Acts: True To The Faith

The Acts of the Apostles is about more than the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth. By the time the ascended Christ had sent the Holy Spirit to guide his disciples, they had no doubt what the basics of the gospel message were: that Christ died for our sins, was buried, rose again on the third day, and would one day come again. According to Luke's account, however, difficult questions and challenges arose for the apostles as they began to spread this message. These questions, once settled by the apostles, further defined the gospel with answers that remain definitive for us today.

By carefully tracing Luke's presentation of the historical material, David Gooding demonstrates that Luke arranged his account into six sections. Each section contains a set of issues centered on a dominant question confronting the early church: Was the gospel to be under the authority of the Jewish Sanhedrin, even when they called into question the deity and Messiahship of Jesus? Would the temple and its entire system of worship become obsolete because of Christ's sacrifice at Calvary, as Stephen claimed? What would God do when the observance of His own food laws became a barrier to preaching the gospel to Gentiles such as Cornelius? How would the apostles decide about the rite of circumcision and its relationship to salvation? How would the gospel distinguish itself from the spiritism, idolatry, religions, and philosophies of the pagan world, while positively presenting its own answers concerning the origin of the universe and life's ultimate purpose? And how would Paul defend the gospel at the highest levels of society against every kind of misrepresentation when he found himself under the authority of Roman law and order?

The conclusions reached by the apostles and the early churches, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, remain profoundly relevant. Their defence against each new challenge confirmed the truth of the gospel for every generation of Christ's disciples. David Gooding's exposition echoes the powerful, unspoken exhortation of Acts: to examine ourselves honestly and determine whether the Christianity we represent and the gospel we preach and defend are uncompromisingly the same as those established by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.