Explore the Bible: Acts 9:10-19

Occasionally as we read through the historical narratives of the Bible we come across a person who enters the story for just a brief mention, then is never heard of again in Scripture. Some of these are figures of far more importance to redemptive history than their short notice indicates. One of these is found in Acts 9, right in the middle of the narrative of Saul’s conversion.

Ananias was a follower of Jesus who lived in Damascus. Later church tradition counts him as one of the 72 disciples Jesus sent out during His ministry, but the Bible tells us nothing of his background. We don’t even know if he was in Damascus due to the dispersion of the church due to persecution or whether he had already been a resident of the city, who had perhaps visited Jerusalem around Pentecost. What the Bible does tell us, in Paul’s later retelling of his conversion in Acts 22, is that Ananias was “a devout man according to the law, well spoken of by the Jews who lived there” (verse 12).

Jesus appeared to Ananias in a vision; this one was less dramatic than Saul’s, perhaps because Ananias was prepared to listen to his Lord. Jesus’ instructions are straightforward, but Ananias pauses when he hears them. While he may never have seen Saul personally, he certainly has heard a lot about him, even understanding that Saul could have him arrested and brought back to Jerusalem. Ananias may not have been balking at his assignment, but trying to make sure he was hearing correctly. Jesus was sending him to the church’s chief adversary? And he was supposed to perform a miraculous healing on that man? I think it safe to say no one else in the history of the church has been given a mission like that!

Jesus not only confirmed His call, He added a message that Ananias would pass on to Saul (see Acts 22:14-16). Saul, the devout Jew and rabbinic scholar, was to become the Lord’s choice to take His gospel to the Gentiles. In addition, Jesus added that Saul, who had caused so much suffering to the church, would himself suffer much for the sake of the Lord.

Ananias went and fulfilled his divine commission. He went to the place Saul was staying and found him fasting, probably along with prayer. Ananias announced the Lord’s message and laid his hands on Saul, which restored his sight. While we aren’t told details of Saul’s response, he apparently was immediately baptized, even before he broke his fast. Ananias was convinced that Saul was a genuine believer and follower of Jesus.

While God is in control of all of history, and our human efforts cannot thwart His will, it is interesting to think about what the short mission of Ananias to Saul, who later became known as Paul, meant to the history of the church. Sixteen of the 27 books of the New Testament owe their writing to Paul: his own 13 epistles, plus three book penned by writers influenced by Paul (Hebrews, Luke, and Acts). A large number of churches were directly planted by Paul, and others were strengthened by his ministry among them. Paul’s writings changed the lives of many later Christians who became powerful influences for Christ in their own times and beyond. Paul is viewed as perhaps the Christian with the greatest influence of anyone after Jesus Himself, yet it was Ananias who brought Paul the gospel message he needed to hear and who helped him understand the changes Jesus would bring to his life.

Sometimes when we look at the great figures of the Bible, we can be overwhelmed. Even though we understand that all of those heroes had their weaknesses (even Paul), we look at their powerful influence and wonder how we could ever be like them. When we think like this, we need to remember that we are not all called to be Pauls. For many of us, our call is more like that to Ananias: listen to Jesus, then go and minister in His name where we are placed. No matter what you are called to do by Christ, you can have a profound influence on the world through your faithful obedience.

The Baptist Faith and Message: IIA. God the Father (Part 2)

“God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.”

One of the glib truths often cited by people is that “we all have God as our Father, and we are all brothers.” There is an assumption that since God has created us, He also remains in a fatherly relationship to every person. It sounds so nice to our ears we just assume that the Bible teaches it.

Unfortunately, this isn’t what the Bible says. God is indeed a Father. First and foremost, He is the Father of Jesus, the Son, within the economy of the Trinity. The Bible reveals to us that those who stand in a right relationship to God are also His children. Jesus even taught His disciples to call God “Our Father” in prayer. Those who have their faith in Jesus Christ are adopted by God into His family (Romans 8:14-15). To do this, we must repent of our sin and rebellion against God and accept His way of salvation.

This is part of the meaning of the term “born again” as Jesus used it in John 3. Our original birth brought us into the world, but as part of humanity we came with a sinful human nature. (We’ll look at this topic more in a later post.) We aren’t just sinners by birth, though; we are also sinners by choice. We freely choose to pursue what we want rather than what God expects and commands from us. As a result, we are not part of the family of God, although we are a part of the human family. The “brotherhood of man” is a truth, but not one that brings us into a right relationship with God.

To our Western culture, this sounds bigoted, narrow-minded, and just plain wrong. If we say some people are not children of God, we may insult them or hurt their self-image. It doesn’t matter what is true, just what makes people feel good about themselves. People don’t want to face the consequences of their action, so they assume God will overlook “a few little faults” and let them into His family and into heaven.

It doesn’t matter how people feel about what the Bible reveals, however. If it is true that we must be “born again” to become part of God’s family, then we cannot find any other way to reach that goal. We cannot be part of a family whose Father we reject and openly defy. And frankly, why would you want to spend eternity with the One whose word you ignored and whose standards you broke whenever you chose?

Some might argue that even an earthly father can be reconciled to children who have rejected him or ignored what he wanted. Wouldn’t God be even more likely to want reconciliation? That is absolutely true. God has made it possible for us to be reconciled to Him through the work of Jesus. He won’t force us to be reconciled, though. We must choose to humble ourselves, repent of our sins, and accept His chosen means of reconciliation. Just as an earthly father can’t be reconciled to a child who refuses his advances, so God cannot be reconciled to those who reject His offer of reconciliation.

Now God does have a fatherly attitude toward all of humanity. He provides providential care for all, and He has made a way for all to become His children. But His fatherly attention is meant to draw us into a relationship with Him through Christ. Only then will He truly be our Father, as His Word reveals to us. 

Explore the Bible: Acts 8:9-24

The character of Simon the magician (called Simon Magus in early Christian literature) appears suddenly on the scene here in Acts 8, and just as quickly exits the Biblical narrative. Yet Simon gained a wide reputation among the early Christian writers as the father of Gnosticism and indeed many (if not all) heresies. We see a description of him in Rome attempting to lead people astray as early as the First Apology of Justin Martyr (chapter 26), where he is described as a wonder worker followed by many Samaritans and others. The early church father Irenaeus devotes several chapters of his Against Heresies to addressing Simon and his followers. Some apocryphal works describe multiple confrontations between Peter and Simon in Rome, with Peter always coming out on top. But how much of this early church tradition is true?

There is no doubt that writers like Justin and Irenaeus believed that they were reporting true accounts of Simon’s life and teaching. By the time of Irenaeus, a work purportedly by Simon, called The Great Declaration, was circulating among the Gnostics. Scholars who have studied this work see it as a precursor to what later became the school of the Gnostic teacher Valentinus, so it may have roots that go back much earlier. It seems likely that there was ahistorical Simon who was indeed a teacher of an early form of what later became known as Gnosticism. The question is, was this Simon the same as the Simon of the book of Acts?

As with many questions of this type, there is much debate, and some disagreement. Some believe that Simon, given his background and even his nickname, could certainly have become a leader of a heretical sect that took some of the teachings of Christianity and merged them with magical and philosophical ideas to create a new religion. Such a religion may well have prided itself on its own secret gnosis (from the Greek word for knowledge, and the term which gives us the name Gnotiscism), and attempted to promote itself as the true knowledge passed on by Jesus. The willingness of some scholars even today to find in Gnosticism a legitimate alternate form of Christianity shows us how powerful this draw can be.

Other scholars believe that the Simon who wrote and taught what we see in Justin and Irenaeus was a different person who probably lived somewhat later than the Simon of Acts. The story in Acts 8 led Christians to think of the two as the same person, so the later Simon was thought to be the one that Luke wrote about. Even with this idea, there is still thought to be an actual historical Simon. It is interesting that scholars who are skeptical that the teaching of the Gospels tells us anything true about Jesus are often willing to accept the 2^nd century Great Declaration as the actual teaching of Simon!

I think it quite possible that Simon, whose belief in the apostles’ teaching appears in Acts to be little more than a belief in a more powerful magic than he knew, could well have taken a few elements of what Philip, Peter, and John taught and merged them with his own magical beliefs to form a religion of his own, perhaps even one that claimed to follow secret teachings of this Jesus. Such teaching could have been developed by his followers (and I don’t rule out that one could even have been a later Simon) and merged with the growing Gnostic trends that came from Greek philosophy, Christian terminology, and other first and second century influences.

The story of Simon in Acts 8 isn’t so much about who he was as it is about what he was: a man who failed to grasp the truth of the grace of God, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the power of the Spirit. Simon had some kind of belief, even going so far as to be baptized, but he clearly didn’t understand the core of the gospel, the free gift of salvation through Jesus and the free gift of the indwelling Spirit. Peter warned him, and gave him the opportunity to repent, but we never read that Simon did. The stories that rose about him in later Christian tradition suggest he never came to repentance. We must be sure that our “belief” isn’t just an outward show in church or in some habitual practices, but that we have truly come to know the life-giving freedom that comes in Christ through the message of the gospel.