Church

Key Verse

“Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” – John 6:27 

The key in our “Key Verse” is that Father God has set his seal upon Jesus. Here’s what Barnes’ Notes on the Bible says about this seal:

To seal is to confirm or approve as ours. This is done when we set our seal to a compact, or deed, or testament, by which we ratify it as our act. So God the Father, by the miracles which had been performed by Jesus, had shown that he had sent him, that he approved his doctrines, and ratified his works. The miracles were to his doctrine what a seal is to a written instrument. – Barnes’ Notes on the Bible 

The Key is Jesus

The key in this new series, “Why So Many,” will always be Jesus. What we are searching for is how Jesus expressed Himself through individual Christians and, collectively, through His Church during the early days of Christianity that was so transformative.

For the sake of clarity, let me clearly state that our work as laborers for Christ (1 Corinthians 15:58) is far from over. The title of this series, Why So Many,” is not meant to imply that there are a sufficient number of Christians!

For “Why So Many”, we are again using the idea that we are on an expedition to learn what individual Christians as well as the Church did during the first few hundred years after Christ’s ascension that set Christianity on its course to change the whole world. However, instead of archaeologists, this time we will be anthropologists. BTW – archaeology is a subset of anthropology.

Anthropology: the study of human beings and their ancestors through time and space and in relation to physical character, environmental and social relations, and culture – Merriam Webster Dictionary 

Learning from our Ancient Brothers and Sisters

For our study, we will consider why Christianity has changed the entire world. There are some fascinating discoveries that we will make on our journey as we learn why so many people abandoned their ancestral religions as well as wealth, families, property, and familiar culture to be reborn and live for Jesus.

The impetus of this series is for us to learn from our ancient Christian brothers and sisters. How did they live? What did they value? What can they teach us? Why would a hedonist reject their life, receive Jesus, and refuse to deny his Savior even when commanded to deny Jesus upon pain of death? Yet, in our modern world, Christians often refrain from sharing Jesus at work because it is against company policy. Our modern justification appears lacking when compared to execution.

What is the difference between then and now? It appears reasonable that there may be much that we can learn from the first Christians. As the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 2:15-16 (NLT):

Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume. And who is adequate for such a task as this?

This fragrance does not discriminate between friends or family. Do you remember when Christ’s half-brothers didn’t believe in Him? We find this in John 7:5, “For not even his brothers believed in him.” God had prophesied this in Psalms 69:8 (ESV), “I have become a stranger to my brothers.” We shall see this derision and doubt repeated against Christ’s regenerated followers from the first century all the way to today, and most certainly tomorrow.

Wrap-Up

So now we know our mission. In the next installment of this series we will investigate something that Coptic Christians did from their conviction that life is valuable. It is shocking.

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A New Adventure 

In this second installment of An Expedition Adventure in the Bible, we are investigating why there are so many Christians in the world today. Our purported role is that of an anthropologist researching the early Church to understand why Christians were so disliked by so many leaders, yet through Christians God began a transformation of the whole world, upending the Roman empire and creating a cohesive, moral standard that launched universities, the sciences, hospitals, and so much more.

The First Christians and the Birth of the Church 

As you may remember, the first Christians were the 11 apostles. We know exactly when they became born-again believers in Jesus. The event was recorded by the apostle John:

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit…”  

John 20:22 (ESV)

The Holy Spirit had descended upon Jesus and remained. (John 1:32) But when Jesus breathed upon His apostles this was the first time that God lived in a child of “Adam,” other than Jesus (Colossians 2:9). Then, in the 2nd chapter of Acts, the Holy Spirit came upon everyone that was gathered together (Acts 2:1-4) in obedience to Christ’s command (Acts 1:4).

The Ministry of John the Baptist

Please allow me to take a moment to address the ministry of John the Baptist. Sometimes people think that the Jews baptized by John the Baptist were “saved.”

John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets. Jesus said of him, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11a) Still, the baptism that John the Baptist performed was under the Old Testament. Jesus had not yet died, buried, and risen from the grave. There wasn’t any “born-again salvation” available for the people baptized by John.

The Birth of the Church

The event recorded in the 2nd chapter of Acts is the birth of the Church. Now they were Christians and they were the first church community. However, they had no “statement of faith”, no catechism, no Church ordinances, no lay ministry. Still, they were disciples of Jesus and they had the Holy Spirit within them, so they were “equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:17)

The Jewishness of Christianity 

What we see after the birth of the Church is what I call God’s baby bubble for the Church. God gave His children some time to jell. Let’s remember that Christianity is undeniably Jewish. Jesus was born a Jew, raised a Jew, and fulfilled the prophecy of Moses and other Jewish prophets regarding the “Seed” of Abraham and the Messiah. As the apostle Paul wrote:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 

Romans 1:16 (ESV)

Gentiles are grafted into the True Vine. Therefore, the early Church was not without the Scriptures (Old Testament) or a large body of work that provided cultural norms that helped them begin the process of becoming the Bride of Christ “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.” (Ephesians 5:25) However, when Stephen was martyred then the “baby bubble” was popped and the 1st century Christians were dispersed by rapid persecution from the Jewish leadership (Acts 8:1) because the Jewish Leaders saw the Gospel of Jesus as a Jewish heresy.  

The Dispersion 

This dispersion was God’s will for Christians to carry the good news of Jesus with them wherever they went. One of the very first locations that received the Good News was Egypt and North Africa. We will come back to North Africa on a future blog.

As Christianity began to take root, their (our) morality that came from the Truth that abided within them (and us) often collided with the reprobate Roman empire. We need to remember that we are not just looking at the clash of cultures. We are viewing the collision of a moving object (the Roman society) with an immovable force (Christ’s Truth).

The 1st Century Church’s Moral Impact 

We may think that the first century Christians were so distracted by persecution that they did not have a public message about social ills within society. In fact, it is just the opposite. It was morality built from the substance of Christ’s commands that caused a moral impact which put a spotlight on Christians. As an example, let’s consider the 1st century Church’s stand against abortion. Yep, the Church has been wrestling with the world over this issue for 2,000 years.

The following are a few excerpts from “ABC Religion & Ethics“:  

Exposure should be understood as “the rejection of a neonate (new born baby) in the first week of life, before it was accepted into the family and undergone rituals of purification and naming.” 

While the New Testament is silent on the issues of infanticide and exposure, the writings of the early church are replete with condemnations of Graeco-Roman practices that they felt ran counter to the commitments of the early Christians. These included gladiatorial battles, public executions and abortion, as well as infanticide and exposure. Indeed, their opposition was so vehement that they labeled not only infanticide but also exposure and even abortion as “parricide.”

Parricide was a term that was known and used in the Graeco-Roman world to refer to the killing of a close relative, but it was not a term usually used in connection with the death of an infant. The early Christians, however, considered “conception, gestation, birth, and nurture as a continuous process” and therefore considered the termination of life at any point through this process as an act of murder. As a result, many of the early Christian texts openly condemned infanticide, exposure and abortion. The Didache, for example, which is a Christian treatise dated from the late first to the early second century, states:

There are two ways — the way of life and the way of death, and the difference between these two ways is great. Therefore, do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant. 

In a chilling and astonishingly callous statement, some modern bioethicists suggest, “Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life.” So, just as it was for the 1st century Church, so it is today; we are at moral loggerheads with the society within which we live.

With this moral chasm being the case, how did the early Church, by 340 AD, persuade the Roman Emperor  Valentinian I, to enact the first law requiring parents to rear their children? Valentinian I also decreed that the killing of an infant was a capital offense.

Wrap-Up 

We will begin to dig into the details of the early Church next time!

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It is not the will of God that we “Christianize” the things of the world so that we can bring them into the Church and call them good. God does not want or need worldly things in His kingdom.

Go Out

2 Corinthians 6:14 -18 (ESV)
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,

“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,
    and I will be their God,
    and they shall be my people.
Therefore go out from their midst,
    and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch no unclean thing;
    then I will welcome you,
and I will be a father to you,
    and you shall be sons and daughters to me,
says the Lord Almighty.”

Lead Them Out

What God wants is for us to lead people out of this world by bringing them to Jesus that they might be saved from the judgment that already rests upon them and this world.

Do not call worldly things that you’ve attached the name of Jesus to as clean for they are not clean.

God has set a High Standard for Christians

Just look at the accounting by God of the churches in the book of Revelation (chpt 1-3). God has not lowered the bar that He set for Israel, His chosen people. They were called into account when they failed to be obedient so why should the wild branches that He has chosen to graft into the true vine be measured by a different standard. No! All His fruit is measured the same.

When we pray God looks at the righteousness of Jesus. When we petition He looks at the blood of His only begotten. When we sin He looks at the scars of Jesus. But our standard is our obedience to the commands of Jesus for that is how we show our love. And in our love for God’s only begotten we find the same mercy that He has continually extended to His chosen people and His royal priesthood.

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