1 Our reason for writing about the first Christians

Our inten­tion in writ­ing about the first Chris­tians 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.

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 com­mand­ment². 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 Golgatha to Pentecost

Even though Jesus had pre­pared his dis­ci­ples for the fact that he would die and rise from the dead¹⁰, 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 Jesus¹¹, 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” them¹². 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 chil­dren¹³ 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 (NIV))

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 them­selves¹⁵ 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 anoth­er¹⁶, 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 of¹⁷, 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 Sap­phi­ra¹⁹ 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 earth²⁰. 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 night²¹.

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 Tes­ta­ment²² 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 have²³, 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 house­hold³¹ 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 broth­er³⁵, 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 Jesus³⁸, 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 exager­rat­ed. 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)

1. Luke 6:12–16. ↩
2. John 13:34–35 ↩
3. John 5:30–46. ↩
4. Luke 11:1. ↩
5. Lukas 5,30–32. ↩
6. Mark 6:31ff. ↩
7. Luke 6:27–35. ↩
8. John 10:11. ↩
9. Luke 6:27–35 ↩
10. Matthew 16:21 ↩
11. Mark 1:14 ↩
12. See Psalm 32:1,5 ↩
13. Romans 5:5 ↩
14. Luke 14:33 ↩
15. Luke 9:23 ↩
16. James 5:16, Acts 19:18 ↩
17. Matthew 5:14–15. ↩
18. Acts 5:12–14. ↩
19. Acts 5:1–11. ↩
20. Acts 1:8 ↩
21. Luke 12:35–40 ↩
22. e.g. in Romans 15:25–27 ↩
23. The Greek word koinon­ia does not stand for alms but the mutu­al help in the church ↩
24. Nehemi­ah 10:37–38. ↩
25. Acts 24:5,14 ↩
26. Jesus had spo­ken about it in John 8:37–47. ↩
27. Acts 5:17–23, 40–41 ↩
28. Acts 7. ↩
29. 2 Corinthi­ans 11:22–27. ↩
30. Romans 12:1–2, 1 Peter 4:1–5 ↩
31. Eph­esians 2:19 ↩
32. Philip­pi­ans 2:14–16 ↩
33. James 4:4. ↩
34. 2 Corinthi­ans 4:7–11. ↩
35. As in oth­er pas­sages of the New Tes­ta­ment, to “hate” here also means some­thing like to “have less regard for” or “put some­thing behind some­thing or some­one more impor­tant” ↩
36. Eph­esians 5:25–27. ↩
37. 1 Corinthi­ans 12:12ff. ↩
38. Luke 13:22–24. ↩