Seven Marks of a New Testament Church:. David Alan Black
rather reluctant to add to the number of books on Acts. But I do want to awaken Christians to what these early followers of Jesus achieved. Their story is a remarkable one, and we would do well to emulate it. There is nothing new or profound in what I have written here. This is a simple book that any Christian can follow, even the newest believer. Quotations from the New Testament are my own translations made from the original Greek. In case you’re wondering, the seven characteristics we’ll be discussing are:
Evangelistic preaching
Christian baptism
Apostolic teaching
Genuine relationships
Christ-centered gatherings
Fervent prayer
Sacrificial living
All over the globe there is a beautiful but powerful grassroots movement in the church asking the question, “What does a healthy congregation look like?” Many are looking for a simple, biblical definition of “church.” Perhaps The First Church of Jerusalem can provide us with some answers. I hope so!
1. Evangelistic Preaching
“Peter said to them, ‘Repent’.”
In this book we are looking at the characteristics that marked the early church in Acts and how these characteristics might mark our churches today. It is clear, to start with, that a New Testament church is of necessity an evangelistic church. The first purpose of the church is to connect people to Jesus Christ. This is called the “Great Commission,” and it is good news in every way. Here’s how Matthew recorded it (Matt. 28:19-20):
So wherever you go, train everyone you meet — the people in every nation — how to be My followers. Mark them publicly by baptism in the triune name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them not just in knowledge but in the practice of everything I’ve commanded you. And as you do this, remember: I will be with you, day after day after day, until the very end of the age.
Mark’s version is as follows: “Go everywhere in the world and share the Good News with everyone” (Mark 16:15). Proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel was a decisive factor in the formation and growth of the early church. For it is here, in the event that happened at Calvary and on the first Easter Sunday, that the Christian church distinguishes itself from all the world’s religions. See how carefully Luke expounds this theme in our text (Acts 2:37-41):
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the Holy Spirit as a gift. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Him.” And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Be saved from this corrupt generation!” So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand people were added to the group.
Clearly the risen Savior is eager to add new members to His body. So when we say that evangelistic preaching is the first mark of the church, what is meant is that a healthy church, like a healthy body, is always growing. Hence the first Christians were committed to evangelistic outreach. They were faithful to the duty their Master had placed on them. There was a whole world out there waiting to hear the Good News. Opportunities abounded for infusing the love of Christ into sin-sickened hearts. And the early Christians made the most of them. That is the sort of commitment that packs power in the twenty-first century, as it did in the first.
Of course, there is an entirely different way of looking at “preaching” today, and it would be helpful for us to consider it briefly. The trend in recent years is to apply the term
“preaching” to the modern thirty-minute sermon delivered on Sunday mornings. It is the pastor, we are told, and not the evangelist, who is in view when the idea of preaching is under consideration. This understanding will not stand. In the first place, it is plain from the New Testament that preaching takes place in an evangelistic context. The sermons in Acts are good examples of this. Note that the lost, not the saved, were the objects of Peter’s preaching on the Day of Pentecost. And so it is elsewhere in Acts. In the second place, to call New Testament pastors “preachers” is to ignore the biblical texts that consistently portray the role of pastor as that of teacher. Two texts are of greatest importance here: Eph. 4:11 (“And He gifted some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastor-teachers….”) and 1 Tim. 3:2 (“Now an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, able to teach….”). If, therefore, we would retain the New Testament’s own perspective on the role of a pastor, we must be wary of applying the term “preaching” to what takes place when believers gather for mutual edification. Preaching is neither the sole nor primary task of pastor-teachers. It is simply sharing the Good News, and the first believers were so successful at it that they were accused of “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). The Christians of New Testament days saw bold evangelism as the purpose for which the church existed.
But what exactly is evangelism? And how is it to be practiced today? There are at least five characteristics that always mark genuine evangelism. Let us examine them a little more closely.
A Christ-exalting message is perhaps the first characteristic that strikes us. Evangelism is neither a system nor a method. It is simply bringing people face to face with a Person. It is sharing the Good News of what God has done in Jesus Christ through His death and resurrection. It is the wonderful story of how God rescues people in their need and transforms them into a new society. And note: There is nothing shallow about this message. The Gospel is a life-changing message, and the Christians who first turned the world upside down knew it.
Do we truly understand this message, and are we able to share it with others? We would be wise to store away in our memories certain key verses from Scripture that summarize the Gospel. A good example is 1 Cor. 15:1-4. Here we see that Paul had a deep assurance of the truth of what he was preaching, and supremely of the reality of the death, burial, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances of Christ. Conversion is unthinkable without such an understanding of the significance of Calvary and the empty tomb. Another passage is Rom. 10:9-10. Unless we confess Jesus as Lord and believe that God raised Him from the dead, we cannot be saved. The intellectual content of saving faith can be as simple as “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor. 12:2). This confession, indeed, lies at the heart of every true conversion.
We must, then, immerse ourselves in the Word we proclaim. This is an age of relativity, but people are crying out for truth. It is up to us to explain the Gospel to them in words they can grasp. Like the early Christians, we must discover the need for a Jesus-centered presentation, however flexible our evangelistic methods might be. This means that, like the apostles in Acts, we must always seek to exalt Christ in our preaching. The early Christians were consumed with a passion for Jesus. No one else was so important to them. If people have really found the Good News, they will always be eager to tell others of Jesus and His love. And there is nothing so attractive in this world as a church in which Jesus is exalted.
A second characteristic that stands out when we think of evangelism is its Spirit-dependence. As David Wells puts it in his book God the Evangelist, it is the Holy Spirit who initiates, motivates, and empowers evangelism. Indeed, the Holy Spirit is the supreme actor in the book of Acts, and He was the source of power in the lives of the earliest disciples. It was the Spirit who launched the first evangelistic outreach on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:38 ff.), and it was the Spirit who stirred up the hearts of the believers in Antioch to begin evangelizing Asia Minor (Acts 13-14). The same theme is apparent throughout Acts. These followers of Jesus lived in total dependence on the Holy Spirit. Nothing was allowed to hinder His power in their lives.
What about us? We know little of the Spirit’s presence and power today. We rely instead on our methods, education, and finances. Perhaps there is no greater challenge to the contemporary church than to repent of our overdependence on manmade evangelistic strategies. The first Christians sought to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18) and to obey Him