The Result of Our King’s Evangelism in Acts
Introduction
The following is an excerpt from a book entitled, The Kingdom of God, page 137. This book is by the author of this series.
IF, in fact, God created all mankind to be His children, what must Jesus accomplish in the “last days” of time as king over God’s kingdom? What He desired to accomplish is what happened according to the New Testament.
To implement God’s purposes, Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, needed to reconcile mankind to God (II Cor. 5:17-19). Jesus’ reconciliation plan has four main parts. They are the evangelism of the world, the seating in Christ of people from the world realm, sanctification of the church and His return trip for faithful children of God. Jesus did the work for His part in three ways: by becoming incarnate, by living in a physical body with the knowledge of good and evil without choosing evil and by His crucifixion on the cross (Phil. 2:5-11; II Cor. 5:21; I Pet. 2:24).
Our kings’ implementation of His kingdom during the last days of time involves evangelism (Matt. 28:19). Without evangelism there would be no advertisement of Jesus’ reconciliation program. Evangelism is the offering of good news to those who do not have it. End of excerpt.
One result of Jesus’ thirty year evangelism story in Acts is that the seed of the kingdom was planted and churches being built (the seating in Christ of people from the world realm) from Jewish Jerusalem to pagan Rome. These congregations of God’s people have members from every class of people. The two most inclusive classes were the Jew and the Gentile. Within the Roman Empire there were the Greeks (Gr. hel’lane) and the non-Greeks (Barbarians in KJV). The Greek word is barbarous in Rom. 1:14.
In fact, the class concept for personal identity was removed when Jesus became king over God’s kingdom. “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Gal. 3:28. The result of God breaking down the Jew/Gentile wall will be studied in Part V. Also, we will take another look at the “towel and basin” leadership mentality Jesus demonstrated and ordained for church leaders. This was introduced in Part I, Lesson One.
Since Acts is the historical and geographical context for several letters in the New Testament, we will want to briefly survey the churches who received letters from the Apostle Paul during this historical period.
The opposition of the Pharisees and other “self serving” people will be identified in the context of the individual narratives in Acts (Gal. 6:12, 13; II Cor. 2:17). This information will serve in our exegetical approach to reading the letters.
To understand how a kingdom functions we first ask; “What is the form government?” We understand the kingdom of God is ruled by God Almighty (Gen. 17:1; I Tim. 6:13-16). Jesus Christ has been given power over a dimension of God’s kingdom to bring to God the fruit from His creation of mankind (I Cor. 8:6; I Tim 2:5, 6). God did not place Himself under the rule of His Son (I Cor. 15:27).
Jesus rules the dimension of God’s kingdom He has been authorized to rule (Luke 10:22; Matt. 28:18). Jesus rules God’s church (I Tim. 3:15). The catholic (universal) church has been purchased by the blood of Christ (Acts 20:27, 28). In this scripture, we learn the individual church at Ephesus was under the elders. The question for each Christian in each congregation of God’s church is; “How does Jesus rule each church?” Jesus rules each church by the elders (I Tim. 5:17-19). An elder may teach and preach; however, a preacher never rules a church. Timothy and Titus received their power over churches via Paul’s apostleship.
Finally, we will investigate the individual role of each Christian in God’s evangelism program “in Christ.” In Part V, Lesson Fourteen, in the book entitled, The Kingdom of God, pages 283-296, you can find a lesson entitled “Evangelism.” We will use some excerpts from this lesson for our final lesson in Acts.
