13 Acts 2:42–47 Is the DNA of a Living People

Acts 2 is not a “church model.”

It is a biological description.

It is the fMRI scan of a people saturated with the Spirit of Jesus. It is His Ecosystem, on earth as it is in Heaven. Just as He taught us to pray. “Your Kingdom COME!”

“All of creation groannnnnns until the sons of God become their calling, and their potential!”

Let’s read it with engineering eyes:

“They devoted themselves…”

Not casually. The Greek word is “laid siege to”…

Not when convenient.

Not when scheduled.

Devoted = continuous action; voluntary intensity.

“…to the apostles’ teaching…”

Teaching was not a performance, and farrrrr from “sermons” (good grief!)—it was the overflow of responding to issues in front of them with all the new baby Christians: the habits, and carry-over of the new Christians’ childhoods, wounds and ambitions, and the echoes of their old indulgent self-centered lives. They would tell the stories of time with Jesus, describe the ways Jesus responded to critics, and to tests, and insults, and to the disciples’ dumb stuff. “I remember when.”

And the disciples, the apprentices chosen to start the ball of Ecosystem rolling, would apply real things to real people, as Jesus did, by responding from the overflow of His Spirit within, as He Planned. “What does Jesus think about the judgment you carry, do you think?” And to another, genericized for larger crowds that slowly circled around him, the chosen apprentice asked, “That desire of yours you mentioned grieves Jesus, right? You have HIS Spirit in you now. How do you think He feels about that?”

The apostles’ teaching was laying out the paths of Life in the Ecosystem to the living parts of His new Body. “Purify me Lord, from ways that aren’t of You”—and we’ll know what to do next. Teaching. And Hebrews 5, “and you ALL ought to be teachers by now”—and “when YOU are Changed, strengthen your brothers and sisters.” –Jesus, Luke 22

“…and to the fellowship…”

“Fellowship” = koinonia = shared life. Selflessness results, when needs arise, in shared possessions. A shared purpose for being on earth now.

[Peter said to Ananias and Sapphira, “that was your land, and your money, but you lied and were trying to promote yourself.” Shared life is optional not legislated!]

“…to the breaking of bread…”

Not ritual crumbs—real meals.

Real tables.

Real daily interaction.

Food and meals are supernatural, somehow. It’s not just about filling up the stomach. It’s listed alongside prayer and the apostles’ teaching. And when someone in Corinth needed a “swift kick” because they were stubborn and unwilling to admit the sin they were in, what was taken away? Sharing meals. And THAT resulted in a massive turnaround and saved him from massive, larger problems.

“…and to prayer.”

Not one guy praying on a stage.

Everyone.

Constantly. Praying without ceasing. The subroutine for all, now being “conscious of God” with every fiber of their being, was friendship and companionship with God and “one another.” There is NO such thing in God’s real Kingdom of “I’ll say a little prayer for you.” What is THAT?!

There is also NO such thing as practiced and performed “prayers” or reading a “prayer” from a piece of paper. Would you honestly speak to a real person, a parent, or a king in some rehearsed, canned way like that?

“Everyone was filled with awe…”

Not “everyone enjoyed the service.”

AWE—the unmistakable sense that God Himself is present.

Anointed

Wonder

Empowered

AWE.

“…many wonders and signs…”

Not hype.

Actual spiritual power. Things Changing, and in season, Signs confirming that these Words were from Jesus for those who had no other way to authenticate them, beyond, “Did not our hearts burn within us as we walked along the way?”

“…all who believed were together…”

Not metaphorically.

Literally.

“Daily, in public places, like the city park called the temple courts and Solomon’s Colonnade, and from house to house.”

“The temple,” Solomon’s Porch, was NOT A BUILDING and not on Sunday morning. Acts 2:36-47 was a bunch of folks who had not even known each other before becoming followers of Jesus, Christians with HIS Spirit now in them, walking as He walked with His followers when it was just Twelve and then 120, and then 3000. RELATIONSHIPS, centered daily around Jesus. There IS no other kind of Christianity, if Jesus’ Spirit lives in us because we are Washed and clean.

The earliest Christians met openly in Solomon’s Porch (as recorded in Acts 3:11 and Acts 5:12), but these gatherings occurred any ole day and were not linked to the specific practice of Sunday worship meetings, services, masses or other scheduled meetings, which developed later.

Though some will try to say, “the temple courts” meant a “church building.” It was not.

The large 36-acre area—that’s 36 football fields of open space, set aside for the Temple and “Temple Courts” and Solomon’s Colonnade—was amazingly well suited for tens of thousands of people informally grouping up and wandering from group to group of this new Teaching from and of Heaven on Earth, the Tree of Life and the Second Adam. There was no other space in Judea remotely close to this open park space available to the new Believers to pry out of the very willing apostles the truths of how to “live and move and have their being” in the Risen Jesus who had left His very SPIRIT for all who would die to their own lives to put on His.

Illustrations of the Temple courts referenced in Acts 2.
Another illustrations of the Temple courts referenced in Acts 2.

“…selling their possessions…”

This wasn’t socialism or mandated, as Peter’s discussion with Ananias and Sapphira proved; it was supernatural love, welling up for the New Jesus living IN them now. It wasn’t legislated or pressured. It was paying attention to others and loving. “AS anyone had needs.”

“…day by day… they met…”

There it is again: daily.

“…and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

“Evangelism,” “Good News telling,” wasn’t a program. Not “Romans Road” or “Evangelism Explosion” or “Mentor-Tutor-Discipler” designations or the like.

It was the overflow of daily life. “They went everywhere gossiping the word” and were “always ready to give a reason for the hope that lies within them.” They had their own Story! If you won an Olympic Gold medal or accidentally found the Ark of the Covenant or Cleopatra’s Tomb or Luxor, Egypt’s “Lost City of Gold,” it might just come out in conversation with new friends and neighbors, somehow, in context of life. AND JESUS IS A MILLION TIMES BETTER, in this Life and the Life to come.

Acts 2 is not a nostalgic “that was for them” first century dream. They had no such plan. They had JESUS living His own Life inside of them. It IS the New Covenant.

It is the Kingdom of God in its natural habitat.

And once you see this, you cannot unsee it.

And 25 years, a quarter century or more after we were forced to ask someone to leave and to “go explore the world you seem to want to grab on to so badly,” they still hate those who asked them to go do what they seemingly are desperate to do: love the world and the things of the world. WHY would anyone hate and call names and plot and collude after a quarter century, after most of their hair had turned gray or turned loose? What’s the obsession? Why can’t they just move on since no one whatsoever was ever mean to them, or took their money or followed them around even for a second? They can’t stop name-calling and obsessing and hating decades after anyone has even seen them. Why?

There is NOTHING like the Ecosystem of God, Heaven on earth even with a bunch of dumb Homo sapiens, humans. (Ironically, the words “Homo sapiens” mean “wise man,” which we’ve found is far from universally true.) And once you have Tasted it and would not allow this man Jesus to be King over you and are asked to leave… you will never have such extravagant life and love and power near you again the rest of your earthly days. And you feel the loss deeply. There is NO replacing it with drugs or attendance or wealth or biological family. All that rings very hollow by comparison to the Ecosystem of Life in Jesus, Together with other parts of His Body and Gifts, daily, ad lib. That’s why.

Look as you may, you cannot find consistent real Jesus Life in a System that is not in the Bible. Good people, yes, but all losing half of their future, at least, due to the System’s faulty ways. No child could learn to walk or speak or read that way, let alone eventually comprehend physics or the thermodynamic cycle.

This is not what Jesus lived or what He brought to us from Heaven.

Acts 2 is the DNA of the Ecosystem.

Everything else is mutation.