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What was the purpose of Jesus Christ?

 

In Acts 2:22-24, the Apostle Peter offers a succinct answer to this question in his sermon to the Jewish crowd at Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost:

 

Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.

 

There are two parts to his answer: history and theology. The history is a précis of the three-year ministry of Jesus Christ, focusing on his miracles and culminating in his death and resurrection. The theology shows God at work behind the scenes of everything that Jesus did and that was done to him. Neither the history nor the theology sits well with modern minds.

 

Consider, first of all, the history. Modern treatments of the historical Jesus downplay or outright deny the supernatural and miraculous character of Jesus’ ministry. There is no better symbol of these treatments than the so-called Jefferson Bible, in which President Thomas Jefferson literally took scissors to the pages of the Gospels and cut the miracles out. The resulting Jesus was a talking head, a teacher, a dispenser of gnostic truths.

 

Peter, on the contrary, emphasized the acts of Jesus. Jesus healed the sick, exorcized the demonized, died for sinners, and conquered death by his resurrection. Of course he taught as well. Peter knew that. But his précis of Jesus’ ministry focused on the deeds, for they were the deeds of God.

 

That brings us, second, to the theology. God stood behind Jesus’ acts. He “accredited” Jesus to his contemporaries (and to us) “by miracles, wonders and signs.” In fact, he “did” them. God “raised” Jesus from the dead. And, most controversially, he arranged for Jesus’ capture and crucifixion according to his “set purpose and foreknowledge.”

 

Modern philosophers typically fall into one of two mutually exclusive categories: determinists, who say that individual choice is determined by large impersonal forces; and existentialists, who say that there is no reality beyond what the individual chooses. Christians reject them both. We believe that a personal God guides the choices of human individuals toward his appointed ends without thereby robbing them of moral freedom and responsibility. How God does this is a mystery. That he does so is a biblical truth beyond dispute.

 

The whole bent of modernism is to squeeze God out of life, to claim that he plays no role in the world. Peter’s sermon is a prophetic refutation of that tendency. God is active in the world. He has a plan for it. Enacting that plan was—and is—the purpose of Jesus Christ.

 

Everyone views the world along an angle of vision that affects both how he interprets the world and lives within it. That angle of vision itself is formed by, among other things, time and place and creed and culture, not to mention the postmodern troika of race, sex, and class. To understand why a person interprets the world the way he does, then, we must begin by understanding the person.

 

Edward Gilbreath is editor at large for Christianity Today and editor of Today’s Christian. These are two mainstream evangelical publications, placing Gilbreath firmly in the evangelical camp. In America, evangelicals are predominantly white, but Gilbreath is black. That status as a black evangelical gives Gilbreath a unique angle of vision, which he writes about in Reconciliation Blues: A Black Evangelical’s Inside View of White Christianity.

 

In a moving paragraph, Gilbreath describes

 

the loneliness of being “the only black,” the frustration of being expected to represent your race but being stifled when you try, the hidden pain of being invited to the table but shut out from meaningful decisions about that table’s future. These “reconciliation blues” are about the despair of knowing that it’s still business as usual, even in the friendly context of Christian fellowship and ministry.

 

Gilbreath’s story is not unique. Although much of Reconciliation Blues is autobiographical, Gilbreath also writes about such pioneering black evangelicals as evangelist Tom Skinner, publisher Melvin Banks, and activist John Perkins, not to mention other lesser-known pastors and professionals. They trod (and continue to tread) a lonely road within evangelicalism’s predominantly white subculture.

 

Historically, that subculture was not friendly to black demands for civil rights. White evangelicals sat out the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. Or worse, they rooted against its heroes. Gilbreath tells the story of Dolphus Weary who, as a student at Los Angeles Baptist College (now The Master’s College) heard white students laughing at the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Of course, that event is forty years in the past, and Gilbreath concedes that white evangelicals have made progress in their racial attitudes. But there are still blindspots. Gilbreath mentions the 2004 brouhaha over LifeWay Publisher’s VBS curriculum, Rickshaw Rally, whose stereotyped artwork offended many evangelical Asians. Rather than admitting offense, LifeWay dug itself into a hole defending the curriculum.

 

For Gilbreath, as for many black evangelicalism, part of the problem with white evangelicals is institutional racism, defined by sociologist James Jones as “those established laws, customs, and practices which systematically reflect and produce racial inequities in American society.” Examples of this kind of racism include:

 

the failures of public education (why are inner-city schools devoid of proper resources?), imbalances in our nation’s criminal justice system (what’s with the inordinate number of black males in prison?), and the inability of African Americans and other minorities to keep pace with their white counterparts (why do some banks charge higher rates on loans to African Americans and Latinos?).

 

These examples of evangelical insensitivity and institutional racism raise political questions that make white evangelicals uncomfortable. Two of the more challenging chapters in the book are back-to-back chapters on politics: “Is Jesse Jackson an Evangelical?” and “God Is Not a Democrat or a Republican.” Jackson is a lightning rod of controversy among conservative white evangelicals, both for his politics and for his personal indiscretions, but he is viewed with admiration by many in the black evangelical community for his social concern. Indeed, his heir apparent at Operation Push is a Bible-believing, black evangelical pastor named James Meeks. And while in the abstract many white evangelicals agree that God is not a partisan, they still have problems with the concrete practice of voting for Democrats that is so prevalent in the black evangelical community.

 

(Indeed, after reading Gilbreath, I began to wonder whether politics is a stalking horse for race in contemporary American culture. That is to say, I began to wonder how much of the tension between white and black evangelicals is due to political differences rather than racial ones.)

 

Gilbreath tells his story and provides challenging analysis, but throughout this book, his main concern is racial reconciliation among evangelicals. This was a prominent them among evangelicals in the 1990s. Promise Keepers made racial reconciliation one of its seven key promises. And white Pentecostal denominations (such as the Assemblies of God) disbanded the all-white Pentecostal Fellowship of North America and joined with black Pentecostals and others to form the multiracial Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches of North America in 1994 (the so-called “Memphis Miracle”).

 

Unfortunately, racial reconciliation has fallen on hard times. The first sentence of Gilbreath’s book is the sentiment of a black female friend of his: “I’m sick and tired of racial reconciliation.” And the Epilogue of the book describes a November 2005 conference of dispirited racial reconciliation leaders, Gilbreath among them. Despite the history, heartache, and hard work, Gilbreath isn’t giving up on the dream of reconciliation. “I think about Jesus’ prayer for his followers, ‘that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you sent me’ (John 17:21).”

 

As I said at the outset of this review, everyone has an angle of vision. Gilbreath has his, and I—white, Pentecostal, and politically conservative—have mine. But surely Jesus’ angle of vision is the one that counts, the one that calls us to work through our differences to a higher unity based on our common life in him!

We explain what we do not know in terms of what we do.

 

Consider the word horsepower. James Watt coined that term to market steam engines to people who relied on horses as beasts of burden. They understood how powerful horses were, so Watt explained how powerful steam engines were in terms of how much horsepower they were equivalent to.

 

In Acts 2:16-21, the Apostle Peter used what his audience knew (Old Testament prophecy) to explain what they did not know (the disciples’ spiritual experience). Here is what Peter said:

 

No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

 

“In the last days, God says,

            I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy,

            your young men will see visions,

            your old men will dream dreams.

Even on my servants, both men and women,

            I will pour out my Spirit in those days,

            and they will prophesy.

I will show wonders in the heaven above

            and signs on the earth below,

            blood and fire and billows of smoke.

The sun will be turned to darkness

            and the moon to blood

            before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.

And everyone who calls

            on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

 

Peter’s “No” reminds us that we can misinterpret what we do not know in terms of what we do. The crowds had misinterpreted the disciples’ spiritual experience as the slurred speech of drunks. Peter rejected their misinterpretation and turned to Joel 2:28-32 for the proper interpretation. He noted four Old Testament expectations that the disciples’ spiritual experience had met:

 

First, the expectation of the end: First-century Jews looked forward to “the last days” and “the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.” The disciples’ spiritual experience heralded the beginning of that end.

 

Second, the expectation of universality: First-century Jews looked forward to a day when God’s Spirit would be poured out on all people regardless of nationality, age, sex, and class. This happened on Pentecost when the disciples praised God in many foreign languages, which they spoke by divine enablement.

 

Third, the expectation of signs and wonders: First-century Jews believed the end of time would be characterized by supernatural portents in heaven and on earth. The sound of wind and tongues of fire that manifested themselves on the Day of Pentecost were examples of such portents. So were the miracles performed by Jesus and by the early church.

 

Fourth, the expectation of salvation: First-century Jews looked forward to the day when God would judge the wicked and save the righteous. According to Joel, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” This expectation began to be met when 3000 people accepted Peter’s evangelistic message and were baptized (Acts 2:41).

 

This is that. We explain what we do not know in terms of what we do. And what we should know best is the Bible, which helps us interpret all spiritual experience.

When my wife and I started dating, we had to sort out our religious differences. She was raised fundamentalist Baptist; I, evangelical Pentecostal. She believed in once-saved, always-saved; I did not. I believed speaking in tongues was normal; she did not. We worked things out by the time we married. Now we are both Bapticostals.

 

I mention my personal experience because I think it illuminates a problem facing Christians in modern America. If two Christians with similar beliefs and morals have to explain themselves to one another, imagine how much they need to explain themselves to non-Christians, who do not share their beliefs and morals. If religious literacy among Christians is low, it certainly must be lower among unbelievers.

 

There is an additional twist to this problem. Some American unbelievers are not merely ignorant about Christianity; they are hostilely ignorant. They do not understand it, but they nevertheless want to critique what they do not understand.

 

This antipathy to Christianity is as old as, well, Christianity itself. Acts 2:1-13 describes the earliest Christians’ experience of the Holy Spirit, which produced supernatural, charismatic manifestations such as speaking in tongues. Many bystanders asked, “What does this mean?” They were genuinely interested in the supernatural phenomenon they were witnessing. Others, however, ridiculed the disciples: “They have had too much wine.” They critiqued what they had not bothered to understand.

 

Acts 2:14-15 records Peter’s response:

 

Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning!”

 

Notice, first of all, what Peter does not do. He does not ignore either the honest questioners or the hostile critics. Several years ago, I talked with a friend of my sister’s who, though once a strong Christian, had become alienated from the church. When I asked her why this had happened, she told me that she had been turned off to the faith by a pastor who, instead of answering her honest questions, tried to bully her into silence. I wonder how many people share her unfortunate testimony. Unanswered questions result in uncommitted lives.

 

Now notice what Peter does. He answers the hostile critics. They claim the disciples are drunk; he argues that the facts show otherwise. This refutation then allows him, in verses 16-41, to answer the honest questioners and explain what Pentecost means. Think of answering hard questions as a ground-clearing operation. If you want to build a house, you must first lay a foundation. And if you want to lay a foundation, you must first clear and level the ground. That is what Christian apologetics does. It clears away alternative explanations of spiritual experience—whether honest or hostile—so that the foundation of the gospel can be laid in people’s lives.

 

So, next time someone asks you a question about Christianity, answer it! Answered questions lead to committed lives.

Every Sunday, I preach to my congregation. Sometimes, my sermons are ill-prepared and poorly delivered. Other times—hopefully, more often than not—they are well-prepared, well-delivered, and spiritually effective.

 

The Apostle Peter preached the first recorded sermon of the Christian church on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:14-41). In it, he proclaimed the gospel or “good news” of Jesus Christ. The English word gospel comes from the Greek word euaggelion, which the Romans transliterated as evangel. Preaching is an evangelical activity. It brings good news to its hearers.

 

When I read Peter’s sermon, I see four characteristics of a good sermon:

 

First, it is apologetically sensitive. I don’t mean that a preacher says “I’m sorry” a lot from the pulpit. Apologetics is that branch of theology that provides a defense (Greek, apologia) of the Christian faith. In Acts 2:1-13, we read about the disciples’ spiritual experience on the Day of Pentecost. Some bystanders think the disciples are drunk. But Peter defends them. “These men are not drunk as you suppose” (verse 15). A good sermon is always aware of the alternative explanations people offer for spiritual experience, and it defends the truth.

 

Second, it is biblically grounded. Peter doesn’t offer a subjective defense of the disciples’ spiritual experience. He doesn’t say, “Well, I just feel like this is God at work.” Instead, he says, “this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel” (verse 16); and “David said” (verses 25, 34). In other words, Peter grounds his defense of the disciples’ spiritual experience in Scripture. Specifically, he quotes Joel 2:28-32 and Psalms 16:8-11 and 110:1. A good sermon always grounds itself in the objectivity of God’s Word rather than in the subjectivity of human experience.

 

Third, it is Christ-focused. The Bible is a big book. It says many things that are not always easy to square with one another. What readers need is an interpretive key to unlock Scripture’s meaning. After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to two disciples on the road to Emmaus and showed them that he is that key: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). When Peter quotes Joel and the Psalms, he does so because they illuminate Jesus Christ: “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (verse 36). A good sermon always keeps the focus on Jesus.

 

Fourth, a good sermon is decision-oriented. In light of his biblically grounded, Christ-focused defense of the disciples’ spiritual experience, Peter calls on his audience to make a decision: “Repent and be baptized” (verse 38). If Jesus really is the good news of the Bible, then all of us need to respond to him with love and faith. A good sermon requires us to make changes in our lives.

 

Acts 2:1-47 narrates the paradigmatic revival of the Christian church. It includes an experiential dimension (verses 1-13). But it also includes an evangelical dimension (verses 14-41). Let us always strive, like the early disciples, to ground our spiritual experience upon the evangel of Jesus Christ!

What are spiritual experiences?

 

We Christians believe that authentic spiritual experiences are experiences of God and/or other elements of the supernatural realm (such as angels or demons). We also believe that counterfeit spiritual experiences are possible, however, when people mistakenly attribute to a supernatural cause an event with a natural explanation. Knowing whether a spiritual experience is counterfeit or authentic, and if authentic whether divine or demonic, calls for discernment (1 John 4:1).

 

Acts 2:1-4 narrates the spiritual experience of the early Christians (speaking in tongues) and attributes it to a supernatural source (the Holy Spirit). But Acts 2:5-13 also notes that critics of the early Christians had an alternative, naturalistic explanation of the experience. Let’s take a closer look at the latter passage:

 

Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs — we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

 

Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

 

On the one hand, the Holy Spirit; on the other hand, alcoholic spirits.

 

Which is the better explanation for what happened on the Day of Pentecost?

 

First, what exactly is the experience? In this case, it is speaking in tongues, which is the miraculous ability to speak a human or angelic language you have not learned through normal means.

 

Second, is the experience publicly verifiable? It is one thing for believers to claim that they have spoken in tongues. The important thing to know is whether there is public confirmation of the experience. In this case, nonbelievers confirmed that they heard their native languages being spoken by the disciples. If the case was a miraculous healing, we would expect before and after doctor reports as public confirmation of the miracle.

 

Third, is a supernatural or natural explanation more probable? Two natural explanations of what happened on the Day of Pentecost arise from within the text itself: (1) The disciples had learned these languages by normal means. (2) They were drunk. Against (1), even the nonbelievers were “amazed and perplexed” at the disciples’ speech; they assumed that Galileans in general and Christ’s Galilean disciples in particular were uneducated (cf. Acts 4:13). Against (2), religious Jews didn’t drink alcohol so early in the morning (Acts 2:14); and anyway, the disciples speech was coherent praise, not incoherent babbling, which is what you would expect from drunks.

 

On balance, then, a supernatural explanation of publicly verifiable tongues-speech is more probable than a naturalistic one. Notice, I have not approached this issue dogmatically, but empirically, using common-sense questions to make my case. In our skeptical day and age, this is a good apologetic strategy when engaging in dialogue with nonbelievers.

Acts 2 narrates the paradigmatic revival of the Christian church. It has three dimensions: experiential (verses 1-13), evangelical (verses 14-41), and ecclesial (verses 42-47). Over the next few days, I will examine each dimension, pointing out its relevance for today’s church.

 

First, however, let me explain my use of the term revival to describe the events of Acts 2. The dictionary offers two meanings of revival in a religious context: (1) “an awakening, in a church or community, of interest in and care for matters relating to personal religion”; and (2) “an evangelistic service or a series of services for the purpose of effecting a religious awakening: to hold a revival.” When I use revival, I intend the first meaning, not the second.

 

With that in mind, look at Acts 2:1-4:

 

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

 

Pentecost was one of Judaism’s three annual festivals, which included pilgrimage to Jerusalem (Ex. 23:14-17). It occurred fifty days (Gr., pentekostos) after Passover, and it celebrated the firstfruits of the harvest (Lev. 23:15-21, Deut. 16:9-12). In intertestamental Jewish tradition, it also celebrated the giving of the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai.

 

Luke himself does not draw out the symbolic value of Pentecost, but the conversion of 3000 people (Acts 2:41) can be seen as the spiritual firstfruits of the gospel. Moreover, the charismatic phenomena experienced that day (wind, fire, and tongues) parallel what Jews believed happened at Sinai (e.g., Heb. 12:18-19, Ex. 19:16-19). On Pentecost, as at Sinai, God showed up, and people were changed by the encounter.

 

Luke emphasizes the supernatural source of these charismatic phenomena by noting that they came “from heaven” as a result of being “filled with the Holy Spirit” and “enabled” by him. This spiritual infilling is the same thing as the promise of the Father (Luke 24:49, Acts 1:4) and the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:16, Acts 1:5).

 

The experiential dimension of revival is thus a filling with or baptism in the Holy Spirit. This experience can include charismatic manifestations. I say can rather than must because while tongues reappear throughout Acts as evidence of Spirit-baptism (e.g., 8:14-19, 10:44-48, 19:1-7), wind and fire do not.

 

Unfortunately, in the history of the Christian church, some have become so desirous of the experiential dimension of revival that they neglect its evangelical foundation (salvation through Jesus Christ) and its ecclesial outcomes (moral formation in a believing community). We must therefore remember that revival is like a three-legged stool: without one of its legs, the stool topples over.

 

The Spirit yes, but not without Christ and the church!