The opening words of Acts sum up the contents of Luke's "first book"’his Gospel’as "all that Jesus began to do and teach" until his ascension (Acts 1:1). These words imply, first, that the narrative in Acts will continue the account of Jesus' activity, as he now carries on his work from his heavenly throne through the Holy Spirit, who transforms, empowers, and deploys his people as his ambassadors on earth. Second, Jesus' twofold ministry while on earth’doing and teaching‘will continue to be twofold as he reigns in heaven. In Acts we can anticipate an account both of Jesus' words and of his deeds. The Christ, who was "mighty in deed and word before God and all the people" (Luke 24:19) during his earthly humiliation, still ministers mightily in both modes now in his heavenly exaltation.
Jesus' teaching receives special emphasis in Acts, since so high a proportion of the book is devoted to recording samples of gospel proclamation in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and beyond. It is also true, however, that the ascended Lord's words, delivered through his apostles, were accompanied and confirmed by deeds that demonstrated his power and compassion. During Jesus' earthly ministry, his awesome acts of might and mercy illustrated the good news of the kingdom, and they certified his authority as the promised messianic King. Peter said to the crowd on Pentecost, "Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst" (Acts 2:22).
Now in the book of Acts the signs and wonders that the risen Christ performed through his apostles confirmed that he had commissioned them to be his spokesmen: "And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles" (2:43). "And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus" (4:33). Paul summed up the purpose of miracles to certify God's spokesmen when he rehearsed his own apostolic credentials: "The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works" (2 Cor. 12:12).
In addition to signaling God's endorsement of his messengers, Jesus' miracles, before his death and after his resurrection, also carried another message: they expressed the compassion of the King for his suffering and sinful subjects. (1) It was compassion that moved Jesus to resurrect a widow's only son, recently deceased, and restore him to his grieving mother (Luke 7:13-15). Compassion moved him to provide food for large crowds, lest they faint from hunger (Mark 8:2). He healed the sick and freed those possessed by demons (Luke 4:40-41). He brought healing and release to suffering people on the Sabbath (Luke 6:6-11; 13:10-17), demonstrating God's life-restoring purposes for that holy day (see Mark 2:27-28).
Jesus taught that there was a wideness in God's mercy, for the Most High "is kind to the ungrateful and the evil" (6:32-36). As the Father's beloved Son, Christ's miracles of mercy likewise reached out beyond the circle of his followers and beyond the borders of Israel's covenant community. More than once in his earthly ministry, this surprising Messiah exerted his kingdom power to deliver marginalized "outsiders" from suffering and sorrow as seen in the following examples.
(1) A desperate mother, Syrian by birth and Greek by culture, despite her past in paganism relentlessly begged this Jewish Messiah to free her daughter from demonic torment. Though Jesus was sent (as he himself said) "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," this Gentile outsider knew that Jesus could and would provide such a feast of mercy and might that the "children" could eat their fill, and the crumbs that fell from their table would more than meet her daughter's need (Matt. 15:21-28).
(2) A Roman centurion showed more faith than those in Israel, and his servant was healed by Christ's word (Luke 7:1-10).
(3) A demonized madman in pagan Gerasa ran at Jesus not because he was drawn in faith but because he was driven by dark spirits who tyrannized his tortured mind. He showed no glimmer of trust at first. How could he, so enslaved by evil? Yet Jesus set him free and drew him by grace into God's kingdom (Luke 8:26-39).
(4) Jesus' cleansing of ten lepers along the border between Samaria and Galilee demonstrated the breadth of God's embrace of grace in two striking ways (Luke 17:11-19). First, of the ten who were cleansed, only one returned to praise God and thank Jesus. The Son had displayed his Father's heart by extending healing mercy even to ingrates. Second, the one who did give thanks was a Samaritan, a "foreigner," as Jesus rightly called him: the Messiah's compassion was reaching beyond the borders of God's covenant community.
Jesus' teaching about kingdom compassion fit his practice. A scholar skilled in the law tried to make its second great commandment’"You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Lev. 19:18)’more achievable, hoping to define "neighbor" in a way that would limit his neighborly obligation. But Jesus pushed in the opposite direction. The scholar should have expected as much. In the same chapter of the law as the command to love one's neighbor are these words: "You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Lev. 19:34; see Deut. 10:18-19). So Jesus told a story of a mugging victim and his three potential rescuers: a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Each character in Jesus' parable is identified in terms of his social circle, except one. Priest and Levite belong to Judaism's honored elite, whereas the Samaritan is a despised outcast. But to whose circle does the victim belong? Whose neighbor is he? (Jesus does not say that the victim is a Jew, though his hearers may have assumed so.) Jesus' point is that mercy that reflects God's compassion does not focus on the boundary of its obligation but on the breadth of its opportunity: "Which…proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" (Luke 10:36). (2) That is how God and his Messiah operate: moving toward, rather than shying away from, people in need’all sorts of people’to lavish rescue and restoration on people in pain. The compassion of the kingdom breaks beyond borders to embrace outsiders and to draw them in, to heal the hurting, to free the captives, and to bring the dead to life.
In the book of Acts, we see Jesus' deeds of compassion carried over after his exaltation in his ministry of mercy through his church. At the temple, a crippled beggar sought only silver, not strengthened ankles to bear his weight, much less salvation from sin and death. But Jesus' name gave him more than he asked, by far: legs to leap for joy, and "perfect health" by faith in Jesus' name (Acts 3:1-11, 16; 4:10-11; see Isa. 35:5-7). The parallels between the healing of this (presumably Jewish) lame man at the temple and another in (manifestly pagan) Lystra (14:8-18) show that the restorative mercy of the Messiah was bursting beyond the ancient covenant community to embrace the Gentiles.
In Jerusalem, people carried their sick into the streets, hoping that Peter's shadow might fall across them (5:15). In pagan Ephesus, people grabbed Paul's headbands and aprons, hoping that apostolic perspiration could cure sickness and expel evil spirits (19:11-12). Whatever blend of superstition and nascent faith motivated such practices, the lavish mercy of God flowed freely in both places: "The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed" (5:16), "and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them" (19:12). (3)
Less visible to the naked eye than the apostles' signs and wonders was fruit that the Spirit began to bear in ordinary believers' attitudes toward their possessions and their neighbors. The free gift of forgiveness through the crucified and risen Christ and life in his Spirit evoked a response of joyful generosity toward others: "And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need" (2:45). This was no compulsory communalism (5:4), but the reflex of hearts so captured by God's compassion that they overflowed with generosity toward fellow believers, expressed in concrete and costly terms. Properties the affluent might otherwise have retained for their own security were liquidated to meet the urgent needs of destitute brothers and sisters in the family of God (4:34-35).
As the church grew, the challenges of distributing food to its many widows increased to the point that a second group of leaders, charged to administer ministries of mercy, was added alongside the apostles, whose focus remained on the Word (6:1-7). (4) Christians continued to care for others in the family of God, even across geographic and cultural distance. When the largely Gentile church in Antioch learned of an impending famine, "the disciples determined, everyone according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea" (11:28-29). Later, carrying another offering from Gentile churches to relieve needy believers in Jerusalem, (5) Paul bade farewell to the elders of Ephesus with a parting reminder of his own example of generous compassion: "In this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive'" (20:35).
Although the need of the church's Greek-speaking widows was the specific occasion for the recognition of a distinct order of mercy ministers in Acts 6, it goes beyond the purpose of that passage to press this specific historical detail in such a way as to exclude the church's ministry of mercy to orphans, to the poor, or to the new covenant equivalent of ancient Israel's "sojourners"’suffering neighbors who do not (yet) belong to the community of the King.
The Law of Moses and the example and instruction of Jesus called God's people to respond to his grace by reaching out, individually and corporately, in actions that display the King's restorative compassion, as well as in words that proclaim the King's redemptive mercy. Followers of Jesus love neighbors in costly and caring ways, not confining their compassion within convenient "neighborhood boundaries." Tabitha, for example, was beloved in Joppa for her good works and acts of charity (9:36), but Luke seems unconcerned to specify whether she had clothed only widows who were followers of Jesus. When she was raised to life, in fact, Peter presented her to "the saints and the widows" (9:41). We are left to speculate whether "the widows" were a subgroup of "the saints," or represented a wider circle of those whose needs Tabitha's kindness had met. Was not her King's compassion shown as surely in her mundane services as a seamstress, as in the awe-inspiring resurrection by which Peter restored her to the church and the widows whom she had clothed?
Luke's account of instances of kingdom compassion in the church's early decades illustrates both the breadth and the focused priority expressed by Paul to the churches of Galatia: "As we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith" (Gal. 6:9). The overarching and comprehensive directive is to "do good to everyone," as God's providence supplies resources and opportunities to express his compassion in action. Within that calling, our first priority is to meet need with mercy for believers within the kingdom community, the household of faith’whether Jesus' suffering brothers and sisters live in our congregation or city, or across the world.
Maintaining the balance the apostle enjoins is no easy challenge. Jesus cared for his disciples and Israel's covenant community, but he also extended his Father's compassion to outsiders and even, on occasion, to the ungrateful. The early church likewise emerged as a community set apart by its mutual care for its helpless members, so that "there was not a needy person among them" (Acts 4:34), a sign of God's blessing on his people (Deut. 15:4-5). Meanwhile, their Lord's generous mercy was shown in the apostles' healings of those who approached with no faith or defective faith but who nevertheless departed as citizens of God's kingdom, having received so much more than they sought. We may find it a difficult and delicate balance, sometimes messy and frustrating, to minister mercy wisely to those outside the church as well as caring for Christ's suffering siblings. Yet Jesus' words and deeds in Acts call his church to reflect both our Father's wide compassion and his focused redemptive love.
2 [ Back ] Edmund Clowney comments on Jesus' question: "Such love [imitating the Father's 'love of grace toward guilty and undeserving enemies (Mt. 5:44-48)'] does not ask what it must do as a minimum, but rejoices in doing unrequired good. The compassion of the Samaritan does not ask, 'Who is my neighbour?' Rather, it displays the free love of a neighbour, reflecting the compassionate love of God (Lk. 10:24-37). We are to be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful." Edmund P. Clowney, The Church (Contours of Christian Theology) (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1995), 161.
3 [ Back ] God later extended mercy through Paul to the hospitable residents of Malta, who kindly cared for shipwreck survivors. In response to Paul's prayer, the Lord healed the father of the island's "chief man," whereupon "the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured" (Acts 28:8-9).
4 [ Back ] Stephen, Philip, and their five colleagues were appointed to "serve" tables. The verb used (diakoneo) belongs to the word-group from which the English word deacon is derived. The noun diakonoi appears elsewhere designating church officers whose supportive role complements the teaching and governing labors of overseers/elders (Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3). Many theologians see in Acts 6 the institution of the ongoing office of deacon, yet the Seven may have filled an extraordinary, transitional role in mercy ministry, anticipating the later, continuing office of the diaconate in a way analogous to the apostles' ministry of Word and rule, ministries that were later carried on (without the gifts of new revelation and confirming miracles) in the ordinary office of overseer/elder. After Stephen's martyrdom and the dispersion of many believers (including, presumably, the rest of the Seven), when the church at Antioch later sent an offering to relieve poor Christians in Jerusalem, it was entrusted to the church's elders (not deacons) for distribution (11:30). In any case, Acts 6 illustrates the general distinction between word ministry and deed/mercy ministry (see 1 Pet. 4:10-11).
5 [ Back ] Although Luke does not explicitly mention this offering, he lists the representatives of the Gentile churches who accompanied Paul (Acts 20:4). Paul discusses the Gentiles' offering for the poor in Judea in his letters (1 Cor. 16:1-4; 2 Cor. 8-9; Rom. 15:25-32).
