Our church's home groups are studying Romans 12-16 this term, and this past week we looked closely at Romans 12:1-2. We spent quite a bit of time discussing the idea that we must be 'transformed by the renewing of your minds', and how we work this transformation out in practice. The group that meets at our home talked about the importance of recognising the role of Scripture in this renewing of our minds. This meant devoting ourselves to sitting under the preaching of the Word, engaging in the study of the Bible in groups and individually, and so on.

Some years ago, I remember reading a portion of Don Carson and Douglas Moo's book, An Introduction to the New Testament, that related to this discussion of the importance of the Word of God in our transformation. In their chapter on the book of Acts, they write this:

An easily overlooked theme in Acts is the power of the word of God. Again and again, Luke attributes the growth and strength of the church to the dynamic activity of God's word. Preaching the world of God is what the apostles do wherever they go. 'Received the word of God' is another way of saying 'became a Christian' (Acts 11:1). Especially striking are those places where Luke, usually in transitional summaries, claims that the word of God 'grew' or 'spread' or 'increased' (Acts 6:7; 12:24; 13:49; 19:20). For Luke the word of God is especially the message about God's gracious redemption through Jesus Christ. For all Luke's emphasis on the importance of apostolic preaching, therefore, he makes clear that it is only as they are faithful witnesses to the Word that spiritual transformation takes place. As C. K. Barrett notes, 'Luke's stress on the proclamation of the Word...shows that the Word itself was the decisive factor,' and that the church is an agency of salvation 'only in so far as it provides the framework within which the preaching of the Word takes place.'

It really testifies to the significance of Scripture in the transformation of people that Luke gave it so much emphasis in Acts. And as we see in Romans 12, Paul felt the same way. If we are to be truly transformed, we must allow the Bible to have a prominent place in our lives. As David simply and honestly writes, 'How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word' (Psalm 119:1).

John Stott, in his book, The Cross of Christ, briefly mentions the role of the image of a fish in early Christianity:

Only the initiated would know, and nobody else could guess, that icthys ('fish') was an acronym for Iesus Christos Theou Huios Sotēr ('Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour'). But it did not remain the Christian sign, doubtless because the association between Jesus and a fish was purely acronymic (a fortuitous arrangement of letters) and had no visual significance.

Clearly Stott never had the privilege of driving around 21st century America.

Acts 2:42-47 is a favourite passage of those who like to talk about an ideal of what the church should be like, and for good reason – we have in these few verses one of the clearest biblical pictures of a vibrant, living, and active church. Mike Goheen and Craig Bartholomew, in their book, The Drama of Scripture, discuss the marks of the early church in this passage:

As Luke describes the young church, it has three defining qualities. The first is devotion: this new community devotes itself to the apostles' teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer so that they might more and more experience the life of the kingdom (2:42). The church's second defining quality is that the life of Christ in manifested both in the lives of individual members and in the life of the community considered as a whole. The church is thus known by convincing signs of God's saving power within it (2:43), by justice and mercy in its communal relations (2:44-45), by joyful conviviality (2:46), and by worship (2:47). Third, as the liberating life of the kingdom becomes more and more evident in the church, we hear that the exalted Lord "[adds] to their number daily those who are being saved" (2:47). This too fulfills the Old Testament prophecies about God's kingdom. The prophets pictures the drawing power of a renewed Israel (Isaiah 60:2-3; Zechariah 8:20-23): "A decisive element of the prophetic conception of the pilgrimage of the nations to Zion is that the Gentiles, fascinated by the salvation visible in Israel, are driven of their own accord to the people of God. They do not become believers as a result of missionary activity; rather, the fascination emitted by the people of God draws them close." This newly formed community of the early church is attractive to outsiders. The life of the believing community radiates the light of the kingdom and thus draws people from darkness (cf. Ephesians 5:8; 1 Peter 2:9).

We have here a church which understands that the gospel is about more than just saving souls, and is more than just a belief one needs to hold in order to guarantee eternal life. The gospel is an announcement that in the person of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God has come. The gospel calls people to be members of this Kingdom, to serve King Jesus, and to have their whole beings transformed by the power of the risen Christ. The church, believing this message, begins to embody a new reality that testifies in word and bears witness in deed to the rule and lordship of Christ over all of creation. By its words and deeds the church then invites people to an encounter with the Kingdom of God and the true freedom, justice, and peace that comes through the rule of the sovereign Lord, in order that they too might confess that Jesus is Lord and be baptised into this new life.

In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, New Testament scholar N.T. Wright discusses the centrality of the resurrection to early Christianity:

In early Christianity resurrection moved from the circumference to the center. You can't imagine Paul's thought without it. You shouldn't imagine John's thought without it, though some have tried. It is enormously important in Clement and Ignatius, in Justin and Irenaeus. It is one of the key beliefs that infuriated the pagans in Lyons in A.D. 177 and drove them to butcher several Christians, including the bishop who preceded the great Irenaeus. Belief in bodily resurrection was one of the two central things that the pagan doctor Galen noted about the Christians (the other being their remarkable sexual restraint). Take away the stories of Jesus' birth, and you lose only two chapters of Matthew and two of Luke. Take away the resurrection, and you lose the entire New Testament and most of the second-century fathers as well (42-43).

He goes on to note that this belief in resurrection and its implications was perceived as a major threat by the Roman authorities, and was one of the reasons Christians in the early centuries faced persecution:

Because of the early Christian belief in Jesus as Messiah, we find the development of the very early belief that Jesus is Lord and that therefore Caesar is not... Already in Paul the resurrection, both of Jesus and then in the future of his people, is the foundation of the Christian stance of allegiance to a different king, a different Lord. Death is the last weapon of the tyrant, and the point of the resurrection, despite much misunderstanding, is that death has been defeated. Resurrection is not the redescription of death; it is its overthrow and, with that, the overthrow of those whose power depends on it. Despite the sneers and slurs of some contemporary scholars, it was those who believed in the bodily resurrection who were burned at the stake and thrown to the lions. Resurrection was never a way of settling down and becoming respectable; the Pharisees could have told you that. It was the Gnostics, who translated the language of resurrection into a private spirituality and a dualistic cosmology, thereby more or less altering its meaning into its opposite, who escapted persecution. Which emperor would have sleepless nights worrying that his subjects were reading the Gospel of Thomas? Resurrection was always bound to get you into trouble, and it regularly did (50).

Resurrection has moved to the periphery in twenty-first century Western Christianity. With the exception of Easter, you find little mention of it in the everyday language of Christians. Talk of Jesus' death and what he did for individual believers is plentiful (it is the major theme, for instance, in much of contemporary worship music), and while lip service is paid to Christ being Lord over all, the implications of this are not often thought of or practiced. Christians who are content to privatise and internalise their faith are hardly a threat to the established order. It should not be surprising, then, that society generally views them with passing indifference. What would happen if the church were to restore the resurrection to its proper, central place? Our comfortable lives would probably not be so comfortable anymore.

We have just begun to read John Stott's little book, The Living Church, together as a staff team at our church. In the first chapter, he writes about some of the defining marks of the early church as recorded in Acts 2:42-47, one of which was a strong committment to evangelism.

The fervor the early church manifested in fulfilling its mission to be witnesses to the gospel of Jesus Christ is no secret, and Stott highlights the fact that the Lord blessed their efforts by "adding to their number daily those who were being saved" (Acts 2:47). He notes that "those early Christians did not regard evangelism as an occasional activity...[but] their witness was as continuous as their worship" (32).

Part of the reason they devoted themselves wholeheartedly to this task was because they had this eager expectation that the Spirit was actively at work drawing people to himself and believed that they were his instruments to gather the people of God from every nation, tribe, and language. They were animated by the conviction that if they faithfully proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ, they would see their efforts bearing fruit by the power of the Spirit.

In the West as we continue to witness the rapid decline of Christianity, it is easy to lose hope in ever seeing this kind of result in our day. And our disillusionment plays a part in leading us to neglect our call to bear witness to the risen Lord. We also lose confidence in work of the Spirit, and in some instances, may even be tempted to think that the Spirit has left the church. As a result, we turn to devising all kinds of plans and methods and programs to get people to come into our churches, and hope that in the process, the Spirit comes back.

But the Spirit already came at Pentecost, and the reality is that he has not left the church! We can rejoice in this truth, and root ourselves in the knowledge that he is always with us. Jesus promised in Matthew 16:18 that he will build his church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. We are living in a time where most of his work to build his church seems to be going on in other parts of the world, but the staggering growth of the church around the world alone should remind us how amazing the work of the Spirit can be.

Let us recover the eager expectation that characterized the early church and pray that God would work powerfully through us to gather his people to himself.