Acts 1:1-11
Bock, Darrell L.. Acts (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) (pp. 106-110,121-122). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
I. Introduction: Jesus Ascends to the Father and Gives a Mission (1:1–11)
Acts begins with a short prologue that connects the book to Luke’s Gospel and introduces the key themes of Acts: (1) Jesus is alive and functioning at God’s right hand; (2) the promised Spirit will come and enable the new mission in fulfillment of divine promise; (3) the message of the kingdom is to go out into all the world, starting from Jerusalem. The Father is active through the Son by means of the Spirit to enable Jesus’s followers to proclaim God’s forgiveness. The new faith, rooted as it is in God’s promise, reaches into commitments Israel’s God made long ago. All of this sets the stage for the expectation of the Spirit and the launch of the mission from within the new community in Jerusalem. The language is that of a historical monograph in the Greco-Roman sense. Plümacher (1979: 457–66) notes terminological and conceptual overlap with a series of epistles by Cicero, Sallust (Jugurthine War 5.1; Conspiracy of Cataline 4.4), and Diodorus Siculus (Library of History prologue to book 16) in referring to events and their linkage to each other. So also Palmer (1993), who cites Cicero’s letters to Atticus (1.19.10; 1.20.6; 2.1.1–2) and to family (5.12.10) as examples of works focused on one theme or person. Palmer argues that this approach is paralleled by Sallust, 1 Esdras, and 1 and 2 Maccabees.
This unit has two parts. First is the review of Jesus’s activity in the forty-day period between his death, resurrection, and ascension. Here Jesus issues a charge to await the promised Spirit in Jerusalem and reminds his followers that the work of John the Baptist contrasts with the greater work of God to come in the arrival of the Spirit (1:1–5). Second is the quelling of eschatological curiosity with a call to mission. Jesus is taken up to the Father’s side after the commission. From here on, the Spirit will empower the new mission, and at some unspecified later point in time Jesus will return to complete the work God started through him (1:6–11). As Jesus departs, so he will return. All remaining questions and promises will then be realized.
The length of this introduction is disputed. Barrett (1994: 57) takes it to verse 14, arguing that everything in these verses recapitulates things known from Luke’s Gospel. Schneider (1980: 188, 195) argues that Acts 1:1–3 is the introduction and that verses 4–14 are about the ascension. Barrett’s option looks more likely than Schneider’s, as there is too tight a conceptual linkage between issues in verses 3–5 to separate them. On the other hand, 1:12 shows the response to the command to wait in Jerusalem and sets up the “waiting” commanded by Jesus (note τότε, tote, then, in v. 12), moving directly into the replacement of Judas (with a mere καί, kai, and, in v. 15). So I have chosen to view this waiting as the first act of the church gathered in Jerusalem rather than a part of the introduction (with Gaventa 2003: 62). In verses 12–14 the initial participants are specified. As in Luke’s Gospel, Jerusalem is a hub of activity at the beginning of Acts. By the end of the book, however, the center of activity will change. Rome becomes the hub, a move that vividly illustrates how the gospel has gone out into the world as Jesus commanded. God’s activity will move far outside Israel but in keeping with promises made to it.
Traditionally, the title of the book has been “Acts of the Apostles,” but this ignores the role of God as the main player. “Acts of the Holy Spirit” is a second suggestion, but this title overemphasizes the Spirit when Jesus is also at work over his new entity, not to mention the direction of the Father over all of these events. Stott (1990: 33–34) has suggested the title “The Continuing Words and Deeds of Jesus by His Spirit through the Apostles.” This title is good but also tends to underplay God’s sovereign work in the book. More appropriate would be “The Acts of the Sovereign God through the Lord Messiah Jesus by His Spirit on Behalf of the Way.” The apostles are not noted in this title because many others besides the apostles are the human agents in the book. “The Way” is mentioned because this is Luke’s most prominent title for the new movement. The title underscores the divine support for the new community God has formed and is expanding. The name also explains that the community’s identity is rooted in divine provision and promise, as well as possessing a direction God points to on behalf of humanity.
A. Review of Book 1 to the Ascension (1:1–5)
Acts begins by linking this second volume to Luke’s first, his Gospel. Luke 24 is especially important to this linkage. There Jesus is raised and appears to the disciples after a ministry that involved both word and deed (Luke 24:50–53). In this section of Acts, Jesus proves himself to be alive to the apostles for a period of forty days. The disciples and readers such as Theophilus can be assured that Jesus is alive. His divine mission is alive and well on earth. More than that, he gives instruction to prepare them for mission, while also promising that enablement for this mission will come to accomplish what is needed for God’s kingdom. So Jesus instructs them to remain in Jerusalem and not to begin the mission until the long-promised enabling Spirit comes from the Father. What they have to do is so important and will require so much from them that God must equip them for the task. God will not let them down. He will give them the one they need to accomplish taking the message to the end of the world. Thus this review introduces, reassures, and prepares the reader for what God has called the new community to do. The church’s primary task is to represent God faithfully, including witnessing to God’s work in Jesus through the Holy Spirit.
B. The Ascension and Final Testament: A Promise for the Disciples Now and a Promise to Return (1:6–11)
This scene reconstructs the eschatological priorities and calendar anticipated by the Jews and the disciples. It also sets forth a mission that supplies the outline for Acts and reflects the church’s fundamental call. In explaining the mission, Jesus clarifies the calendar for the disciples, who still need instruction about God’s plan. In verse 7 Jesus does not answer the question in verse 6 about whether the restoration of the kingdom for Israel is around the corner. Instead he tells them it is not their business to know what time the Father has set for this event. The reply does not deny that this will happen; it just affirms that the timing will not be revealed and that they have another calling to pursue in the meantime. This splitting of the coming of the Messiah from the future restoration creates room for what the church came to call the second coming of Christ. What Judaism had believed would come all at once is split into two parts, with a mission in between.
This mission is defined in verse 8. They are to receive power in the Spirit of God. As a result, they can be witnesses to Jesus from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and finally to the end of the earth. Instead of worrying about when God will consummate the program, they are to take to the world the news of salvation’s coming.
The scene ends with Jesus ascending into heaven, taken up in a cloud to God’s side to share in administering God’s program, and a pair of angels appear to explain that as Jesus has departed, so will he return (vv. 9–11). This note of assurance, tinged with rebuke, says that they should not be surprised that Jesus has gone to reside in God’s presence in heaven and that they should be certain that he will return as he has departed. That the hope of return is associated with the clouds of heaven is something Paul reassures the Thessalonians about in 1 Thess. 4:13–18 as he gives a word of comfort. Luke’s purpose here is similar. Jesus may not be visibly present, but the plan moves on and the new community has a task to perform until he returns. The point of the unit is really a command: do not look up and merely be idle, waiting for the return, but move out and share what God’s program in Jesus is all about.
Bruce, F. F.. The Book of Acts (New International Commentary on the New Testament) (pp. 30-31). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
1-2
Luke begins with a brief reference to his former volume as an account of “all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up”—or, if we follow the Western text, “until the day when, by the Holy Spirit, he commissioned the apostles whom he had chosen, and charged them to proclaim the gospel.” This exactly summarizes the scope of the Gospel of Luke from 4:1 onward: the commissioning of the apostles is recorded in Luke 24:44–49. The implication of Luke’s words is that his second volume will be an account of what Jesus continued to do and teach after his ascension—no longer in visible presence on earth but by his Spirit in his followers. The expression “to do and teach” well sums up the twofold subject matter of all the canonical Gospels: they all record The Work and Words of Jesus (to quote the title of one presentation of their subject matter).
It was “through the Holy Spirit” that Jesus gave his parting charge to his apostles. Almost invariably Luke restricts the designation “apostles” to the twelve men whom Jesus chose at an early stage in his ministry (Luke 6:13–16), except that Judas Iscariot was replaced by Matthias (as we are told later in this chapter). His charge to them made them the chief heralds of the good news which he had brought. The extension of the good news in the power of the Spirit is the theme of Acts. At his baptism Jesus had been “anointed” with the Holy Spirit and power (10:38), and more recently, in Paul’s words, he had been “designated Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). In the Johannine account of the commission laid on his disciples by the risen Christ, he indicated the power by which they were to carry out their commission when he “breathed into them” and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). Luke makes it plain that it is by the power of that same Spirit that all the apostolic acts which he goes on to narrate were performed, so much so that some have suggested, as a theologically more appropriate title for his second volume, The Acts of the Holy Spirit.
Bruce, F. F.. The Book of Acts (New International Commentary on the New Testament) (pp. 35-37). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
7
Jesus’ answer did not take the form of a direct “No.” He told them that the epochs of the fulfilment of the divine purpose were matters which lay within the Father’s sole jurisdiction. Similarly, he had assured them on a former occasion that not even the Son knew the day or hour of his parousia; this knowledge was reserved to the Father alone (Mark 13:32). Whatever purposes of his own God might have for the nation of Israel, these were not to be the concern of the messengers of Christ. The kingdom of God which they were commissioned to proclaim was the good news of God’s grace in Christ. Their present question appears to have been the last flicker of their former burning expectation of an imminent theocracy with themselves as its chief executives. From now on they devoted themselves to the proclamation and service of God’s spiritual kingdom, which men and women enter by repentance and faith, and in which chief honor belongs to those who most faithfully follow their Lord in the path of obedience, service, and suffering.
8
Instead of the political power which had once been the object of their ambitions, a power far greater and nobler would be theirs. When the Holy Spirit came upon them, Jesus assured them, they would be vested with heavenly power—that power by which, in the event, their mighty works were accomplished and their preaching made effective. As Jesus had been anointed at his baptism with the Holy Spirit and power, so his followers were now to be similarly anointed and enabled to carry on his work. This work would be a work of witness-bearing—a theme which is prominent in the apostolic preaching throughout Acts. An Old Testament prophet had called the people of Israel to be God’s witnesses in the world (Isa. 43:10; 44:8); the task which Israel had not fulfilled was taken on by Jesus, the perfect Servant of the Lord, and shared by him with his disciples. The close relation between God’s call to Israel, “you are my witnesses,” and the risen Lord’s commission to his apostles, “you will be my witnesses,” can be appreciated the more if we consider the implications of Paul’s quotation of Isa. 49:6 in Acts 13:47. There the heralds of the gospel are spoken of as a light for the Gentiles, bearing God’s salvation “to the end of the earth”; here “the end of the earth” and nothing short of that is to be the limit of the apostolic witness.
In Acts we do not find an apostolic succession in the ecclesiastical sense, nor a succession of orthodox tradition, but “a succession of witness to Christ, an apostolic testimony in Jerusalem to the self-styled leaders of Israel until they finally reject it, and an apostolic testimony from Jerusalem to Rome and the Gentile world of Luke’s own day.”
It has often been pointed out that the geographical terms of verse 8 provide a sort of “Index of Contents” for Acts. “You will be my witnesses” might be regarded as announcing the theme of the book; “in Jerusalem” covers the first seven chapters, “in all Judaea and Samaria” covers 8:1 to 11:18, and the remainder of the book traces the progress of the gospel outside the frontiers of the Holy Land until at last it reaches Rome.
Dunn, James D. G.. The Acts of the Apostles (p. 5,9,12-13). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
The transition from the previous volume 1.1–5
Luke’s first objective is to ensure that his readers recognize the continuity with his earlier account of Jesus’ ministry (the Gospel of Luke). This is not merely a concern for narrative continuity. It is first and foremost a theological concern. The reader must understand that the history of ‘the way’ about to be narrated cannot be detached from what has gone before. Quite the contrary: what began in Jerusalem really began with Jesus. Failure to appreciate this theological (as well as historical) fact will mean failure to understand the character and purpose of both the narrative and its subject matter.
The new direction clarified 1.6–8
This section is evidently the climax of the instructions given by Jesus during the forty days in company with the apostles. That 1.8 provides a contents page for the rest of Acts has long been recognized. But more attention needs to be given to 1.6–7. For 1.8 functions as a correction of the false perspective or misleading emphasis articulated in 1.6. The full significance of 1.8 therefore depends on the prior understanding of what it is in 1.6 which is being corrected. The climax of Jesus’ resurrection teaching for Luke can be properly appreciated only if both parts of 1.6–8 are given full weight.
Jesus’ departure 1.9–11
By making the narrative run on without a break, Luke indicates that 1.7–8 was Jesus’ final word. The account of the ascension thus functions to bring to a clear and unequivocal end this phase of the two-volume story. It is here, strictly speaking, that the account of Jesus’ earthly ministry ends. The interlocking nature of the two volumes is reinforced.
Luke’s account of the ascension poses two principal problems. (1) We have earlier observed that the forty-day period is peculiar to Luke and that the resurrection appearances seem to have continued for a longer period. What then is the explanation for Luke’s account here? We can hardly be sure, but one possible answer is that Luke wished to emphasize the distinctiveness of the different epochs of God’s purpose. The next fixed date in the calendar of earliest Christian remembrance was Pentecost (see Introduction to Ch. 2). That began the phase of a Spirit-empowered church. To mark it out clearly from the preceding epoch, the ministry of Jesus, it was desirable, therefore, to draw a clear line under that ministry, indicating beyond doubt that it had ceased, at least in the form of the personal presence of Jesus on earth. The intervening few days (1.15–26) would then make clear the absence of both Jesus and the Spirit.
If there is anything in this we should not conclude that Luke is dealing casually with his material or falsifying history. Quite what the history actually was is hard to tell, when all that we otherwise hear of is episodic seeings of and encounters with Jesus. And Luke may well have been confronted with the same difficulty; he later describes the appearance to Saul/Paul as a ‘heavenly vision’ (26.19). More important, then, to make quite clear that that period of revelatory encounter with the risen Christ had ceased. Apart from anything else, there might be endless confusion between experiences of the Spirit and experiences of the risen Christ (a few have seen Pentecost as a variant tradition of the appearance to more than 500 — I Cor. 15.6); and the scope for new and divergent teachings to be rooted in a claimed succession of further resurrection appearances would be endless (as the later Gnostic documents show). At this point the theological imperative takes precedence over a disparate tradition whose historical connectedness is unclear.
(2) The other problem is how the ascension should be conceptualized. It was no problem for Luke, of course, since he presumably shared the common perception of the cosmos, where heaven was literally above the earth, so that ‘going to heaven’ meant quite literally ‘ascension’ (‘taken up into heaven’ — 1.11). The problem arises for the modern interpreter, however, since heaven is no longer conceived as ‘up there’, except in a metaphorical or pictorial sense. The problem is compounded since, according to 1.11, the return of Jesus (the second coming) will be patterned on his departure to heaven. What then are we today to make of an ‘ascension’ in a day of space rockets and satellites?
The simplest answer is that we should not confuse metaphor and fact. All talk of the divine and of heaven has to be metaphorical; human speech can never encompass a dimension of reality which so completely transcends our own. This was as true of the ancients as it is today. In trying to speak of heaven they, like us, spoke of what was beyond everyday experience. With their more limited perspective on the cosmos, it was sufficient to express that ‘beyond’ in terms of beyond what eye can see. The metaphor of transcendence could be expressed quite fully enough for them by envisaging it as literal ‘upabove’-ness. The result was that they framed their visions of heaven in these terms; they could not conceive of going to heaven as otherwise than ascending to heaven. Consequently the interpretation of Luke’s account here involves no denial of what he says, but simply a reconceptualizing of what he recounts. Nor does it mean that we have to abandon the language of ‘ascension’. It simply means that we give more weight to its metaphorical and symbolical character. What all this means for a conceptualization of the coming again of Christ needs to be thought through more than it has been.
Richard N. Longenecker, “The Acts of the Apostles,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: John and Acts, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), 252,255–256,257–258.
A. A Resumptive Preface (1:1–5)
The Prologue to Luke-Acts is really Luke 1:1–4. Here, however, Luke begins his second book with what may be called a “resumptive preface” which serves to link the two books and anticipates the features he wants to stress as being constitutive for the Christian mission.
B. The Mandate to Witness (1:6–8)
Though 1:6–8 is usually treated either as the last part of the Preface (1:1–8) or as an introduction to the Ascension narrative (1:6–11), in reality it serves as the theme, setting the stage for all that follows in Acts: “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (v. 8). The concept of “witness” is so prominent in Acts (the word in its various forms appears some thirty-nine times) that everything else in the book should probably be seen as subsumed under it—even the primitive kerygma that, since Dodd’s Apostolic Preaching, so many have taken as the leading theme of Acts. So as Luke begins his second book, he highlights this witness theme and insists it comes from the mandate of Jesus himself.
C. The Ascension (1:9–11)
Luke next speaks of the second constitutive factor of the Christian mission, the church’s ascended Lord. The Greek of v. 2 includes this as a fourth element in its logical listing of constitutive factors, but here Luke is proceeding more chronologically. So he speaks of the Ascension before mentioning the full complement of apostles and the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Ascension, of course, has been referred to in Luke 24:50–51 and Acts 1:2, and many have questioned the appropriateness of three references to it. But each occurrence has its own purpose in Luke’s writing.
Here the important thing is that attention is focused on (1) the fact of Jesus’ ascension and entrance “into heaven” (eis ton ouranon)—an expression repeated four times in vv. 10–11—and (2) on the angel’s message that rebukes the disciples for their lack of understanding and assures them of their Lord’s return. There is no explanation of how the Ascension occurred or of the psychological state of the disciples—features so common to legendary development. Nor are there any apocalyptic details like those in Luke 17:22–37 (also perhaps Luke 21) as to when that return might be expected. “The story,” as Haenchen says, “is unsentimental, almost uncannily austere” (Acts of the Apostles, p. 151). Luke’s point is that the missionary activity of the early church rested not only on Jesus’ mandate but also on his living presence in heaven and the sure promise of his return.
Many modern scholars have asserted that looking for the Parousia paralyzes missionary activity and inhibits Christian social action by diverting attention away from present needs to the “sweet by and by” and that the early church only turned to missions when it had to renounce its futuristic eschatology. Nevertheless, in Acts 1:9–11 Luke insists that Christian mission must be based on the ascended and living Lord who directs his church from heaven and who will return to consummate what he has begun. Rather than the missionary enterprise being a stopgap measure substituted by some sub-apostolic Christian theologians for the unrealized hope of the kingdom of God, Luke’s position is, as Oscar Cullmann says, “that ‘missions’ are an essential element in the eschatological divine plan of salvation. The missionary work of the Church is the eschatological foretaste of the Kingdom of God, and the Biblical hope of the ‘end’ constitutes the keenest incentive to action” (“Eschatology and Mission in the New Testament,” The Background of the New Testament and its Eschatology, edd. W.D. Davies and D. Daube [Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1964], p. 409).