The Life of the First Christians

Why are we writ­ing about the first Chris­ti­ans? Our inten­tion is not merely to describe their way of life and view of things. The aim of this text is to invite the read­ers to think about why they lived as they did.

1 Intro­duc­tion

Many people today share the opin­ion that we can no longer live as the first Chris­ti­ans did because the cir­cum­stances we live in are dif­fer­ent, or that it was only pos­sible for the first Chris­ti­ans to share their lives with each oth­er so intens­ively because of their ini­tial enthu­si­asm. We would like to show that the life of the first Chris­ti­ans was a con­tinu­ation of what the dis­ciples saw in their master’s life. They under­stood that Jesus’ devo­tion is the arche­type of true ser­vice for God and that fol­low­ing him means just this: to be ready to com­mit our whole lives to God, to our broth­ers and to the growth of his king­dom just as Jesus did, regard­less of what it might mean spe­cific­ally for our lives. This is how it was then, and it can­not be any dif­fer­ent today.

The Sunday and hobby “Chris­tian­ity” of today is not a neces­sary res­ult of changes in soci­ety. Rather, it is an expres­sion of people’s unwill­ing­ness to walk on the nar­row path of fol­low­ing Jesus, even though they some­how desire sal­va­tion. Even dur­ing Jesus’ time, there were people with this atti­tude, whom he warned:

Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? Every­one who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man build­ing a house, who dug deep and laid the found­a­tion on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a found­a­tion. When the stream broke against it, imme­di­ately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great. (Luke 6:46–49)

2 “They Left Everything to Fol­low Him” – The Time the Dis­ciples Were With Jesus

When John the Baptist star­ted to bap­tize his fellow-countrymen and call them to repent­ance, pre­par­ing them for the com­ing of the Mes­si­ah, Jesus had not begun his pub­lic min­istry yet. John attrac­ted the atten­tion of many Jews, espe­cially those who had high hopes that God would not wait much longer in send­ing the prom­ised saviour. Some of these Jews later became Jesus’ most trus­ted friends.

From the time of Jesus’ bap­tism, John the Baptist began to clearly testi­fy that Jesus was the ser­vant of God who would redeem Israel. As the people came to him, he poin­ted them to Jesus. The focus of the Mes­si­an­ic move­ment thus shif­ted from John to Jesus.

Jesus chose twelve men from among those who came to listen to him and accom­pan­ied him from time to time, with the aim that they remain with him con­stantly.^[1] He explained many things more exactly to them. They are known as the apostles. They got to know him most deeply, and were taught and formed by him in order to be able to later bear the cent­ral respons­ib­il­ity of build­ing the new nation of God, the church.

When Jesus was asked what the most import­ant com­mand­ment is, he replied:

The most import­ant is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neigh­bour as your­self.’ There is no oth­er com­mand­ment great­er than these. (Mark 12:29–31)

On the last even­ing they spent togeth­er, Jesus gave his dis­ciples the new com­mand­ment to love each oth­er as he loved them and gave them his own example to show what it means to ful­fil the greatest com­mand­ment^[2]. At this point, his dis­ciples had not yet grasped the full extent of this love, since the greatest proof for it—the step to sub­mit to the unjust, cruel death on the cross—had not yet taken place. Through their daily fel­low­ship with him, how­ever, they had already under­stood many things:

• His example in the uncer­tain and irreg­u­lar life as they trav­elled with him taught them deep and uncon­di­tion­al trust in God. Jesus knew the Fath­er as the one who is love in his very being, and who will provide him with everything he needs.
• They also wit­nessed his pray­er life and close­ness with the Fath­er, from whom he drew the strength for everything he did. In this way he was able to res­ist every tempta­tion to receive acknow­ledge­ment and hon­our from people, and was filled with and led by com­plete devo­tion to God.^[3] This must have impressed his dis­ciples, and they asked him to teach them to pray.^[4]
• His dis­ciples must have also taken spe­cial notice of his empath­et­ic and impar­tial care for the weak, the des­pised and the out­casts, those who were caught in sin and who he was able to show the way out to.^[5]
• He was avail­able every day of his pub­lic min­istry in tire­less devo­tion to the people who were like sheep without a shep­herd. His shepherd-like love was so great that he was will­ing to put aside his own needs in order to give food to the spir­itu­ally hungry. It is repor­ted that some­times so many came that there was not even time to eat.^[6]
• The apostles also knew his fear­less clar­ity in the dis­putes with the self-righteous Phar­isees. Jesus saw that the only thing that could help them out of etern­al con­dem­na­tion is to expose their hypocrisy.
• He also taught his dis­ciples to love their enemies, not even to respond to hos­til­ity with hate or grudge, but to put them to shame with a humble and lov­ing atti­tude.^[7]
• Finally, his dis­ciples also exper­i­enced how he stood up for the truth he preached without com­prom­ise. He chose rather to die than to retract any­thing he said or to flee from his enemies, which would have under­mined his own cred­ib­il­ity and that of his mes­sage. He knew that the sal­va­tion of man­kind depended on it. The good shep­herd lays down his life for his sheep.^[8]
• In all this, they saw his self­less atti­tude: he was ready to give and serve without expect­ing any reward or grat­it­ude from the people.^[9]

3 “Why Do You Seek the Liv­ing Among the Dead?” – From Gol­gotha to Pentecost

Even though Jesus had pre­pared his dis­ciples for the fact that he would die and rise from the dead^[10], his death was nev­er­the­less a cata­strophe for them which seemed to have taken away all hope. Ris­en from the dead, he appeared to them on the third day. The fol­low­ing weeks with the resur­rec­ted Jesus were again a time of intens­ive rethink­ing. They learned to see everything in a new light. It became very clear to them that the Mes­si­ah is not the one who would set up an earthly king­dom of peace and des­troy all the wicked. The king­dom of God bears its good fruit in the midst of the weeds of this world. The dis­ciples were com­mis­sioned to go to the ends of the earth with the mes­sage of Jesus and preach the grace of God everywhere—the God who became man out of love. In Jesus God him­self came into the world. Through his devo­tion he wanted to lead man­kind to repent­ance from their rejec­tion and apathy towards their lov­ing Cre­at­or, and to a life of love for God and their neighbours—this is the way of sal­va­tion. From then on the dis­ciples of Jesus were to give their lives for this very purpose.

At Pente­cost the dis­ciples received the Holy Spir­it. This was the decis­ive impetus for them to go out to preach. The Spir­it of God helped them over­come all fear and gave them words that touched people’s hearts. Not few among the Jews who were in Jer­u­s­alem at Pente­cost believed the testi­mony of the dis­ciples con­cern­ing the resur­rec­tion of Jesus and the fact that he is the Mes­si­ah sent by God. This was the begin­ning of church history.

4 “Broth­ers, What Shall We Do?” – The Emer­gence of the Church and Church Life

We find the fol­low­ing text in Acts 2:32–47. It con­tains the last part of Peter’s ser­mon, delivered to the Jews in Jer­u­s­alem at Pente­cost (Acts 2:1–13), and the reac­tion of those who believed:

“… This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are wit­nesses. Being there­fore exal­ted at the right hand of God, and hav­ing received from the Fath­er the prom­ise of the Holy Spir­it, he has poured out this that you yourselves are see­ing and hear­ing. For Dav­id did not ascend into the heav­ens, but he him­self says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your foot­stool.”’ Let all the house of Israel there­fore know for cer­tain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you cru­ci­fied.” Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Broth­ers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be bap­tized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the for­give­ness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spir­it. For the prom­ise is for you and for your chil­dren and for all who are far off, every­one whom the Lord our God calls to him­self.” And with many oth­er words he bore wit­ness and con­tin­ued to exhort them, say­ing, “Save yourselves from this crooked gen­er­a­tion.” So those who received his word were bap­tized, and there were added that day about three thou­sand souls. And they devoted them­selves to the apostles’ teach­ing and the fel­low­ship, to the break­ing of bread and the pray­ers. And awe came upon every soul, and many won­ders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were togeth­er and had all things in com­mon. And they were selling their pos­ses­sions and belong­ings and dis­trib­ut­ing the pro­ceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attend­ing the temple togeth­er and break­ing bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and gen­er­ous hearts, prais­ing God and hav­ing favour with all the people. And the Lord added to their num­ber day by day those who were being saved.

Just like Jesus^[11], Peter began with a call to repent­ance. The con­di­tion for a new life as God’s child is to turn away from the old life ruled by sin. Who­ever wants to belong to God has to come to the light along with sins which sep­ar­ate him from God and oth­er people.

This is the mes­sage we have heard from him and pro­claim to you, that God is light, and in him is no dark­ness at all. If we say we have fel­low­ship with him while we walk in dark­ness, we lie and do not prac­tice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fel­low­ship with one anoth­er, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:5–7)

Man can only approach the holy God with a sin­cere heart. If one opens up his sins before God, God will “cov­er” them^[12]. God will for­give him and cre­ate a new man out of this per­son who allows God’s Spir­it to lead him. God’s Spir­it will lead those who repen­ted to a life of love. The dis­ciples of Jesus had learned from their mas­ter that love means devot­ing their whole lives; this devo­tion was what shaped the believ­ers of the early church. The love that God pours out into the hearts of his chil­dren^[13] com­pels them not to live for them­selves any longer. Paul puts it this way:

For Christ’s love com­pels us, because we are con­vinced that one died for all, and there­fore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for them­selves but for him who died for them and was raised again. (2 Cor­inthi­ans 5:14–15, NIVUK)

The first Chris­ti­ans did not want to live for them­selves, just like Jesus. They fought to become free of everything that could hinder them from lov­ing this way—free from being bound or attached to their houses, fields, fam­ily mem­bers, future plans …^[14] They were ready to let go of everything that would hinder them in serving God and help­ing people receive sal­va­tion. They knew from Jesus on the one hand that this ser­vice would not be pos­sible any oth­er way, and on the oth­er hand, that there is a prom­ise that comes along with it:

Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and fol­lowed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or broth­ers or sis­ters or moth­er or fath­er or chil­dren or lands, for my sake and for the gos­pel, who will not receive a hun­dred­fold now in this time, houses and broth­ers and sis­ters and moth­ers and chil­dren and lands, with per­se­cu­tions, and in the age to come etern­al life.” (Mark 10:28–30)

Their read­i­ness to deny them­selves^[15] and give up their self-determined lives made them free for things of God’s king­dom. They spent their time daily in the temple, where they could speak with many of their coun­try­men and give testi­mony about Jesus the Mes­si­ah. They gathered in their houses for daily fel­low­ship. In their small assem­blies, no one remained anonym­ous. There were no litur­gies or pro­grammes, which one could attend without any com­mit­ment. They prac­tic­ally exper­i­enced how they became broth­ers, sis­ters, par­ents and chil­dren to one anoth­er, even if they had pre­vi­ously been dis­tanced, ali­en­ated or even hos­tile towards each oth­er. The church was open for every­one: the rich and the poor, men and women, Jews and Gen­tiles, slaves and free, young and old. Their life of fel­low­ship was groun­ded on what the apostles taught about Jesus’ life and com­mand­ments as well as God’s being and will. Just as Jesus served the people, they too served, encour­aged, admon­ished, com­for­ted and cor­rec­ted each oth­er. They spent as much time with each oth­er as they could, and there­fore knew each oth­er very well. They knew where their broth­ers and sis­ters needed help. In shal­low and short-lived rela­tion­ships, real love can­not be put into prac­tice because it means that you do not open up your private sphere to oth­ers. The Chris­ti­ans in that time shared their joys and pain, con­fessed their weak­nesses and sins to one anoth­er^[16], and helped each oth­er in the fight of faith. All things were done out of the desire to sup­port one anoth­er in liv­ing holy lives pleas­ing to God, so that they would all reach the aim of their faith: the etern­al joy in the pres­ence of God. Hebrews 3:12–14 clearly shows how import­ant daily broth­erly encour­age­ment is:

Take care, broth­ers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbe­liev­ing heart, lead­ing you to fall away from the liv­ing God. But exhort one anoth­er every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceit­ful­ness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our ori­gin­al con­fid­ence firm to the end.

Through their love, devo­tion and unity they became the light that Jesus spoke of^[17], which impressed the people around them. Yet no-one dared to join them unless they had the same desire to live a holy life.^[18]

They were deeply united through their com­mon faith in Jesus as the saviour and in the truth of his word. This, how­ever, also meant that the uni­on was des­troyed if someone chose to walk a self-determined path and not love self­lessly any­more. The example of Anani­as and Sap­phira^[19] shows what a dis­aster it is when Chris­ti­ans become insin­cere. Both of them sold their field, but were dis­hon­est con­cern­ing their read­i­ness to share, and lied to the apostles. They could have kept what they had. If they really have had good reas­on for it, there would have been no need to cov­er up their plan. They could have spoken about everything with open­ness and trust.

Dis­hon­est people can­not remain in the church of God. The trust neces­sary for serving God togeth­er will be des­troyed as soon as someone gives up the sin­cere wish to search for God’s will.

This takes us to the next point regard­ing the life of the first Chris­ti­ans: com­munity of prop­erty.

5 “All the Believ­ers Had Everything in Com­mon” – Com­munity of Property

In Mark 10:28–30 quoted above, Jesus even prom­ised his dis­ciples houses and fields. This prom­ise was ful­filled by the Chris­ti­ans because they did not con­sider their belong­ings their private pos­ses­sions any­more. They had everything in com­mon and shared their things with their broth­ers and sis­ters in faith. No one told them to do so. They were free to decide what they wanted to do with their pos­ses­sions on the base of their con­science towards God. For someone look­ing from out­side, com­munity of prop­erty was indeed the most obvi­ous expres­sion of their trust and of how united and bound togeth­er they were. This is some­thing that can­not be found in the world. Since they have become a new cre­ation, they did not cling to their earthly belong­ings any longer. The imper­ish­able things were their most pre­cious treas­ure, and so it was nat­ur­al for them to com­mit even the per­ish­able things to the king­dom of God. They did not put everything into a com­mon cash box, but gave accord­ing to what they had wherever there was need. This is not only repor­ted in Acts 2 but also in chapter 4:32–37:

All the believ­ers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their pos­ses­sions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles con­tin­ued to testi­fy to the resur­rec­tion of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so power­fully at work in them all that there were no needy per­sons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was dis­trib­uted to any­one who had need. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barn­a­bas (which means “son of encour­age­ment”), sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles’ feet.

Wherever broth­erly love is not found in today’s so-called churches, where it is replaced with reli­gious forms or the attend­ance of meet­ings, the read­i­ness to share one’s belong­ings will not be found either. Even church taxes, which are not writ­ten in the Bible at all, or tithes, com­monly found among Evan­gel­ic­al groups, do not make it any bet­ter, since each indi­vidu­al only offers a frac­tion of what he con­siders his own. It is not sur­pris­ing that theo­lo­gians look for appar­ent argu­ments to jus­ti­fy the fact that com­munity of prop­erty is not prac­tised today. Many church mem­bers are fond of such argu­ments since they need some reas­on to con­ceal their selfish­ness with regard to mater­i­al things. They say, for example, that the Chris­ti­ans of those days shared their pos­ses­sions because they believed that Jesus would soon return and there­fore thought that they would not need earthly goods much longer any­more. Some­times they even say that the Chris­ti­ans had stopped work­ing and through this the Jer­u­s­alem church had become poor. They argued that Paul then needed to col­lect money later in order to save the believ­ers in Jer­u­s­alem from the threat of star­va­tion that they them­selves had sup­posedly caused.

In these “argu­ments” we see a mali­cious dis­tor­tion of the love that God showed in the lives of the Chris­ti­ans. Such asser­tions are an accus­a­tion against the apostles because they imply that the apostles were not led by God’s Spir­it and had led the church into a dead end. Indir­ectly, Jesus’ wis­dom is also being ques­tioned, who chose these men to build his church. They even ignore the fact that God him­self con­firmed the spir­itu­al author­ity of the apostles by per­form­ing mir­acles through them. It is sad to see how people, espe­cially theo­lo­gians, prefer to under­mine the apostles’ author­ity and ques­tion the work of God rather than to crit­ic­ally exam­ine their own lives before God, who sees the heart. Here we will look at the argu­ments in more detail:

The assump­tion that the first Chris­ti­ans expec­ted Jesus’ immin­ent return can­not be derived from the Bible. Jesus had com­manded them to preach the Gos­pel to the ends of the earth^[20]. They were cer­tainly not so unreal­ist­ic as to think that it would be accom­plished in just a few years. We also read in John 21:18–19 that Jesus had prom­ised Peter that he would die a cruel death in his old age. This is a clear hint that Peter would not exper­i­ence Jesus’ return dur­ing his life­time on earth. The Chris­ti­ans wanted to be pre­pared to meet Jesus and lived in the expect­a­tion that this may hap­pen at any time, whenev­er it might be. He him­self had taught them (and every­one else) to be watch­ful since the Son of Man will come like a thief in the night^[21].

They sold the land they did not need any­more. This had a par­tic­u­lar reas­on. The pious Jews had the expect­a­tion that the Mes­si­ah would appear in Jer­u­s­alem. This is why it is assumed that they bought plots of land in and around Jer­u­s­alem to be bur­ied there. In this way they hoped to be present on the spot when the Mes­si­ah comes at the resur­rec­tion of the dead on the last day. When they became Chris­ti­ans and under­stood that Jesus the Mes­si­ah had already come, they very prob­ably sold these plots of land to sup­port the needy. They how­ever con­tin­ued to live and gath­er in houses as we read in the pas­sage in Acts 2.

We may also assume that the Chris­ti­ans in Jer­u­s­alem did not think any dif­fer­ently to Paul regard­ing work, who clearly rebuked some Chris­ti­ans who had been liv­ing idle lives in the let­ter to the Thessalonians:

Now we com­mand you, broth­ers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any broth­er who is walk­ing in idle­ness and not in accord with the tra­di­tion that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imit­ate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without pay­ing for it, but with toil and labour we worked night and day, that we might not be a bur­den to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imit­ate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this com­mand: If any­one is not will­ing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idle­ness, not busy at work, but busy­bod­ies. Now such per­sons we com­mand and encour­age in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own liv­ing. (2 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 3:6–12)

Com­munity of prop­erty among Chris­ti­ans def­in­itely does not mean that you can just depend on what oth­ers have. Every­one should earn his liv­ing by work­ing and live mod­estly so that he can also give to the needy.

The col­lec­tion for the churches in Palestine which we read about in the New Test­a­ment^[22] is not an argu­ment that com­munity of prop­erty did not work out. On the con­trary it is an argu­ment for how great a bless­ing com­munity of prop­erty is in a lar­ger frame. The reas­on for the first col­lec­tion in the New Test­a­ment was the wide-spread fam­ine repor­ted in Acts 11:27–30:

Now in these days proph­ets came down from Jer­u­s­alem to Anti­och. And one of them named Agabus stood up and fore­told by the Spir­it that there would be a great fam­ine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudi­us). So the dis­ciples determ­ined, every one accord­ing to his abil­ity, to send relief to the broth­ers liv­ing in Judea. And they did so, send­ing it to the eld­ers by the hand of Barn­a­bas and Saul.

This fam­ine cer­tainly affected dif­fer­ent regions of the Roman Empire to vari­ous extents. The Jews were simply poorer since they had to pay sev­er­al taxes and levies: the tithes for the priests and their ser­vice at the temple, and taxes for the temple renov­a­tion, Caesar and the tax col­lect­ors. In such a situ­ation it was nat­ur­al for the Chris­ti­ans who were bet­ter off to help their broth­ers who were more severely affected in the impov­er­ished Palestine—this read­i­ness to share and help went without say­ing. We also find this among the churches which sup­por­ted those in Judea dur­ing Paul’s third mis­sion­ary jour­ney, which Paul reports con­cern­ing the Mace­do­ni­ans in 2 Cor­inthi­ans 8:3–4:

For they gave accord­ing to their means, as I can testi­fy, and bey­ond their means, of their own accord, beg­ging us earn­estly for the favour of tak­ing part in the relief of the saints.

And he car­ried on encour­aging the Corinthians:

I say this not as a com­mand, but to prove by the earn­est­ness of oth­ers that your love also is genu­ine. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. And in this mat­ter I give my judge­ment: this bene­fits you, who a year ago star­ted not only to do this work but also to desire to do it. So now fin­ish doing it as well, so that your read­i­ness in desir­ing it may be matched by your com­plet­ing it out of what you have. For if the read­i­ness is there, it is accept­able accord­ing to what a per­son has, not accord­ing to what he does not have. For I do not mean that oth­ers should be eased and you burdened, but that as a mat­ter of fair­ness your abund­ance at the present time should sup­ply their need, so that their abund­ance may sup­ply your need, that there may be fair­ness. As it is writ­ten, “Who­ever gathered much had noth­ing left over, and who­ever gathered little had no lack.” (2 Cor­inthi­ans 8:8–15)

Of course the col­lec­tion should not cause any­one to be in need, but by shar­ing every­one should receive what he needs for a liv­ing. Paul’s reas­on­ing for this read­i­ness to share was Jesus’ atti­tude of being “poor” so that oth­ers may become “rich”, and not the expect­a­tion of Jesus’ immin­ent return. He con­sidered this shar­ing the proof for the genu­ine­ness of their love. Chris­ti­ans should not love with words but in deed and in truth:

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the broth­ers. But if any­one has the world’s goods and sees his broth­er in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little chil­dren, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:16–18)

We find fur­ther encour­age­ment to share in Hebrews 13:16:

Do not neg­lect to do good and to share what you have^[23], for such sac­ri­fices are pleas­ing to God.

Even here we see that the reas­on for shar­ing what they had with the needy was not because they were expect­ing Jesus to return soon but because it was a sac­ri­fice pleas­ing to God.

5.1 Tithes

We would like to briefly write about tithes. As men­tioned, this prac­tice is wide-spread among evan­gel­ic­al denom­in­a­tions, and many prob­ably think that it is taken from the Bible. To be sure, we can find some­thing about it in the Bible, but not por­trayed as a Chris­ti­an prac­tice. In the Old Test­a­ment it was meant to be a con­tri­bu­tion that sup­por­ted the ser­vice of the priests and Levites and was also used to pay for the sac­ri­fices in the temple.^[24] Besides that, every third year tithes were also dis­trib­uted among the poor of the nation accord­ing to Deu­ter­o­nomy 14:28–29. How­ever, there is no sign of this prac­tice among the Chris­ti­ans in the New Test­a­ment. What we find instead is that they shared everything. This is in line with the descrip­tion in Acts 4:32—they were one in heart and mind. The trust that is as great as this, which is often not even found in fam­il­ies, does not reach its lim­it when it comes to money. They were able to trust each oth­er this much because they knew each other’s lives very well. They knew the sin­cer­ity their broth­ers had in seek­ing God’s will. And on this basis they were able to entrust their money and oth­er goods to each oth­er, know­ing that it will be used for God’s purpose.

6 Sheep Among Wolves

In the early stages the people of Jer­u­s­alem held the Chris­ti­ans in high esteem. It did not take long, how­ever, before the proph­ecy was ful­filled which Jesus had foretold:

“Behold, I am send­ing you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as ser­pents and inno­cent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliv­er you over to courts and flog you in their syn­agogues, and you will be dragged before gov­ernors and kings for my sake, to bear wit­ness before them and the Gen­tiles. When they deliv­er you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be giv­en to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spir­it of your Fath­er speak­ing through you. Broth­er will deliv­er broth­er over to death, and the fath­er his child, and chil­dren will rise against par­ents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. (Mat­thew 10:16–22)

From the begin­ning the Jew­ish reli­gious lead­ers had been try­ing to sup­press this new “sect”^[25] from spread­ing. They were afraid of los­ing their influ­ence on the nation and their hon­our from the people, and refused to hear the truth about their own lives.^[26] So they for­bade the apostles to speak, had them flogged and imprisoned them.^[27] But “every day, in the temple and from house to house, they [the dis­ciples] did not cease teach­ing and preach­ing that the Christ is Jesus.” (Acts 5:42). After Steph­en had made the mem­bers of the San­hedrin aware of their guilt in mur­der­ing the right­eous ser­vant of God and began to show them how they were res­ist­ing God, he was stoned to death, and so became the first to fol­low his master’s example as a mar­tyr.^[28] From the reports about Paul we also learn of how he was per­se­cuted because of his evan­gel­ist­ic activ­it­ies, often by the Jews but also by the Gen­tiles.^[29]

Chris­ti­ans were not people who adap­ted to the spir­it of their time.^[30] As mem­bers of God’s house­hold^[31] they were aware of their duty towards the truth of the Gos­pel and so held to it firmly, even in the face of unbe­liev­ers who res­isted the call to repent­ance. These Chris­ti­ans wanted to show with their lives what the will of God for every­one is. Paul encour­aged them to shine like lights in the midst of a crooked and twis­ted gen­er­a­tion.^[32] This is the view they had of the world, and they knew that friend­ship with the world means enmity with God.^[33] Hence the val­ues they had and the works they did were totally dif­fer­ent from that of the people around them, who lived their lives accord­ing to their own plans and desires. For those who did not accept it as a testi­mony of God’s work, it was taken as a per­son­al accus­a­tion, which some­times even led to viol­ence towards the Gos­pel and those who pro­claimed it.^[34]

In the 2nd and 3rd cen­tur­ies those who pro­fessed their faith in Jesus were out­siders in the soci­ety. They sep­ar­ated from the worldly pleas­ure in which most people found their enjoy­ment. They did not par­ti­cip­ate in pub­lic feasts nor reli­gious rituals, but instead urged the people to repent of their sin­ful lives. In doing so they incurred hos­til­ity. Grue­some rumours were spread about them. Dur­ing the times of state per­se­cu­tion, many were sen­tenced without any proof of their wrong­do­ing. You can find a col­lec­tion of quotes that gives a more detailed insight of the situ­ation by fol­low­ing this link (“Quo­ta­tions from early Chris­ti­an writers”).

7 What Does it Mean for Us?

The way of life of the first Chris­ti­ans was not a par­tic­u­lar form they determ­ined for them­selves. They shared with each oth­er and gave one anoth­er their every­day life, spare time, gifts and abil­it­ies, joy, suf­fer­ing, money and property—everything life con­sists of. In every way they desired to help each oth­er to remain faith­ful in liv­ing for God. As the dis­ciples of Jesus, they desired to fol­low his devo­tion, as apostle John writes:

By this we know love, that he [Jesus] laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the broth­ers. (1 John 3:16)

The love for each oth­er, just as it is nor­mal among broth­ers and sis­ters, was the expres­sion of their love for God. John writes it clear and simple:

We love because he first loved us. If any­one says, “I love God,” and hates his broth­er^[35], he is a liar; for he who does not love his broth­er whom he has seen can­not love God whom he has not seen. And this com­mand­ment we have from him: who­ever loves God must also love his broth­er. (1 John 4:19–21)

The same thing applies today to every­one who wants to fol­low Jesus, that is, to become a Chris­ti­an. To think that being a Chris­ti­an is just a me-and-God rela­tion­ship with some (occa­sion­al) attend­ance of reli­gious meet­ings is self-deception, and it has great con­sequences. Christ’s bride is the church, not an indi­vidu­al Chris­ti­an.^[36] The church is also called his body. He is the head that all mem­bers have to be joined to—the head that leads them all in their com­mon ser­vice for God.^[37] You can learn more about what Jesus wants the church to be like in oth­er art­icles on this web­site, for example in “The Church in the New Test­a­ment”.

***

In our lives we would like to fol­low the example of the first Chris­ti­ans in every regard, and we invite you to do the same togeth­er with us. We meet in dif­fer­ent places in vari­ous towns. We would be glad to take the effort of trav­el­ling great­er dis­tances to get in touch with people who ser­i­ously seek to fol­low Jesus. We know, not just from the words of Jesus^[38], but also from our exper­i­ence, that there are not many who want this. The his­tory of man­kind has always shown that the major­ity does not want to walk on God’s ways.

Just like the first Chris­ti­ans, we too face rejec­tion and slander, and are con­fron­ted with people who try to hinder us on our way. Because they them­selves are not ready to sub­mit their lives to God and his word, they try to cat­egor­ize our love for God and our obed­i­ence as leg­al­ist­ic or exag­ger­ated. We would like to invite each one not to be led by pre­ju­dices or be put off by them, but to do his duty to the truth by get­ting to know our lives and to form his own opin­ion on the base of Scripture.

Through our com­mon life we want to testi­fy to God’s power to change us, and would like to encour­age you not to be of little faith or to doubt wheth­er we can still live this way today. We see not only how great a bless­ing it is but also how neces­sary this way of life is for growth in the real vir­tues: in humil­ity and self­less­ness, in self-denial and devo­tion, in gen­tle­ness and patience, in regard­ing oth­ers high­er than ourselves, in for­go­ing our own advant­age and seek­ing what is best for oth­ers. Through this way of life we exper­i­ence not only how Jesus can make us able to do all these things, but also how much more deeply we under­stand and exper­i­ence his devo­tion and love for us, which leads us to thank and praise him more.

***

Beloved, let us love one anoth­er, for love is from God, and who­ever loves has been born of God and knows God. Any­one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made mani­fest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the pro­pi­ti­ation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one anoth­er. No one has ever seen God; if we love one anoth­er, God abides in us and his love is per­fec­ted in us. (1 John 4:7–12)