One Heart and Soul
Who likes sports? Majority of sports are team games. You can have a team of incredible talent that doesn’t work well together, and though they have great talent, they are not a great team. On the other hand, you can have a team of mediocre talent who play as one, and they can outscore the team with greater talent. That’s the beauty of team sports. And really, that’s the beauty of the church. That’s how God intends us to act. We are going to see from today’s text that the early church was of one heart and soul…at least for a little while.
A pattern and technique in Luke’s writing is to present a positive example before a negative. Today’s text exemplifies the positive. Next week we will see the negative. What we see a positive example of in today’s text is unity and generosity.
How many people do you think are a part of the body of Christ at this point? Some estimate the number to be more than ten thousand.[1] Remember, it started as 120, grew to 3,000 at Pentecost, and just recently, after the healing of the lame man and Peter’s bold sermon, the number grew to be 5,000 men. This doesn’t take into account the women who believed. So, there is a very large number of believers. Our text starts off with an interesting phrase, especially if we think of the large number of believers there were. It says, “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul.”
How many do we have here? Last week we had around 400 in our services. Can we say our full number is united in heart and soul? What does that even mean? Well, that’s what we’re going to break down this morning. How do we attain unity, and how do we live it out?
We should be united in heart. (32a)
How is it possible that this many people from such an array of backgrounds were unified? They believed the gospel. They weren’t unified because they had all things in common (that’s uniformity). They were united because they had one thing in common—the gospel. Tony Merida says it like this: “This scene is a great reminder that unity doesn’t mean uniformity. Diverse individuals were united in gospel belief. Our strongest source of unity, then, isn’t our common affinities; it’s our gospel identity.”[2]
When the scriptures use the word heart, it is indicating the deepest part of our being. It’s similar to how we often use it in sentences like, “I love you with my whole heart.” Whether we’re talking about bacon, a sports team, or a loved one, we’re not saying, “I love you with my whole muscle that pumps blood throughout my body.” No, we know we need our heart to pump in order to live, so when we say we love somebody or something with our whole heart, we mean we love it with all of who we are.
In the same way, we should be united together with all of who we are. How can that be when we are so different? If Jesus has your whole heart, you are united to all those whose hearts belong to Jesus as well.
When disunity comes, you know why it is? It’s because we have taken our eyes off Jesus. Most often it comes because we have placed our eyes on ourselves. We want to keep some of our heart for ourselves. You know those friendship necklaces where one person has half of a heart and the other has the other half? That’s how we often live our lives. When we are truly living as God intended is when we give him the whole heart. And that’s when we’re united to each other because each one of us has given God our whole heart. We are united together in heart when Jesus has our whole heart.
We should be united in soul/mind. (32a)
This unity is different than a unity of heart. It is the Greek word psyche. It has more to do with your mind than the essence of who you are. One commentator describes it this way: “They shared the same basic mental focus and thought about many of the same things.”[3] Do you think they believed in exactly all the same things? No. They certainly had disagreements about theology and its application, as we will see many times throughout the book of Acts.
Have you ever had disagreements in the church? How can you foster unity amidst disagreement? I think it’s a matter of love and priorities. Do you love the person you are disagreeing with? Regarding priorities, what is your number one priority? Is it the matter you are arguing about, or is it the gospel? It should be the gospel!
We, amidst our differences, can be of the same mind when all our minds are set on the main thing.
Because of this, and our desire to function like the early church, we have been hard at work developing a concept we are calling CORE. It will start with a new member class that we will have the whole church go through at first. This is a way we are all on the same page pursuing the same mission together…of one heart and soul.
The Greeks had an ideal view of friendship in which true friends “held everything in common and were of “one mind.” Aristotle is reputed to have defined a friend as “one soul dwelling in two bodies.”…What they esteemed as an ideal had become a reality in the young Christian community.”[5] They attained unity not because of their one soul in two bodies, but because they each had the same Spirit within their bodies.
We should be united in witness and power. (33)
Not only are we united by the gospel, but we are united for the gospel. They didn’t just have power as they proclaimed the resurrection, but they had great power. This is literally “mega” power.[6] Where did their power come from? These weren’t powerful people. They were normal, ordinary people. Their power was two-fold. It came from the Holy Spirit within them and the gospel that went forth from them.
The same Spirit that rose Jesus from the grave is at work within you![7] There’s no greater power than that! Not only do you have power within you, if you are in Christ, but you have power that should be coming out of you…out of your mouth. When you are saved by the gospel, you are called to the ministry and are entrusted with proclaiming the message of the gospel.[8]
Romans 1:16 – For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…
We should be united in grace. (33)
Not only did they have mega power, but they have mega grace. Abundant grace. They had an abundance of getting what they don’t deserve. Grace is all from God.
John 1:16 – For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
When you realize everything you have and are is from God, it changes how you live—you start to hold onto everything more loosely. And that’s exactly what they did.
We should be united in possessions. (32b, 34-37)
When Jesus has your whole heart, your heart doesn’t only belong to him, but it belongs to all those whom he loves. You care about what he cares about. You care about who he cares about. Because of this, we see the early church give freely.
The early Christians, as ourselves, were under no obligation to share their possessions. This was not a forced communism or socialism. It flowed from a generous heart and seeing ourselves as stewards of all that God has given us. One commentator says it like this: “Communism says practically, ‘What is yours is everyone’s.’ Christianity says, ‘What is mine is yours.’”[9]
To lay their gifts at the apostles’ feet was to lay them at Christ’s feet. Church, we shouldn’t build bigger barns. We should pour all that we are and all that we have into building a people.
We shouldn’t just share our possessions—we should share ourselves.
Tony Merida says,
“Frankly, we sometimes like to make things more complicated than they are not because we lack understanding but because we don’t want to obey. Our talk is often a smoke screen for our lack of willingness to do what we know we can and should do. So let’s pause and ask God to make us a generous people.
The type of generosity he wants to see in us requires not only a relinquishing of possessions but also sensitivity toward others. We must be involved in people’s lives if we are to know when they have a need. A generous person is a relationally involved person.”[10]
We must not just be stewards of our things, but we should be stewards of our lives.
We can see this in Barnabas. He was so other-oriented that they gave him the nickname “son of encouragement.” And he modeled it throughout his life. I truly believe that you wouldn’t have majority of the New Testament if it wasn’t for Barnabas. He was content with being in the background. His main concern was that the gospel go forth and the kingdom be built. He knew how much he had been forgiven, so he poured himself out for both Paul and Mark. He sold a field and laid it at the apostles’ feet…at Christ’s feet, as the elders in heaven lay their crowns at his feet.
May our lives be the same.
[1] Tony Merida, Exalting Jesus in Acts, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary (Nashville: B&H, 2017), 68.
[2] Tony Merida, Exalting Jesus in Acts, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary (Nashville: B&H, 2017), 69.
[3] R. Kent Hughes, Acts, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1996), 68.
[4] https://albertmohler.com/2005/07/12/a-call-for-theological-triage-and-christian-maturity
[5] John B. Polhill, Acts, The New American Commentary (Nashville: B&H, 1992), 152.
[6] megalē
[9] Hughes, Acts, 71.
[10] Tony Merida, Exalting Jesus in Acts, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary (Nashville: B&H, 2017), 70.
