Click to Download: The First Christians vs. Christians Today

A Comparison Between the Believers in Acts and the Church We Have Settled For

I want to give you two lists. Read both of them. Then I want you to do something most of us are not willing to do. Be honest about which one describes you and the congregation you are part of.

This is not an attack on Christianity. It is a plea for it. I love the church that Jesus purchased with His own blood. That is precisely why I cannot stay quiet about what I see. And Jesus will hold all of us as teachers to a higher standard (James 3:1); I take that seriously.  I take that very seriously.

The first Christians were not smarter than us. They had no church buildings, no printed Bibles, no Christian radio, no podcasts. What they had was a pursuit of God so consuming and costly that the Roman world around them could not ignore it. Three thousand were added in a single day. They turned cities upside down. They suffered and kept going. They prayed like something was at stake. They gave like possessions did not matter. They gathered not because it was Sunday but because they needed each other and could not stay away from God.

The word Christian was first used in Antioch to describe these people (Acts 11:26). It was not a label they chose. It was a description others assigned to them because what they were doing was so distinctly like Christ that no other word fit.

I want you to read what those first Christians did. Then I want you to read what many who carry that same name look like today. Then I want you to sit with what Jesus said to two churches in Revelation who thought they were doing fine.

THE FIRST CHRISTIANS

They prayed. Relentlessly.

• One hundred and twenty gathered in the upper room and devoted themselves to prayer before Pentecost ever came (Acts 1:14).
• The church continued steadfastly in prayers as a defining mark of their life together (Acts 2:42).
• When Peter was in prison, the church gathered and prayed without ceasing for him (Acts 12:5).
• Paul commanded believers to continue in prayer, to watch in it, to be instant in it (Romans 12:12, Colossians 4:2).

They fasted. Regularly.

• The church at Antioch was worshiping and fasting when the Holy Spirit spoke and sent out the first missionaries (Acts 13:2-3).
• Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in every church with prayer and fasting (Acts 14:23).
• Jesus assumed His followers would fast and gave instructions on how. Not if you fast. When (Matthew 6:16-18).

They gathered outside the formal assembly.

• They met daily in the temple courts and from house to house (Acts 2:46).
• They were together. Constantly. Breaking bread, sharing meals, bearing one another’s lives (Acts 2:44-46).
• When crisis came, they gathered. When there was news, they gathered. The assembly was not the ceiling of their community. It was the floor.

They were bound to each other.

• They shared possessions with anyone who had need (Acts 2:44-45, Acts 4:32-35).
• They bore one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2).
• They wept with those who wept and rejoiced with those who rejoiced (Romans 12:15).
• When Paul left Ephesus for the last time, the elders wept, fell on his neck, and kissed him because they were losing someone they loved (Acts 20:37).

They were willing to lose everything.

• Peter and John stood before the Sanhedrin knowing what had happened to Jesus and told that council plainly they could not stop speaking (Acts 4:19-20).
• Paul counted his credentials, his reputation, his safety, and eventually his life as loss for the sake of knowing Christ (Philippians 3:7-8).
• Stephen was stoned to death while praying for the men who were killing him (Acts 7:59-60).

They searched the Scriptures like something depended on it.

• The Bereans searched the Scriptures daily to verify what Paul was preaching (Acts 17:11).
• They received the apostles’ teaching not as the word of men but as the Word of God (1 Thessalonians 2:13).
• They passed letters among the churches and read them aloud in the assembly (Colossians 4:16).

CHRISTIANS TODAY

Now read this list. Read it slowly.

There are no prayer meetings.

• Many congregations have not held a church prayer meeting in years (if ever).
• When prayer requests are shared on Sunday morning, they are rarely followed up on. Nobody calls to find out whether the prayer was answered.
• Private prayer has been reduced to mealtime grace and a few words before bed. Sustained, serious, watchful prayer is almost unknown.

Fasting has disappeared entirely.

• Millions of people who call themselves Christians have never heard a single sermon on fasting, never practiced it, and never been expected to.
• It is not practiced. It is not taught. It is not expected. It has been quietly removed from the Christian life without anyone officially deciding to remove it.
• And we wonder why we do not feel the nearness of God.

Sunday morning is the beginning and end of community.

• Many members come on Sunday, shake a few hands, and do not see or speak to another member until the following Sunday.
• There is no mid-week gathering. No home fellowship. No one checking on anyone.
• Your fellow members are not the people you text when something goes wrong or call when something goes right. They are acquaintances you see once a week in a building.

“But that was then. They lived close together. We are spread out today.”

• This is the objection that surfaces the moment Acts 2 starts to convict. And it needs to be answered honestly.
• The Jerusalem church did not gather daily because geography made it easy. They gathered daily because they could not stay away from each other and from God. Luke does not say they met daily out of convenience. He says they were together with gladness and singleness of heart (Acts 2:46). That is a description of desire, not distance.
• The churches Paul planted were not in Jerusalem. Antioch was not Jerusalem. Corinth was not Jerusalem. Thessalonica was not Jerusalem. Believers across Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Greece were spread across cities and regions, and the commands to assemble, to bear one another’s burdens, to encourage one another, to stir one another up to love and good works, not one of those commands came with a geography exemption.
• Hebrews 10:25 was written to people who were already drifting from the assembly. The writer did not say ‘I understand, you are spread out.’ He said do not forsake the gathering together, and do it more as the Day approaches. The urgency of the times was a reason to gather more, not less.
• The early church had no cars, no phones, no paved roads between cities, and no days off from work as we know them. They gathered anyway. We have every advantage they lacked and have decided Sunday morning is enough.
• ‘That was then’ is not an exegetical conclusion. It is a comfort-protecting assumption dressed up as hermeneutics. The question is not whether daily gathering is logistically possible. The question is whether we want it badly enough to try.

There is no real community of life.

• Nobody weeps together. Nobody sacrifices for each other. Nobody loses sleep over whether a brother or sister is drifting away from God.
• Possessions are kept carefully to themselves. The idea of selling something to meet a fellow member’s need feels extreme.
• The grief that drove Paul to tears over wayward believers is absent. We are comfortable. And comfort has made us quiet.

Nobody is willing to lose anything.

• The faith costs us nothing measurable. No reputation. No money. No sleep. No relationships.
• We have made our peace with a version of Christianity that fits neatly inside the rest of our lives without disturbing any of it.

The Scriptures are an obligation, not a pursuit.

• Many members read a verse a day if that. The idea of searching the Word daily, of building a life around understanding it, is reserved for preachers.
• Almost nobody is losing sleep over whether they are living the way Jesus called them to live. Almost nobody weeps over the gap between what they read in Acts and what they see on Sunday morning. Almost nobody even asks.

What Jesus Said to Churches That Thought They Were Fine

Before you decide this does not apply to you, I want you to read something. These are not my words. They are the words of Jesus Christ Himself, spoken to churches that were still meeting, still taking communion, still using His name.

To the church at Sardis, He said:

“I know your works. You have a reputation for being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.” (Revelation 3:1-3)

Sardis had a reputation. People on the outside thought they were alive. The members probably thought they were fine. Jesus said they were dead and told them to wake up before He came against them.

To the church at Laodicea, He said:

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” (Revelation 3:15-17)

Laodicea was comfortable and self-sufficient. They had what they needed. They were not in crisis. Jesus said He was about to vomit them out of His mouth.

These were Christians. The same name you carry today. Actual people who confessed Jesus as Lord, who gathered to worship, who believed they were in right standing with God.

He told them to repent.

He Came as a Lamb. He Is Returning as a Lion.

We cannot fully comprehend the grace of God. It is deeper than any theology we can construct. The cross is the greatest demonstration of mercy in the history of creation.

But the same Jesus who went silently to Calvary will return as the Judge of all the earth. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is also the Lion of the tribe of Judah before whom every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.

He is not coming back to be gentle about lukewarmness. He is not coming back to offer extensions to the church that had a reputation for being alive but was dead.

There will be a day when He speaks. And what He says will be final.

So here is the question I am asking myself. Here is the question I am asking you.

Which list describes your Christianity? And which list do you want Jesus to see when He returns?

You cannot control what everyone around you does. But you can wake up. You can pray. You can fast. You can open your Bible like something is at stake. You can reach for your brothers and sisters. You can start being the kind of believer who pulls a cold congregation back toward fire.

Or you can keep coming on Sundays, posting Bible verses, calling yourself a Christian, and telling yourself that what you see in those two lists does not really apply to you.

The first Christians bore that name because what they did looked like Christ. They pursued God like He was worth being pursued. They paid for it. They lost things. Some of them lost everything.

Jesus called that faithfulness.

He is still calling for it today.

God help us. God help us all.

Earnestly Pursuing God Ministries™

Click to Download: The First Christians vs. Christians Today