Cut From the Same Cloth
When passing on a compliment of you having inherited some gifts, or that you’re displaying a generational merit, people will often say you’re “from good stock” or “cut from the same cloth.” We don’t know what the future holds, but most cultures are reasonably focused upon determining where they’re from. So too, and how true, for the Jews. They are God’s chosen people, the Israelites, and their story traces back before King David, before Moses, and before even their selection by God of the man Abram. Their origin story points to the creation of the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden and the direct relationship with God that entailed.
This is important to remember for Christians today. Though God foreknew his elect (Rom. 8:29, English Standard Version), Christians are being “born again” by grace through faith all over the world all the time by the rebirth that happens in baptism according to the Great Commission (Matt. 26). As it turns out, baptism and faith conjoined us into the same cloth we were all originally cut from, as the earliest Christians who were largely Jesus-believing Jews. As Elwell & Yarbrough write, “The early Christians saw themselves as the people of God and the inheritors of the Old Testament promises.”1 Dr. Robert Wayne Stacy concurs by saying, “Christianity began as a legitimate movement within the piety of first century Judaism.”2
This is significant for Luke as the author of Acts, and himself a gentile. The gospel he wrote chronicles the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus through careful interview of the Jewish players (disciples et al); the book of the Acts of the Apostles introduces the power of the promised Holy Spirit working through the birthed church that grows to fulfill the Great Commission. Acts is still very much a contemporary model for us present-day believers, exemplifying the good stock we come from. We were made for good works, and Acts is the book to showcase them, from Peter’s bold preaching at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-41), to a life lived in service & community among believers (Acts 2:42-47), to drastic conversions of the likes of Saul of Tarsus into Paul the missionary (Acts 9), Luke is writing about what Jews do when they take following Jesus seriously.
What we Christians today must remember is that our God – the Triune God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – has been and remains at work (John 5:17) as we are invited into the right relationship with him through faith in Jesus Christ. At church this past Sunday (Calvary Chapel Palos Verdes, CA) by providence we are two weeks into proceeding through Acts verse-by-verse. God is certainly good in His timing to put this blog post into the midst of a fresh sermon series. One of Pastor Daniel’s key points was that he believed Pentecost, in its sound of wind (Acts 2:2), tongues like fire (Acts 2:3), and all manner of languages heard AND understood (Acts 2:5-11), that it represented the inverse of the tower of Babel calamity (Gen. 11:1-9). Here, by the power of the Holy Spirit, unity and purpose were given to man as opposed to taken from them in their aspirations to raise themselves to the height of God. Since their languages were separated from the tower of Babel episode, at last, that distinction was made invalid for the sake of unity in birthing the church. It was a point I hadn’t considered before, but it represents the heritage the early church had, that we still have, to the way God interacted with his people in earliest history.
Luke took pains to demonstrate the early church as authentically Jewish because the story of God and his people traces back through the Jews to the authorship of man altogether for the sake of salvation by one God-man altogether, Jesus Christ.3 Some examples include:
The Jewish feast of Pentecost (Shavuot) was primarily a thanksgiving for the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, but it was later associated with a remembrance of the Law given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. (Acts 2)
Peter’s sermon begins with detailed recitation of Scripture, the first time we actually have recorded his use of citing Scripture, when he quotes the prophet Joel. (Acts 2:17-21)
Peter refers to the “patriarch David” as an example of a Jewish protagonist who prophesied about Jesus, quoting, “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” (Acts 2:29, 34-35)
Without these and other exacting bridges authored by Luke, inspired by the Holy Spirit, meant to combine the nascent church with the historic faith, our faith lineage would resemble the arbitrary incompleteness of alternate world religions.
1Walter A. Elwell and Robert W. Yarbrough, Encountering the New Testament: A Historical and Theological Survey
Links to an external site., Third Edition., Encountering Biblical Studies (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 188.
2Robert Wayne Stacy, Ph.D. The Jewish Setting of the Early Church In Acts. Liberty University, 2019. https://canvas.liberty.edu/courses/628598/pages/watch-the-jewish-setting-of-the-early-church-in-acts?module_item_id=70858838
3Robert Wayne Stacy, Ph.D. Pentecost and the Eschatological Setting of the Early Church In Acts. Liberty University, 2024. https://canvas.liberty.edu/courses/628598/pages/watch-pentecost-and-the-eschatological-setting-of-the-early-church-in-acts?module_item_id=70858851