Acts 2:47

Acts 2:47 (R.V.)

A pure Church an Increasing Church

Notice here:

I. The profound conception which the writer had of the present action of the ascended Christ. Headds to the Church, not wenot our preaching, not our eloquence, our fervour, our efforts; these may be the weapons in His hands, but the hand that wields the weapon gives it all its power to wound and to heal, and it is Christ Himself, who by His present energy, is here represented as being the Agent of all the good that is done by any Christian community, and the builder up of those Churches of His, in numbers and in power.

II. Notice how emphatically there is brought out here the attractive power of an earnest and pure Church. Wherever there is a little knot of men obviously held together by a living Christ, and obviously manifesting in their lives and characters the features of that Christ transforming and glorifying them, there will be drawn to them by the gravitation which is natural in the spiritual realm souls that have been touched by the grace of the Lord, and souls to whom that grace has been brought the nearer by looking upon them. Wheresoever there is inward vigour of life there will be outward growth; and the Church which is pure, earnest, living, will be a Church which spreads and increases.

III. Observe the definition given here of the class of persons gathered into the community, "Those that were being saved." Through all life the deliverance goes on, the deliverance from sin, the deliverance from wrath. The Christian salvation, then, according to the teaching of this emphatic phrase, is a process begun at conversion, carried on progressively through the life, and reaching its climax in another state. Day by day, through the spring and the early summer, the sun is longer in the sky and rises higher in the heavens. And the path of the Christian is as the shining light. Last year's greenwood is this year's hardwood; and the Christian, in like manner, has to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord and Saviour. So these progressively, and as yet imperfectly saved people, were gathered into the Church.

A. Maclaren, Christ in the Heart,p. 183.

References: Acts 2:47. C. J. Vaughan, Church of the First Days,vol. i., p. 92.Acts 3:1. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xix., p. 376. Acts 3:2. Ibid.,vol. xvi., p. 361; W. Scott, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxviii., p. 244; H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,p. 381; Ibid., Forty-eight Sermons,vol. i., p. 105.