who had some difficulty on this account in establishing his claim to be an Apostle.

23. The Apostles might doubtless have added Matthias to their number on their own authority, but instead of doing so they consulted the brethren, thus introducing a popular element into the polity of the Church: see on Act_6:3-6. Two] The disciples (probably because the Holy Spirit had not yet been received) did not venture to make a final choice, but left the decision to God. Joseph called Barsabas] RV 'Barsabbas,' i.e. Joseph, son of Sabba, is probably brother of the Judas Barsabbas mentioned in Act_15:22. His surname 'Justus' is Roman, and was assumed in accordance with a not uncommon practice of the Jews at this time: cp. 'Marcus' (Act_12:12), 'Niger' (Act_13:1), 'Paulus' (Act_13:9). According to Papias, this Joseph drank a draught of poison without receiving injury.

Matthias] lit. 'gift of Jehovah.' This apostle is not again mentioned in the NT.

24. They prayed] This, the first recorded Christian prayer, is probably addressed to Jesus Himself. For, (1) prayer to Jesus was no exceptional thing, but a usual practice of the Apostolic Church (see Act_9:14); and (2) it was appropriate that He who had chosen eleven of the apostles should be invoked to choose the twelfth.

25. His own place] St. Peter speaks with merciful reserve, but probably means Hell ('Gehenna'). The same euphemism is found in rabbinical writings.

26. Gave forth their lots] RV 'gave lots for them'; RM 'gave lots unto them.' The two names were probably written on tablets, and shaken in a vessel until one of them dropped out. The use of the sacred lot (Urim) was common from the age of Moses to that of David, but afterwards it fell into disuse. This solitary example of its revival, occurring, as it did, before the descent of the Holy Spirit, is not to be regarded as a precedent.

J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 1-11. The recapitulation.

St. Luke is like a traveler, who, having gained a certain summit, before he proceeds on his journey through the new country which is opening upon his view, stops and looks back upon the scene which he has traversed, but which he is now about to lose sight of. He marks the sites which had attracted his attention as he journeyed the rising knoll, the conspicuous wood, the sheet of water, the open plain. But as he looks he spies out other objects which he had not noticed before an ivy-mantled tower, a dwelling-house, a village, a clump of trees, which add richness and diversity to the scene; and so he adds them to his journal or to his sketch. In like manner our sacred historian, being about to quit the blessed scenes of the life of Jesus Christ which had engaged his pen in the Gospel, and to enter upon the history of the Apostolic Church, casts a lingering look upon the closing days of our Lord"s sojourn upon earth, marks again what he had before narrated, recapitulates the history of the days which connect the Gospel with the Acts, but withal adds some striking incidents, throws in some additional words from the lips of the Divine Master, and by a few touches of his master-pen heightens the beauty of the scene, which was the last parting of Jesus from his Church on earth. The Resurrection itself, and the many proofs thereof given to the sight, the hearing, and the handling of the apostles; the commandments to the apostles; the walk to Bethany; the parting blessing; the ascension into heaven; the return of the apostles to Jerusalem; the continual prayers and praises of the disciples while they waited there for the promise of the Father; those had all been duly noted in the closing chapter of the Gospel. But St. Luke wished, before entering upon his new ground, to mark more distinctly that mysterious border-land between the pre-resurrection and the post-resurrection Church; that strange period which belonged neither to the life of Jesus Christ on earth nor to the history of his Church, properly speaking the forty days that intervened between the Resurrection and the Ascension. It was important to mark more distinctly than he had done in the Gospel that those manifestations of himself to his apostles, and that converse in the course of which he had instructed them in the duties of the apostolate, were extended over a period of forty days. It was important to do this both as strengthening the other proofs of the Resurrection, and also as showing how full a commission the apostles had received for the future ordering and governing of the Church. Hence the distinct mention of the forty days, and the somewhat fuller report of the conversations between the Lord and his apostles. But the act of the Ascension also was to receive some further light. In the Gospel St. Luke had mentioned the touching fact that it was while in the very act of blessing them that Jesus was parted from them. But now he adds, his mind apparently being full of the importance of proofs of the things narrated by him, that he was taken up u as they were looking," and that they did not lose sight of him till he was enveloped in a cloud. He adds also another remarkable circumstance, of which he may not have been previously aware, that two angels had appeared to the apostles, as they stood looking with fixed gaze into heaven, and announced to them his sure return. And thus, in this recapitulation and expansion of his briefer narrative in the Gospel, he closes with the announcement of that crowning glory of the Son of man which has been the hope and joy and strength of the Church amidst all her sufferings, the second advent of the Lord in the clouds of heaven.

HOMILIES BY S. CONWAY. Vers. 1-8. Christ"s mission and ours.

The introduction to this narrative of" the things pertaining to the kingdom of God" suggests to us truths concerning the mission of our Divine Lord and also concerning our own.

I THE MISSION OF CHRIST. We gather front the opening words of Luke that this was fourfold, and may be included under these heads:

1. Miraculous works. He "began to do" (ver. 1). The "mighty works" of Jesus were far from being mere "wonders:" they were

(1)deeds of pure beneficence,

(2) acts called for by the circumstances of the hour, malting an irresistible appeal to the heart of love and the hand of power,

(3) illustrations of the Divine principles which he came to establish, as well as

(4) incidental proofs of heavenly origin and almighty power.

2. Teaching. He began "both to do and teach" (ver. 1). The teaching of Christ covered all the ground on which we most urgently need enlightenment. He taught us all that we want to know concerning

(1) the nature and disposition of God, including his attitude toward guilty souls;

(2) the real nature of man, his true heritage and the way by which he could return to God;

(3) what constitutes moral excellency in God"s sight: how man can do and be that which is due to himself and to all by whom he is surrounded;

(4) the truth respecting the future world.

1. Endurance. The story of "his passion" (ver. 3) is the story of his life. In the case of all other of the children of men, the narrative of the last hours is felt to be but the necessary closing of the chapter. In his case alone the relation of the Passion is felt by us all to be the supreme and culminating point the one indispensable feature of his whole career; that to which everything led up, for which everything prepared, compared with which everything else was unimportant. Never, at any period of his ministry, did the Son of God so truly and so largely fulfill the mission on which he came, as when he was "putting away sin by the sacrifice of himself," as when he was betrayed and smitten and reviled, as when he was "lifted up" on the cross and "poured out his soul unto death.

2. Life. He came to be the holy, loving, patient, truthful, reverent One he was. The historian does not speak here of this his exemplary life before his Passion, hut we may have it in our mind as a complementary thought; he does, however, refer to his life after the Passion (ver. 3). This is divisible into two parts.

(1) The forty days on earth. Then he bore witness to the reality of his work and the genuineness of his mission: he "showed himself alive by many infallible proofs.

(2) Everlasting life in heaven. He is now doing the work of administration. "Jesus began both to do and to teach" when he was below; he continues now the great work he then began. As he arrested Paul on his way to Damascus and charged him to enter his service, as he inspired and directed his servants so that the "acts of the apostles" are his acts through them; so now he is administering the affairs of his blessed kingdom by enlightening, inspiring, governing his Church by his Spirit (see ver. 2).

II OUR MISSION. We have here indications of the kind and method of service which it belongs to us to render. We are:

1. To look expectantly. We too are to "wait for the promise of the Father" (ver 4); often in our Christian life, from its very beginning to its very end, asking and waiting. We are to ask, to seek, to knock if need be, again and again; not impatient to receive, but remembering that God knows when as well as how to bestow.

2. To receive gratefully. We too "shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost" (ver. 5, and see ver. 8). God will come to us in rich effusion if only we ask earnestly and wait patiently; then we shall receive joyfully, and our hearts will fill with sacred and happy gratitude.

3. To submit cheerfully. Our Lord ofttimes says to us, "It is not for you to know" (ver. 7). We long to know many things not revealed, and this is his reply to our vain curiosity. Or we long to effect impossible things, and then he says to us, "It is not for you to do." He imposes limits to our action as well as to our knowledge, and within these bounds we must be content to move, rejoicing that we are permitted to know anything of him and do anything for him; rejoicing, also, to believe that soon the circle of understanding and accomplishment will be immeasurably enlarged.

4. To testify faithfully. "Ye shall be witnesses unto me" (ver. 8). It was a far higher function for the apostles to bear witness to Christ to the greatness of his person, the beauty and tenderness of his spirit, the fullness and joy of his salvation than to be the depositaries of heavenly secrets as to dates and places. There is nothing we should so earnestly aspire and so strenuously strive to become, as faithful witnesses of Jesus Christ. We cannot conceive of a nobler work than to be, by life and lip, bearing testimony to him, constraining our fellow men to realize his readiness to receive, his willingness to forgive, and his power to bless and to ennoble them. C.

HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON

Vers. 1-5. The forty days after the Passion.

I JESUS PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE. In the work of God all is continuous. As in nature there is no pause, but in autumn we find the new petiole or leaf-stalk already formed when the old leaf is detached, so in the kingdom of God. There were ages of preparation for Christ"s coming; and when he came, his life-work was a making ready to go. Full of blessing was the ministry of his visible presence; fuller still was to be that of the invisible Spirit. He must go that the Spirit may come. (Joh_16:7) The progress is ever from the visible and finite form to the eternal and infinite spiritual content.

1. Preparation by special instruction. (Joh_14:15 Joh_15:12-17) These parting commands were charged with the holiest unction; were breathed forth in spiritual power, with the deep earnestness and tenderness of a Divine farewell. All his commands are summed up in the great word "love." They were issued to a select band, and ever remain in the select keeping of the true Church. Obedience to Christ is, in one word, the unfolding of love in all life-relations. Christian duties and graces are but the various forms which Divine love would stamp on conduct.

2. By manifestations era risen life. His appearances were firmly accredited as red, says St. Luke, using, a word not elsewhere found in the New Testament denoting valid proof (cf. Luk_24:31, Luk_24:39, Luk_24:43) This firm persuasion of the reality of the Lord"s risen life is the inspiration of the early Church; it cannot be explained away without raising more difficult problems. The appearances were accompanied by appropriate activity. He discoursed on these occasions, and on the supreme theme, on religion, on the kingdom of God. Christianity is not sensation wonder for wonder"s sake; its principle is intelligence; its method is teaching. "Go and teach" is the great word of the risen One.

3. By a particular direction. The apostles were to remain in Jerusalem. (Luk_24:49) Here were all the conditions of unity provided for: place and time and a common attitude of soul. Spiritual force must be collected in centers, that it may be diffused through the body of the world.

II THE CHURCH IN THE ATTITUDE OF WAITING.

1. It was for something definite the fulfillment of a Divine promise. Promise attends all obedience; and perhaps the highest blessings belong to the patient attitude of the soul, the unhaste of perfect confidence in God. It was the promise of a blessing foreshadowed in past experiences. A baptism, therefore a revival and refreshing from above like John Baptist"s ministry; yet unlike that in that it was to be more excellent.

2. There was something indefinite, therefore, in the promise. A good not yet tasted, and so not yet conceivable. So is it with all coming good. We know something of that to be expected from past experiences of Divine grace; but the "half has not been told us." The future is ideal, and never exactly imitates the past; while it rests upon the past and elicits its meaning. Obey, trust, wait this is a grand lesson of the Christian life which comes back to us from this page. J.

HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD

Vers. 1-5. The dawn of the gospel day.

These verses form an introduction to the whole book. The risen Christ is the chief Object in view. The light which has been a lowly light upon the earth, is now about to ascend and take its place as the Sun of Righteousness in the heavens. From thence he will shine upon the earth first upon that part of the earth immediately below the point of his ascent; and from that, as a starting-place, from country to country, till the whole earth is enlightened. The Acts begins its narrative at Jerusalem, the metropolis of Palestine, and ends it at Rome, the metropolis of the world. Again, we recognize the divinely chosen method, the appointment of apostolic witnesses and representatives, who heard the things which Jesus "spake concerning the kingdom of God," and received from him "the commandment," or commission, to preach and labor for the spread of the glad tidings of the kingdom. And then, further, in these verses, the vital distinction is set prominently forth between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of this worldthe indwelling presence and operation of the Holy Ghost, which is represented as first in Jesus himself, speaking in him, working in him, promised by him, and then as bestowed upon the messengers of the kingdom according to the promise of the Father," repeated by the Son. Thus the great fundamental lines of the Book of the Acts are hid down; the kingdom of the risen and glorified Christ proclaimed and spread through the world; chosen and consecrated men the representatives and ministers of the kingdom; baptism of the Holy Ghost the prerequisite for Christian work and achievement, without which it must not be attempted and cannot be accomplished. R.

Alpha and Omega.

"Concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach." This opening sentence of the Acts, full of significance, as pointing at once to the past years of Christ"s earthly ministry and to the future work of his people, in his Name and by his power, and connecting them together. He himself is the Alpha of the kingdom, and he is the Omega. His doing and his teaching really one; in matter and in manner, Divine; the standard for apostles and all others; the Acts of the Apostles a continuation of the acts of their Master. He only began to do and to teach in his ministry; he went on to manifest himself by the Spirit, according to his promise, "He the Father shall give you another Comforter Helper, that he may be with you for. (Joh_14:16) Consider, then

I THE PRE-EMINENCE OF JESUS. A spiritual pre-eminence. The short period of his life and ministry; yet containing deeds and words which have created the world afresh. Not the bare history of miracles, or record of religious discourses, but the manifestation to the world of the Divine Spirit through a human history, character, and speech.

II A PRE-EMINENCE ACKNOWLEDGED IN HEAVEN. "The day when he was received be the consummation of the gospel story; the "doing and up" is distinctly declared to teaching" were not only before men, but before God, on behalf of men. Hence the distinction between Christ"s ministry and that of all merely human doers teachers; God accepts the pre-eminence, is well-pleased in his testimony a testimony which was wrought out both in active efforts and patient suffering. His pre-eminence is prophetic, priestly, kingly. The necessity, especially in our times, of following Christ is thought to the right hand of God. He is not merely the highest of the philanthropists and the wisest of the sages. He is the Heir of all things, "received up" to heaven, pre-eminence that "in all things he might have the pre-eminence.

III THE PRE-EMIENCE OF JESUS IS GRACIOUS. His own ministry is followed by the ministry of his apostles. The Acts only the first volume of an endless record of gracious ministration, of which Jesus is the Source and his people the instruments. Hence the value of the Acts. It helps us to see what a Christ-like ministry is; how it overcomes the world, how it reveals the Spirit. Yet compare the Acts and the Gospels, and we are taught how much the servants fall below their Lord. Instances of infirmity and sin in apostles. Encouragement in the great lesson, our life linked on to Christ"s. Acts" a continuation. Keep close to the doing and teaching of Jesus, in its essential features and ruling spirit. R.

HOMILIES BY R. TUCK Ver. 1. The apparent incompleteness of our Lord"s life.

It was but a beginning. The word "began" is as characteristic of St. Luke as straightway" is of St. Mark; it occurs thirty-one times in his Gospel. The idea of Christ"s life on earth as being a "beginning" fits well into the Pauline theology, which sets in such prominence the present and continuous working of the risen, glorified, living Savior. To the apostles" first view our Lord"s earthly life must have seemed a failure; they could not know how it was to be continued and completed. From our enlarged knowledge we can apprehend it as being the necessary introduction to his present and permanent spiritual work. Illustrations of apparent incompleteness of earthly life may be found in the story of Moses, who did not cross the Jordan; and David, who did not build the temple. A man"s life is never incomplete if he does well his appointed piece.

I THE BREVITY OF OUR LORD"S LIFE-WORK. At the longest computation it extended only over three years, and many think the time was even shorter than this. Thirty years were spent in secluded preparations; and we may well ask What great work could any man accomplish in three brief years? And yet some of the most powerful and permanent influences recorded in human history have come from men whose lives were short. Illustrations are found in every department of life; and the common observation has gained expression in the proverb, "Those whom the gods love die young." Life may be very short, and yet very full of power and impulse for good. "He liveth long who liveth well.

II THE SUDDEN STOPPAGE OF IT. Taken away by a violent death, our Lord could not make it what men would call complete," "rounded off." On his last day he had to admit that it must remain, to men"s view, seemingly imperfect. I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." So with many human lives, the close comes suddenly, and we wish we could tarry to get things completed. But we must leave them, as Christ did; and we may be restfully assured that, if our work has been good, God will find for it completeness by finding its fitting into his great plan.

III THE INTRODUCTORY CHARACTER OF IT. It was a "beginning," a "preface," a "threshold," an "ante-chamber," an outward earthly show to help us in realizing a continuous spiritual reality. The remembrance of what was is to aid us in realizing what/s. And, in a yet fuller sense, that brief human life was to lay the intellectual, moral, and religious bases on which the Divine relations with men were from that time to rest. "It behooved Christ thus to suffer, and to enter into his glory.

IV THE CONTINUANCE OF IT. Of that "continuance" we have several distinct forms of Conception; such as:

1. The work of the Holy Spirit.

2. The actual presence of Christ in his Church.

3. The permanent office of Christ as the one human Mediator, Intercessor, and High Priest.

The relation of the "continuing" work to the "introductory is shown in our Lord"s statement concerning the Holy Spirit: He shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you." So far as the continuance of Christ"s earthly life and influence is concerned, we find it in the holy living of his Church, and the teachings of apostles and ministers. In application, it may be urged that a work so graciously introduced in our Lord"s life on earth, and so graciously continued in his present working in his Church, must have its completion some day. Such completion is reached in the believer"s "full sanctification;" and, for the Church, in that day when the "kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ," and the "Church" shall be the redeemed world. R.T.

The origin of the Gospel records.

Luke reminds Theophilus of his having written his Gospel, and of the circumstances which called for his labors. (comp. Luk_1:1-4) Incidentally we are assured that the historical figure of Christ is the essential foundation of the Christian system; and, therefore, such extreme care was necessary in securing authentic records of his words and works. The trustworthiness of our Gospels may be efficiently impressed by the illustration and enforcement of the following points, which are suggestive enough to be presented without elaboration:

I SHOW THE LEADING POINTS OF APOSTOLIC PREACHING AND TEACHING. They were facts, of Christ"s coming, teaching, personnel, miracles, crucifixion, and resurrection.

II IN DECLARING THESE, THE APOSTLES INVITED COMPARISON WITH THE OLDER SCRIPTURES. They appealed to existing and recognized inspired writings.

III THEIR FACTS NEEDED TO BE SET IN DEFINITE WRITTEN FORM. If comparisons were to be efficiently made, the precise facts must be assured. As preached, there would be variety in the statement of the incidents and expressions of our Lord"s life, and no suitable basis for faith.

IV THE MATERIALS FOR SUCH WRITING MUST BE GATHERED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. Each disciple remembered some special thing. Our Lord"s mother could tell what nobody else could know. Other women had special narratives to give. Peter, James, and John were on several occasions of importance alone with Christ.

V SUCH MATERIALS REQUIRED THE EDITING OF SOME COMPETENT MEN. Illustrate Luke"s fitness as educated, as Paul"s companion, as evidencing a careful, critical habit, and as having access to the best information.

Show that, of the many Gospels, and parts of Gospels, that may have been written, there was a Divine selection of four. The wisdom of the selection may be pointed out and impressed; and also the special bearing of Luke"s two treatises on the basis-facts of the Pauline theology. Luke"s facts underlie Paul"s doctrines. R.T.

The threefold aspect of our Lord"s human life.

The aspects that need to be so carefully recorded. Two are stated in the text to do, and to teach; the third we gather from the Gospel itself to suffer.

I OUR LORD CAME TO DO. It has been said that "conduct is three-fourths of life;" and upon our Lord"s daily life and doings we, first of all, reverently fix our gaze.

1. He came to live; to express in pure, beautiful character, and in sweet, self-denying, helpful intercourse with men, the example of the holy life. Show how this became inspiration for all sincere hearts, and conviction for all self-servers and time-servers.

2. He came to work mighty works. In miracles, of healing and of power, revealing to men the true God and Father, in whom we "live, and move, and have our being;" and making trust in the "living God the Savior" possible for man.

II OUR LORD CAME TO TEACH. And the teaching was in full harmony with the life, and unfolded the gracious design and mission of the works.

1. He taught the people. As in the sermon on the mount, by his parables, and in the temple porch at Jerusalem.

2. He taught the disciples. By explanation of parable and miracle, by private instructions, by trial missions, and in his modes of dealing with them.

3. He taught his enemies. By severe warnings and denunciations, seeking to arouse the sense of sin, in which alone lies the hope of salvation.

III OUR LORD CAME TO SUFFER. He could not but suffer personally, in carrying out such a mission; but he, further, suffered mediately and vicariously, as "bearing our sins." For us it "pleased the Lord to bruise him." Conclude by working out the harmony of this threefold aspect, in the light of Christ"s perfect and complete obedience to his heavenly Father"s will. He did, he taught, he suffered, all that will. And also in the light of our Redeemer"s minion as the Savior of the world. He is therein shown to be the perfect Savior. R.T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL REMARKS

Act_1:1. The former treatise have I made.—Better, the first (πρῶτος for πρότερος, as in Joh_1:15-30, unless πρῶτος was intended to point to a τρίτος: Ramsay) treatise (λόγος in ancient written speech meaning the separate book rolls in a connected work—Holtzmann) I made. That the first treatise was the Gospel of Luke the name of its recipient (Luk_1:3) declares.

Act_1:2. Through the Holy Ghost.—Should be connected with “given commandments”—see Joh_20:22 (Meyer, Weiss, Overbeck, Spitta, and others), rather than with either “chosen” (De Wette, Wendt, Holtzmann, Zöckler, and others)—though see Act_20:28—or “taken up,” the Ascension never being in Scripture ascribed to the Spirit, but commonly represented as the work of the Father (Act_2:33; Eph_1:20; Php_2:9). though sometimes depicted as the free act of Christ Himself (Joh_20:17; Eph_4:10; Heb_1:3).

HOMILETICAL ANALYSIS.—Act_1:1-2

The Two Treatises; or, The Connection between the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of Luke

I. Their names.—

1. Of the former treatise, the Gospel of Luke. Recognised by being addressed like the Acts to Theophilus.

2. Of the latter, the Acts of the Apostles. In some MSS. “Acts of all the Apostles, “Acts of the Holy Apostles,” or some other such variation. Neither title originated with the author of the writing, but was afterwards appended when the writing found a place in the Canon.

II. Their contents.—

1. Of the former, the earthly, or pre-ascension ministry of Christ. Not everything Christ said and did (see Joh_21:25), but as many of His deeds and words as were needful to furnish an adequate picture of Him as a teacher and worker.

2. Of the latter, the post-ascension or heavenly ministry of Jesus. The word “began” suggests that Christ’s activity did not terminate with His taking up, but continued after. Hence the Acts, which records that activity, is neither a full series of apostolical biographies, the actions and utterances of Peter and Paul only being narrated at any length, while of the other apostles, the sons of Zebedee alone are incidentally mentioned; nor a complete Church history, since it leaves untold much that happened, and carries the story of the Church no further than the time when Paul reaches Rome; but an account of Christ’s doing and teaching since His Ascension through the instrumentality of the two above-named Apostles, their colleagues, and assistants (Stephen, Philip, James the Brother of the Lord, Barnabas, Mark, Silas, Timothy, Titus, Apollos, and others), first, in founding and developing the Church at Jerusalem and within the Holy Land, and, secondly, in extending and establishing it among the Gentiles in Asia Minor and in Europe.

III. Their author.—The writer of the “we” passages in the Acts (Act_16:10-11, Act_20:5-6).

1. Not Timothy, whom the writer of the Acts distinguishes from himself (Act_16:10).

2. Still less Silas, an opinion having no better support than the resemblance ingeniously detected between Silvanus (from silva, a wood) and Lucanus (from lucus, a grove).

3. But Luke, a physician by profession (Col_4:14), who joined Paul as a companion in travel at Troas (Act_16:10), and was with him as a fellow-worker at Rome (2Ti_4:11; Phil. 24). See Introduction.

IV. Their recipient.—Theophilus. Possibly his baptismal name (Ramsay). Most likely a Gentile Christian, probably a member of the Roman Church; manifestly a patron of learning and an inquirer after truth. That his social rank was high may be inferred from the epithet “most excellent” given him by Luke (Act_1:3)—a title of honour used by Paul in addressing Felix (Act_23:26) and Festus (Act_26:25).

Lessons.—

1. The inter-connection of the various books of Scripture.

2. The purely natural way in which the existing Scriptures arose.

3. The value of Scripture independent of a knowledge of the authorship of its several parts.

4. The excellence of grace in persons of high station.

HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS

Act_1:1. The Earthly Ministry of Christ; or, the work and wisdom (the doing and doctrine) of Jesus.

I. The Work of Jesus.—

1. Personal.—He fulfilled all righteousness (Mat_3:15).

2. Philanthropical.—He healed all manner of sickness and disease among the people (Mat_4:23; Act_10:38).

3. Legal.—He made atonement for the sins of men (Joh_1:29).

4. Social.—He founded a kingdom of heaven upon earth (Mat_5:1-20; Joh_18:36).

II. The Wisdom of Jesus.—

1. He revealed the nature (the Trinity) and character (love) of God (Joh_3:16).

2. He taught the necessity and nature of the New Birth for man (Joh_3:3).

3. He promulgated the way of salvation—through faith in His name (Joh_6:47).

4. He disclosed the certainty of a future life of blessedness for believers (Joh_14:1-2).

5. He announced the terms of citizenship in the kingdom of God (Mat_5:1-8).

Conclusion.—Christ’s pre-eminence in both departments. The noblest worker and the loftiest teacher the world has ever seen.

The Heavenly Worker.

I. His name.—Jesus, signifying Saviour, of whom Luke had already written in the Gospel (Act_2:21).

II. His sphere.—On earth and among men, as distinguished from His pre-existent and post-resurrection theatres of activity.

III. His character.—As a worker.

1. Faithful.

2. Loving.

3. Unwearied.

4. Effective.

5. Disinterested.

IV. His continuance.—

1. Until the day of His Ascension.

2. Until now (Joh_5:18).

The Incomparable Teacher.

I. His person.—Jesus, who spoke of Himself as the Truth (Joh_14:6), and whom men recognised as a Teacher (Joh_3:2; Joh_11:28).

II. His doctrine.—

1. What it concerned.—

(1) God, whom He revealed (Joh_1:18).

(2) Man, whom He unveiled as to His nature, character, responsibility, destiny (Luk_6:8; Joh_2:24; Joh_5:42; Joh_16:30).

(3) Salvation, as to its essence and conditions (Joh_3:16).

(4) The future life, as to its rarity, and the means of attaining thereunto (Joh_14:1-6).

2. Whence it came.—Not of Himself or from men, but from above (Joh_5:20; Joh_7:16).

III. His method.—

1. Simple (Mar_12:37).

2. Gracious (Luk_4:22).

3. Authoritative (Mat_7:29).

4. Original (Joh_7:46).

The Name of Jesus.

I. A historic name.—Borne by Joshua, the successor of Moses (Act_7:45; Heb_4:8).

II. A personal name.—As distinguished from that of Christ (Luk_2:21), or Messiah, an official name.

III. A symbolic name.—Signifying Saviour and foreshadowing its possessor’s work (Mat_1:21).

IV. An exalted name.—Glorified above every other name in heaven or on earth (Php_2:9).

V. A powerful name.—

1. The ground of salvation (Act_4:12).

2. The plea of prayer (Joh_14:13).

3. The potent instrument of working miracles (Mar_16:17).

A Momentous Beginning—that of the ministry of Jesus. In relation to—

I. Jesus Himself.—In respect of—

1. His ability to finish what He had begun (Luk_14:28). And

2. The consequences it would entail upon Himself if carried out and finished (Joh_12:27).

II. The Old Testament Dispensation.—Of which the work of Jesus was—

1. The fulfilment (Mat_5:17), and

2. The setting aside (Heb_7:19; Heb_8:13).

III. The World.—Of this, it was destined to be either—

1. The salvation, or

2. The condemnation, according as it was accepted by the world or rejected.

The Christ of God and Christian History.—The expression, “all that Jesus began to do and teach,” is a peculiar one, and seems to imply two things: first, that the Gospel was to be a record of the doings and sayings of Jesus from the very beginning, which it pre-eminently is, recording the previous prophecy, the angelic annunciation, the conception and birth of Jesus. Of the human side of Jesus, the Christ of God, Luke especially records the beginning. And all, from the very first, is grace and truth. But the expression “began” means, secondly, that this record is the beginning or fountain head of all subsequent Christian history; that out of these doings and teachings have flowed all things connected with the Church of God down to the last. It is a fontal record; a root; a well-spring; the source of a river which is still flowing amongst us, and refreshing the sons of men.

I. We connect all subsequent testimony with Christ’s doings and sayings.—All the testimony delivered by Christian witnesses goes back to Christ’s life; and is, as it were, a prolongation of His own voice, a continuation of His own doings. It is of His life and death that the witnesses speak; and it is that life and death that contain the power which their testimony embodies. The power of our testimony lies in the directness of its communication with the manger and the cross; as well as with all between. It is Jesus Himself that is working His miracles before our very eyes, and speaking to us still.

II. We connect each individual conversion with Christ’s sayings and doings.—The soul, in the moment of its mighty change, is brought into direct communication with these; it is transported back over eighteen centuries, and feels itself in the very presence of Jesus of Nazareth—speaking, working, loving, blessing, saving, pardoning, comforting. Virtue goes out from these sayings and doings of this personal Christ to lay hold on the sinner. And this is the beginning of his eternal history!

III. We connect each planting of a church with what Jesus did and taught.—We see this very clearly in Luke’s story of the planting of Christianity. Trace up the history of a church—at Jerusalem, or Samaria, or Antioch, or Thessalonica—to its true source, and you are landed at once among the scenes of Christ’s life on earth. There is no church where there is no direct link of this kind. Other foundation can no man lay; other soil can no church root itself in; round no other centre can any church revolve. For what is the temple if the shekinah be not there? What is a church or congregation if the Holy Ghost, revealing Christ in His grace and glory, be not the indwelling and inworking energy?

IV. We connect each true revival of religion with what Jesus did and preached.—No quickening can be genuine save that which goes back to this, and takes its rise from this. Excitement, earnestness, impression, there may be; but only that is authentic, and divine, and abiding, which springs directly out of that which Jesus began to do and to teach.—H. Bonar, D.D.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

PART FIRST

The Church of Christ founded, as a Church designed for Israel and for the entire human race. (Ch. 1 and 2)

______

INTRODUCTION

A reference to the Gospel of Luke, as the first division of the whole work written by him

Act_1:1-3

1The former treatise [discourse]1 have I [indeed] made, O Theophilus, of all thatJesus began both to do and teach, 2Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom hehad chosen: 3To whom also he shewed [had shown] himself alive after his passion [suffering] by many infallible [omit infallible] proofs, being seen of [in that he appeared to] them forty days, and speaking of [and spoke concerning] the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Act_1:1. a. The former treatise.—Luke applies this name to his Gospel, πρῶτος λόγος, the first discourse, not only because he had, in the order of time, written it previously to the composition of The Acts, but also because it presents the groundwork of all that belongs to the subsequent history of the Apostles and the Church.

b. All that Jesus began both to do and teach, as related in the Gospel. Where, however, is the continuation of such “doing and teaching,” as the word began implies, to be found? It may unquestionably at first seem to be Luke’s meaning that he had exhibited the successive acts and teachings of Jesus from the beginning, and had then, as it would be self-evident, continued the narrative to the close of the life of Jesus on earth. Still, he must have had a special reason for attaching weight to the conception of the beginning, and that reason can be the following only:—Luke distinguishes in his mind between the entire work of Jesus on earth, on the one hand, and his action after his ascension to heaven, on the other; he viewed the former as making a beginning or laying a foundation, in such a sense that Jesus himself, in his state of humiliation, began or sketched out the work which, after he had entered into his glory, he completed through the agency of the Apostles (Starke). This view of the word ῆρξατο (Olshausen, Schneckenburger, Baumgarten) is rejected by others, both as arbitrary in its character, and as ascribing to Luke a [modern] subjective view of the course of history (de Wette, Meyer). The latter are in error, for the entire book of the Acts, from the beginning to the end, presents the following view of the course of the events:—The exalted Lord operated in his Apostles, with them, and for them; thus he continues the work which he had commenced during his life on earth. The first chapter already exhibits “the lot which fell upon Matthias” as a visible sign of a choice made by the Lord, “who knoweth the hearts of all men,” Act_1:24. The outpouring of the Holy Ghost is an act of the exalted Lord, Act_2:33. When Stephen, “being full of the Holy Ghost,” saw “Jesus standing on the right hand of God,” and prayed: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” that prayer was, according to the book before us, one which obtained an answer, for the Lord Jesus stood there, ready to receive him, Act_7:55; Act_7:59. These few instances afford sufficient evidence that those commentators do not obtrude upon the book a subjective view of the course of history, but only give prominence to the conception which really pervades it, when they regard the leadings of the Apostles and of the Church that are related in it, as deeds of the glorified Redeemer, and as the continuation of all that he began during his ministry on earth.

c. All that Jesus did and taught, Luke here says that he has already recorded. He maintains that his account of the life of Jesus is full and complete, without, however, claiming that every incident without exception had been related; such a detailed statement was given neither by the evangelist John (Act_20:30) nor by Luke. Indeed, it would not have been possible, according to Joh_21:25, to relate all the deeds of Jesus without any omissions; neither was such a course necessary, since it is important to the Christian, not so much to know many things or all things, as, rather, to obtain a correct knowledge of all that constitutes revealed truth; that truth is found in the Gospel of Luke, in his Acts, and, in general, in the Word of God.

Act_1:2. a. Until the day in which he was taken up;—at that point of time the Gospel pauses, and the history of the Acts of the Apostles begins. The ascension of Jesus is not only the leading event which is common to both treatises, but it is also the turning-point of both. It was the glorious termination of Christ’s visible walk on earth, and also the beginning, alike momentous and rich in promise, of his invisible presence and his operation on earth. C. H. Rieger says: “The foremost places here assigned to the history of the Ascension to heaven, in order that we may continually remember that all that occurred in the visible world and that is related in this book, originates in the invisible world ‘whither the Lord Jesus is for us entered’ (Heb_6:20). He who desires to understand aright the form which the Church of Christ assumes on earth, must continually bear the ascension of Jesus in mind, and the invisible process by which he took possession of his kingdom, as well as the future manifestation of that kingdom.” The phrase, he was taken up, describes the ascension as an experience of Jesus, that is, as an act of God the Father. At the same time, this term indicates that the event was not so much a local and sensuous exaltation from earth to heaven (although it is originally derived from such impressions made on the senses), as, rather, a spiritual and real event, in so far as Jesus then acquired a higher position and greater power and dignity.

b. The day of the ascension is, however, one of vast importance in the eyes of Luke, not only on account of the exaltation of Jesus, but also on account of the commandments which he then gave to his chosen Apostles. These commandments or commissions constituted the last will of the Lord, and the acts of the apostles, so far as they were really apostolical in their character, were simply the execution of that will. Luke indicates the importance of the latter by employing the words διὰ πνεν́ματος ἁγίου. Many interpreters (among the most recent, Olshausen and de Wette) combine these words with ον͂ς ἐξελέξατο, i.e. whom he had chosen through the Holy Ghost, but the order of the words in the original does not admit of such a combination, which would be forced and unnatural. The most natural and simple sense of the words is the following: Jesus gave commandments through, or, by virtue of the Holy Ghost; that is, Jesus, who was anointed with the Holy Ghost (Luk_4:1; Luk_4:14; Luk_4:18; Mat_12:28), “in the power of the Holy Ghost” gave commandments to the Apostles to be his witnesses, etc., so that such commandments were given by the Spirit also.

Act_1:3. a. The circumstance that the Lord shewed himself alive to the Apostles, like the call which they had previously received, was both a preparation for the commission which he gave them at his departure, and also the necessary condition of its fulfilment. For how could he have given them the charge to be his witnesses in the world (Act_1:8, Act_2:32), unless he had furnished them with the strongest evidence, and had most fully convinced them that he did live again, after having suffered and died? Now precisely such an assurance of faith, and such a strong conviction in the Apostles, as the appointed witnesses of Christ, whose testimony should proceed from their own personal knowledge, required as a basis proofs consisting of facts—not of one isolated fact, but of many (πολλὰ τεκμήρια). [“This epithet (‘infallible’) is not expressed in Greek, but is really included in the meaning of the noun, which is used by Plato and Aristotle to denote the strongest proof of which a subject is susceptible.” (J. A. Alexander).—Tr.]. He gave them many signs and evidences that it was He himself, the Crucified One, whom they saw, and not another, and that He lived indeed,—evidences that appealed to the eye, the ear, and the touch.

b. Forty days.—It has recently been asserted that this verse, according to which forty days intervened between the resurrection and the ascension, contradicts Luke’s Gospel, Luke 24, in which, it is alleged, the ascension is represented as having occurred on the day of the resurrection (Zeller, in his Apostelgesch., [The Acts, etc., critically investigated], and Meyer, in his Commentary). This assertion is altogether unfounded, inasmuch as it is absolutely impossible that all the events related in Luke, Acts 24, particularly in the portion extending from Act_1:13 to the end, should have occurred within the limits of a single day, as indeed Lange has demonstrated (Apost. Zeitalter, I. 84 ff. [The apostolic Age]). It is true that Luke does not furnish precise dates in his Gospel or distinguish particular periods of time from one another, and that, if we possessed no other account of the occurrences which took place between the resurrection and the ascension, we could never have imagined that the interval between the two events extended to forty days. Still, this circumstance cannot be termed a contradiction, particularly when, on a closer inspection of the Gospel (Luk_24:44; Luk_24:50), we ascertain that the latter exhibits obvious traces of a transition from one incident to another, even if the dates are not precisely furnished.

c. Speaking of … the kingdom of God.—During the interval between the resurrection and the ascension, the Lord repeatedly appeared to the apostles, and thus firmly established their conviction that he was alive, as well as gave distinctness and strength to their consciousness that he was invisibly near them; at the same time he also initiated them more fully by word and doctrine into the mysteries of the kingdom of God [Luk_8:10] by speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.—This kingdom was the great subject of the teaching of Jesus both before his death on the cross, and after his resurrection; and the present discourses concerning the kingdom, which immediately preceded the ascension, furnished a foundation for all that the apostles themselves “did” and “taught” after his exaltation.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The first treatise of Luke was the Gospel concerning Jesus; the history of the apostolic church occupied the second place. In the whole circle of our personal knowledge of Christian truth, the knowledge of the Person of Jesus Christ must occupy the first or highest place. Christ, the God-Man, is the foundation that is laid; nothing can be permanent that is not built on him.

2. The history of the Church of Christ is the continuation of the divine-human life of Christ on earth. All that the apostles, and, after their day, other men of God have wrought, must be traced back to the continued action of the power of Christ. As he once came in the flesh, so he continually comes in the Spirit. This is the point of view indicated by the Bible, and the one which faith takes when it ponders the facts of Church History. He who desires to understand, not merely the first part, but also the whole, must survey with an attentive eye the operations of Christ in his Church.

3. The actions and the teachings of Jesus. To regard him merely as a teacher, is to divide Christ. Teaching was not even his first or chief office, but, rather, “he first performed himself that which he taught, and, indeed, spent thirty entire years in the most diligent practice of all the duties which he designed to prescribe afterwards to men.” (Brandt: Apostolisches Pastorale). “Christ preached his own life, and lived his own doctrine.” (Chubb). His doctrine may be found substantially in his acts, to which his sufferings also belong. And, in general, works and words, doing and teaching, belong together in the ways of God, and illustrate and aid each other.

4. The Ascension of Jesus was his assumption (Act_1:2, ἀνελήφθη; comp. 1Ti_3:16). The Eastern Church gave the name of Assumption-day (ἀνάληψις) to the festival of the Ascension. The eternal Son of God was again taken up; the Son of Man was taken up into glory. The Exalted One is, and continues to be, the Son of Man; the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily in him (Col_2:9), and where Jesus designs to be essentially present in his Deity, there, too, he designs to be present in his human corporeality. Comp. Gess: Lehre von der Person Christi, 1856, pp. 256 ff. [Doctrine of the Person of Christ].

5. The statement that Jesus had through the Holy Ghost given commandments unto the apostles, is intimately connected with the doctrine of the Holy Ghost: in the latter, the leading point of the mutual relation between God the Son and the Holy Ghost, involves many others which are still obscure.

6. Christ showed himself to the apostles alive: this circumstance indicates the high importance of the resurrection with respect to our faith; comp. 1Co_15:14; 1Co_15:17 ff. The fact that “He lives,” is the principle of life—the punctum saliens—of Christianity; it is the main support—the heart—of all Christian faith, charity and hope.

7. The discourses of the risen Saviour respecting the kingdom of God. The Word is the true light. By his word the Lord enlightened his disciples still further during the forty days, and prepared them for the service of the word. Even as the heart of the men who were going to Emmaus burned within them, while he opened to them the Scriptures [Luk_24:32], so the Lord still imparts light and warmth to believers through the Word, as a means of grace.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Act_1:1. The former treatise;—The Gospel concerning Christ, his Person, and his Work, is, and indeed always must continue to be, the first and principal subject of the instructions which a teacher furnishes (Brandt: Apost. Past.).—O Theophilus; faithful servants of Christ watch over the whole flock with the utmost assiduity and zeal; but when they find a Theophilus in the flock, that is, when they find souls which earnestly seek God and their Saviour, they rightly devote special attention to these, and endeavor to instruct them in all things which belong to a perfect understanding of the way of salvation (Ib.).—Of all that Jesus began,—After the glorious beginning, a glorious progress follows. Theophilus had naturally addressed the question to himself; How did it occur that I became a Christian? How could the Gospel penetrate even to Rome? Luke now furnishes the answer:—Jesus, who ascended to heaven, sent the Gospel even to Rome. Theophilus, and all we who are Christians, belong as surely to the Lord Jesus, and are as intimately connected with him as the original disciples. He who in the beginning called his own, has also called us; for even as he began both to do and to teach, until the day in which he was taken up, so, too, he continues ever after to do and teach, as a Prophet, High-priest, and King in his kingdom. (Besser: Bibelst.). It is not sufficient when we begin well; it is our duty to persevere in obedience to the end. (Starke).—To do and teach.—The doctrine and the life, the word and the walk, the revelation and the fulfilment of the divine will, were always combined in Jesus the Teacher, to whom no teacher is equal; he lived in accordance with that which he taught, and performed himself all that he commanded. He is therefore not only the divine Master, at whose feet we should sit in order to learn the will of God from him, but he is also our divine example; when we follow in his steps, we can always have the blessed assurance that we are doing the will of God. It is the duty of every Christian both “to do” and “to teach,” that is, he must be a Christian not in words only, but also in deed, Mat_7:21. (Starke).

Act_1:2. a. Until the day in which he was taken up.—The Spirit of God has carefully provided that our knowledge respecting Christ’s state of exaltation should be as full as it is respecting all that occurred in his state of humiliation; he has thus taught us from the beginning that all those would commit an error of judgment who should deem the latter state alone entitled to attention. (Apost. Past.)—We cannot form a correct judgment respecting the peculiar appearance which the Church of Christ now presents on earth, unless we continually bear in mind, first, the ascension of Jesus; secondly, the fact that the mode in which he begins to take possession of his kingdom, is invisible; and, thirdly, the future manifestation of that kingdom. (K. H. Rieger).—The first treatise, or, the Gospel of Luke, commences with the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and concludes with his ascension, or his return to the Father; the latter is the terminating point of his visible walk, his doing and teaching on earth, but not of his operations in the midst of his redeemed people. That ascension is, rather, the condition on which Christ’s coming in the Spirit depends, and is really the commencement of this coming, by which Christ, who is now exalted above the heavens, uninterruptedly bears witness to his own kingly might and grace; hence Luke begins his history of the Apostles and of the Church by repeating his account of the ascension (Leonhardi and Spiegelhauer: Homilet. Handbuch zur Apostelgesch.).—All that occurs in the visible world originates in the invisible world; the apparently tangled threads of human affairs and of earthly events, meet above us, and are held by the hand of the holy and almighty Ruler of the world; so, too, in a special manner, that power which controls the history of the kingdom of Jesus Christ (of which history the Book of the Acts constitutes the first and most attractive portion), resides in the hand, once pierced, of our blessed Lord and Saviour, who was exalted from the cross to the right hand of God.

b. After that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen.—Here the apostles, whose history the book before us relates, are introduced. The Son did not return to the bosom of the Father [Joh_1:18] until he had effectually provided for the continuance of his work on earth, by commanding his chosen apostles to assume the office of preaching the Gospel, and by leaving with them the promise of the Holy Ghost. The selection and mission of the apostles, and the endowments which they received, constitute, in their combination, an act of the prophetic wisdom, the sacerdotal love, and the kingly authority of our Lord, of the importance of which we can never form too high an estimate.How could the kingdom of Christ have endured after his departure, unless these executors of his testament had been invested with full authority and power by him? We are distinctly informed in the text that Christ was taken up at the very time when he was giving instructions and commandments to his apostles; thus he taught not only during his life and at his death, but also at his ascension. Imperatorem oportet stantem mori, et verum ecclesiæ Christianæ doctorem decet docentem vivere, mori, coelos adscendere. (Apost. Past.).—Through the Holy Ghost had given commandments.—That which Christ has taught through the Holy Ghost, we must also receive and learn through the Holy Ghost. (Starke).

Act_1:3. a. To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion.—Those who behold the sufferings of Christ and suffer with him, shall also live and reign with him [2Ti_2:11-12].—When men preach the Gospel, it is important that they should be competent to bear witness respecting his life, as well as his sufferings and death; in both respects the apostles were qualified to speak by their experimental knowledge. The same duty continues to devolve on the messengers of the Gospel. Unless they have been crucified and have died with Christ, as well by that faith by which all things are their own [1Co_3:21], as also by following him and crucifying their old man with him [Rom_6:6], they have no true knowledge of his life. (Apost. Past.).—Thousands in Israel saw the ignominious sufferings of Christ on the cross; but the great truth that He who was put to death in the flesh, was quickened by the Spirit [1Pe_3:18], is manifested on earth to those alone who have themselves been qualified by faith to receive the Spirit in which Christ lives bodily. (Besser).b.

Speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.—It is still the duty of religious teachers to exhibit a full and complete image of the kingdom of Christ on earth to their hearers, so that they may see it in its various aspects, and not be misled by false views. If we should describe that kingdom to them in pleasant terms alone, and refer only to the blessedness to which it conducts, they would afterwards be ready to take offence when dark clouds arise, and the kingdom of Christ appears in that form of which he has spoken to us prophetically in John, Acts 16, and elsewhere. (Apost. Past.).

On the whole section. The divine character of the Bible, proved from the wonderful combination of opposite qualities in the books which compose it: I. They relate to personal matters, and are, nevertheless, universally applicable. II. They refer to special circumstances and occasions, and are, nevertheless, suited for all subsequent ages. (The Gospel of Luke and the Acts were both written for Theophilus).—The sufficiency of the Scriptures: they present, 1. Not every point of general interest, but, II. All that is necessary to salvation.—Christ, our Prophet: I. In his acts; and II. In his words.—The commandments of Christ are spirit and life [Joh_6:63]: I. Inasmuch as he is himself anointed with the Holy Spirit; and, II. Grants the Holy Spirit to them that obey him.—The oneness of God the Son and the Holy Ghost.—“Because I live, ye shall live also.” [Joh_14:19].—The condescension and grace of the Lord, manifested in his appearances during the forty days which succeeded his resurrection: I. He appeared often; and, II. Furnished infallible proofs that He was alive.—The value of the evidence that Christ lives: I. It is the foundation of our faith; II. The anchor of our hope.—The course of the kingdom of God, and of the Saviour, is the same: I. First, the cross; II. Then, the crown. (G. V. Lechler).

The Gospel concerning the life of Jesus on earth, the first treatise: this descriptive phrase refers I. To the vast results which the Gospel has produced—it is the germ whence all the succeeding developments of the kingdom of God on earth have proceeded. The phrase indicates, II. The cheerful character of the contents of the Gospel—viewed as the most benign message which fallen man ever received. It exhibits, III. The very ancient origin of the Gospel—as the testimony of faithful witnesses of the truth, founded on their personal experience, (Act_1:3,)—(as opposed to the negative assertions of a destructive criticism.).—The irrefutable testimony of Jesus Christ, the faithful witness [Rev_1:5]: it is furnished, I. By all that he did as well as by all that he taught; II. By his sufferings and death, as well as by his glorious exaltation; III. By the mouth of his Apostles, as well as by his personal acts; IV. By the course of events in the history of the world and of his kingdom, as well as by the internal experience of true believers.—The deep religious significance of the interval of forty days between the resurrection and the ascension: I. For the Lord; it was a period in which he (a) found a holy, sabbatical repose after the completion of his redeeming work; (b) terminated the pastoral labors which he had performed for the disciples, and (c) joyfully awaited his approaching exaltation. II. For the disciples; it was a period in which they (a) arrived at the close of that blessed intercourse which they had enjoyed with their glorified Master; (b) searched their own hearts diligently (“Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?”), and thus (c) were fully prepared to perform their apostolical labors in the world. III. For us; it is a type (a) of that happy life of faith with Christ in God, which is hidden from the world, Col_3:3; (b) of that blessed labor of love performed in the hearts of our friends in view of the approaching separation; (c) of our joyful hope of entering the glory of heaven.

Footnotes:

[1][Note.—Where Dr. Lechler’s German version differs materially from the authorized English version, the variations, as far as the idioms of the two languages permit the translator to reproduce them, are also given, and inclosed in brackets.—Tr.]

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Acts

THE ASCENSION

THE THEME OF ACTS

Act 1:1 - Act 1:2. - Act 28:30 - Act 28:31.

So begins and so ends this Book. I connect the commencement and the close, because I think that the juxtaposition throws great light upon the purpose of the writer, and suggests some very important lessons. The reference to ‘the former treatise’ {which is, of course, the Gospel according to Luke} implies that this Book is to be regarded as its sequel, and the terms of the reference show the writer’s own conception of what he was going to do in his second volume. ‘The former treatise have I made . . . of all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which He was taken up.’ Is not the natural inference that the latter treatise will tell us what Jesus continued ‘to do and teach’ after He was taken up? I think so. And thus the writer sets forth at once, for those that have eyes to see, what he means to do, and what he thinks his book is going to be about.

So, then, the name ‘The Acts of the Apostles,’ which is not coeval with the book itself, is somewhat of a misnomer. Most of the Apostles are never heard of in it. There are, at the most, only three or four of them concerning whom anything in the book is recorded. But our first text supplies a deeper reason for regarding that title as inadequate, and even misleading. For, if the theme of the story be what Christ did, then the book is, not the ‘Acts of the Apostles,’ but the ‘Acts of Jesus Christ’ through His servants. He, and He alone, is the Actor; and the men who appear in it are but instruments in His hands, He alone being the mover of the pawns on the board.

That conception of the purpose of the book seems to me to have light cast upon it by, and to explain, the singular abruptness of its conclusion, which must strike every reader. No doubt it is quite possible that the reason why the book ends in such a singular fashion, planting Paul in Rome, and leaving him there, may be that the date of its composition was that imprisonment of Paul in the Imperial City, in a part of which, at all events, we know that Luke was his companion. But, whilst that consideration may explain the point at which the book stops, it does not explain the way in which it stops. The historian lays down his pen, possibly because he had brought his narrative up to date. But a word of conclusion explaining that it was so would have been very natural, and its absence must have had some reason. It is also possible that the arrival of the Apostle in the Imperial City, and his unhindered liberty of preaching there, in the very centre of power, the focus of intellectual life, and the hot-bed of corruption for the known world, may have seemed to the writer an epoch which rounded off his story. But I think that the reason for the abruptness of the record’s close is to be found in the continuity of the work of which it tells a part. It is the unfinished record of an incomplete work. The theme is the work of Christ through the ages, of which each successive depository of His energies can do but a small portion, and must leave that portion unfinished; the book does not so much end as stop. It is a fragment, because the work of which it tells is not yet a whole.

If, then, we put these two things-the beginning and the ending of the Acts-together, I think we get some thoughts about what Christ began to do and teach on earth; what He continues to do and teach in heaven; and how small and fragmentary a share in that work each individual servant of His has. Let us look at these points briefly.

I. First, then, we have here the suggestion of what Christ began to do and teach on earth.

Now, at first sight, the words of our text seem to be in strange and startling contradiction to the solemn cry which rang out of the darkness upon Calvary. Jesus said, ‘It is finished!’ and ‘gave up the ghost.’ Luke says He ‘began to do and teach.’ Is there any contradiction between the two? Certainly not. It is one thing to lay a foundation; it is another thing to build a house. And the work of laying the foundation must be finished before the work of building the structure upon it can be begun. It is one thing to create a force; it is another thing to apply it. It is one thing to compound a medicine; it is another thing to administer it. It is one thing to unveil a truth; it is another to unfold its successive applications, and to work it into a belief and practice in the world. The former is the work of Christ which was finished on earth; the latter is the work which is continuous throughout the ages.

‘He began to do and teach,’ not in the sense that any should come after Him and do, as the disciples of most great discoverers and thinkers have had to do: namely, systematise, rectify, and complete the first glimpses of truth which the master had given. ‘He began to do and teach,’ not in the sense that after He had ‘passed into the heavens’ any new truth or force can for evermore be imparted to humanity in regard of the subjects which He taught and the energies which He brought. But whilst thus His work is complete, His earthly work is also initial. And we must remember that whatever distinction my text may mean to draw between the work of Christ in the past and that in the present and the future, it does not mean to imply that when He ‘ascended up on high’ He had not completed the task for which He came, or that the world had to wait for anything more, either from Him or from others, to eke out the imperfections of His doctrine or the insufficiencies of His work.

Let us ever remember that the initial work of Christ on earth is complete in so far as the revelation of God to men is concerned. There will be no other. There is needed no other. Nothing more is possible than what He, by His words and by His life, by His gentleness and His grace, by His patience and His Passion, has unveiled to all men, of the heart and character of God. The revelation is complete, and he that professes to add anything to, or to substitute anything for, the finished teaching of Jesus Christ concerning God, and man’s relation to God, and man’s duty, destiny, and hopes, is a false teacher, and to follow him is fatal. All that ever come after Him and say, ‘Here is something that Christ has not told you,’ are thieves and robbers, ‘and the sheep will not hear them.’

In like manner that work of Christ, which in some sense is initial, is complete as Redemption. ‘This Man has offered up one sacrifice for sins for ever.’ And nothing more can He do than He has done; and nothing more can any man or all men do than was accomplished on the Cross of Calvary as giving a revelation, as effecting a redemption, as lodging in the heart of humanity, and in the midst of the stream of human history, a purifying energy, sufficient to cleanse the whole black stream. The past work which culminated on the Cross, and was sealed as adequate and accepted of God in the Resurrection and Ascension, needs no supplement, and can have no continuation, world without end. And so, whatever may be the meaning of that singular phrase, ‘began to do and teach,’ it does not, in the smallest degree, conflict with the assurance that He hath ascended up on high, ‘having obtained eternal redemption for us,’ and ‘having finished the work which the Father gave Him to do.’

II. But then, secondly, we have to notice what Christ continues to do and to teach after His Ascension.

I have already suggested that the phraseology of the first of my texts naturally leads to the conclusion that the theme of this Book of the Acts is the continuous work of the ascended Saviour, and that the language is not forced by being thus interpreted is very plain to any one who will glance even cursorily over the contents of the book itself. For there is nothing in it more obvious and remarkable than the way in which, at every turn in the narrative, all is referred to Jesus Christ Himself.

For instance, to cull one or two cases in order to bring the matter more plainly before you-When the Apostles determined to select another Apostle to fill Judas’ place, they asked Jesus Christ to show which ‘of these two Thou hast chosen.’ When Peter is called upon to explain the tongues at Pentecost he says, ‘Jesus hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear.’ When the writer would tell the reason of the large first increase to the Church, he says, ‘The Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved.’ Peter and John go into the Temple to heal the lame man, and their words to him are, ‘Do not think that our power or holiness is any factor in your cure. The Name hath made this man whole.’ It is the Lord that appears to Paul and to Ananias, to the one on the road to Damascus and to the other in the city. It is the Lord to whom Peter refers Aeneas when he says, ‘Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.’ It was the Lord that ‘opened the heart of Lydia.’ It was the Lord that appeared to Paul in Corinth, and said to him, ‘I have much people in this city’; and again, when in the prison at Jerusalem, He assured the Apostle that he would be carried to Rome. And so, at every turn in the narrative, we find that Christ is presented as influencing men’s hearts, operating upon outward events, working miracles, confirming His word, leading His servants, and prescribing for them their paths, and all which they do is done by the hand of the Lord with them confirming the word which they spoke. Jesus Christ is the Actor, and He only is the Actor; men are His implements and instruments.

The same point of view is suggested by another of the characteristics of this book, which it shares in common with all Scripture narratives, and that is the stolid indifference with which it picks up and drops men, according to the degree in which, for the moment, they are the instruments of Christ’s power. Supposing a man had been writing Acts of the Apostles, do you think it would have been possible that of the greater number of them he should not say a word, that concerning those of whom he does speak he should deal with them as this book does, barely mentioning the martyrdom of James, one of the four chief Apostles; allowing Peter to slip out of the narrative after the great meeting of the Church at Jerusalem; letting Philip disappear without a hint of what he did thereafter; lodging Paul in Rome and leaving him there, with no account of his subsequent work or martyrdom? Such phenomena-and they might be largely multiplied-are only explicable upon one hypothesis. As long as electricity streams on the carbon point it glows and is visible, but when the current is turned to another lamp we see no more of the bit of carbon. As long as God uses a man the man is of interest to the writers of the Scriptures. When God uses another one, they drop the first, and have no more care about him, because their theme is not men and their doings, but God’s doings through men.

On us, and in us, and by us, and for us, if we are His servants, Jesus Christ is working all through the ages. He is the Lord of Providence, He is the King of history, in His hand is the book with the seven seals; He sends His Spirit, and where His Spirit is He is; and what His Spirit does He does. And thus He continues to teach and to work from His throne in the heavens.

He continues to teach, not by the communication of new truth. That is finished. The volume of Revelation is complete. The last word of the divine utterances hath been spoken until that final word which shall end Time and crumble the earth. But the application of the completed Revelation, the unfolding of all that is wrapped in germ in it; the growing of the seed into a tree, the realisation more completely by individuals and communities of the principles and truths which Jesus Christ has brought us by His life and His death-that is the work that is going on to-day, and that will go on till the end of the world. For the old Puritan belief is true, though the modern rationalistic mutilations of it are false, ‘God hath more light yet to break forth’-and our modern men stop there. But what the sturdy old Puritan said was, ‘more light yet to break forth from His holy Word.’ Jesus Christ teaches the ages-through the lessons of providence and the communication of His Spirit to His Church-to understand what He gave the world when He was here.

In like manner He works. The foundation is laid, the healing medicine is prepared, the cleansing element is cast into the mass of humanity; what remains is the application and appropriation, and incorporation in conduct, of the redeeming powers that Jesus Christ has brought. And that work is going on, and will go on, till the end.

Now these truths of our Lord’s continuous activity in teaching and working from heaven may yield us some not unimportant lessons. What a depth and warmth and reality the thoughts give to the Christian’s relation to Jesus Christ! We have to look back to that Cross as the foundation of all our hope. Yes! But we have to think, not only of a Christ who did something for us long ago in the past, and there an end, but of a Christ who to-day lives and reigns, ‘to do and to teach’ according to our necessities. What a sweetness and sacredness such thoughts impart to all external events, which we may regard as being the operation of His love, and as moved by the hands that were nailed to the Cross for us, and now hold the sceptre of the universe for the blessing of mankind! What a fountain of hope they open in estimating future probabilities of victory for truth and goodness! The forces of good and evil in the world seem very disproportionate, but we forget too often to take Christ into account. It is not we that have to fight against evil; at the best we are but the sword which Christ wields, and all the power is in the hand that wields it. Great men die, good men die; Jesus Christ is not dead. Paul was martyred: Jesus lives; He is the anchor of our hope. We see miseries and mysteries enough, God knows. The prospects of all good causes seem often clouded and dark. The world has an awful power of putting drags upon all chariots that bear blessings, and of turning to evil every good. You cannot diffuse education, but you diffuse the taste for rubbish and something worse, in the shape of books. No good thing but has its shadow of evil attendant upon it. And if we had only to estimate by visible or human forces, we might well sit down and wrap ourselves in the sackcloth of pessimism. ‘We see not yet all things put under Him’; but ‘we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour,’ and the vision that cheered the first martyr-of Christ ‘standing at the right hand of God’-is the rebuke of every fear and every gloomy anticipation for ourselves or for the world.

What a lesson of lowliness and of diligence it gives us! The jangling church at Corinth fought about whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas was the man to lead the Church, and the experience has been repeated over and over again. ‘Who is Paul? Who is Apollos? but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man. Be not puffed up one against another. Be not wise in your own conceits.’ You are only a tool, only a pawn in the hand of the Great Player. If you have anything, it is because you get it from Him. See that you use it, and do not boast about it. Jesus Christ is the Worker, the only Worker; the Teacher, the only Teacher. All our wisdom is derived, all our light is enkindled. We are but the reeds through which His breath makes music. And ‘shall the axe boast itself,’ either ‘against’ or apart from ‘Him that heweth therewith’?

III. Lastly, we note the incompleteness of each man’s share in the great work.

As I said, the book which is to tell the story of Christ’s continuous unfinished work must stop abruptly. There is no help for it. If it was a history of Paul it would need to be wound up to an end and a selvage put to it, but as it is the history of Christ’s working, the web is not half finished, and the shuttle stops in the middle of a cast. The book must be incomplete, because the work of which it is the record does not end until ‘He shall have delivered up the Kingdom to the Father, and God shall be all in all.’

So the work of each man is but a fragment of that great work. Every man inherits unfinished tasks from his predecessors, and leaves unfinished tasks to his successors. It is, as it used to be in the Middle Ages, when the hands that dug the foundations, or laid the first courses, of some great cathedral, were dead long generations before the gilded cross was set on the apex of the needlespire, and the glowing glass filled in to the painted windows. Enough for us, if we lay a stone, though it be but one stone in one of the courses of the great building.

Luke has left plenty of blank paper at the end of his second ‘treatise,’ on which he meant that succeeding generations should write their partial contributions to the completed work. Dear friends, let us see that we write our little line, as monks in their monasteries used to keep the chronicle of the house, on which scribe after scribe toiled at its illuminated letters with loving patience for a little while, and then handed the pen from his dying hand to another. What does it matter though we drop, having done but a fragment? He gathers up the fragments into His completed work, and the imperfect services which He enabled any of us to do will all be represented in the perfect circle of His finished work. The Lord help us to be faithful to the power that works in us, and to leave Him to incorporate our fragments in His mighty whole!

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Analysis and Annotations

Part I

The Witness to Jerusalem.

The Advent of the Spirit and the Formation of the Church.

The Offer to Israel and its Rejection.

Chapters 1-7

CHAPTER 1

1. The Introduction (Act 1:1-3).

2. The final words of the risen Lord (Act 1:4-8).

3. The ascension (Act 1:9-11).

4. The waiting company (Act 1:12-14).

5. Matthias chosen in the place of Judas (Act 1:15-26).

The introductory words prove that Luke is the writer. In the former treatise, Luke had addressed to Theophilus (the Gospel of Luke) the beginning of the teaching, and acts of our Lord were reported. The Book of Acts reveals the same wonderful person witnessed to by the Holy Spirit. Eight things are mentioned concerning our Lord in the beginning of this book. 1. His earthly life of doing and teaching. 2. He gave them commandment. 3. He had suffered. 4. He had showed Himself after His passion by many infallible proofs. 5. He was seen by them for forty days. 6. He spoke of the things which concern the Kingdom of God. 7. He was taken up. 8. He will come again. Once more He gave to them the promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit. In Act 1:5 we read “ye shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence.” John the Baptist had spoken also of a baptism with fire. The Lord omits the word fire, because the baptism with fire is a judgment act linked with His second coming (See Mat 3:12). The question they asked of Him concerning the restoration of the Kingdom to Israel was perfectly in order. This is the Hope of Israel; the Hope of the church is not an earthly kingdom, but a heavenly glory; not to be subjects in the kingdom on earth, but to reign and rule with the King. The answer they received assured them that the kingdom was to be restored to Israel; the times and seasons for that, however, rested with the Father.

Then they saw Him ascending. What a sight it must have been! Their Lord was “received into Glory.” Gradually in majestic silence He must have been lifted out of their midst. Lovingly His eyes must have rested upon them, while their eyes saw only Him. Then a cloud received Him out of their sight. “And then a cloud took Him in (literal rendering) out of their sight.” The cloud was not a common cloud of vapor, but the glory-cloud. It was the cloud of glory which had filled Solomon’s temple, which so often in Israel’s past history had appeared as an outward sign of Jehovah’s presence. Then angels announced His coming in like manner. And thus He will come, even back to the Mount of Olives (Zec 14:4).

However, we must beware of confounding this event given here with that blessed Hope, which is the Hope of the church. The Coming of the Lord here is His visible Coming as described in the prophetic books of the Old Testament; it is His coming to establish His rule upon the earth. it is the event spoken of in Dan 7:14 and Rev 1:7. When He comes in like manner as He went up, His Saints come with Him (Col 3:4; 1Th 3:13). The Hope of the church is to meet Him in the air, and not to see Him coming in the clouds of heaven. The coming here “in like manner” is His Coming for Israel and the nations. The Coming of the Lord for His Church, before His visible and glorious manifestation, is revealed in 1Th 4:16-18. It is well to keep these important truths in mind. Confusion between these is disastrous. He left them to enter into the Holy of Holies, to exercise the priesthood which Aaron exercised on the day of atonement, though our Lord is a priest after the order of Melchisedec. And when this promise of the two men in white garments is fulfilled, He will come forth to be a priest upon His throne.

Then we see them as a waiting company. They are not the church. Their waiting for the Coming of the Holy Spirit ended ten days after, when the Holy Spirit came. Since then He is here. To wait for another outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as so often done by well meaning people, is unscriptural. Among the waiting ones were “Mary the mother of Jesus and His brethren.” The one chosen by God’s grace to be the mother of our Lord; Mary, who had conceived by the Holy Spirit, is waiting with the other disciples. This proves that she has no place of superiority among God’s people. When the Holy Spirit came she too was baptized by the Spirit into the one body of which, through the Grace of God, she is a member like any other believer in our Lord. After this she is not mentioned again in the Word of God. Mary, the mother of Jesus, has absolutely no relation with the redemption work of the Son of God. His brethren, according to Joh 7:5, were unbelieving. Since then they had also believed on Him.

The action of Peter in proposing to place another in Judas’ place was not a mistake as some claim. Peter acted upon the Scriptures and was guided by the Lord. Some hold that Paul was meant to be the twelfth apostle. This is incorrect. Paul’s apostleship was of an entirely different nature than that of the twelve. Not till Israel’s complete failure had been demonstrated in the stoning of Stephen was he called, and then not of men, but by revelation of Jesus Christ. There is positive proof that the Holy Spirit sanctioned this action of the disciples. See 1Co 15:5-8. Furthermore, twelve apostles were needed as a body of witnesses to the entire nation. How strange it would have been if Peter and the ten, eleven men in all, instead of twelve, had stood up on the day of Pentecost to witness to Christ in the presence of the assembled multitude.

Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Act 1:5

I. What is the baptism of the Holy Ghost? We are told that with an invisible power the Spirit should come down and rest upon the heart, cleansing and purifying the whole man, so that it can be said, "If any man is in Christ he is a new creature." This change is mysterious and in some respects inexplicable; but we find it produces union between God and the soul. When the baptism of the Holy Ghost comes to a Church; when it comes to a mass that are brought to the knowledge of Christ; when it comes to a community, as on the day of Pentecost, it seems to represent to us a shower of blessing, and we may well be glad when we commemorate that outpouring. But is it attainable by us now? Yes, we answer, and more than ever. This dispensation is called the dispensation of the Spirit.

II. What are some of the consequences that flow out of this baptism of the Holy Spirit? (1) One of the first is joy and peace. All the epistles are written with the pen of joy. The fulfilment of Christ’s Word was theirs. (2) There will be a large accession spiritually to the Church of God. There is nothing else we want in the midst of this Christian people of England; nothing else will save the tens of thousands passing down to destruction; nothing will alter the condition of life which Christ declared to Nicodemus. "Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again."

III. How is this attainable? We must secure it by prayer. God tells us throughout the whole of these Scriptures, where He promises the Spirit, that we can only receive it by prayer and supplication. Prayer and the consecration of our souls to the service of God—these are the conditions on which we shall receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost—"not many days hence."

J. Fleming, Christian World Pulpit, vol. i., p. 456.

References: Act 1:5.—J. Keble, Sermons from Ascension Day to Trinity, p. 197.

Act 1:6

The extent and the nature of the intercourse of the risen Lord with His disciples must ever be of the deepest interest to the Church. He was not in those forty days quite as He had been before. His theme was the same, but the tense was different. He could not now talk of His decease as a future event. The subject of much of His conversation seems to have been the unfolding of the prophecies of the ancient Scripture. He was Himself the proper theme of His own ministry. It was natural for the disciples to ask the question of the text. They had been longing, like all patriotic Jews, for the restoration of the glories of the house of Israel. Ancient prophecies, they knew, had foretold this restoration, and had always associated it with a great outpouring of the Spirit. Now that they had been expressly bidden to go to Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Holy Ghost, was it strange that they should ask, "Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?"

I. In their request several mistakes were involved. (1) They thought that national supremacy was synonymous with spiritual power. (2) They thought that the visible was the enduring. After their roving life they longed to be at home and at rest, and they thought that the restoration of the kingdom would mean for them a secure and permanent abode. (3) They thought that outward conformity was the same as inward unity. They forgot that outward conformity may be merely like the tie that binds a bundle of dry and lifeless faggots.

II. Our Lord’s answer is a very remarkable one. They had asked for power, and He promises that they should be endued with power from on high. The times and seasons mattered little. What they needed was strength to be witnesses for Him. Stormy times were coming, when their strength would be sorely tried. Yet if ever the kingdom did come, it must be by the faithful efforts of faithful men.

H. E. Stone, Jan. 4th, 1891.

Consider what is the nature of the power necessary to regenerate and save the human race

I. Let us show what it is not. (1) We should sadly misunderstand the words of the Saviour did we attach to them the idea of physical power. "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God." (2) It is not miraculous power. They were already endued with this, though no doubt a great increase was subsequently made to it. This was not the power the world stood principally in need of. Miraculous power cannot save men. We would rush to perdition through a battalion of ghosts. (3) Neither is it the power of eloquence. I admit there is tremendous power in words; they breathe, they burn, they move the soul. But there is one thing they cannot do—regenerate the soul. They are not adequate to do that. The power Christ promised His disciples was not the word power. (4) Neither is it the power of logic. It is trite and commonplace to say that argument cannot convert a soul. God can never save you by argument; the world will defy the Almighty in a debate. There is argument in the Bible; and argument is indispensable; but it is not by logic that men are made new creatures. The power that Christ promised His disciples is not that of logic. (5) It is not that of thought. I do not say that thought is not necessary; but it is not of itself adequate to bring about the desired change.

II. Consider the subject on its positive side. (1) This power which Christ promises to His disciples is "power from on high," a power which has its source in worlds above us. (2) It is "the power of the Holy Ghost." (3) Its effect was to make the disciples pre-eminently spiritual. (4) Its effect on the congregation is that many are turned to God, and are brought out of nature’s darkness into the marvellous light of the Gospel.

J. Cynddylan Jones, Studies in the Acts, p. 1.

The power which accompanied the first missionaries of the Gospel and fitted them for a work which, to human eyes, must have seemed hopeless, is the power which works now for the accomplishment of the same ends. The external phenomena of that day have indeed ceased; the miracles are no more; the gift of tongues is but once or twice alluded to in the second century, and then we hear no more of it. But every minister of Christ, every missionary of the cross, must be clothed with the same power from on high which was imparted to the first Apostles, if he would carry on the work which they commenced. And what is the secret of that power? Where is it to be found? I answer, first in the knowledge of the truth, and next in the sanctification of the heart.

I. This power cannot exist apart from the knowledge of the truth and the love of the truth. "He shall guide you into all truth," says our Lord. That is the most magnificent promise ever given to man, opening the brightest vista to human thought and aspiration, and fitted to fire the noblest minds with a worthy ambition. The whole truth into which the Apostles were to be led, and into which we are to be led, is the truth concerning Christ. It is in the knowledge of that truth that is to be found the secret of the power that gives life to the world.

II. But once more, this power is to be found in the virtue of a holy life, no less than in the knowledge and utterance of the truth. The Spirit of Truth is the Holy Spirit. And in His gracious work we may believe that He who enlightens the understanding to know the truth, does also purify the heart and sanctify the whole man. The power of a holy life is far more than the power of uttering the truth. You may not have the learning of an Origen, or the philosophical acuteness of an Augustine, or the fervid eloquence of a Chrysostom; but if you have been baptised with the Spirit of God, you must be a light wherever you are, you must be a life and a power in the world; there will stream forth from you, in your daily example, in your mortification of self, in your growing self-mastery, in your growing self-sacrifice, in your pureness, your charity, your patience, your meekness, your love; in a word, in your bright exhibition of all the graces of the Christian character, that power which of old subdued the world.

J. S. Perowne, Sermons, p. 205.

References: Act 1:1, Act 1:2.—G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons to English Congregations in India, p. 295; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 32; A. Verran, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 397. Act 1:6.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. v., p. 272. Act 1:6, Act 1:7.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 37. Act 1:6, Act 1:8.—New Outlines on the New Testament, pp. 77, 79. Act 1:6-12.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. i., p. 361. Act 1:7, Act 1:8.—J. R. Bailey, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 314; R. W. Church, Ibid., vol. ii., p. 187. Act 1:1-8.—A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve, p. 536; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. ii., p. 130.

Act 1:1-11

(with Luk 24:15-53)

Ascension Day

I. It is quite necessary to seize firmly and hold fast by this thought, that the acts of Apostles and all subsequent acts of their true successors, are, as Bengel says, a continuation of Christ’s own history, if we would understand St. Luke’s opening section of Church history, or any after section of it from St. Luke’s day till now. The one event in which St. Luke finds the meeting place of these two eras is the Ascension. It finds a place at the end of his Gospel, and at the beginning of his Church history, because it is really common to both.

II. Unlike the feebleness of good wishes on men’s dying lips, the strong benediction of the Prince of Life commands and confers a blessing, while from His radiant face and form, and down from His uplifted hands, there rains into the souls of the eleven a rain of gracious influences, of hope and courage and content and gladness. Then, like a thing of rarer quality, which by its own upward virtue ascends through the grosser atmosphere below, His blessed body rose with a still and slow and stately movement into the pure bright upper air. Nor stayed; but followed by the fixed gaze of the amazed men, rose on, until, still raining blessings down, He reached the region where white clouds rest. Then suddenly there swept beneath His feet a cloud that shut him from their envious eyes. This was no time for idle, melancholy despondencies, that root themselves in the past—for profitless longings after that which is not. Gazing into heaven will not fetch Christ back, nor any other departed. Let us return to Jerusalem. Earth has its calls to duty, and heaven will chide us if we do not heed them. Let this be the spur which quickens labour and the hope which cheers exhaustion, that "This same Jesus who is taken from us into heaven, shall so come in like manner as they saw Him go into heaven."

J. Oswald Dykes, From Jerusalem to Antioch, p. 5 (see also Preacher’s Lantern, vol. iv., p. 1).

References: Act 1:1-11.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ii., p. 266; Act 1:1-21.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 189. Act 1:2, Act 1:3.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 32. Act 1:3.—T. Binney, Christian World Pulpit, vol. i., p. 379; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ix., p. 468; Homilist, vol. iii., p. 015. Act 1:4.—Lawrance, Church Sermons, vol. ii., p. 123. Act 1:4, Act 1:5.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 33. Act 1:4-8.—Ibid., vol. iv., p. 267.

Act 1:9

Consider the obvious lessons which result at once from Christ’s Ascension

I. The first is heavenly-mindedness. He went but as the great forerunner of His people, and we must follow Him in His course; where the Head is, there should the members be; and our treasure, our life, our affection, are meant to be with Him at the right hand of God. Let us hear the cries that come to us from heaven above and from the earth beneath, from the works of nature and the voices of conscience, and from the wail of the weary and from all the graves of men, the cry of Sursum corda, "Lift up your hearts;" and from every one of us let the answer be, "We lift them up unto the Lord."

II. The second lesson is a lesson of simple duty. It is the same plain and unvarnished and homely lesson which is taught in the fifteenth Psalm, "Lord, who shall dwell in Thy tabernacle, or who shall rest upon Thy holy hill?" Is it only the lofty, the unapproachable, the devoted, the timely-happy? No, but common men who by God’s grace have lived their common lives in the paths of purity and duty, the lowly, the undeceitful, the unmalicious, the uncorrupt. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall rise up in His holy place? Even he that hath clean hands and a pure heart; he who doeth the thing which is right and speaketh the truth from his heart.

III. The third is a lesson of holy fear. If you be an impenitent and hardened sinner, and will continue impenitent and hardened still, then fear; for then to you the lesson of Christ’s Ascension is a lesson of wrath and doom.

IV. But, lastly, if you be loving justice and mercy, and walking humbly with your God, if you be striving, however faintly, to be true and pure and good, then the lesson of the Ascension is a lesson of hope. It is a pledge to us of that forgiveness which Christ died to win. For Christ is our Intercessor. And therefore when we are summoned to the bar of God’s judgment-seat, we may hope; for the soft rainbow, like unto an emerald, encircles it, and we have an Intercessor. Humble, yet unabashed, may we stand where the very seraphs must veil their faces with their wings, for He is by our side. With the thought of such an Intercessor as this, is not the lesson of the Ascension a lesson of infinite peace and hope?

F. W. Farrar, The Fall of Man, p. 97.

References: Act 1:9.—S. Wilberforce, Church Sermons, vol. ii., p. 161; Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. ix., p. 140; F. W. Farrar, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. v., p. 354; J. N. Norton, Golden Truths, p. 272; Expository Sermons on the New Testament, p. 127. Act 1:9-11.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv, p. 89; G. Moberly, Plain Sermons at Brighstone, p. 209; W. R. Savage, Church of England Pulpit, vol. i., p. 336; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. lii., p. 40. Act 1:10-11.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi., No. 1817; Contemporary Pulpit, vol. xi., pp. 126, 308; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ix., p. 292. Act 1:11.—J. Keble, Sermons on Various Occasions, p. 85; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. v., p. 272; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 271; vol. v., p. 452. Act 1:12, Act 1:13.—T. Gasquoine, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 29; W. M. Arthur, Ibid., vol. xvi., p. 317. Act 1:12-14.—A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve, p. 542; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 42. Act 1:13.—J. Keble, Sermons from Ascension Day to Trinity, p. 155. Act 1:14.—Ibid., p. 143; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 557; J. H. Hitchens, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 330. Act 1:15-22.—Ibid., p. 156. Act 1:15-26.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. viii., p. 99.

Act 1:16-17

The Subserviency of Crime to the Purposes of God

We are so accustomed to view the traitor Judas with indignation and denounce him for his crime and treachery, that we are apt to overlook the important ends which, as overruled by God, are eventually subserved.

I. As an attestation of the miracles of Christ, we think the treachery of Judas overruled for the lasting benefit of the Church. The traitor shall witness to the Master he betrayed. For had there been anything of luck or deception in the miracles of Jesus, Judas, we may be sure, would have known it and told it. This would have been a fine piece of intelligence to have sold to the chief priests, and by communicating it, he would at once have enriched himself and destroyed Christianity. Nay, he would have done a righteous deed; and while gratifying his avarice, he would have laid up no food for remorse. If suspicion may rest on the witness of those faithful ones who had bound themselves to Christ, and who died rather than deny Him, none can rest on that of the renegade whose only object was to gain money by arresting the religion. The silence of the traitor should convince us, if unconvinced by the glorious company of martyrs.

II. The Christian religion might have been assailed, with at least equal power, through the moral character of its Founder. If the chief priests and scribes could have charged Christ with any sinful practice, and could have made good the charge, their end would have been as effectually answered as if they could have shown Him an impostor and a deceiver. Has Judas no information to give? no, he can betray the person, he cannot impeach the purity of his Lord. It is the innocence of the Sufferer which fills him with excruciating remorse, and so drives him to despair that he takes refuge in suicide. We say of all this, that it is the most perfect and convincing testimony to the spotless character of our Saviour.

III. There is no such extraordinary instance in Scripture as is furnished by the history under review of the utter incapacity of man to hinder the purposes of God. The treachery of Judas was overruled by God, rendering invulnerable, as at first, the testimony to Christ, both from miracle and prophecy. Judas Iscariot vindicates the Master he betrayed, and sustains the cause from which he apostatised.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1862.

References: Act 1:17, Act 1:18.—Parker, City Temple, vol. iii., p. 433. Act 1:21.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. xi., p. 328.

Act 1:21-22

The Christian Ministry

I. Consider what may be gathered, in regard to the office and qualifications of an Apostle, from that portion of Scripture brought before you by the services of the day. You will observe that St. Peter defines the office as that of being a witness to the resurrection of Christ, and requires that the appointed individual should be taken from those who had been associated with Christ through His earthly ministrations. So thoroughly is the resurrection an epitome of redemption—so completely may the whole of Christianity, whether as to evidence or doctrine, be gathered into the one truth, "The Lord is risen, the Lord is risen indeed,"—that in witnessing to the event which Easter commemorates, they witnessed to all which a sinful world was most concerned to know.

II. But why, if it were only of the resurrection that the apostles were to be witnesses—if they witnessed to everything in witnessing to this—was it necessary that the man chosen to the apostleship should be selected from those who had from the first been associated with Christ? The necessity is alleged in the text, and its reasons may be easily discerned. Those alone were fitted to bear testimony that Christ had risen, who had been much with Him before He went down into the grave, and much with Him after he had left it. Unless both conditions were fulfilled, there could be no convincing testimony. The Apostle must have been much with Christ not only after His resurrection, but before His crucifixion; for thus alone could he be fit to judge whether it was actually the Being who had been nailed to the tree, who was now claiming to have overcome death. We see, then, how St. Peter gathers into our text a just description of the qualifications of an apostle. It was the resurrection to which they were to give prominence and on which they were to lay stress, and if it were of the resurrection that the Apostles were called to be witnesses, their having been associated from first to last with Christ was indispensable to the placing their testimony beyond the reach of cavil. We see, therefore, with what propriety St. Peter declared that "Of those who had companied with us all the time that the Lord was among us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of His resurrection."

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1858.

I. We here see one secret of the superhuman strength which sustained the Apostles in the fiery trials through which they were destined to pass. They were strong, not because of any secret possession peculiar to them as Apostles, but simply because the mysteries of another world, closing in around them, had become an abiding vision, and issued through their faithfulness to the work of grace within them, in a consistent conformity of thought and act which was above the world. They had, therefore, in all their bearing a singleness, an ease, a dignity, an energy, before which the powers of this lower world gave way. They thus acted and suffered, because they lived and moved in the realities of an inner creation, which imparted its own colour and tone to all their views and judgments. Rut this grave power was independent of their special gift as Apostles, and was promised to abide in the Church for ever.

II. This aspect of the lives of the Apostles bears on our own history. We are so apt to look on the life depicted in the Acts of the Apostles as a kind of heroic form of Christianity, which has passed away, and that we have inherited only the possibilities of a lower state, more accommodated to the actual circumstances of modern society. Such a supposition is fatal to all high sanctity or real faithfulness. Moreover, it is to mistake the very meaning and object of the Acts of the Apostles. In the Acts we behold the Church in its abiding form, as it arose through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and as it was promised to continue through the grace of His unfailing presence even to the end.

III. The following simple rules will by the grace of God tend to cherish that pure inner light on which the increase of spiritual perception depends. (1) Fill up some of the vacant spaces of the day with recurring ejaculatory prayers. (2) Practice con-temptation in some form, however simple. (3) Study Holy Scripture at times in prayer on your knees. (4) Learn to view all acts, all words and thoughts, as they will appear at the day of judgment. (5) Beware of a religion which depends on ardent impulses or occasional efforts.

T. T. Carter, Sermons, p. 151.

References: Act 1:21, Act 1:22.—H. Melvill, Voices of the Year, vol. ii., p. 386; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. vi., p. 88; Bishop Barry, Cheltenham College Sermons, p. 333. Act 1:22.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. x., p. 99. Act 1:23.—Contemporary Pulpit, vol. v., p. 193. Act 1:23-26.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 159. Act 1:24.—C. J. Vaughan, Church of the First Days, p. 19. Act 1:25.—J. N. Norton, Every Sunday, p. 313; Mason, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 193; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ii., p. 156; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 106; T. M. Herbert, Sketches of Sermons, p. 264. Act 2:1.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx., No. 1783; J. Vaughan, Children’s Sermons, 2nd series, p. 148; 5th series, p. 93; J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. x., p. 125. Act 2:1-4.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., No. 511; Contemporary Pulpit, vol. vii., p. 297; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. vi., p. 280; M. Wilks, Christian World Pulpit, vol. i., p. 449; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 161.

The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Subdivision 1. (Act 1:1-11.)

The Foundation.

It is striking that, while Luke’s is one of the two only Gospels closing with the ascension of Christ, he yet should begin what is in some sense, as he declares, a continuation of his former work, with another account. The reason of this, however, is not hard to discover. In Matthew He has announced that upon that "Rock" which Peter had just confessed He would build His assembly (Mat 16:18). And He Himself, as Peter assures us, is the foundation upon which this "spiritual house" is built up (1Pe 2:4-6). Resurrection it is that has marked out the Son of the Living God (Rom 1:4). His work is there manifestly accomplished and accepted; that upon which all rests for us is finished, and here alone can there be an unchangeably secure foundation laid for any blessing. But the Church as the "spiritual house" is the House of God; and it is made so by the indwelling of the Spirit within it; while, if we think of it as the Body of Christ, it is by one Spirit that we are all baptized into one body (1Co 12:13). This the Lord presently assures us, was at Pentecost: Pentecost then was the beginning of the Church, and the Spirit given at that time was the fruit of Christ’s departure to the Father (Joh 16:7); and it is as there set at the right hand of God that He is made Head over all things to the Church, which is His Body (Eph 1:20-23).

It is plain, then, why the story of the assembly as related here should have for its introduction the ascension of Christ. It was fitting that this should end the Gospel; it is as fitting that it should begin the history of the Acts: in both connections its place is perfect, yet it is neither from the Gospel nor the Acts that we are made to realize this. Scripture as a whole is the product of one Mind alone.

1. It is the writer of the Gospel of the Manhood who gives us here, distinctly as linked with it, the story of that which He has specially associated with Himself as Man. The body is that by which the spirit of man which is in him takes its part in the world and is able to express itself in a scene like this. The Body of Christ is in the same way the "epistle of Christ," the expression of the absent One who as Head guides and governs it. To be feet and hands and mouth for Christ, as representatives of Him, seems fittingly and naturally to explain our position in this respect, which the opening of the Acts may well confirm. "Acts of the Apostles" is the title given by the MSS., which is confirmed by writers as early as Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, while Luke himself might appear to furnish another. For he calls his Gospel a "first account" of things which "Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which He was taken up." The "Acts" he leaves us to infer to be a second account, of things Jesus went on to do after His ascension, somewhat as Mark speaks of the disciples going forth and preaching everywhere, "the Lord (in heaven) working with them, and confirming the word with signs following." Here in Luke it would be, not the Lord working with, but in and through; and this would be completely that which the members on earth of the Christ in heaven would seem to suggest.

A company like this the world had never seen before. It implies an intimate fellowship with the mind of Christ (1Co 2:16), and a unity of loving obedience to His will, which, empowered by the Spirit of God, would be indeed an epistle of Christ upon the earth; and such truly was the Church at its commencement. They were a force among men which was recognized alike by enemies and friends. As they became known, indifference ceased regarding them; there remained but sympathy or opposition, friendship or bitter hatred. They experienced the truth of the Saviour’s words, "If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also." And, while persecution did not fail to follow, the word of God ran and was glorified; the light shone; the heavens through which Christ had gone were pouring out radiance through that open door.

Luke writes once more to his friend Theophilus, who, we notice, has lost his title of honor on the world’s roll, -a sign, perhaps, of advance in honor on a better one; perhaps the world had promoted the "friend of God" after its fashion with such. At any rate, Luke was sure of Theophilus, continued interest in such matters as he cared to write about. In him Jesus had begun both to do and teach, -a beginning which would have a glorious ending and a sure one. He is not able to go on in the truth, for whom the world is not dropping off the more in proportion as he goes on with this; and such an one, we may surely believe, was he to whom Luke the evangelist, -must we not say, Luke’s glorious Master also? -was able to pour out his heart.

Of that which Jesus goes on to do and teach, Luke devotes himself, as we have seen, to the activity, rather than the doctrine. It has never been the method of the Spirit to confide what He has to communicate to a single teacher. No one vessel could be found competent to hold all the truth; -a thing to be marked at all times, when the Spirit is communicating. Humility is better served, communion is more realized, God is mote fully exalted, in the use of various instruments, not tied to any, working sovereignly as He will. But Luke has a very distinct line of his own, as, more or less, every inspired writer has. He is the historian of the Spirit’s energy in a world of sin and of Satan’s power manifested; -the historian, therefore, of a mighty conflict, the world side of that which in Ephesians is seen upon its heavenly side. Here it is the struggle to save men from his sway on earth; there it is to lay hold against all his wiles of our inheritance in heaven.

It is the commandment of the Lord to which all are subject here; He, as true and typal Man, speaking by the Holy Spirit upon Him to the apostles He had chosen; to whom as witnesses of His resurrection He shows Himself alive after His suffering with many sure proofs. For the resurrection, as the sign of His acceptance, and of ours in Him, is the basis of the whole gospel, and of our heavenly position, as well as of the Church; and thus the resurrection chapter closes the first epistle to the Corinthians, the epistle of Church fellowship and activity, the doctrinal counterpart of the Acts itself.

Again and again, therefore, during forty days the risen Lord is seen by them, and as no mere apparition, but freely speaking to them of the Kingdom of God, to the interests of which they were now devoted. This is the general term for that which meets the condition of a world away from God, which has thrown off allegiance to Him, and wandered in the tortuous labyrinths of its false wisdom and the misery of its self-will. For God being no longer in His place, all else is out of its place necessarily when that to which all is in relation has ceased to be.

Thus the news of the coming of the Kingdom of God is indeed gospel; and the faith of Jesus, as it prevails, establishes of necessity the Kingdom. The full rest of the soul is only gained when the apprehension of sovereign Love has subjected the will of man to entire acquiescence in its blessed ways.

2. It is not by the knowledge of His resurrection merely that they are qualified to bear testimony for their Lord. The promise of the Father is to be fulfilled, and they are to be baptized with the Holy Spirit within a few days from that time. It is sorrowful enough, after all the pains that the Lord has taken to make known the true nature of the coming of the Spirit, and even in spite of the apostle’s declaration that "by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body," that Christians should still be ignorant of the character of that which then took place, -should confound Person and influence, the Gift with the gifts! The Lord has fully shown us that it was the Spirit Himself who then would come in place of Him who was now going away: "another Comforter" or Advocate, to be with them, as Christ had been, but in them also, making their bodies by His Presence temples of God. As the Spirit of adoption He taught them to cry, "Abba, Father!" As dwelling in the Church, this became also the House and Temple of God; as united by Him to Christ, His Body. The various gifts are qualifications for various place in this, as its members.

It is not so much denied that such things are, as that it was ever otherwise than now, at least from Abraham, with whom by most the Church is thought to have begun. All that has taken place since is, for those who hold such views, merely an increase of light and power; the coming of the Spirit merely a strong term for a larger outpouring than heretofore; and such "a Pentecostal shower" should "precede every sermon." This treatment of Scripture evacuates it of its proper meaning. Its language becomes loose, indefinite, incapable of precise significance. We escape from this fog easily by giving the same credit to the statements of the word of God that we should to those of any honest man not given to exaggeration, nor liable to confusion of speech. However, this is not yet the place to discuss the doctrine of the Church, for the simple reason that we have not, yet the scripture as to it, and the Church is born, like many another child of destiny, without the knowledge of its God-given dignity.

But we should notice that the Lord, after His resurrection, has acknowledged in His disciples brethren of His own, and that the "promise of the Father" of which He here speaks characterizes well the Spirit of adoption which is at hand. The children of God which have been scattered abroad are now to be gathered together, and this involves that they shall be known to themselves and one another. Baptism with the Holy Spirit, whatever else it may mean, is the introduction into this acknowledged family of God, and as the Holy Spirit, the introduction accomplished by it is no formality but a true and enduring change. John’s baptism of water is only mentioned, as he himself mentioned it, to be put in contrast with the gift now to be given by the Son of God. It is a true initiation into a spiritual state, never to be confounded or mixed up with any baptism of water: there the line is clearly drawn by the Lord’s own conduct as to the latter: "Jesus Himself baptized not, but His disciples" (Joh 4:2).

Those gathered round Him now, as risen from the dead, are still, however, Jews, and with little ability to enter into that which the Lord is putting before them. We hear, at least of no question pointing in this direction. They have another, "Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" The answer to this we can easily see now they were not prepared for; nor did it accord with the offer which was to be made through them to the nation, to be told the final result. "It is not for you," He says, "to know times and seasons which the Father has placed under His own authority." Yet, with reference to Israel in the days preceding her entrance into the blessings promised her, such times are not only given, but it was distinctly declared to the prophet of them that, while the vision was shut up and sealed to the time of the end, yet that then the wise shall understand (Dan 12:9-11). The Lord’s words therefore are an intimation that they stood not in such relation to the coming blessing. And as they were, so are we still. A heavenly people, waiting to be caught up to heaven, "days and months, and times, and years" are not for those who are not of the world, but detached from the stream of the world’s history. That which to the wise in Israel, in such a crisis as Daniel shows they are to pass through, will be of the greatest importance for them to know, would have been to Christians, through all the intervening centuries of their history, a knowledge which would have put far off from them the One for whom they wait. We still watch because we know not what hour our Lord doth come (Mat 24:42).

But if times and seasons were not for them to understand, there was a glorious testimony to be given, for which the Spirit’s coming would empower them. They were to be His witnesses far and wide, even to the end of the earth; and of this testimony Jerusalem would be the beginning and the centre. How great a glory indeed the Light that arising out of Israel illumines already with its beams every heart that will receive it in! "A Light," says Simeon, "for revelation of the nations, and the Glory of Thy people Israel." But not as yet would Israel receive the message sent.

3. Now in open sight of all, He is taken up. The cloud that receives Him out of their sight is surely the "bright cloud" of the Transfiguration. It is the Man Christ Jesus welcomed by the Glory into which He is taken; and no vision of angels would be as fitting as is this. Nay, angels have here no place: we are made to think rather of the apostle’s words, that being perfected, He was "saluted of God a High Priest after the order of Melchizedek" (Heb 5:10). The Glory salutes Him here, now perfected; and His priestly office is that upon which depends all the outflow of divine grace with which the book is filled.

Upon earth the angels have their message of comfort: this Jesus is to return as He went up; the beginning and end of the day of atonement are here brought together. As Priest He departs, and as Priest He will return to bless the people of Israel. As yet it is of Israel that they are specially thinking; and His coming for the Church is not revealed. The disciples are in heart an Israelitish remnant still, and the revelation of the purposes of God proceeds only gradually. But heaven is where He is; and the angels, message comforts the home-sickness of their hearts as they see Him depart. Up, then! to serve Him in His absence. Not in contemplation merely, but in active energy of devoted labor will they be in fellowship with Him, who even upon the throne of heaven is serving still.

F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter 1

THE ORIGIN AND AUTHORITY OF THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

Act_1:1-2

THESE words constitute the very brief preface which the writer thought sufficient for the earliest ecclesiastical history ever produced in the Church of God. Let us imitate him in his brevity and conciseness, and without further delay enter upon the consideration of a book which raises vital questions and involves all-important issues.

Now when a plain man comes to the consideration of this book one question naturally strikes him at once: How do I know who wrote this book, or when it was written? What evidence or guarantee have I for its authentic character? To these questions we shall apply ourselves in the present chapter.

The title of the book as given in our Bibles does not offer us much help. The title varies in different manuscripts and in different ancient authors. Some writers of the second century who touched upon apostolic times call it by the name our Bibles retain, The Acts of the Apostles; others call it The Acts of the Holy Apostles, or at times simply The Acts. This title of "Acts" was indeed a very common one, in the second and third centuries, for a vast variety of writing purporting to tell the story of apostolic lives, as an abundance of extant apocryphal documents amply proves. The Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Acts of St. Thomas, of St. Peter, and of St. John, were imitations, doubtless, of the well-known name by which our canonical book was then called. Imitation is universally acknowledged to be the sincerest form of flattery, and the imitation of the title and form of our book is an evidence of its superior claim and authority. One of the oldest of these apocryphal Acts is a document celebrated in Christian antiquity as the Acts of Paul and Thecla. We know all about its origin. It was forged about the year 180 or 200 by a presbyter of Asia Minor who was an enthusiastic admirer of the Apostle St. Paul. But when we take up the narrative and read it, with its absurd legends and its manifold touches and realistic scenes drawn from the persecutions of the second century, and well known to every student of the original records of those times, we can at a glance see what the canonical Acts of the Apostles would have been had the composition been postponed to the end of the second century. The Acts of Paul and Thecla are useful, then, as illustrating, by way of contrast in title and in substance, the genuine Acts of the New Testament which they imitated.

But then, some one might say, how do we know that the genuine Acts of the Apostles existed prior to the Acts of Paul and Thecla and the time of Tertullian, who first mentions these apocryphal Acts, and tells us of their forged origin? The answer to that query is easy enough. Yet it will require a somewhat copious statement in order to exhibit its full force, its convincing power.

Tertullian is a writer who connects the age of apostolic men, as we may call the men who knew the Apostles-Ignatius, Polycarp, Clement of Rome, and such like-with the third century. Tertullian was born about the middle of the second century, and he lived till the third century was well advanced. He was one of those persons whose chronological position enables them to transmit historical facts and details from one critical point to another. Let me illustrate what I mean by a modern example. Every unprejudiced thinker will acknowledge that the Rev. John Wesley was a man who exercised an extraordinary religious influence. He not only originated a vast community of world-wide extent, which calls itself after his name, but he also imparted a tremendous impetus to spiritual life and work in the Church of England. After the departure of Mr. Wesley from this life his mantle fell upon a certain number of his leading followers, men like Adam Clarke, the commentator; Jabez Bunting, the organiser of modern Wesleyanism; Thomas Coke, Robert Newton, and Richard Watson, the author of the "Institutes of Theology." Several of these men lived far into this century, and there are at the present day thousands still alive who recollect some of them, while there are many still alive who can recollect all of them. Now let us draw a parallel with all reverence, and yet with perfect fairness. John Wesley began his life at the beginning of the eighteenth century as our Lord began His human life at the beginning of the first century. John Wesleys immediate disciples perpetuated their lives till the middle of the present century. Our Lords apostles and immediate followers perpetuated their lives in some cases till well into. the second century. At the close of the nineteenth century there are hundreds, to say the least, who remember Adam Clarke and Thomas Coke, who in turn were personally acquainted with John Wesley. In the last quarter of the second century there must have been many still alive-apostolic men, I have called them-whose youthful memories could bear them back to the days when the Apostle St. John, and men like St. Mark, and St. Luke, and St. Ignatius, still testified what they had personally seen and heard and known. Why, the simple fact is this, that in the year 1950 there will be still living numerous persons who will be able to say that they have personally known many individuals who were the friends and acquaintances of John Wesleys immediate disciples. Four long lives of ninety years, and one overlapping the other, will easily cover three centuries of time.

Let us dwell a little more on this point, for it bears very directly on Tertullians witness, not only to the canon of the New Testament, but also to the whole round of Christian doctrine. It is simply wonderful what vast tracts of time can be covered by human memory even at the present day, when that faculty has lost so much of its power for want of exercise, owing to the printing-press. I can give a striking instance from my own knowledge. There is at present an acquaintance of mine living in this city of Dublin where I write. He is hale and hearty, and able still to take the keenest interest in the affairs of religion and of politics. He is about ninety-five years of age, and he has told me within the last twelve months that he remembers quite well a grandaunt of his born in the reign of Queen Anne, who used to tell him all the incidents connected with the earliest visits of John and Charles Wesley to Ireland about 1745. If Tertullians experience was anything like my own, he may quite easily have known persons at Rome or elsewhere who had heard the tale of St. Pauls preaching, labour, and miracles from the very men whom the Apostle had converted at Antioch, Damascus, and Rome. I can give a more striking instance still, which any reader can verify for himself. Mr. S. C. Hall was a writer known far and wide for the last seventy years. About the middle of this century Mr. Hall was at the height of his popularity, though he only passed to the unseen world within the last year or so. In the year 1842 he, in union with his accomplished and well-known wife, composed a beautifully illustrated work, published in three volumes, called "Picturesque Ireland," which now finds an honoured place in many of our libraries. In the second volume of that work Mr. Hall mentions the following curious fact bearing on our argument. He states that he was then (in 1842) staying at the house of a gentleman, Sir T. Macnaghten, whose father had commanded at the siege of Derry in 1689, one hundred and fifty-three years before. Yet, vast as the distance of time was, the explanation which he offered was easy enough. The Macnaghten Clan was summoned to assist in the celebrated siege of Derry. They refused to march unless headed by their chief, who was then a boy of seven. The child was placed on a horse and duly headed his clan, who would follow him alone. That child married when a very old man, and his eldest son attained to an equally patriarchal age, carrying with him the traditions of Jacobite times down to the reign of Queen Victoria. I could give many other similar instances, illustrating my contention that vivid and accurate traditions of the past can be transmitted over vast spaces of time, and that through persons who come into living contact with one another.

Tertullian must have had ample means, then, of ascertaining the facts concerning the books of the New Testament from living witnesses. There is again another point we must bear in mind, and it is this: the distance of time with which Tertullians investigations had to deal was not so vast as we sometimes imagine. It was by no means so great as the spaces we have just now referred to. We naturally think of Tertullian as living about the year 200, and then, remembering that our Saviour was born just two centuries before, we ask, What is the value of a mans testimony concerning events two centuries old? But we must bear in mind the exact point at issue. We are not inquiring at all about events two centuries old, but we are inquiring as to Tertullians evidence with respect to the canonical Gospels and the Acts; and none of these was one hundred years old when Tertullian was born, about 150 A.D., while the Gospel of St. John may not have been more than sixty years old, or thereabouts, at the same date. Now if we take up the writings of Tertullian, which are very copious indeed, we shall find that the Acts of the Apostles are quoted at least one hundred times in them, long passages being in some cases transcribed, and the whole book treated by him as Scripture and true history. If we accept the ordinary view, that the Acts were written previously to St. Pauls death, the book was only a century old at Tertullians birth. But we can come nearer to the apostolic times.

The Muratorian Fragment is a document which came to light by chance one hundred and fifty years ago. It illustrates the age of the Acts, and shows what wondrous testimonies to the New Testament scriptures we may yet gain. Its story is a very curious and interesting one for ourselves. St. Columbanus was an Irish missionary who, about the year 600 A.D., established a monastery at Bobbio, a retired spot in North Italy. He gathered a library there, and imparted a literary impulse to his followers which never left them. Some Irish monk, a hundred years later than Columbanus, employed his time in copying into a book an ancient manuscript of the second century giving a list of the books of the New Testament then received at Rome. This second-century manuscript enumerated among these the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and thirteen Epistles of St. Paul. Concerning the Acts of the Apostles, the Roman writer of this document, who lived about A.D. 170, Says: "The Acts of all the Apostles are written in one book. Luke explains to the most excellent Theophilus everything which happened in his presence, as the omission of Peters martyrdom and of Pauls journey into Spain manifestly proves"; a passage which clearly shows that about the middle of the second century the Acts of the Apostles was well known at Rome, and its authorship ascribed to St. Luke. But this is not all. We have another most interesting second-century document, which proves that at the very same period our canonical book was known and authoritatively quoted far away in the south of France. It is hard to exaggerate the evidential value of the Epistle of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne written about the year 177, and addressed to their brethren in Asia Minor. That letter quotes the books of the New Testament in the amplest manner, and without any formal references, just as a modern preacher or writer would quote them, showing how common and authoritative was their use. Leader-writers in the Times or the Sunday Review often garnish their articles with a scriptural quotation; the late Mr. John Bright, in his great popular orations, loved to point them with an apt citation from Holy Writ; but he never thought it necessary, nor do journalists ever think it necessary, to prefix a formal statement of the place whence their texts have been derived. They presume a wide knowledge and a formal recognition of the text of the Bible. So it was in this epistle written from Lyons and Vienne, and in it we find an exact quotation from the Acts of the Apostles-"According as Stephen the perfect martyr prayed, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge."

But this is not the whole of the argument which can be derived from the Epistle of the Lyonnese Christians, which is given to us at full length in the fifth book of the "Church History" of the celebrated historian Eusebius. Their incidental notice of the Acts involves a vast deal when duly considered. The Epistle from Lyons implies that the Acts were received as authoritative and genuine in the churches of towns like Ephesus, Philadelphia, Smyrna, Miletus, where the memories and traditions of the Apostles were still vivid and living. Then, too, the Bishop of Lyons had suffered in this persecution. His name was Pothinus. He was the first Bishop of the Church of Lyons, and he died when he was more than ninety years of age, and may have been a disciple of an apostle, or of one of the first generation of Christians. At any rate, his memory would easily carry him back to the days of Domitian and the times of the first century; and yet the Church over which this first-century Christian presided accepted the Acts of the Apostles. The testimony of Pothinus helps then to carry back the Acts of the Apostles to the year 100 at least. But we can go farther still, and closer to apostolic times.

The Gospel of St. Luke and the Acts of the Apostles are, we may say, universally admitted to be by the same writer. The reference of the Acts to the Gospel, the unity of style and tone of thought, all demonstrate them to be the production of one mind. Any circumstance therefore which proves the early existence of the Gospel equally proves the existence of the Acts of the Apostles. Now we have proof positive that the Gospel of St. Luke occupied an authoritative position and was counted an apostolic and sacred writing at Rome in the early years of the second century, say between too and 150, because when Marcion, whom we might call a primitive Antinomian, wished to compile a gospel suited to his own purposes, he took St. Luke s Gospel, cut out whatever displeased him, and published the remainder as the true version. The perversion and mutilation of St. Lukes work show that it must already have held a high position in the Church at Rome, or else there would have been no object in mutilating it. Marcions treatment of St. Luke proves the use and position the Gospel and the Acts must have occupied in days when the converts and companions of the Apostles were still alive. That is as far as we can go back by external testimony. But then we must remember what these facts involve-that the Gospel and the Acts occupied authoritative positions in various parts of the world, and specially in Rome, Gaul, Africa, and Asia Minor, in the generation next after the Apostles. Then let us take up the Book of Acts itself, and what does this book, known at Rome and throughout the Christian world at that early period, tell us? It informs us that it was the work of the writer of the Gospel, and that the writer was a companion of the Apostle Paul throughout the portion of his career sketched in the latter part of the book. The Christian Church has never pinned its faith to the Lukian authorship of either the Gospel or the Acts. The question of the authorship of these books is an open one, like that of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Acts has been attributed to Silas, to Timothy, to Titus; but I may say, without going into any further details on this question, that every attempt to ascribe the Acts to any one else save to the beloved physician has failed, and must fail, because he was the real author, well known to the living tradition of the Church of Rome in the early part of the second century, as that tradition is handed down to us in the language at the Muratorian Fragment.

If we were writing a critical treatise, we should of course have to enter upon the full discussion of many questions which might here be raised. The Acts of the Apostles in its latter chapters plainly claims to be the work of an eye-witness. In its opening words, placed at the head of this dissertation, it claims to be the work of the author of the Gospel. All the facts fall into a simple, natural order if we accept the traditional testimony of the Church that the Acts and the Gospel were both of them written before the martyrdom of St. Paul, and were indited by the hands of St. Pauls companion St. Luke. Any other solution is forced, unnatural, and involves inconsistencies on every side. We may turn aside from this brief outline of the critical question, to some more purely spiritual reflections, simply referring those who desire more information on the questions of date and authorship to such exhaustive works as those of Dr. Salmons "Introduction to the New Testament"; Dr. Westcott on the "New Testament Canon"; Dr. Charteris on "Canonicity," or Meyers "Introduction to the Acts."

First, then, it may strike the intelligent reader, how comes it that we have not much fuller testimony in early Christian writers to the Acts of the Apostles, and to all the books of the Old Testament? How is it that the writings of Polycarp, Ignatius, Clement of Rome, do not abound with references, not merely to the Acts, but also to the four Gospels and to the other works of the New Testament? How is it that we have to depend on this obscure reference and that dubious quotation? These are questions which had often puzzled my own mind before I had investigated, and must often have raised anxiety and thought in other minds sincerely desirous of being rooted and grounded in the truth. But now, after having investigated and thought, I think I can see solid reasons why things are as they are; clear evidences of the truth of the Christian story in the apparent difficulties. Historic imagination is one of the necessary requisites in such an investigation, and historic imagination is one of the qualities in which our German cousins, from whom most of the objections to the canon of the New Testament have been derived, are conspicuously deficient. They are gifted with prodigous industry, and an amazing capacity for patient investigation. They live secluded lives, however, and no one is a worse judge of practical life, or forms wilder conclusions as to what men actually do in practical life, than the academic pure and simple. A dear friend, now with God, himself a distinguished resident of a well-known college, used often to say to me, "Never trust the opinion of a mere college fellow or professor upon any practical point; they know nothing about life." This dictum, begotten of long experience, bears on our argument. German thought and English thought offer sharp and strong contrasts on many points, and on none more than in this direction. English students mix more in the world, are surrounded by the atmosphere of free institutions, and realise more vividly how men spontaneously act under the conditions of actual existence. The German thinker evolves his men of the past and the facts of their existence out of his own consciousness, without submitting them to the necessary corrections which experience dictates to his English brother; and the result is that while we may be very ready to accept the premises of the Germans, we should be in general somewhat suspicious of their conclusions. Scholarship alone does not entitle a man to pronounce on questions of history. It is only one of the elements requisite for the solution of such problems. Knowledge of men, experience of life, enabling a man to form a just and true mental picture of the past and of the motives by which men are influenced, -these are elements equally necessary. Now let us try and throw ourselves back by an effort of historical imagination into the age of Polycarp, Ignatius, and Clement of Rome. and I think we shall at once see that the omission of such abundant references to the New Testament as men at times desiderate was quite natural in their case.

Let us reflect a little. The manner in which the early Christians learned the facts and truths of Christianity was quite different from that which now prevails. If men wish now to learn about original Christianity they resort to the New Testament. In the age of Polycarp they resorted to the living voice of the elders who had known the Apostles, and had heard the truth from their lips. Thus Irenaeus, who had the four Gospels before him, tells us: "I can recall the very place where Polycarp used to sit and teach, his manner of speech, his mode of life, his appearance, the style of his address to the people. his frequent references to St. John and to others who had seen our Lord; how he used to repeat from memory the discourses which he had heard from them concerning our Lord, His miracles, and His mode of teaching; and how, being instructed himself by those who were eyewitnesses of the Life of the Word, there was in all that he said a strict agreement with the Scriptures." And it is very natural that men, though possessed of the Gospels, should thus have delighted in the testimony of elders like Polycarp. There is a charm in the human voice, there is a force and power in living testimony, far superior to any written words. Take, for instance, the account of a battle contributed to a newspaper by the best-informed correspondent. Yet how men will hang on the lips and follow with breathless attention the narrative of the humblest actor in the actual contest. This one fact, known to common experience, shows how different the circumstances of the early Christians were as touching the canonical books from those which now exist, or existed in the third and fourth centuries. Again, we must remember that in the age of Polycarp there was no canon of the New Testament as we have it. There were a number of books here and there known to have been written by the Apostles and their immediate followers. One Church could show the Epistle written by St. Paul to the Ephesians, another that written to the Colossians. Clement of Rome, when writing to the Corinthians, expressly refers them to the First Epistle to the Corinthians, which possibly was treasured by them as their one sacred document of the new covenant; and so it was doubtless all over the Christian world till well-nigh the close of the second century. The New Testament was dispersed in portions, a few leading Churches possessing perhaps all or most of the books, and a few remote ones probably only a few detached epistles, or a solitary gospel. A Greek document found in the National Library at Paris within the last few years illustrates this point. The Scillitan martyrs were a body of Africans who sealed their testimony to the faith by suffering martyrdom in the year 180, about three years after the sufferings of the Christians of Lyons and Vienne. North Africa, now the chosen home of the false prophet, was then the most fruitful field for the religion of the Crucified, yielding doctors, saints, confessors, in multitudes. The document which has now come to light tells the story of these North Africans and their testimony to the truth. The details of their judicial examination are there set forth, and in one question, proposed by the heathen magistrate, we have an interesting glimpse of the very point upon which we are insisting, the scattered and detached nature of the New Testament writings at that period. The President of the Roman Court, in the course of his examination, asks the leader of the martyrs, St. Speratus, "What are those books in your cases?" "They are," he replied, "the epistles of that holy man Paul." So that apparently the Scillitan Church depended for instruction, in the closing years of the second century, upon the Epistles of St. Paul alone.

The canon of the New Testament grew up by degrees, somehow thus. While the Apostles and their followers and the friends of their followers lived and flourished, men naturally sought after their living testimonies, consulting doubtless such documents as well which lay within their reach. But when the living witnesses and their friends had passed away, the natural instinct of the Church, guided by that Spirit of Truth which in the darkest times has never wholly left Christs Spouse, led her to treasure up and dwell with greater love upon those written documents which she had possessed from the beginning. It is no wonder, then, that we do not find large quotations and copious references to the canonical books in the earliest writers-simply because it was impossible they should then have occupied the same place in the Christian consciousness as they now do. Rather, on the contrary, we should be inclined to say that, had they been largely quoted and frequently referred to by Polycarp, Ignatius, or Clement, men might naturally have derived therefrom a forcible argument against the genuine character of the works of these primitive Fathers, as such quotations would have been contrary to the principles of human nature. It is very important for us to remember these facts. They have a very clear bearing upon present-day controversies. Friends and foes of Christianity have often thought that the truth of our religion was bound up with the traditional view of the canon of the New Testament, or with some special theory of inspiration; forgetting the self-evident truth that Christianity existed at the beginning without a canon of the New Testament, that the early Christians depended upon personal testimony alone, and that if the Apostles and their friends had never written a line or left a solitary document behind them, yet that we should have abundant information concerning the work and teachings of our Lord and His Apostles in the writings of the successors of the Apostles, compared with and fortified by contemporaneous pagan testimony. Men have sometimes thought and spoken as if the New Testament descended from-heaven in its present shape, like the image that fell down from Jupiter which the Ephesians worshipped, forgetting the true history of its upgrowth and origin. The critical theories that have been advanced in abundance of late years would have troubled a second-century Christian very little. If the Johannine authorship of the fourth Gospel were denied, or the Pauline authorship of Colossians or Ephesians questioned; what does it matter? would have been his reply. These documents may have been forgeries, but there are plenty of other documents which tell the same story, and I have myself known many men who have suffered and died because they had embraced the truths, from the lips of the Apostles themselves, which they have taught me. The simple fact is, that if all the books of the New Testament were proved impudent forgeries except the Epistle to the Romans, the two Epistles to the Corinthians, and the Calatians, which every person admits, we should have ample and convincing statements of Christian truth and doctrine. The devout Christian may, then, make his mind easy, certain that no efforts and no advances in the field of biblical criticism are likely to ruffle even a feather of the faith once delivered to the saints.

But then, some one may come forward and say, is not this a very uncomfortable position for us? Would it not have been much more easy and consoling for Christians to have had the whole canon of Scripture infallibly decided by Divine authority once for all, so as to save all doubts and disputations on the whole subject? Would it not have been better had the Acts of the Apostles expressly named St. Luke as its author, and appended ample proofs that its statement was true? This objection is a very natural one, and springs up at times in every mind; and yet it is merely part and parcel of the larger objection, Why has Revelation been left a matter of doubt and disputation in any respect? Nay, it is part of a still wider and vaster question, Why has truth in any department, scientific, philosophical, ethical, or historical, been left a matter of debate? Why has it not shone forth by its own inherent light and compelled the universal consent of admiring mankind? Why has not the great fundamental truth of all, the existence and nature of God, been made so clear that an atheist could not possibly exist? A century and a half ago Bishop Butler, in his immortal "Analogy," disposed of this objection, which still crops up afresh in every generation as if that work had never been written. God has placed us here in a state of probation, and neither in temporal nor in spiritual matters is the evidence for what is true, and right, and wise so clear and overwhelming that no room is left for mistake or error. As it is in every other department of life, so is it especially with reference to the canon of Scripture. It would doubtless be very convenient for us if the whole question were settled authoritatively and no doubts possible, but would it be good for us? would it be wholesome for our spiritual life? I trow not. We have, indeed, a living and speaking example of the blessings of uncertainty in the state of the Roman Catholic Church, which has tried to better the Divine method of training mankind, and banish all uncertainty. That communion undertakes to settle infallibly all questions of theology, and to leave nothing in doubt; and with what result? The vast body of the laity take no interest whatsoever in theological questions. They regard theology as outside their sphere, and belonging to the clergy exclusively. The clergy in turn believe that the Pope, in his office of infallible and universal pastor and teacher, has alone the right and authority to settle doctrines, and they leave it to him. They have made a solitude, and that they call peace, and the pretence alone of an authority which undertakes to release man from doubt and the need of investigation has paralysed theological inquiry among Roman Catholics.

The same results on a vastly larger scale must have happened throughout the Christian world had God made His revelation so clear that no doubt could arise concerning it. Man is a lazy animal by nature, and that laziness would at once have been developed by the very abundance of the light vouchsafed. Religion would have been laid aside as a thing settled once for all. All interest would have been lost in it, and human attention would have been concentrated on those purely mundane matters where uncertainty arises, and therefore imperiously demands the minds thought and care. The blessings of uncertainty would offer a very wide topic for meditation. The man of vast wealth whose bread is certain can never know the childlike faith whereby the poor man waits upon his God and receives from Him day by day his daily dole. The uncertainties of life hide from us much future sorrow, teach us to walk by faith, not by sight, and lead us to depend completely on the loving guidance of that Fatherly Hand which does all things well. The uncertainties of life develop the spiritual life of the soul. The doubts and questions which arise about religion bring their own blessings with them too. They develop the intellectual life of the spirit. They prevent religion becoming a matter of superstition, they offer opportunities for the exercise of the graces of honesty, courage, humility, and love; and thus form an Important element in that Divine training by which man is fitted here below for the beatific vision which awaits him hereafter. Human nature ever craves with longing desire to walk by sight. The Divine method evermore prescribes, on the contrary, that man must for the present walk by faith. Very wisely indeed, and with truest spiritual instinct, the poet of the "Christian Year" has sung, in words applicable to life and to theology alike:-

"There are who, darkling and alone,

Would wish the weary night were gone,

Though dawning morn should only show

The secret of their unknown woe:

Who pray for sharpest throbs of pain

To ease them of doubts galling chain:

Only disperse the cloud, they cry,

And if our fate be death, give light and let us die."

"Unwise I deem them, Lord, unmeet

To profit by Thy chastenings sweet,

For Thou wouldst have us linger still

Upon the verge of good or ill,

That on Thy guiding hand unseen

Our undivided hearts may lean,

And this our frail and foundering bark

Glide in the narrow wake of Thy beloved ark."

The thoughts with which we have hitherto dealt connect themselves with the opening words of the text with which we have begun this chapter, "The former treatise I made, O Theophilus." There are two other points in this passage which are worthy of devout attention. The writer of the Acts took a thoroughly historical view of our Lords life after the resurrection as well as before that event. He considered that our Lords person, no matter how it may have been modified by His death and resurrection, was still as real after these events as in the days when He ministered and wrought miracles in Galilee and Jerusalem. His Whole life was continuous, from the day of the birth in Bethlehem "until the day He was taken up."

Then again St. Luke recognises the dual personality of our Lord. As we shall afterwards have frequently to notice, St. Luke realised His Divine character. In the opening verses of this book he recognises His complete and perfect humanity-"After that He had given commandment through the Holy Ghost unto the Apostles." There was an ancient heresy about the nature of our Lords person, which denied the perfection of our Lords humanity, teaching that His Divinity took the place of the human spirit in Christ. Such teaching deprives us of much comfort and instruction which the Christian can draw from a meditation upon the true doctrine as taught here by St. Luke. Jesus Christ was God as well as man, but it was through the manhood He revealed the life and nature of God. He was perfect Man in all respects, with body, soul, and spirit complete; and in the actions of His manhood, in the exercise of all its various activities, He required the assistance and support of the Holy Ghost just as really as we ourselves do. He taught, gave commandments, worked miracles through the Holy Ghost. The humanity of the Eternal Son required the assistance of the Divine Spirit. Christ sought that Divine aid in prolonged communion with His Father and His God, and then went forth to work His miracles and give His commandments. Prayer and the gift of the Spirit and the works and marvels of Christ were closely connected together, even before the open descent of the Spirit and the wonders of Pentecost. There was a covenant blessing and a covenant outpouring of the Spirit peculiar to Christianity Which was not vouchsafed till Christ had ascended. But the Divine Spirit had been given in a measure long before Christ came. It was through the Spirit that every blessing and every gift came to patriarchs, prophets, warriors, teachers, and workers of every kind under the Jewish dispensation. The Spirit of God came upon Bezaleel and Aholiab, qualifying them to work cunningly for the honour and glory of Jehovah when a tabernacle was to be feared. The Spirit of God came upon Samson, and roused his natural courage when Israel was to be delivered. The Spirit of God could rest even upon a Saul, and convert him for a time into a changed character. And just as really the Holy Ghost rested upon the human nature of Jesus Christ, guiding Him in the utterance of those commandments, the outcome and development of which we trace in the book of the Acts of the Apostles.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

1:1-3 Here Luke summarizes his first book, the Gospel of Luke, which Luke had previously written to Theophilus (Luke 1:3). Theophilus is elsewhere called “most honorable” (Luke 1:3)—the title indicates that he was a person of very high social standing (cp. Acts 23:26; 24:2; 26:25). He was probably a benefactor or patron who assisted Luke with the expenses of publication or distribution of his work (see study note on Luke 1:3).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Act 1:1. Μὲν, indeed) The Apodosis to the μὲν, viz., as to this second book (treatise), is exhibited by the fact itself, which absorbs the particle δὲ, but [which should follow the μέν].—λόγον, treatise) λόγος, the Latin liber, usually has such a length, as that the eager reader can finish it at one reading. It is therefore of use, at times, to read through at one time one whole book; for instance, the Gospel according to Luke. The authority of either of the two treatises of Luke redounds to the other. The greatest (farthest) limit hitherto, in the economy of Christ, is this time from the resurrection as far as to the Ascension: with it the first book of Luke terminates, and the second begins, which 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.—περὶ πάντων, concerning all things) namely, narrated in a summary manner. Joh 21:25.—ἤρξατο ποιεῖν—ἄχρι) began to do—until; that is, did from the beginning: comp. the use of ἀρξάμενος, beginning, in Act 1:22. Luke has interwoven, in due order throughout the beginnings and endings; i.e. he has introduced all things with due consideration.—ποιεῖν, to do) by His miracles and holy actions.—διδάσκειν, to teach) by His discourses.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Act_1:1. Τὸν μὲν πρῶτον λόγον ἐποιησ.] Luke calls his Gospel the first history, inasmuch as he is now about to compose a second. πρῶτος, in the sense of πρότερος. See on Joh_1:15. λόγος, narrative, history, or the like, what is contained in a book. So in Xen. Ages. 10. 3, Anab. iii. 1. 1, and frequently. See also Schweigh. Lex. Herod. II. p. 76; Creuzer Symbol. I. p. 44 ff. As to ποιεῖν used of mental products, comp. Plat. Phaed. p. 61 B: ποιεῖν μύθονς, ἀλλʼ οὐ λόγους. Hence λογοποιός = ἱστορικός. Pearson, ad Moer. p. 244. μέν, without a subsequent δέ. Luke has broken off the construction. Instead of continuing after Act_1:2 somewhat as follows: but this δεύτερος λόγος is to contain the further course of events after the Ascension,which thought he had before his mind in the μέν, Act_1:1,he allows himself to be led by the mention of the apostles in the protasis to suppress the apodosis, and to pass on at once to the commencement of the history itself. Comp. Winer, p. 535 [E. T. 720]; Buttm. neut. Gr. p. 313 [E. T. 365]; Kühner, ad Xen. Anab. i. 2.1; Baeuml. Partik. p. 163 f.

περὶ πάντων] a popular expression of completeness, and therefore not to be pressed.

ὧν ἤρξατο κ.τ.λ.] ὧν is attracted, equivalent to ἅ; and, setting aside the erroneous assertion that ἤρξατο ποιεῖν is equivalent to ἐποίησε (Grotius, Calovius, Valckenaer, Kuinoel), it is usually explained: what Jesus began to do and to teach (and continued) until the day, etc., as if Luke had written: ὧν ἀρξάμενος Ἰησοῦς ἐποίησε κ. ἐδίδαξεν ἄχρι κ.τ.λ. Comp. Act_11:4; Plat. Legg. vii. p. 807 D; Xen. Anab. vi. 4. 1; Lucian, Somm. 15; also Luk_23:5; Luk_24:27; Luk_24:47; Act_1:22; Act_8:35; Act_10:37. So also Winer, p. 577 [E. T. 775]; Buttm. p. 320 [E. T. 374]; Lekebusch, p. 202 f.[96] But Luke has not so written, and it is arbitrary thus to explain his words. Baumgarten, after Olshausen and Schneckenburger, has maintained that ἤρξατο denotes the whole work of Jesus up to His ascension as initial and preparatory, so that this second book is conceived as the continuation of that doing and teaching which was only begun by Jesus up to His ascension; as if Luke had written ἤρξατο ποιῶν τε καὶ διδάσκων (as Xen. Cyr. viii. 8 2 : ἄρξομαι διδάσκων, I shall begin my teaching, Plat. Theaet. p. 187 A, Menex. p. 237 A; comp. Krüger, § 56. 5, A. 1). In point of fact, ἤρξατο is inserted according to the very frequent custom of the Synoptists, by which that which is done or said is in a vivid and graphic manner denoted according to its moment of commencement. It thus here serves to recall to the recollection from the Gospel all the several incidents and events up to the ascension, in which Jesus had appeared as doer and teacher. The reader is supposed mentally to realize from the Gospel all the scenes in which he has seen Jesus come forward as acting and teaching,a beginning of the Lord, which occurred in the most various instances and varied ways up to the day of His ascent. The emphasis, moreover, lies on ποιεῖν τε καὶ διδάσκειν, which comprehends the contents of the Gospel (comp. Papias in Eus. 3:39). It may, consequently, be paraphrased somewhat thus: The first narrative I have composed of all that, by which Jesus exhibited His activity in doing and teaching during His earthly life up to His ascension. ποιεῖν precedes, comp. Luk_24:19, because it was primarily the ἜΡΓΑ of Jesus that demonstrated His Messiahship, Joh_10:38; Act_10:38.

[96] So also in substance Hackett, Commentary on the Original Text of the Acts of the Apostles, Boston, 1858, ed. 2.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Act 1:1 . τὸν μὲν πρῶτον λόγον , a reference beyond all reasonable doubt to St. Luke’s Gospel. Not merely the dedication of both writings to Theophilus, but their unity of language and style is regarded by critics of all schools as convincing proof of the identity of authorship of Acts and the third Gospel; see Introd. and Zöckler, Greifswalder Studien , p. 128 (1895). In the expression πρῶτος λόγος Ramsay finds an intimation from St. Luke’s own hand that he contemplated a third book at least, otherwise we should have had πρότερος λόγος , St. Paul the Traveller , pp. 23, 27, 28; see to the same effect Zahn, Einleitung in das N. T. , ii., 371 (1899), Rendall, Acts of the Apostles, in loco , and cf. comment. on Act 28:31 . So, too, primus is used in Latin not simply as former but as first in a series, Cicero, De Invent. , ii., 3. On the other hand, Blass, Grammatik des N.G. , p. 34, Acta Apost. , p. 16, and more recently Philology of the Gospels , p. 38, maintains that πρῶτος simply = πρότερος (so also Holtzmann and Felten). But Ramsay, whilst pointing out instances in which St. Luke apparently uses πρῶτος differently from this, p. 28 ( cf. also Zahn, u. s. , p. 389), admits that we cannot attain to any absolute certainty in the passage before us, since no instance occurs of the use of πρότερος by St. Luke. λόγον : frequently used by classical writers in the sense of a narrative or history contained in a book; see instances in Wetstein. The passage in Plato, Phædo , p. 61, ., is valuable not only for the marked contrast between λόγος and μῦθος , ποιεῖν μύθους ἀλλʼ οὐ λόγους , but also for the use of ποιεῖν (Wendt). Amongst other instances of the phrase ποιεῖν λόγον cf. Galen, De Usu Part. , ii., περὶ πρώτων τῶν δακτύλων ἐποιησάμην τὸν λόγον . St. Chrysostom sees in the phrase a proof of the unassuming character of the author: St. Luke does not say “The former Gospel which I preached”. For the anomalous μέν , “solitarium,” without the following δέ , frequent in Luke, see Blass, Grammatik des N. G. , p. 261, cf. Luk 8:5 , Act 3:21 ; Act 28:22 , etc., and several times in St. Paul. μέν occurs thus six times in the Acts without οὖν on μὲν οὖν see Act 1:6 . ὦ Θεόφιλε : the interjection used here simply in address, as common in Attic Greek, cf. Act 18:14 , Act 27:21 , 1Ti 6:11 ; without the epithet κράτιστε , as in Luk 1:3 , and without ὦ , Θεόφ . alone would have seemed too bold, Winer-Schmiedel, p. 258. It has been suggested that the omission of the epithet κράτιστε , Luk 1:3 , denotes that St. Luke’s friendship had become less ceremonious, just as a similar change has been noted in the dedication of Shakespeare’s two poems to the Earl of Southampton; cf. also Zahn, Einleitung , ii. 360. The way in which the epithet κράτιστε is employed elsewhere in the book in addressing Roman officials, Act 23:26 , Act 24:3 , Act 26:25 , has been thought to indicate that Theophilus held some high official post, or that he was at least of equestrian rank (Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller , pp. 388, 389, and his inferences as to the date of Acts). Ramsay is of opinion that the name was given at baptism, and that it was used or known only among Christians, and he infers that this baptismal name is used in Acts because the book was probably written at a time when it was dangerous for a Roman of rank to be recognised as a Christian. But Theophilus was by no means uncommon as a Jewish name; cf. B. D. 2 , i., p. 25, and also article “Theophilus,” B. D. 1 (see also Deissmann, Bibelstudien , p. 19). The epithet κράτιστος was peculiarly appropriated to Romans holding high office, and actually became during the second century a technical title to denote equestrian rank; and from its use here Zahn maintains not only that Theophilus was a man of some social position, but that he was, when Luke wrote his gospel, not a nember of the Christian Church, since there is no instance in the first two centuries of a Christian addressing his fellow-Christians in a title corresponding as it were to “your Excellency” ( Einleitung in das N. T. , ii., 360, 383). The instance of the address of the Epist. ad Diognetum , κράτιστε Διόγνητε , is alleged by Blass as an instance that the epithet is not always used in the technical sense mentioned; but to this Ramsay replies that if Diognetus was the friend and teacher of Marcus Aurelius, the emperor might well raise his teacher to equestrian rank; Septimius Severus raised his sons’ tutor to the high dignity of the consulship. Ramsay discusses κράτιστος at length in Was Christ born at Bethlehem? (1898), pp. 65, 71, 72, as against Blass, Philology of the Gospels , p. 19. Blass fully recognises that Theophilus held a high position, and that the title in question would naturally occur in a book dedicated to a patron; but it must be borne in mind that Blass regards Theophilus as of Greek extraction, possibly a fellow-citizen with Luke of Antioch, whilst Ramsay sees in him a citizen of Rome and a resident in the imperial city. Theophylact asks why Luke should have cared to write to one man only and to value him so highly, and makes answer that it was because the Evangelist was a guardian of the words spoken by the Lord: “It is not the will of my Father that one of these little ones should perish”. There seems no great reason to doubt that Theophilus was a real personage, and the epithet κράτιστε , at all events in its technical significance, is hardly consistent with any other supposition (see Sanday, Inspiration , p. 319, note). The recent attempt to identify Theophilus with Seneca, referred to by Zöckler, Apostelgeschichte , p. 163, must be dismissed as equally groundless and fanciful as the former conjecture that he was no other than Philo. περὶ πάντων ὧν : the use of πᾶς (mostly after a prep., as here) followed by an attracted relative may be classed amongst the mannerisms of St. Luke (Simcox, Writers of the N. T. , p. 24, where other instances are given); see also Friedrich, Das Lucasevangelium , Phi 1:2 . ὧν : in St. Luke’s Gospel and in the Acts the frequency of the attraction of the relative again specially characterises him amongst the N.T. writers, Friedrich, u. s. , pp. 36 and 100. ἤρξατο : often regarded as simply pleonastic, but sometimes as emphatic, to intimate that the work which Jesus began on earth He continued in heaven, or that He began the work of the Gospel and committed its continuance to His followers; Zahn, u. s. , p. 366 ff. In Winer’s view to regard ἄρχεσθαι as pleonastic is a mere subterfuge to avoid a difficulty, and he renders the passage “what Jesus began both to do and to teach, and continued to do until,” etc. (see also Grimm-Thayer, sub v. ), treating it as an example of breviloquence (Winer-Moulton, lxvi., 1). On the whole it is perhaps best to consider the phrase ἤρξ . ποιεῖν with Bengel ( in loco ) as equivalent to fecit ab initio , although no doubt there is a sense in which, with every Christian for nineteen centuries, St. Luke would regard the whole earthly life of Jesus as a beginning , a prelude to the glory and mighty working to be revealed and perfected in the ascended Lord. The verb is of frequent use in St. Luke’s writings (Friedrich, Zeller, Lekebusch), although in St. Mark’s Gospel it is also constantly found. In the LXX it is often found like חָלַל hi., and also in Apocr. ποιεῖν τε καὶ διδάσκειν , “Scilicet prius fecit, deinde docuit; prius docuit exemplo, deinde verbo. Unde prius non docuit, quod prius ipse non fecit” (Corn. à Lap.).

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Act 1:1-14. LINK CONNECTING THIS BOOK WITH ST LUKE’S GOSPEL. DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE ASCENSION

1. ὁ Ἰησοῦς with אAE. The omission in other MSS. is probably due to the occurrence of o as the last letter of ἤρξατο.

1. πρῶτον. The use of πρῶτος for the former of two things was not uncommon in later Greek. We have examples, Mat 21:28; 1Co 14:30; Heb 8:7; Heb 9:15; Rev 21:1. We use first in the same way in English, and Cicero (de Inventione) in his second book (chap. 3) calls the former book primus liber. The work here intended by it is the Gospel according to St Luke, also addressed to Theophilus.

τὸν μὲν πρῶτον λόγον. The clause which should have answered to this and been of the form τοῦτον δὲ τὸν δεύτερον κ.τ.λ. is omitted. The writer is carried on by the subject to speak of Christ’s appearances and leaves the structure of his sentence incomplete.

λόγος is used in a similar way by Xenophon (Anab. ii. 1) in speaking of one ‘book’ of his history.

ἐποιησάμην, I made. The time is indefinite and we have no warrant in the text for that closer union of the two books, in point of date, which is made by the rendering of the A.V.

Θεόφιλε. Nothing is known of the person so called, except that from the adjective κράτιστος applied to him in Luk 1:3 he seems to have held some official position. Cf. Act 23:26; Act 24:3; Act 26:25. Some have however thought that had the title been an official one it would not have been omitted in this verse. The word is used without any official sense; cf. Josephus Ant. vi. 6, 8; where the Midianitish women speak to the Israelites as ὦ κράτιστοι νεανιῶν. But its employment elsewhere in the Acts favours the acceptance of it as a title. Josephus uses the word as a title in addressing Epaphroditus, to whom he dedicates the account of his life (Vit. Joseph. ad fidem). The suggestion, that θεόφιλος, = ‘lover of God,’ is a name adopted by the author to indicate any believer, is improbable. Such personification is unlike the rest of Scripture and is not supported by evidence.

ὧν. The relative, instead of standing as required by the governing verbs (ποιεῖν and διδάσκειν) in the accusative is attracted into the case of the preceding demonstrative. This grammatical peculiarity is very common. Cf. Act 3:21; Act 3:25; Act 7:17; &c.

ἤρξατο. This is an emphatic word. The writer regards the Gospel as a record of work which Jesus began, and committed to others to be carried forward; and this later book is to be a history of the beginning of Christian congregations in various places, and after such a beginning has been made at Rome, then the metropolis of the civilized world, his proposed labour is brought to a close.

The Gospel was the record of Christ’s work on earth, the Acts of His work from heaven. Hence the force of ‘began’ as applied to the former. His work was continued by the various ‘beginnings’ recorded in the Acts.

ποιεῖν τε καὶ διδάσκειν. So in St Luke (Luk 24:19) the disciples call Jesus ‘a prophet mighty in deed and in word.’ The acts and the life spake first and then the voice.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The acts of Jesus are the miracles and doings which showed his Godhead, and his most perfect holiness and example of his doctrine.

A passing over from the history of the Gospel, that is, from the history of the sayings and doings of Christ, unto the acts of the Apostles.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.

-Usherian year of the world, 4033.

-Alexandrian aera of the world, 5531.

-Antiochian year of the world, 5521.

-Constantinopolitan year of the world, 5537.

-Year of the aera of the Seleucidae, 341.

-Year of the Spanish aera, 67.

-Year of the Christian aera, 29.

-Year of the Paschal Cycle, 30.

-Year of the Jewish Cycle, 11.

-Golden Number, 8.

-Solar Cycle, 10.

-Dominical Letter, B.

-Jewish Passover, April 15.

-Epact, 20.

-Year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius Caesar, 18.

-Year of the CCII. Olympiad, 1.

-Year of Rome, 782.

-Consuls, from Jan. 1, to July 1, L. Rubellius Geminus, and C. Rufius Geminus; and, for the remainder of the year, Aulus Plautius and L. Nonius Asprenas.

For an explanation of these aeras, see the Advertisement prefixed to the Comment on the Gospel of St Matthew.

CHAPTER I.

St. Luke's prologue, containing a repetition of Christ's

history from his passion till his ascension, 1-9.

Remarkable circumstances in the ascension, 10, 11.

The return of the disciples to Jerusalem, and their employment

there, 12-14.

Peter's discourse concerning the death of Judas Iscariot, 15-20,

and the necessity of choosing another apostle in his place,

21, 22.

Barnabas and Matthias being set apart by prayer, the apostles

having given their votes, Matthias is chosen to succeed Judas,

23-26.

NOTES ON CHAP. I.

Verse 1. The former treatise] The Gospel according to Luke, which is here most evidently intended.

O Theophilus] See Clarke on Lu 1:3.

To do and teach] These two words comprise his miracles and sermons. This introduction seems to intimate that, as he had already in his Gospel given an account of the life and actions of our Lord, so in this second treatise he was about to give an account of the lives and acts of some of the chief apostles, such as Peter and Paul.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

To the intent that all godly men may, with more diligence, read this history, and also be more desirous thereof, it shall not be without profit briefly to note what commodity they shall reap thereby.

This is the chiefest praise that a profane history hath, namely, that it is the mistress of life. If that narration of famous deeds, which only teacheth men what they ought to follow, or what they ought to eschew, in their common actions, deserve such a title, of how great praise are the divine histories worthy, which do not only frame the outward life of man that he may win praise by virtue, but also (which is more) which declare unto us that God, from the beginning, hath had a special regard always of his Church, (and faithful congregation,) that he hath been always a most just revenger of all wrongs done unto those that have betaken themselves unto his tuition, and have committed themselves unto his custody; that he hath showed himself favorable and merciful unto most miserable and wretched sinners; and, lastly, by teaching us faith, raised us high above the heavens. I say nothing of this, that they do everywhere set forth the providence of God, that they distinguish the true worship of God from the false, and never err in the difference of vice and virtue; although I omit now also those worthy praises which used most commonly to be attributed unto the sacred histories, intending only shortly to touch those which are proper to this book which we have taken in hand.

Those things which Luke setteth before us in this place to be learned are not only great, but also of rare profit; for, first, in that he showeth that the Spirit of God was sent unto the apostles, he doth not only prove that Christ was faithful (and true) in keeping his promise made unto his apostles; but also he certifieth us, that he is always mindful of his, and a perpetual governor of his Church, because the Holy Spirit did descend from heaven to this end; whereby we learn that the distance of place doth no whit hinder Christ from being present with those that be his at all times. Now, here is most lively painted out the beginning of Christ’s kingdom, and as it were the renewing of the world; for although the Son of God had gathered together, by his preaching, a certain Church, before such time as he departed out of the world, yet, nevertheless, that was the best form of the Church which began then, when as the apostles, having new power given them from above, began to preach that that only Shepherd did both die and also rise again, that through his conduct all those which were dispersed, far and wide, (upon the face of the whole earth,) might be gathered unto one sheepfold. Here is, therefore, set down both the beginning and also the increasing of the Church of Christ after his ascension, whereby he was declared to be King both of heaven and earth.

Furthermore, therein appeareth, as well the marvelous power of Christ, as the great force and efficacy of the gospel itself; for in that Christ, by a sort of simple souls, (and of no reputation amongst men,) being indued also with no eloquence at all, hath subdued the whole world so easily, by the only voice of the gospel, whereas, notwithstanding Satan did resist him with so many lets, he hath showed a most manifest token of his divine power and might therein. And also, we see in the same the incredible force of the gospel, that it did not only come forth and show itself, although the whole world did say nay, but also with great glory and majesty, make all that which did seem stubborn to be obedient unto Christ. Therefore, these few and simple creatures did more prevail against the troublesome tumults of the world, with the base and simple sound of their mouth, than if God should openly have thrown down lightnings from heaven. And, on the other side, the Spirit of God teacheth us, that the kingdom of Christ beginneth never sooner to flourish, but by and by Satan opposeth himself most furiously against the same, and useth all his engines either utterly to overthrow or sore to shake the same. Neither are we only taught, that Satan doth resist Christ as an enemy, but also that the whole world doth furiously rage together against him, that he may not reign over them. Yea, furthermore, that is to be set down as a thing most certain, that wicked men, whilst they do so rage against the gospel, do both fight under Satan’s banner, and are pricked forward by him into so blind fury. Hereupon do arise so many uproars, so many plaguy conspiracies, so many devilish endeavors of the reprobate to overthrow the gospel, (and to hinder the free passage of the same,) which Luke setteth down almost in every place.

Lastly, like as the apostles have indeed tried, that the doctrine of the gospel is a fire and a sword, so may we learn by their experience that it will always come to pass, not only by the obstinate malice of Satan, but also by the fatal stubbornness of men, that the gospel shall suffer many conflicts, and that thereby many tumults shall be raised. But, on the other side, he declareth that the apostles, (with a stout stomach,) with a lively courage and invincible violentness [force] of mind, did, notwithstanding, execute the office which they knew was enjoined them by God; and also, what innumerable troubles they suffered with great perseverance, what wearisomeness they passed over, how patiently they sustained most cruel persecution; and, lastly, how meekly they suffered reproach, sorrow, and calamity of all sorts. And we must learn patience by such examples, seeing the Son of God hath pronounced that the cross and tribulation shall always accompany his gospel; we must not pamper and cherish ourselves with a vain hope, as though the state and condition of the Church should be quiet (prosperous) and flourishing here upon earth. Let us, therefore, address ourselves to suffer the like things. And that is added as no small comfort for us, that as God hath marvelously delivered his Church in times past, being afflicted and oppressed so many ways, so he will at this day be present with us also. For, surely, seeing that in this book is declared how that God, by his mighty hand and outstretched arm alone, doth continually defend his Church, being amidst continual deaths: God himself, by this means, setteth before our eyes his continual providence in procuring the safety thereof.

Furthermore, here are set down certain sermons of the apostles which intreat in such sort of the great mercies of God, of the grace of Christ, of the hope of blessed immortality, of the calling upon God, of repentance and the fear of God, and also of other principal points of Christian doctrine, that we need not seek the whole sum of godliness anywhere else.: But that I may now omit the declaration of sound and pure doctrine, — if that be a thing most needful to be known, namely, to understand how the Church of Christ first began; how the apostles began to preach the gospel; what success they had in the same; what cruel combats they suffered; how manfully they passed through so many lets and impediments; how courageously they triumphed over all the pride of the world under the reproach of the cross; how wonderfully God was present with them: then must we highly esteem of this book, which, unless it were extant, the knowledge of so great things should either be quite buried, or greatly obscured, or wrapped in divers doubts. For we see that Satan used all his engines, that he might so bring to pass, that never any of the acts of the apostles might come to light, but such only as were mixed with lies; to the end he might bring into suspicion what thing soever was spoken of them, and so by that means might pluck out of the minds of the godly all the remembrance of that age. For he always raised up, either doting fools or crafty flouters, that they might spread abroad a sort of filthy fables under the names of other men; the blockishness whereof did much discredit even the true histories.

So in those books of Peter and Paul, which are reigned to be of Linus his doing, are contained such a sort of stinking trifles, that they cause the wicked to laugh at them, and the godly to loathe them. So that reigned disputation of Peter with Simon Magus is so ridiculous, that it doth discredit the name of a Christian. The same opinion must we have of all that mingle-mangle, which is set before the Recognitions and Councils of Clement, and recited of Gratianus in his Fragments. They beguile the unskillful under color of ancient names; the wicked boast of those as of oracles, no less boldly than impudently, when as, indeed, they are filthy toys. Satan did use such liberty to lie, that we might have no certain thing left us after Christ’s ascension. So that unless this work of Luke were extant, it might seem that Christ being taken up into heaven, left no fruit of his death or resurrection upon earth. For all should have vanished away with his body. We should not know that Christ was so received into his celestial glory, that, nevertheless, he beareth rule in all the world; we should not know that the gospel was published by the apostles, and so came from them unto us, though by the means of others; we should not know that they were inspired by the Holy Ghost, lest they should teach anything but that which was divine, to the end our faith might be grounded only upon the infallible verity of God. Last of all, we should not know that that prophecy of Esaias was fulfilled, wherein he foretold that the law should come out of Sion, and the Word of the Lord out of Jerusalem.

Seeing this book proceeding, no doubt, from the Spirit of God, taketh from us all doubting of these things, we must count the same as a great treasure, as I have said before not without cause, and now again confirm the same.

That he may pass over unto those things which followed the ascension of Christ, he briefly gathereth the sum of all those which before he had handled in the former book, that he may annex this thereunto. And he briefly setteth down this description of the history of the gospel, that it is a narration of those things which Christ did and said so long as he was conversant upon earth. Furthermore, whereas they interpret this commonly, that there was first in Christ purity of life, before such time as he began to preach, it maketh nothing unto Luke’s mind. Truth it is, that the manners of a good and godly teacher ought so to be framed, that he speak first with his life, then with his tongue, otherwise he should differ nothing from a stage-player. But Luke hath respect rather unto that which he had said about the end of his gospel, (Luke 24:19,) namely, that Christ was a prophet mighty in deed and word, that is, such a one as did excel no less in deeds than in words; although there be but small difference betwixt these two places. For the mightiness of works which is commended there doth belong unto his miracles, but this, to do, doth reach further in my opinion, namely, that under the same are comprehended all the famous acts which were proper unto his ministry, wherein his death and resurrection are the chiefest. For the office of the Messias did not only consist in doctrine, but it was also behoveful that he should make peace between God and man, that he should be a Redeemer of the people, a restorer of the kingdom, and an author of everlasting felicity. All these things, I say, as they were promised of the Messias, so were they looked for at his hands.

Now we see that the sum of the gospel consisteth of these two parts, namely, of the doctrine of Christ, and of his acts; forasmuch as he did not only bring unto men that embassage which was given him in charge of his Father, but also performed all things that could be required of the Messias. He began his kingdom, he pacified God with his sacrifice, he purged man’s sins with his own precious blood, he subdued death and the devil, he restored us unto true liberty, he purchased righteousness and life for us. And to the end that whatsoever he either did or said might be certain, he proved himself by miracles to be the Son of God. So that this word, to do, is extended unto his miracles also; but it must not be restrained only unto the same. Here must we note, that those which have only the bare knowledge of the history have not the gospel; unless the knowledge of the doctrine which maketh manifest the fruits of the acts of Christ be adjoined thereunto. For this is a holy knot which no man may dissolve. Therefore, whensoever mention is made of the doctrine of Christ, let us learn to adjoin thereunto his works, as seals whereby the truth thereof is established and confirmed, and the effect declared. Furthermore, that we may reap commodity by his death and resurrection, and also that miracles may have their use, we must always have respect unto him that speaketh. For this is the true rule of Christianity.

1. Of all things which he began I do not greatly mislike the interpretation which some give of this place that Luke said rather of all than all; because it is possible in some measure to intreat of the works and doctrine of Christ, but to set down the whole course, that the narration may be perfect, were a matter of great weight. Like as John doth declare that the world could not contain the books, (John 21:25.) That is also to be noted that Luke saith, that he began his history at the beginning of the works of Christ. But so soon as he hath declared the nativity of Christ, he passeth over unto the twelfth year of his age (Luke 2:42;) and after he had briefly spoken of his disputation had in the temple with the doctors, passing over eighteen years without speaking any thing of them, he entereth [on] the just narration of the works of Christ. It is, therefore, manifest that those works and sayings only which make any thing unto the sum of our salvation are noted in this place. For, after that Christ came abroad into the world clothed with our flesh, he lived privately at home until he was thirty years of age, at which time his Father put upon him another manner of person. God would have him to lead the former part of his life obscurely, to this end, that the knowledge of these things might be more excellent which do edify our faith.

The former speech. It seemed good to me to translate this on this wise, because λογον ποιεισθὰι, is the same with the Grecians, which verba facere, or to speak, is with the Latins, as Budaeus doth note. And we must understand the contrariety of the second part, which he taketh in hand, that we may know that the evangelist determined with himself afresh to write, having new matter whereupon to write.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

The Acts of the Apostles.—See Introduction as to the title thus given to the Book.

(1) The former treatise.—Literally, word, or discourse; but the English of the text is, perhaps, a happier equivalent than either. The Greek term had been used by Xenophon (Anab. ii. 1; Cyrop. viii. 1, 2) as St. Luke uses it, of what we should call the several “Books” or portions of his Histories. The adjective is strictly “first” rather than “former,” and the tense of the verb, “I made,” rather than “I have made.”

O Theophilus.—See Note on Luk_1:3. It has been thought that the absence of the words “most excellent” implies that the writer’s friendship with Theophilus was now of a more intimate and familiar nature. It is possible, just as a like change of relation has been traced in Shakespeare’s dedication of his two poems to the Earl of Southampton, but the inference is, in each case, somewhat precarious.

That Jesus began both to do and teach.—The verb “begin” is specially characteristic of St. Luke’s Gospel, in which it occurs not less than thirty-one times. Its occurrence at the beginning of the Acts is, accordingly, as far as it goes, an indication of identity of authorship. He sought his materials from those who had been “from the beginning” eye-witnesses and ministers of the word (Luk_1:2).

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1 The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,

Ver. 1. Of all that Jesus began, &c.] If Hen. Stephanus could say of Laertius, that he wrote the lives of the philosophers aureo libello illo in that golden book of his; and (as another hath it) opere utilissimo, et auro contra non charo; {a} how much better may the same be said of the holy evangelists setting forth the oracles and miracles of Christ and his apostles! If Julius Scaliger thought twelve verses in Lucan better than the whole German empire, what high thoughts ought we to have of these divine records! In the monastery at Ratisbon is a New Testament written all in letters of gold, saith Melancthon, who saw it. (Joh. Manl. loc. com.) Gold was not good enough for such a purpose.

{a} Vos. de Hist. Graec. ii. 13.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

St. Luke, who was the author of this history, alludes, in this verse, to his gospel, which he calls his first discourse. In that he informs us, not only of the actions, but also the doctrines of our Saviour. These words, to do and to teach, are the abridgment of the whole gospel: here he gives us the Acts of the Apostles, that is, an history of their travels and preaching. In the beginning of this work he speaks of all the apostles, and what they did before their dispersion. As soon as he comes to the mention of St. Paul, he takes notice of no one else, but is entirely taken up with the narrative of his actions. He addresses his book to Theophilus, which signifies a friend of God, or one who loves God, as if he intended to dedicate it to all the faithful, who believed in, and loved God. But it is more probable that this was the same distinct person, well known to St. Luke, and illustrious for his birth, because he gave him the title of Greek: kratiste, most excellent. [Luke i. 3.] (Calmet)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

The former treatise have I made; this refers unto the Gospel wrote by this evangelist, St. Luke, who was undoubtedly the penman of this book, which bears testimony unto and confirms (if need were) that other.

Theophilus; esteemed the same name with Jedidiah, signifying beloved of God, or one that loved God. Who he was is not certain; some have taken the name appellatively. It is evident by the epithet given unto him, Luk 1:3, that he was one of great authority, having the same title which Tertullus gives unto Festus, Act 24:3, and the chief captain unto Felix, Act 23:26. Although not many noble are called, 1Co 1:26, yet God extends his grace unto some of all conditions.

Of all that Jesus began both to do and teach; this is the sum of the Gospel, viz. a history of the life, doctrine, and death of our blessed Saviour; although every particular word or deed of our Saviour's could not be expressed, Joh 21:25, yet the evangelist was faithful in withholding nothing which was necessary for the church to know, and leaving no room for unwritten traditions.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

1. The former treatise—Or narrative. That is, Luke’s Gospel.

Have I made—Rather, did I make.

Began—To this word Baumgarten, followed by Alford, assigns a meaning somewhat fanciful, yet pregnant with a rich truth. It assumes that the Gospel was Christ’s beginning of his mediatorial doings, and the Acts the great continuance: the former on earth, the latter in the heavens over the earth. The Gospel shows us Jesus terrene, the Acts, Christ celestial: the former as suffering, the latter as reigning. Hereby we see that our great Head, while allowing his Church to struggle amid trial and probation, does still overrule the whole; all to the good of his redeemed and his own glory. This brings into view the great number of instances in the Acts in which the transactions of the Church below are ascribed to the Lord of the Church above. So Baumgarten: “He it is, for instance, who again appoints the twelfth witness, (Act_1:24;) who, after he himself has received the Spirit, sends him down from on high on his Church, (Act_2:33;) who adds to his Church in Jerusalem, (Act_2:47.) He it is who works miracles, both of healing and destruction, in testimony to his apostles’ preaching, (Act_3:6; Act_4:10; Act_4:30; Act_9:34; Act_13:11; Act_14:3; Act_19:13.) To his dying martyr Stephen he reveals himself standing at the right hand of God, (Act_7:55-56;) his angel speaks unto Philip, (Act_8:26;) it is his Spirit that caught him away, (Act_8:39;) he appears to Saul of Tarsus, (Act_19:5; Act_19:27; Act_22:8; Act_22:26;) his hand established the first Church among the Gentiles, (Act_11:21;) his angel delivers St. Peter, (Act_12:7; Act_12:11; Act_12:17;) his angel strikes the hostile Herod, (Act_12:23;) he again it is who appears to St. Paul in the temple, and commits to him the conversion of the Gentiles, (Act_22:17; Act_22:21;) to him the apostles and brethren address themselves on the occasion of the first mission to the Gentiles, (Act_13:2, cf. acts 5:47;) to him are the infant Churches commended, (Act_14:23;) his Spirit prevents the apostolic missionaries from preaching in Bithynia, (Act_16:7;) he calls them by the voice of the man of Macedonia into Europe, (Act_16:10;) he opens the heart of Lydia and effects the first conversion in Europe, (Act_16:14;) he comforts and encourages Paul at Corinth, (Act_18:9-10;) he strengthens him in prison, and informs him of his journey to Rome, (Act_23:11.) These interventions of Jesus, so numerous, express, and decisive, are a sufficient warrant for our regarding his ascension as essentially his really sitting on his throne. We are, therefore, fully justified in ascribing all to his influence, even in those instances where, without any express mention of his name, we are referred to the invisible world. In this way, therefore, we must consider the conversion of the Samaritans by miracles, (Act_8:6-12;) the restoration to life of Tabitha, (Act_9:36-42;) the vision of St. Peter, (Act_10:10-16.) And in like manner in those passages, also, where the Holy Ghost is spoken of as the efficient cause, as, for example, Act_13:2, we must bring before our minds the Lord himself, for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus, cf. Act_16:6-7. And, also, in every mention of the name of God, as at Act_27:23, we are to understand the person of Jesus, for, from Act_1:22; Act_4:30, we learn that God works by Him.” We recognise the fact thus beautifully expanded, but do not recognise it as implicitly embraced in this word began. Luke, we think, refers to this beginning as a great commencement; the continuance is implied in the word until; the termination is at the day in which he was taken up.

Do and teach—His miracles, and his discourses authenticated by his miracles.

HISTORICAL NOTE I.—As we have intimated in notes introductory to, and also upon, Luk_3:1, our Saviour was born under the reign of AUGUSTUS CESAR, who was succeeded, when Jesus was about seventeen years of age, by TIBERIUS.

TIBERIUS was the first of that line of imperial tyrants whose crimes hastened the downfall of the Roman Empire. It was during his reign that the manhood and ministry of our Saviour were passed, and in its eighteenth year took place the crucifixion. While his imperial crimes were contributing to the dissolution of society the Pentecostal Church was rising, destined by the Divine hand to reconstruct the modern civilization of Europe and of our own America. About the period of Stephen’s rise the hand of one of the court favourites relieved the world of the imperial monster, March 16, A.D. 36.

CALIGULA, his successor, ruled four years, signalizing his reign by a series of fooleries and cruelties disgraceful to history. It is a fact which curiously illustrates his character, that, while his real name was Caius, yet his nickname Caligula (Little Boots) became his permanent historical appellation. One of his freaks was a project of requiring worship to be paid to his statue throughout the Empire. This brought him into a fearful collision with the Jews, who were ready to sacrifice their own lives in mass rather than commit an act of idolatry so heinous. So intense was the concentration of their minds on this subject that for the time being they forgot to persecute the Christians, and the Church had a period of repose. This emperor fell by the hand of an assassin, January 24, A.D. 41, in the twenty-ninth year of his age. It was during the four years of this man’s imperial pranks that the most earnest man of any age, Saul of Tarsus, was passing through the solemn scenes of his persecution of the Christian Church, his conversion; his residence in Damascus and Arabia, and his return to Jerusalem. Such are the contrasts of history. (See Hist. Note II at Act_9:31.)

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The former treatise - In that important season which reached from the resurrection of Christ to his ascension, the former treatise ends, and this begins: this describing the Acts of the Holy Ghost, (by the apostles,) as that does the acts of Jesus Christ. Of all things - In a summary manner: which Jesus began to do - until the day - That is, of all things which Jesus did from the beginning till that day.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The Ascension of Jesus.

The last commission of Jesus:

v. 1. The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,

v. 2. until the day in which He was taken up, after that He through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom He had chosen;

v. 3. to whom also He showed Himself alive after His Passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God;

v. 4. And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith He, ye have heard of Me.

v. 5. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.

"The former treatise," the first discourse, Luke had made, namely, in his gospel, to which he here evidently refers. The present history is a sequel to the gospel narrative; as the first writing had given an account of the ministry of Jesus, so the present book is to give an account of the labors of His ministers. This book, like the gospel, is addressed and dedicated to Theophilus, who may well have been a citizen of Rome holding a high official position, probably of equestrian rank, and a resident of the imperial city. In the gospel Luke had spoken of all; he had given a complete account of the labors of Jesus. The phrase "began to do and teach" is an idiomatic expression, as much as "both did and taught" in English. But there is here also a hint of the fact that Jesus began the work of the Gospel and committed its continuance to His disciples. The teaching of Jesus continued, in a way, even after His resurrection, although He then no longer spoke before the general public, but only to the believers. In those days, up to the day of His ascension,—and especially on this day,—He commissioned the apostles, He laid a certain obligation upon them. This commission, according to the intimate union obtaining in the Godhead, He did not give in an independent way, but through the same divine Spirit whom they received in extraordinary measure shortly after His ascension. All the communications of Jesus to His disciples are transmitted through the agency of the Spirit, whom He breathed upon them on Easter evening, Joh 20:22. Note the distinction: Jesus had chosen the disciples out of the unbelieving world, and He had chosen the apostles from the ranks of the believers. To the latter the special apostolic commission was entrusted. Jesus Himself, at this time, was taken up, He was lifted up on high, He experienced His ascension as an act of the Father. But in the interval between His resurrection and ascension, Jesus had taken a number of opportunities to show Himself as their living Savior to His disciples. They had seen Him suffer; they had received the evidence of His death. Therefore He gave them, not only one, but many indubitable proofs of His resurrection from the dead. During a period of forty days He was seen by them on various occasions. And every new appearance was another link in the chain of convincing, certain evidence that He was living. He appeared to Mary Magdalene, Joh 20:14-18; to the women returning from the grave, Mat 28:9-10; to the Emmaus disciples, Luk 24:15; to Simon Peter, Luk 24:34; to ten of the apostles, other disciples also being present, Luk 24:3-6; Joh 20:19; to the eleven disciples a week later, Joh 20:26; to seven of the apostles in Galilee, Joh 21:4; to James and 500 brethren at one time, 1Co 15:6-7; to the assembly of the disciples on Ascension Day, Luk 24:50. Note: There is no discrepancy between Luk 24:43-51 and the present passage, for in the former account Luke has contracted the interviews of the two appearances, while in this narrative he observes the distinction. At every appearance of the risen Christ His conversation and charge to His disciples concerned matters of the kingdom of God, He committed to them the charge of the truths and commands. In word and in deed the apostles and all disciples of the Lord are to proclaim that Kingdom. The one great message of the Church for all times shall be the acceptance of Jesus the Redeemer by faith, by which act the believer becomes a member of the kingdom of God.

Having thus summarized the events of the forty days intervening between the resurrection and the ascension, Luke now proceeds to give the gist of the conversation which took place on the last day of the visible Christ on earth. On this day Christ had assembled His disciples for the last time, not only the apostles, but all the believers, a crowded gathering, according to the Greek word. It was at this time that Jesus charged the assembled congregation of believers, in an emphatic command, not to journey away from Jerusalem. They were to stay there and wait for the promise of the Father, the promise of the Holy Spirit which He had made to them on the evening before His death, Joh 14:26; Joh 15:26-27; Joh 16:12-13. This promise they had heard, and this He calls to their remembrance. And He reminds them of another fact. John’s baptism had been with water only, it had pointed forward to another, greater baptism of which John spoke, of a baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire, Luk 3:16. The extraordinary communication of the gifts of the Holy Spirit was to take place, as Jesus promises, not many days hence, after not many days. The prophecy of Joe 3:18 was about to be fulfilled Notice that Jesus both kindles in the hearts of the disciples a joyful longing and desire for the wonderful gift which is now so near, and exercises the faith of the apostles in His Word.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Observe here, 1. The penman of this sacred history, St. Luke, the same that wrote the gospel, which he calls his former treatise, dedicated, both that and this, to the same Theophilus: The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus.

Observe, 2. The time when St. Luke wrote this holy history, and the place where, namely, when he was the companion of St. Paul; and, as some think, during the time of his imprisonment at Rome: If so, we may profitably remark, the favour which God gave the apostle and his companion in the sight of the keeper of the prison, that they were not denied pen and paper. When persecutors send the saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.

But how doth the apostle and his companion spend their time in prison?

Very advantageously: the former in writing epistles to the churches for their confirmation; the latter in recording the acts and monuments of the holy apostles for our imitation. There is no such way to be even with the devil and his instruments, for all their malice and spite against us, as by doing all the good we can, wherever we come. Satan had better have left these two holy men alone, than have cast them into prison: for by their pens they battered the walls of his kingdom, and made them shake about his ears.

Observe, 3. The integrity and impartiality of this historian St. Luke; he wrote of all things that Jesus both did and taught in his Gospel, and what the apostles did and taught, in the Acts; not that this is to be understood strictly and absolutely, but comparatively only; not as if St. Luke recorded every action that Jesus did, or every expression our Saviour said; for St. John says, they were so many, that they could not be written, Joh 21:25.

But by all things, we are to understand very many things; the most principal and chief things, the most necessary and useful things; every thing that the Holy Ghost thought fit to dictate to him, and enjoin him to publish for the church’s use and service.

Learn thence, That St. Luke was a very faithful and impartial historian, withholding nothing which was necessary for the church to know, and leaving no room for unwritten and uncertain traditions: I have wrote all that Jesus began both to do and teach.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

DEDICATION

1, 2. We see that this book is dedicated to Luke’s friend Theophilus, to whom his Gospel is also dedicated. Doubtless this brother Theophilus, who is not elsewhere mentioned, was much beloved by Paul and Luke. While it is more than likely that some eminent saint is here personally addressed, it is pertinent to observe that Theophilus is a cognomen from Theos, God, and philos, a lover. Hence it means a lover of God, and is here to be understood not only as specific, but generic, and applying to all of the lovers of God in all ages. Hence, reader, take notice; if you are a lover of God, this book, as well as Luke’s Gospel, is dedicated to you, since it is dedicated to all the lovers of God of all ages and nations.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I: 1, 2. A NARRATIVE of Jesus of Nazareth, designed to convince men that he is the Christ, would most naturally begin with his birth and terminate with his ascension to heaven. Such was the "former narrative" which Luke had addressed to Theophilus, and he alludes to it as such in introducing his present work: (1) " The former treatise I composed, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach, (2) until the day in which, having given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen, he was taken up. "

This reference to his former narrative is most appropriate in its place, inasmuch as the one now undertaken is based entirely upon it. The specific reference to "the day in which, having given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen, he was taken up" is still more in point, from the fact that all the authority which the apostles had for the labors Luke is about to narrate was derived from the commandment given on that day. The history of that day furnishes but one commandment then given, which was the apostolic commission. In this commission, then, Luke locates the starting point of his present narrative.

If we would appreciate the narrative thus briefly introduced to us, we must begin with the author, by a proper understanding of this commission.

During the personal ministry of Jesus, he authorized no human being to announce his Messiahship. On the contrary, whenever he discovered a disposition to do so, he uniformly forbade it, and this not only to various recipients of his healing power, but to the apostles themselves. When Peter made the memorable confession, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," we are told that, at the close of the conversation, "he charged his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ." Such was his uniform injunction on similar occasions. Even when Peter, James, and John had witnessed his transfiguration, and heard God himself proclaim him his Son, as they came down from the mount, "Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man is risen from the dead."

This stern prohibition, quite surprising to most readers of the New Testament, may be accounted for, in part, by a desire to avoid that political ferment, which, in the existing state of the public mind, might have resulted from a general belief among the Jews that he was their Messiah. But there is a much more imperative reason for it, found in the mental and moral condition of the disciples themselves. Their crude conceptions of the Messiahship, their gross misconception of the nature of the expected Kingdom, their misunderstanding of much that he had taught them, and their imperfect remembrance of that which they had understood, rendered them incapable of presenting his claims truthfully, not to say infallibly, to the world. Moreover, their faith had not, as yet, acquired the strength necessary to the endurance of privations and persecutions. While laboring under these defects, they were most wisely prohibited from preaching that he was the Christ.

During the last night he spent on earth, Jesus at length informed them that this restriction would soon be removed, and they should receive the qualifications necessary to be his witnesses. He says, "The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said to you." "I have many things to say to you, but you can not bear them now; howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all the truth. " "He shall testify of me: and you also shall testify, because you have been with me from the beginning." In these words they have a promise that they shall testify of Jesus, with the Holy Spirit for their guide; but the promise looks to the future for its fulfillment.

Finally, "in the day in which he was taken up," he gives them the commandment which is to unseal their lips, and authorizes them to preach the glad tidings to every creature. Without this commandment, they could not have dared to tell any many that he was the Christ; with it, they are authorized to begin the labors which our historian is about to narrate. But even yet there is one restriction laid upon them; for they have not yet received the promised qualifications. "He commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem; but await the promise of the Father, which you have heard from me."

Such was the necessity for the commandment in question, and for the limitation which attended it when given. The items of which it is composed are not fully stated by either one of the historians, but must be collected from the partial statements of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew presents three of them, as follows: "Go, disciple all nations, immersing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe and do all whatsoever I have commanded you." Mark presents five items in these words: "Go preach the gospel to every creature; he who believes and is immersed shall be saved; he who believes not shall be condemned. " Luke simply states that Jesus said, "Thus it behoved the Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." If we combine these items, by arranging them in their natural order of succession, we will have the commission fully stated.

The command quoted by Mark, "Preach the gospel to every creature," necessarily comes first. The command, "Disciple all nations," is next in order; for it is by means of preaching that they were to make disciples. But when a man is made a disciple he becomes a believer; and Matthew and Mark agree in the statement that he who believes, or in Matthew's style, he who is discipled, is then to be immersed. Luke, however, says that repentance must be preached, and as repentance precedes obedience, we are compelled to unite it with faith, as antecedent to immersion. Next after immersion comes Mark's statement, "he shall be saved." But salvation may be either that which the pardoned sinner now enjoys, or that to be enjoyed after the resurrection from the dead: hence this term would be ambiguous but for Luke's version of it, who quotes that " remission of sins " is to be preached. This limits the meaning of the promise to that salvation which consists in remission of sins. Next after this comes the command, "teaching them to observe and do" what I have commanded you. Finally, they were to proclaim that they who believed not, and, consequently, complied not with the terms of the commission, should be condemned. In brief, they were commanded to go into all the world, and make disciples of all nations by preaching the gospel to every creature; to immerse all penitent believers into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, promising such the remission of their sins; then teaching them all their duties and privileges, as disciples of Jesus. In the mean time, all were to be assured that he who believed not should be condemned.

Making this commission the starting point of his narrative, Luke proceeds, after a few more preliminary observations, to relate the manner in which it was executed. This is the key to the whole narrative. We will find the apostles adhering strictly to its guidance. Their actions will furnish a complete counterpart to the items of their commission, and the best exposition of its meaning. For the strongest confirmation of the brief exposition just given, we refer to the course of the narrative as set forth in the following pages.

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Acts Chapter 1

Let us now examine the chapters in their course. Chapter 1 supplies us with the narrative of that which relates to Jesus risen, and the actions of the apostles before the descent of the Holy Ghost. The Lord’s communications present several very interesting points. Jesus, the risen man, acts and speaks by the Holy Ghost after His resurrection as before it. Precious token of our own position, as reminding us that we shall have the Holy Ghost after our resurrection, and that, being no longer engaged in restraining and mortifying the flesh, His divine energy in us will be entirely consecrated to eternal joy and worship, and to the service committed to us by God. The risen Lord then gives His disciples commandments in connection with the new position He assumes. Their life and their service are to be formed and guided in view of His resurrection-a truth of which they had irrefragable proofs. They were still on earth, but they were pilgrims there, having Him in view who had gone before them raised from among the dead. Their relations with Him are still connected with their position on earth. He speaks to them of the kingdom, and of that which concerned the kingdom. Jerusalem was the starting-point of their ministry, even more than of His own. For He had gathered together the poor of the flock wherever He had found them, especially in Galilee; [2] but now, resurrection having made Him in power the vessel of the sure mercies of David, He calls Israel afresh to own as Prince and Saviour the One whom they had rejected as the living Messiah on earth. The Epistles of Peter are connected with the gospel in this point of view.

Nevertheless, to exercise this ministry, they were to wait for the accomplishment of the Father’s promise, the Holy Ghost, with whom they were to be baptised, according to John’s testimony, which the Lord assured them should soon take place. The mission of the Holy Ghost led them, at the same time, out of the Jewish field of purely temporal promises. The Father’s promise of the Holy Ghost was a very different thing from that of the restoration of the kingdom of Israel by the power of Jehovah, the God of judgment. It was not for them to know the time and season of this restoration, the knowledge of which the Father kept in His own possession; but they should themselves receive the power of the Holy Ghost, who would come down upon them; and they should be witnesses unto Jesus (as they had known Him, and according to the manifestation of Himself after His resurrection), both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth-thus making Jerusalem the starting-point and first object, according to the mission, Luk 24:47. Nevertheless, their testimony was founded on their beholding their Master and their Lord caught up from their midst, and received into the clouds of heaven, which hid Him from their sight. While looking steadfastly upwards, as this took place, two messengers from heaven come and announce to them that He will return in like manner. His manifestation in this lower world, beneath the heavens, is therefore here intended. He will return to earth to be seen of the world. We have not the rapture of the assembly, nor the assembly’s association with Him while absent. With the knowledge of Jesus taken up out of the world, and to come again into the world, as the termini and elements of all their teaching, they return to Jerusalem, there to wait for the Holy Ghost who was promised unto them. It is not into Galilee that they go. They are to be witnesses in Jerusalem of the heavenly rights of that Christ who had been rejected on earth by Jerusalem and the Jews. [3] All this clearly shews the position in which they were placed, and the mission committed to them. But before they receive the Holy Ghost for its fulfilment, some other characteristic circumstances find their place in this chapter. They act, under the guidance of Peter, according to intelligence in the word, before they are endowed with power from on high. These two things are therefore distinct from each other.

It appears that, although Peter was not directly led of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit put His seal on that which was done in accordance with the word in the Old Testament understood by the apostle. We have before seen that Christ, after His resurrection, opened the understanding of His disciples that they might understand the scriptures. They now act, not having received the Holy Ghost, according to a Jewish principle. They present the lot to the Lord, that He may decide. Nevertheless the lot was not all, nor was it drawn without making a distinction. Apostolic authority flowed from the nomination of Christ Himself. Intelligence of the scriptures makes them understand that which ought to be. The object which the Lord had assigned to their service narrowed the choice to the little circle of those who could fulfil that object. Their history made them capable, as Jesus had said, of being His witnesses, because they had been with Him from the beginning, and could now testify that this same Jesus, whom the Jews had rejected and crucified, was indeed risen from among the dead.

Apostolic authority is exercised in Jerusalem on the Jewish principle, before the gift of the Holy Ghost. In this there was neither research nor the exercise of the human mind. “His bishopric let another take” guided their conduct; the capacity to testify of Jesus in His life on earth, and now of His resurrection and ascension, decided on the needed qualifications; the lot of Jehovah determined the individual who was to take Judas’ place. Two are chosen, according to these needful qualifications, and the lot falls upon Matthias, who is numbered with the eleven apostles. But they were still without the promised power.

Footnotes for Acts Chapter 1

2: The mission given in Luk 24:1-53 is the one fulfilled both in Peter’s and Paul’s discourses in the Acts, but especially in chapters 2 and 13, not that of Mat 28:1-20 which, indeed, was only to Gentiles. Luke’s was on His ascension from Bethany, Matthew’s in resurrection from Galilee, where He had sought the poor of the flock (compare Mat 4:15).

3: In this sense it is not a continuation of Christ’s mission on the earth, continued in the Matthew mission from Galilee.

John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1. The former treatise. Luke's Gospel. Theophilus. See note on Luke 1:3. Luke, whose history of Acts is really a continuation of the history of his Gospel, very naturally refers to the former.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

The former book I wrote

The former book is the Gospel of Luke.

Theophilus

Luke wrote this book to a man named Theophilus. Some translations follow their own culture's way of addressing a letter and write "Dear Theophilus" at the beginning of the sentence. Theophilus means "friend of God" (See: How to Translate Names)

until the day that he was taken up

This refers to Jesus' ascension into heaven. AT: "until the day on which God took him up to heaven" or "until the day that he ascended into heaven" (See: Active or Passive)

commands through the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit led Jesus to instruct his apostles on certain things.

After his suffering

This refers to Jesus' suffering and death on the cross.

he presented himself alive to them

Jesus appeared to his apostles and to many other disciples.

translationWords

Jesus

command

Holy Spirit

apostle

suffer

kingdom of God

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

ΠΡΑΞΕΙΣ ΑΠΟΣΤΟΛΩΝ

On the title, see Prolegomena.

1-3. Introduction.]

1. τὸν μὲν πρ. λ.] The latter member of this sentence, τανῦν δέ, … is wanting (see Winer, § 63, I. 2, e. γ), and the author proceeds at once to his narration, binding this second history to the first by recapitulating and enlarging the account given in the conclusion of the Gospel.

πάντων] Whatever latitude may be given to this word, it must at all events exclude the notion that Luke had at this time seen the Gospels of Matt. or Mark, in which many things which Jesus did and taught are contained, which he had not related in his πρῶτος λόγος. On Theophilus, see notes, Luk 1:3.

ὧν ἤρξατο Ἰησ.] I cannot think ἤρξατο here to be merely pleonastic. Its position here shews that it is emphatic, and the parallel cases (see reff.) all point to a distinct and appropriate meaning for the word. That meaning here seems to be, that the Gospel contained the ἀρχάς, the outset, of all the doings and teachings of our Lord, as distinguished from this second treatise, which was to relate their sequel and results. Meyer understands it—which Jesus first of all men did, &c. But this introduces a meaning irrelevant to the context, besides not giving the emphasis to ἤρξατο, but to Ἰησοῦς. The position of emphasis given to the verb shews, that the beginning of the doing and teaching of Jesus must be contrasted with the continuance of the same, now about to be related.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The former [τον πρωτον] . Lit., the first. Luke refers to his Gospel. Treatise [λογον] . Or narrative.

Began [ηρξατο] . This is interpreted in two ways. Either, (1), as a simple historical statement equivalent to "all that Jesus did and taught." In favor of this is the fact that the synoptists often record that which is done or said according to its moment of commencement, thus giving vividness to the account. See Mt 11:20; Mt 26:22, 37; Mr 6:7; Mr 14:19; Luk 8:38, etc. According to this explanation the word serves "to recall to the recollection from the Gospel all the several incidents and events, up to the ascension, in which Jesus had appeared as doer and teacher" (Meyer). Or, (2), as indicating that the Gospel contains the beginning, and the Acts of the Apostles the continuation, of the doings and teachings of Jesus. "The earthly life of Jesus, concluded with the ascension, has its fruit and continued efficacy; and his heavenly life, commencing with the ascension, has its manifestation and proof in the acts and experiences of the apostles and first churches. The history of the Church was under the immediate control of the exalted Redeemer, and may justly be considered as the continuation in heaven of the work which he had begun on earth" (Baumgarten and Gloag).

While the truth and importance of this statement are admitted, it is objected that such an intention on Luke's part would have been more clearly intimated, and not left to be inferred from a single doubtful phrase. As regards Luke's intention, I think the first explanation is more likely to be correct. The second, however, states a truth, the value and importance of which cannot be overestimated, and which should be kept in mind constantly in the study of the book of Acts. This is well put by Bernard (" Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament, "Lect. 4) :" Thus the history which follows is linked to, or (may I not rather say) welded with, the past; and the founding of the Church in the earth is presented as one continuous work, begun by the Lord in person, and perfected by the same Lord through the ministry of men.... 'The former treatise ' delivered to us, not all that Jesus did and taught, but 'all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up. ' The following writings appear intended to give us, and do, in fact, profess to give us, that which Jesus continued to do and teach after the day in which he was taken up. "

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.