An Introduction: Understanding Acts through a Mandate.

You don’t have to, but I would suggest you first read, An Introduction: Understanding Acts through Different Lenses.

Here is the first of several lenses through we can understand the Book of Acts. This one focuses on the command of Christ to “Go.” That command of the Risen Christ governs Luke’s narrative as much as it governed the lives of the disciples in the first 40 years of the Church.

At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, we have a mandate:

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Jesus has all authority, not some, not a little, but all. His governance is not limited or proscribed by us although we may think so. He holds all authority in heaven, and on the earth—both spheres of activity. His first edict as sovereign in the earth is a mandate, an order to be obeyed to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the Name, and teaching them to obey His commands (of which this is one).

Does this sound at all familiar? It should. Go back to the Garden. God commanded Man in Genesis 1:28: Be fruitful, and increase in number. Fill the earth, and subdue it. In Acts, we have a Christ-centered command in contrast with the man-centered one, which he forfeited. In Christ, we have redemption coloring everything, but the dominion over the earth remained unfulfilled. Christ takes up the charge and set out the campaign—all nations for God.

Let’s turn to the end of Luke’s Gospel. In verse 46, he records: And [Jesus] told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and in His name repentance and forgiveness of sins will be proclaimed to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

And then let’s go to Acts Chapter 1: [I]n a few days, you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit . . . you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

First, I want to point out that while he said “Go” into all nations, he did not say “Go alone.” On the contrary, Luke highlights for us that the Holy Spirit would come, and be there, and enable them to carry out His order. We shouldn’t miss that, and I have stopped to draw your attention to it. But my focus is on the path or way or track Jesus sets out for the end goal of “redemption of all nations” to be accomplished through obedience to Christ’s mandate.

Christ is realizing the original command to fill the earth and subdue it through His people drawn from all the nations. But it starts in Jerusalem as if to echo His earlier heartache: Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Oh, how I would have gathered you to myself as a hen gathers her chicks. But you would not. He still desires Jerusalem, and so she is accorded a special honor.

Luke documents Jesus starting with Jerusalem at the end of his Gospel and in the first chapter of Acts, and then carries us readers from Jerusalem, to all Judea, then Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

When we read the Book of Acts, Luke is careful to follow this progression the Risen Lord set out. The episodes he records takes us to all the places Christ delineated. We do move out from Jerusalem ending up in the capital city of the known world, Rome.

Jerusalem does not lose its influence or luster in the story really; that is not the point here. Luke is not replacing Jerusalem with any other city. Rather, he is honoring the narrative Christ himself established—from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So we should not be surprised that we find ourselves in these chapters in Acts in Samaria, the former Philistia (Lod, Joppa, Ceasarea), Syria, Turkey, Cyprus, Macedonia, Greece, other islands in the sea, Italy, and Rome.

It has been said that “all roads lead to Rome.” By necessity, all roads leading out of Rome must go back out unto the ends of the known world of that time. Thus, Paul in Rome is a fitting end of Luke’s narrative.

So through this lens, Luke has shown us how that command of Jesus as Sovereign was obeyed over the course of the 40 year period he covers from Jesus’ resurrection/ascensions to just before the destruction of the temple in AD 70.

What themes can we see through this lens of Christ’s mandate? His Sovereignty, the activity of the Holy Spirit, and the fruits of obedience to the expressly stated mandates of the Son of God would be a few. Jesus can say, You will be my witnesses in such and such places, but we are given the privilege of working in obedience to that will, and also in concert with the Holy Spirit. Luke portrays for us something very different than master/servant.

In the end, obeying Him in the way He has directed to all nations, through the power and Person He has provided, over the geography He articulated, did turn the world upside down. What does fulfilling the Great Commission look like? It looks like this. Thus, this is one way to understand the Book of Acts.