Acts 4

Acts 4:32, etc. The reasons why the primitive Christians of the church of Jerusalem had all things common, seem to be these:

1. Great part of the members of this church were strangers or Hellenists, or Grecians, as here called. The first Christian church was set up in Jerusalem, the centre of the resort of the Jews from all nations, when they came up to their three great feasts; and therefore the Christian church of Jerusalem, as it was the only Christian church then in the world, was, as it were, the house for the reception and entertainment of the people of Christ, that came from all parts of the world, as we read that this church was constituted of Jews from every nation under heaven. But these strangers did not bring their estates with them, and yet it was very needful that they should mostly keep together in their new and infant state, and not disperse by returning into their several countries; it was fit therefore that the Hebrew Christians should entertain them, and give them of what they had; they all lived upon the estates of the Christians that properly belonged to Judea, and therefore it came to pass that there soon arose a complaint that the Grecians were neglected in the daily ministration; for the estates being originally the Hebrews', they some of them began to grudge to bestow so freely of it on them as on themselves. The circumstances of this church being such, it was thought meet that the church of Jerusalem, which was the first church, and then the only Christian church, and a long time after as a mother to all other churches, should be as a common father's house, where all the children from the utmost ends of the earth might be freely entertained, without money and without price: representing the manner of their spiritual entertainment in their Father's house.

2. Many of them were to be continually employed as teachers, as the apostles, and the whole number of that first one hundred and twenty, on everyone of whom the Holy Ghost was poured out in his extraordinary gifts, sitting on each of them in the appearance of cloven tongues of fire, to fit them and mark them out for teachers; and accordingly they all began to exercise their gifts in teaching, as appears by the beginning of the second chapter of Acts. And after this the same miraculous gifts were given to great numbers of others among them, to fit them also to be teachers, for it was agreeable to the circumstances the church was then in, a little flock in the midst of a dark, blind world, and agreeable to that design of God, of a swift propagation and dispersion of the gospel over great part of the world, that great numbers of the first Christians should be teachers; but those being constantly employed in this work, it was necessary that they should be maintained by the substance of others; and there being so many of them was another thing that made it needful that they should have all things common.

3. The state that this church was in, in the midst of an enemy's country, liable to be sorely persecuted, and driven to and fro, made this requisite, on several accounts:

First. It was needful that their possessions should be turned into that which was portable, so that when persecuted in one city they might fly to another.

Secondly. Their being subject to such great and continual persecutions, made it needful that they should not be entangled in the world, or encumbered with worldly cares about their estates. This made it needful that they should do as a man that is going a journey, about to remove to some other country, sell what he has, and carry the effects with him. A man in his journey has no care but only to use what he carries with him, to lay out his money to support him from hand to mouth; or as a man that goes into the wars, he has no care about anything but fighting, and receiving his food daily from a common stock.

Thirdly. This made them less liable to the rage of their persecutors. A people that are supported one by another, by what they have among them in common, are not so liable to be deprived of all support, as he that has nothing but a possession of his own to depend on; for when things are in common, if they took one, and took from him what he had about him, yet there remained others to help him. A portable estate, consisting in money, is also more easily concealed, and kept out of the way of persecutors, than a real estate.

Acts 6