Acts 1:1-5

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Jesus Taken Up Into Heaven 1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with [a] water, but in a few days you will be baptized with [b] the Holy Spirit."



Dig DeeperWhen I was just six years old the movie “Star Wars” came out. It was a phenomenon immediately and everyone wanted to see it. In fact, the movie amazingly stayed in my hometown as a first-run showing in the theater there for well over one year. One of the main characters of that movie was a Jedi Knight named Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan was a central character that heroically marched into his own death and laid down his life for the benefit of others. So a few years later when the sequel to “Star Wars” came out it was bitter sweet because it would be another “Star Wars” movie but one without Obi-Wan, or so I thought. I was wrong, though. Obi-Wan did make a few important appearances in the next two Star Wars movies. His ghost-like appearance burst into a few scenes here and there but he was no longer a main character.

Although there might be a few similarities there between Obi-Wan’s journey in the Stars Wars series and that of Jesus Christ, it would be quite a disservice to think that the book of Acts is a sequel to the Gospel of Luke with the ghost-like Jesus making a few important appearances but really just fading into the background as a secondary character as the real work of the mission carried on without him, as was the case with Obi-Wan. Luke is quite clear that this is a continuation of his previous writing, which we call the Gospel of Luke, but the reality is that originally these were two parts of the same work and were considered as such for at least the first century of their existence until they slowly came to be seen as separate entities in their own right.

In the ancient world of Luke’s time it was quite common to break up one piece of work into separate parts with a quick summary of the previous work that served as a brief introduction for the second part. That’s exactly what Luke did here. But when Luke says that his former book had to do with “all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven,” he doesn’t mean that this second part was going to go on and talk about something else. Quite the opposite in fact. This work is a continuation of the previous work which means it is a continuation of all that Jesus did and taught. But Jesus had also promised that he would continue to be with his disciples but in a different and even more powerful way. He would constantly reveal himself to them through the work and power of the Holy Spirit. That’s what this book is about. Although it has traditionally been called “The Acts of the Apostles” since around the late 2nd century, it could rightly be called, as some have pointed out over the years, “The Acts of the Holy Spirit.” At it’s heart, though, this book is not a sequel. It is not something entirely new. It is precisely a continuation of the kingdom-bringing work of Jesus Christ.

Before we move on, though, there is one other contrast with “Star Wars” that we need to clear up. Obi-Wan did return to the thick of things on occasion but he was little more than a ghost. Luke is quite clear that the resurrected Jesus was anything but a ghost. He was the prototype of the resurrection body that is promised to all believers. He is the firstfruits of the age to come and he was very real. He spent time with them, taught them, ate with them, and gave them constant proof that he was real, physical, and material. He was not anything less than physical and material, but his resurrection body was actually more than that. The goal of God’s universe, as is made clear by passages such as Ephesians 1:10 and Revelation 21:1-5 is that the separated realms of heaven and earth will be brought together for eternity. At the time of the resurrection of all believers, God will bring together and unite heaven and earth and will be with his people in full presence forever. Jesus is the place where that bringing together of heaven and earth, the age to come, broke into the present age. His resurrection body was at home in the physical realm (which is why he could eat and perform quite normal functions) but it is also quite at home in the spiritual realm (which is apparently why locked doors seemed to be no obstacle for him).

At the heart of this ongoing story, addressed to the same Theophilus as the first section is, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Everything in the Gospel of Luke pointed ahead to and culminated in that seminal event and everything in Acts emanates from that same event. And Luke wants us to know from the beginning that there was no mistaking what had happened. Jesus really did physically raise from the dead. His grave really was empty. In fact the word that Luke used that is translated as “convincing” was actually a technical term used by the Greeks to indicate something that was conclusive with no other alternative. Jesus was alive and they were to be his witnesses, not just about his resurrection but about the kingdom of God itself. The kingdom had indeed broken into the present age and it would be their vocation to go announce that to the world (a topic we will consider in more detail tomorrow).

The book of Acts is a theological history of the ongoing action of God through the life of Jesus Christ and the continuing power and unifying work of the Holy Spirit to bring about his kingdom. It is that simple in one respect, but the reality that coming to a unified understanding of the book of Acts has proved to be elusive over the years. Some have viewed it as nothing more than a nice story with more myth and wishful thinking than anything else. Wiith a critical look at the reliability of Acts as an account that contains factual information, however, we can safely reject this view. Others have seen it as an authoritative blueprint that gives the commands and examples necessary to constructing a proper and biblical religious institution called the church. Still others view Acts as a paradigm for connecting with and accessing the miraculous and incredible power of the Spirit. Luke, however, seems largely uninterested with any of those possibilities as being anywhere near his primary purpose.

At the heart of Luke and Acts are the promises of God. God promised that he would have one family that consisted of all nations (Gen. 17:3-5; Gal. 3:7-8) and this is a picture of the foundations, formations, and ongoing identity of that promised family. Acts is simply not a rule book for constructing a rightly ordered religious institution, nor is it a spiritual handbook for the miraculous and amazing. It is a map. It is a blueprint that shows us the way to creating the family that God desired his people to be. We can easily begin to build the wrong structure, though, if we aren’t clear on what the finished product should be. God promised a family (Gen. 12:1-3; 17:3-5), Jesus delivered a family (Mark 3:31-35; 10:28-30), and as we continue through Acts we will see a beautiful mosaic of that family being formed as the Holy Spirit works within the foibles, shortcomings, and prejudices of human beings. We need to keep all of that mind as we go so that we don’t try to make Acts into something that it was never intended to be. Acts is about the creating of the church but a church that is a family not a religious institution.

It is a picture of a family, true enough, but it is a family that would rely on the strength and power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus wanted his disciples to be clear that they would not be able to be the fulfillment of God’s promised family, his kingdom, on their own strength or ability. They did not have the power to change the world but the Holy Spirit did. So, they would stay put and not do anything until he came upon them. They had forty days after Jesus’ resurrection to be with Jesus and learn from him about being his witnesses but they still would fail miserably until they had the power of the Spirit. They needed to wait for that.

The needed to wait for the powerful baptism of the Spirit that would empower them to be Jesus’ witnesses all over the world and would give them the ability to be unified as the promised family of God. But what exactly did Jesus mean when he spoke of being baptized with the Holy Spirit?

The answer to that question has become more varied over years, especially over the last hundred or so years. It has become increasingly popular to assert that there is a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit that is available to believers at a point and time after their salvation as a second work of God’s grace. This “baptism in the Spirit” is usually said to be accompanied by miraculous gifts of the Spirit, most typically the ability to speak in ecstatic utterances known as “tongues.” According to this view, those who have been baptized with the Spirit are those who have attained a higher spiritual level, one to which all believers should strive to attain.

Despite the growing popularity of such a view, there is little, if any, actual biblical substance to back up such a belief and most who hold to this view are left to rely on shaky biblical interpretation, tradition (and mostly recent tradition at that), and experiences. In fact there are but seven references to the baptism of the Holy Spirit and six of them, including this reference in verse 5, refer to John’s contrast between his symbolic baptism of repentance and the baptism of dying to self and entering into the life of Christ and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit that would become available following the death and resurrection of Christ (see Rom. 6:1-10; Acts 2:38; see also Acts 19 :1-5 where the line of distinction between the pre-resurrection baptism and the post-resurrection baptism will be clearly drawn). John’s baptism with water pointed to the real thing, the baptism into Christ that was still in water but now was the point of contact with the promised Spirit. John’s point was to draw a distinction between his symbolic baptism and the one that would truly bring about entrance into the family of God and the reception of the Holy Spirit who would unify God’s children into this promised family. That is the point of 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, the only other mention of being baptized with or by the Spirit into the one body. The Spirit’s role here is to create and unify the promised family of God.

To properly understand the baptism of the Spirit, we must realize first of all that after the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit was poured out, fulfilling the promises of God (Ezek. 36:24-27) and of Jesus (Jn. 14-16), there is no biblical example of believers being said to be baptized with the Spirit. Pentecost, as we will see in chapter 2, was the anointing or the baptizing of Jesus’ believers with the Spirit, an action that has never been withdrawn and has continued to be available to all men and women when they are baptized into the life of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sin (Acts 2:38). It is also important to note that the disciples were told to wait for the anointing of the Holy Spirit but no believers since then have been told to wait or look for a second outpouring of grace at a “baptism with the Spirit.” We simply cannot claim that the baptism of the Spirit is anything other than the outpouring of the Spirit initiated at Pentecost and continually made available to all believers through water baptism into the life of Christ. This is an outpouring of the Spirit that has never been withdrawn and to insist on a second work of grace through a second baptism not only stands in clear violation of Ephesians 4:5 which declares clearly that there is just one baptism (many claim that there are actually three baptisms available today for believers and claim that Paul here refers just to the “one” baptism that he is speaking of in the context of this passage but consistency would then demand that if Paul said there was one baptism but there are really three that there could actually also be three faiths, three Lords, three hopes, three Gods over all and so on). The erroneous view of the Spirit’s baptism would also contradict Romans 8:9, which says that all believers have the Spirit, not that some have some of the Spirit but should be waiting for a second outpouring.

As we continue reading the book of Acts, what will slowly come into view is a family picture. An account of the anointing of God’s people with his promised Spirit. It is an invitation to come and see what it looked like when God began to form his family and a further invitation to come join in and continue the story. It is the story of God’s promises, his fulfillment, and the Spirit through whom it all happened and continues to happen.

Devotional ThoughtLuke reminds us here in verse 3 that a central aspect of the concept of early Christianity was a willingness to suffer for the benefit of others. Do you embrace that aspect of Christianity or do you try to escape the call to lay down our lives and being willing to suffer so that others might come to the family of God?