12 - Koinonia

This is a very challenging passage. It describes people living out their faith in a way that is so different from our own experience that it leaves us confused or even suspicious. Their lifestyle was radical and we might feel the need to explain it away as an initial burst of enthusiasm which would soon be dimmed by the realities of life. I’ve even read someone who described it as a misguided attempt at communism. Almost everyone who comments on this passage assures us that we don’t have to follow in their footsteps, and, of course, they’re right. There is no law saying we have to live like that. But I think we make a terrible mistake if we simply dismiss this first expression of the church of Jesus Christ as a quaint experiment in naïve zeal. Persecution did arise almost immediately and some of what they did had to change, but some of the most disturbing parts of what we see in our forefathers and mothers not only didn’t disappear, but became vital to their survival. They deserve an honest hearing, after all. This is the church fresh from the hands of Jesus. This is what people who had talked to Him only days earlier thought He wanted. This is what they believed pleased Him. So, yes of course, it will look different today. It has to. But the deep principles they were living out ought not to change. Most have been forgotten over the past 2000 years, but maybe it’s time to remember them, and let them live again.