THE LIVING
CHURCH
Meditations in the Acts of the Apostles
Acts 28:23-25
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WE are coming to the end of this record of the life and growth of the early church, recorded for us in the Acts of the Apostles. What we find is that, as it commenced, so it went on. The church continued to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ. This is the only real good news that can be found in this world. It is the good news that through faith in Jesus we can escape from this fallen and sin torn world into the pure and free Kingdom of God, which transcends this world and goes on under the rule of God for ever.
Paul had been brought to Rome to face trial before Caesar. We might well expect him to be overwhelmed and occupied with this and what it might bring. Instead we find him forgetful of himself, and concerned for others and their eternal salvation.
As usual Paul goes first to the Jews, the people of his own nation, who had for centuries looked forward to the coming of the kingdom of God. However their understanding of this kingdom was all wrong. Paul spends time to explain to them the truth about the kingdom (v.23). From morning to evening he explained and declared to them the kingdom of God. He tried to convince them about Jesus from the Old Testament, which was the Jewish Scriptures.
There are important things to notice here in Paul’s ministry. First of all he explained the gospel of the kingdom. There is nothing intellectually unacceptable about the gospel of God. It is not just an appeal to the emotions without any intellectual integrity. Far from it. The gospel is reasonable, and can be explained and needs to be explained. It satisfies the mind as well as the heart and the soul. When we believe the gospel we are not denying our reason, and exercising unreasonable and blind faith. The gospel is founded on the fact of history. We believe in a real person, who lived and showed by his life that he was God as well as man. We have historical verification that Jesus both died and rose again from the dead.
Further when we seek to understand his teaching it is plainly good and pure. Further it is the only teaching which explains the world as it is, and the problems all down history. It is the only message that offers a reasonable and viable salvation from the problems of humanity. It is the only message that shows how we can know God and be reconciled with him.
We must take time as Paul did to explain the gospel, and teach the truths of God revealed to us in the Bible. But Paul did more than just explain the gospel, he also declared. The gospel of the kingdom of God is not some interesting information we can receive or reject. The gospel is the gospel of God, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who created all things and rules all things in heaven and earth. It is a gospel of grace and love. It reveals the wondrous sacrifice God made to enable him justly to forgive and accept us. It reveals also that God freely offers us his love and forgiveness through Christ, and also tells us that he wants our love and obedience. But this is still the word of the King of kings. We are offered free salvation at the cost of the life of Jesus in our place. However the gospel declares that if we refuse God’s love in Christ, and if we refuse to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, and receive his love in obedience and faith, and own him as our King, then only death and loss, and everlasting woe remains for us.
There is nothing ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ about the gospel of God. It is life if it is received, and the joy of fellowship with God, but it is eternal loss if we refuse it. This is the tragedy that we read here. Some of the Jews believed, but many disagreed with the truth and left Paul, rejecting the love of God (v.25).
The last things from these few verses which we learn about the gospel of God concerning our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is that it is not a novelty thought up by Paul or in New Testament times. We read hear that Paul tried to convince these Jews concerning Christ from the Law of Moses and the Prophets. By this we understand that Paul preached Christ to them from the Old Testament. The promise of salvation through Jesus Christ is the key that unlocks the meaning of the Old Testament. From the promise of the seed of the woman to crush the serpents heads in Genesis 3, to the promise of the seed of Abraham through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed, to the prophesies concerning the Servant of God in the book of Isaiah, and the coming of the Lord our Righteousness in Jeremiah, all through the Old Testament, the promise of the Messiah who would come to love and to save us from our sins is proclaimed. God’s salvation through Christ was God’s plan of love from eternity to eternity.
Let us be like Paul who was not ashamed of the Gospel of God, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the Gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, which is a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written (in the Old Testament): "The righteous shall live by faith." (Romans 1:16,17)