My Friend's House

by Stephen Blandino

4. GROWTH

This passage concludes with an interesting statement. “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47b, NIV). This phrase fits the passage but seems to have a different flavor from the previous description of community.

I don’t believe this is an accident. When you look at the teachings of Jesus, He made it very clear that two qualities – LOVE and UNITY – would actually precipitate people coming to God?

John 13:34-35 says, “Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other” (MSG).

Then, in John 17, Jesus prays for his disciples: “I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me” (John 17:21, NLT).

In other words, the love we have for each other, and the unity we have with each other, should convince our unbelieving friends to believe in Jesus. Perhaps the words of pastor and theologian Francis Schaeffer puts it in perspective: Schaeffer noted that the observable love of Christians was the final apologetic. So, what does that mean. In her book, Community is Messy, Heather Zempel provides some great clarity:

“Apologetics is a branch of theology concerned with the defense of the Christian faith, and we often think of it in terms of defending the historicity and truthfulness of Scripture. But Schaeffer makes a statement that moves apologetics from the cerebral to the practical. He states that we – the family of God, the body of Christ, the church, the community that we experience – should be the ultimate and final proof of God…at the end of the day, the definitive proof is in the way we relate to one another. That’s the final apologetic.”

Heather Zempel, Community is Messy