The First 'Christians'
THE FIRST ‘CHRISTIANS’ Trinity
Acts 11:19-30 13.10.19
A month or so back, the synod of the Anglican diocese of Wangaratta in rural Victoria voted to bless same-sex marriages. Other Anglicans are hostile to the idea, committed as they are to God’s pattern that marriage is only between a man and a woman, and every variation of that is sin.
Some say that is the genius of Anglicanism. It’s like a big umbrella under which people with all shades of opinion, and even opposite opinions can take shelter. It’s what they call “a broad church”.
Go back 2000 years and Judaism was like that. You couldn’t make a list of features and say “This is what all Jews believe.” There were Sadducees and Pharisees and Herodians and a bunch of other groups, some of whom hate each other.
Once the Jewish establishment has Jesus out of the way, it’s likely that some people thought that if they can get his disciples just to moderate their views a little, there would be room for a Jesus-sect under the Jewish umbrella.
Any hope of that happening was blown out of the water by Stephen back in Acts chapter 7. What he said meant that Christianity and Judaism are like North and South Poles: there is no way the disciples of Jesus can be accommodated by Judaism.
The upshot of that was that the Christians in Jerusalem were run out of town. Back in 8:1, Luke told us that some of them went bush, into Judea and Samaria.
Here in 11:19 he adds that:
- Some went 300 kilometres to Phoenicia, today’s Lebanon
- Some went off the coast to the Island of Cyprus
- Some went 500 kilometres from home up to Antioch near the border between Syria and Turkey. (Now that suddenly sounds very contemporary, doesn’t it?)
What about when they got to Antioch? Some of them did what was the most obvious thing to them to do. They started telling people the gospel by saying that “Jesus is Lord” (v20b). They are not apostles or professional preachers; maybe they can’t answer every question they are asked. They know enough about Jesus to start talking about him.
That same Lord so had his hand on them that “a great number who believed, turned to the Lord (Jesus)” (v21)
Now it was not a problem for the talkers, or the hearers, that many of these converts are more Greek than anything else. Maybe a mix of Turk, Syrian, Cypriot or whatever – but whatever they are, they are not real Jews.
That IS however, a problem for others. All the big names back in Jerusalem have come to Jesus along a Jewish road. Can these others come in from the side, without going down the same road? If they can, what will that mean for being connected with Jerusalem, keeping laws like the Sabbath day and circumcision, and all the rest?
Someone from head office had better check this out. Barnabas is a great choice! He has been with the apostles in Jerusalem since chapter 4, so he knows their thinking. But he might be a risk. After all, he is famous for his generous spirit – and he was born in Cyprus with a Greek heritage. Might he bend too far?
Verse 23: “When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose.”
It’s as clear as the noonday sun to him. They don’t need to go back to some Jewish “go”. Their road to Jesus is fine. They should stay on that road, and keep going.
As Barnabas preaches in Antioch, more people convert to Jesus as Lord – “a great many people” (24). So many that there is no way Barnabas can cover all the bases – 5 sermons and 3 Bible studies in 2 days. Better go and get Paul from his home in Tarsus, just around the corner, further into Turkey. And for 1 whole year, Paul and Barnabas work side by side to bring the church at Antioch to maturity.
They are the most of the details of the story, but what is the point of it? There are some big themes in here.
- A NEW WORLD
Antioch is the third largest city in the Roman Empire – after Rome, and Alexandria in Africa – with a population half a million, at least double the population of Jerusalem at the time. And it’s a pagan city. Can you be a Christian in Antioch without ever having even seen Jerusalem? Yes – “Remain faithful to the Lord (where you are)with steadfast purpose”.
For 1000 years, Jerusalem has been the focal point of God’s dealings with this world. Might the church in Antioch be a centre like that? Sure. It is that church which is the base for all the missionary work of Paul and Barnabas, not Jerusalem. The ground is shifting. It’s no longer about Israel. There is a new world order.
So: do you need all the Jewish ritual bits and pieces from before – or any of them? Any of the holy days, holy places, holy people? No. None at all.
Until now, everything in Acts has happened inside Jewish borders. When Philip told the gospel in Samaria, that was inside. When he met the man from Ethiopia and told him the gospel, that was inside. When Peter told Cornelius, the Roman soldier, about Jesus, it happened inside Jewish borders.
Now, for the first time in this book, we are outside. It’s as though the pagan city of Antioch can as much be “the holy land” as the dirt where the temple sat.
This is no big deal for us. We’ve had 2000 years of the gospel going all over. It was utterly radical for anyone who even smells Jewish. The world that has been for more than 1000 years is now a different world. Of course they are struggling to get this.
Yes, but they did get it. Which is why Paul got to Rome with the gospel, aiming for Spain. Without meaning to, some Christians undo that. They are still focussed on the city of Jerusalem, and on getting as many Jews resettled in Israel as they can, to bring in the kingdom.
Jesus brought in the kingdom 2000 years ago – a spiritual kingdom – and the message of Jesus as Lord has been everywhere since. Let’s not backtrack down a road that these men found so hard to leave.
May I stress this: if you belong to Jesus, you’ve got it all. Yes, without seeing Jerusalem or ever observing a Sabbath day. You’re all the way in along with Barnabas and Paul. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:20 “All the promises of God find their Yes in him.”
People out there are looking for a new world order – political, social, economic. When you belong to Jesus you are part of God’s new world order which supersedes everything in this world.
- A new world order
- A NEW NAME
Who are these converts to Jesus at Antioch? What shall we call them? “Disciples” would work. “Followers of the Way”? That is used of others. But the people of Antioch invent a new word – they call them “Christians” – the first time that name has ever been used (v26).
Names can be important. If you are an “Aussie”, we know you are Australian. If you a bushie”, we know you don’t live on the Eastern seaboard. If you are a “Westie”, we know that you are from one of Sydney’s western suburbs.
The outstanding feature about these converts is not that they were “goodies”, though doubtless they were good. Nor that they were “churchies”, though church mattered to them. The big deal about them was that Christ was so precious to them, and their determination to follow him so strong that “Christies” was an obvious name for them.
I’ve been wondering this week what name people might call me had I been here. Would it have been so obvious that Christ was everything to me that using his name was the obvious choice for me?
The name “Christian” had not existed before this. The new order Jesus has brought is so radical, it is as though a new word has to be invented to describe those who follow him. It is the combination of a Jewish word and a Roman or Latin word.
Which means, I think, that not only you can’t identify Jesus with any nationality … but that being in Jesus’ kingdom is over and above any nationality. It’s as though who we are is not determined by our national identity – or gender, age, occupation or anything else.
I am thankful to be an Australian, and I sing the national anthem with loyal commitment. I am grateful to be a Paterson, and for what that has meant for me.
Far above all of that in importance is that God has made me a Christian. That I have a name that supersedes every other name. That says I am part of something much bigger than any nationality. A name that puts me in the same family as every other convert to Jesus as Lord.
You can keep the name “Islam” which means submitting to a system or keeping a bunch of laws. I’m glad for the name “Christie”, since being a Christian is all about knowing, loving and following a person, Jesus Christ. This really is radical stuff.
- New world-order
- New name
- NEW CHURCH
On Friday I spoke briefly to a friendly young guy who was working on our new building. He knew it was a church building, and unprompted, he said “I am a Christian, but I don’t go to church.”
That’s what many good Australians would say. It would be hard to find anything that was more opposite to the way things are in Christ’s new world order for those who bear his name.
From the first sermon on in the book of Acts, when people convert to Jesus, their conversion is described in phrases that are corporate – they are added to one another in churches, churches grow in number, and so on. Churches are front and centre in God’s new order.
In verse 22, we read that it was “the church in Jerusalem” that sent Barnabas to Antioch. And what was the context for the year’s long labour there by Paul and Barnabas? It was “the church” in Antioch, verse 26.
Is it fair to speak of them in equal terms? As though a new church in a pagan city can be on the same level as the big deal church back at Apostles Central?
Sure it is. In the things that matter, they are identical.
- They both are built on Jesus and his gospel.
- They are both comprised of people who are for Jesus first and foremost.
- They both have God-equipped men teaching them God’s truth.
This week and next our team to the Philippines will be with leaders from maybe 80 local churches. They don’t have our history, our nationality or our resources. So we are superior to them, or can boss them around? No, in essence, they are the same as us … they are for Jesus first and foremost, and have his gospel and they have fallen men like us who teach it. They are no less church than we are, or no more. That’s the way it works out in God’s new world order.
The baby church at Antioch, is just as much church as the one at Jerusalem. It gets to stand in its own right as much as any other church of “Christies”, part of Christ’s new world order. That doesn’t mean they exist only for themselves.
That doesn’t mean churches live to themselves. The last few verses of this chapter tell about the famine that hit large parts of that world, leaving the church in Jerusalem in a tough famine-situation. The believers at Antioch, maybe none of whom even knew anyone in the Jerusalem church, did all they could, according to their capacity, to send relief supplies to the Christies there. One real church to another real church.
The story at Antioch is a little slice of the way in which things work in Christ’s new world order. Everything old is new again. Belonging to Jesus Christ is the big deal. Being in committed fellowship with one another is where it shows.
That nice young guy on Friday had it all wrong, as earnest as he was. For it is part of our DNA, friends, that when we are Christ’s we are also church, his bride, for which he gave his life.
I love reading about Barnabas, and I wish I was more like his … “a good man full of the Holy Spirit and of faith” (v24a).
The story here is bigger than that. With the gospel of Jesus everything changes:
- this world, our world, can never be the same again. We are now free from it, and free to be radically different in it.
- Being known as those for whom Christ is the big deal, is what following him is all about
- Not on our own … but together as the people of God, in the church of Jesus.
A humdrum irrelevant story here? Anything but.