Summary: Bible - Book of Acts

The GIST

The Acts of the Apostles is the story of what happened next. The fifth book of the New Testament and the second volume of a work that began with the Gospel of Luke, it picks up at the moment Jesus leaves his followers and traces how a small group of Jewish followers of Jesus became a movement with communities across the eastern Mediterranean and in Rome itself. It is the only narrative of the church's beginnings in the New Testament, and nearly everything later generations have pictured about those years, the tongues of fire, the first martyr, the road to Damascus, the shipwreck, comes from here.

The book gives its own outline in a sentence spoken by the risen Jesus: "ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." The story moves outward in just those stages. Two figures dominate it: Peter in the first half, representing the Jewish church of Jerusalem, and Paul in the second, the missionary to the Gentiles. Tradition names the author as Luke, a doctor who travelled with Paul; the text does not name him, though in several passages the narrator says "we." Most scholars date the book to AD 80 to 90.

What It Says

Waiting (chapter 1). Like the Gospel, the book is addressed to Theophilus. Jesus tells the apostles to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit and is taken up into heaven. The group, about a hundred and twenty people, chooses Matthias to take the place of Judas among the Twelve.

Pentecost and the first community (chapters 2 to 5). On the day of Pentecost, "suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind," tongues like fire rest on each of them, and they begin to speak in other languages, so that visitors from many nations hear them in their own speech. Peter stands up and preaches that Jesus, crucified and raised, is Lord and Christ, and about three thousand are baptized. Luke sketches the life of the new community: they "had all things common," broke bread from house to house and grew daily.

At the Temple gate Peter heals a man lame from birth with the words, "Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee." He and John are arrested and ordered to stop speaking in the name of Jesus. Their answer sets a pattern for the book: "For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." Arrested again, the apostles tell the council, "We ought to obey God rather than men." A respected teacher named Gamaliel advises caution: if this movement is merely human it will collapse, and if it is from God it cannot be stopped. There is trouble inside as well. A couple named Ananias and Sapphira lie about a gift and fall dead.

Stephen and the scattering (chapters 6 to 8). As numbers grow, seven men are appointed to see to the daily distribution of food. One of them, Stephen, is accused of speaking against the Temple and the law. His long speech before the council retells Israel's history as a record of resisting God's messengers, and it costs him his life. He is stoned, praying as he dies, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Watching, and approving, is a young man named Saul. A persecution follows that scatters the believers, and the scattering spreads the message. Philip preaches in Samaria, and on a desert road he meets an Ethiopian official reading the prophet Isaiah in his chariot. "Understandest thou what thou readest?" Philip asks, and before the journey is over the man is baptized.

The persecutor converted (chapter 9). Saul sets off for Damascus with authority to arrest followers of Jesus. On the road a light from heaven strikes him to the ground and a voice says, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" Blinded, he is led into the city, where a disciple named Ananias, afraid but obedient, lays hands on him. Saul regains his sight, is baptized, and begins at once to preach the faith he had tried to destroy. Luke thinks this event so important that he tells it three times in the book.

The Gentiles (chapters 10 to 12). The other great turning point belongs to Peter. In a vision he sees a sheet let down from heaven filled with animals forbidden to Jews as food, and is told to eat. When he objects, a voice answers, "What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common." At that moment messengers arrive from Cornelius, a Roman centurion who has been told by an angel to send for him. Peter goes, enters a Gentile's house, and understands what the vision meant: "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons." While he is still speaking the Holy Spirit falls on his hearers, and he has them baptized. In Jerusalem he has to defend what he has done. Meanwhile a mixed community has grown up in Antioch, where Barnabas brings Saul to teach, and "the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch." Herod the king has James the brother of John killed and Peter imprisoned; an angel leads Peter out of the prison in the night.

The first mission and the council (chapters 13 to 15). The church at Antioch sends out Barnabas and Saul, who from this point is called Paul. They cross Cyprus and travel through the towns of Asia Minor, preaching first in synagogues and then to Gentiles, and meeting both faith and violence. At Lystra, after a healing, the crowd takes them for gods, and they barely prevent a sacrifice; soon afterward Paul is stoned and left for dead. Their success raises the question that could have split the movement: must Gentile believers be circumcised and keep the law of Moses? Apostles and elders meet in Jerusalem. Peter argues from his experience with Cornelius, James proposes a compromise, and a letter goes out laying on Gentile converts no burden beyond a few essentials: "it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us."

Into Europe (chapters 16 to 20). Paul parts company with Barnabas and sets out again with Silas, joined by Timothy. At Troas he has a vision of a man pleading, "Come over into Macedonia, and help us," and here the narrator begins to say we. In Philippi a seller of purple named Lydia believes and opens her house to them. Paul and Silas are flogged and jailed, an earthquake opens the doors at midnight, and the terrified jailer asks, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" In Thessalonica they are denounced as men who "have turned the world upside down." In Athens Paul addresses the philosophers on the Areopagus, starting from an altar he has seen inscribed "TO THE UNKNOWN GOD" and quoting their own poets: "For in him we live, and move, and have our being." He spends a year and a half in Corinth, where the Roman official Gallio refuses to hear a case against him, and more than two years in Ephesus, where the silversmiths who make shrines of the goddess start a riot and the crowd shouts for two hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." His farewell to the elders of Ephesus preserves a saying of Jesus: "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

Arrest and trials (chapters 21 to 26). Despite warnings, Paul goes up to Jerusalem. A mob seizes him in the Temple, and Roman soldiers pull him out. From then on he is a prisoner, and the story becomes a series of hearings: before the crowd, before the council, before the governors Felix and Festus, before King Agrippa. A plot to assassinate him is foiled and he is moved to Caesarea, where he is held for two years. Finally he uses his right as a Roman citizen: "I appeal unto Caesar." Twice more he tells the story of the road to Damascus. Agrippa's response is famous: "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."

To Rome (chapters 27 and 28). The voyage is told in vivid detail. The ship is caught in a storm for fourteen days and wrecked on Malta, with every person aboard reaching land as Paul had promised. On the island a viper fastens on his hand and he shakes it off unharmed. At last he reaches Rome and lives there two years under guard in his own rented house, receiving everyone who comes and teaching, in the book's last words, "no man forbidding him." What became of his case, Luke does not say.

Why It Matters

Acts answers a question that hung over early Christianity: how did the Jewish Messiah come to have a largely non-Jewish following? Luke's answer is that God willed it and the Spirit drove it, step by step, often against the instincts of the apostles themselves. The Holy Spirit is the real protagonist. The geography carries the argument, from Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish world, to Rome, the center of the Gentile one.

It also addresses how believers should stand toward the state. In scene after scene Roman officials find the missionaries innocent, and the book ends with Paul preaching freely in the capital. Yet its heroes also say plainly that they must obey God before any human authority.

For centuries Acts was read simply as the history of the early church. Modern scholars treat it as ancient historiography with a theological purpose and differ over its accuracy; some stress tensions between its picture of Paul and Paul's own letters, while many regard it as reliable by the standards of its time. The abrupt ending remains a puzzle.

Who Should Read It

Read Acts if you want to know how Christianity began to spread, or if you simply like a story of travel, courtroom drama and narrow escapes. It is essential background for the letters of Paul, and it should be read straight after the Gospel of Luke, of which it is the continuation.