Acts 1:1-11 | God's Power at WorkSample

Here’s how it opens: “In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven… (Acts 1:1-2). Acts is a sequel. It’s a sequel written by a disciple named Luke. It’s a sequel to a Gospel he wrote about what Jesus began to do and to teach. Did you catch that? What Jesus began to do and to teach.

People tend to see the Gospels as the totality of what Jesus did and taught. As though Jesus’s work and ministry were contained to the short time he walked the earth. Luke sees it differently. The Gospels are just the beginning. Jesus is still at work. Acts is about the ongoing work and teaching of Jesus.

Just like we shorten the name of the “Gospel according to Luke” to “Luke,” we do the same with Acts too. Look it up, especially in older, hard-copy editions of the Bible, and you’ll see its fuller name: Acts of the Apostles. The title isn’t original. It started getting labeled that way around the end of the second century. Because in Acts we see what the apostles are up to. (Peter and Paul anyway. Aside from a brief interaction with James and John and the other James, we barely get a mention of what most of Jesus’s apostles were up to.)

A lot of people challenge the longer title. Not because it isn’t true, but because it might lead you to focus on the wrong thing. Acts really isn’t just about the acts of the apostles. It’s more about the acts of God. Some say it would be better titled, Acts of the Holy Spirit. But that too, might not be far enough. Because Acts is about Jesus. The Bible will even call the Holy Spirit Christ’s spirit. Maybe the New Testament scholar, NT Wright, sums it up best when he calls Acts “The Deeds and Teachings of King Jesus, Part 2.”

Acts is about seeing what Jesus is continuing to say and do, and then responding. Today, as you read the intro to Acts, ask yourself: How does this set the stage for what God wants to do? What is Jesus doing? What does he say is going to happen? And what does he want to do in and through me?