What does a Christian society look like?

The book of Acts gives us a picture

Did you know that the book of acts is known as a continuation of the Gospel of Luke? Luke, was a physician that didn’t think the other gospels were detailed enough. Sounds like a true researcher! So he states at the beginning he would make a robust account of Jesus’ life and death—this is why we have so many more stories from Jesus birth, an account from His teenage years and so forth. Luke is my favorite.

Luke tells us what Jesus’ life looked like. If you want to know who God is and what He acts like, you look at the way Jesus acted and what He says. Jesus is God, after all. Caring for the sick, healing them, sitting with the poor, and really annoying the religious of the day. Remember it’s the religious who had him killed, not the non religious. He was that offensive to the “Godly”!

So in Acts, Luke goes on to make a detailed account of what the earliest church looked like after Jesus’ death. Remember, this is a continuation of his Gospel. Now that we know Jesus is our savior, what does this look like as a community not separated any more by race, gender, class, or even family units. “There is no slave or free, Jew or Greek, male or female.” And when His family is looking for Jesus, he sees them and says, “Who is my mother and who is my brother?”— in doing so, He radically redefines family. But he also redefines citizenship into a new kingdom which paradoxically differs from the culture of the day. Rome was built on wealth, class, hierarchy, and racial divisions. Jesus says, “My family will look upside down!”

In Acts 2, the spirit falls on believers. Jesus promised not to leave Christians alone, so what’s better than 1 Jesus who is limited by a physical body? The Spirit, who is God, is given to everyone who believes. This is interesting because now they start to act differently than before.

When they were filled with the Spirit in 2:1 , and God lives in them, what did it look like? It goes on to tell us. But not before giving us a huge sermon from Peter recounting the life of Jesus and at the end says, “With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

Right after, in Acts 2:42, we see how they lived in their new community.

42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching (see Peter’s huge sermon) and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

In short, their Christian society looked like this:

▫️They devoted themselves to Scripture and the apostles teaching not their favorite news outlet. The apostles only ever preached about Jesus, not Rome.

▫️They ate together despite race, class, gender, wealth status. (This would have been wild considering the implications of what that meant socially! The rich would get to eat first, the poor would get the scraps.) Everyone was welcome to the table at the same time? How attractive to outsiders.

▫️They used their wealth to make sure everyone was taken care of. Not to build up more wealth for themselves or their government. They practiced a welfare system that is unlike any welfare system we’ve ever seen. It wasn’t “a couple hundred bucks to get you through the week”, it was “take all that you need.” WHOA. That’s radical.

▫️Everyday they met and rallied around the Gospel of Jesus Christ and people looking into the temple would have said why are slaves sitting with free? Why are wealthy sitting with poor? Why are women so cared for?

People were flocking in to this kind of upside down Kingdom. It was so different than anything they had ever seen. The people weren’t rallying around governments, but around the teachings of Jesus. That was the great unifier. In fact, Jesus hardly talked about government, He was too busy helping, healing, teaching, and laying down His life for others.

This is the Christianity you profess and the cross you wear on your neck. If you want a Christian nation, may it mimic what we see in the inspired word of God. Christians must ask what kind of kingdom we are amplifying and what kind of kingdom we are building. Does it look the Kingdom or heaven?

Many of you have bibles in your homes that are ignored while you watch your favorite news pundant tell you what a Christian nation is. But because you haven’t read God’s words, you take what they say as gospel truth. We call good evil and evil good. Sitting with the gospel of Luke in one chunk of time, not taking passages from here or there, but really sitting and reading the book front to back has changed me this year. Reading Acts as a continuation of Luke in one chunk, made me long for a new vision of what society could look like. And what we will experience in Heaven. Maybe it will do the same for you. I find this more hopeful than American politics, Praise be to God!

Hey and if you read this, can you heart it or comment? It helps authors!

Thanks for reading,

Jami