The Acts of the Apostles A Commentary by John Stott

Acts 1:15-17,20 - Waiting for Pentecost
The fulfilment of Scripture

The warrant for replacing Judas was Old Testament Scripture. This was Peter's conviction, which he expressed to the believers: *Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through the mouth of David concerning Judas* (16). We need to recall that, according to Luke, the risen Lord had both opened the Scriptures to his disciples and opened their minds to understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:25-27), 32, 45-49). In consequence, since the resurrection they had begun to have a new grasp of how the Old Testament foretold the sufferings and glory, rejection and reign of the Messiah. And, stimulated by Jesus, explanations, they will during the fifty days of waiting have searched the Scriptures for further light. We know that various lists of Old Testament 'testimonies' to the Messiah were later compiled and circulated. But the process will have begun immediately after the resurrection.

Peter goes on to quote from two Psalms (Psalms 69 and 109), the first explaining what had happened (Judas' defection and death) and the second what they should do about it (replace him). Psalm 69 is applied to Jesus five times in the New Testament. In it an innocent sufferer describes how his enemies hate and insult him without cause (psalm 69:4), and how he is consumed with zeal for God's house (Psalm 69:9). These verses are both quoted in John's Gospel, verse 4 by Jesus himself (John 15:25) and verse 9 by his disciples (John 2:17), while Paul twice refers this psalm to Jesus (Romans 11:9-10; 15:3). Towards its end (Psalm 69:24) the psalmist utters a prayer that God's judgement will fall on these wicked and impenitent people. peter individualizes this text and applies it to Judas on whom indeed God's judgement had fallen: *May his place be deserted; let there be no-one to dwell in it* (20a). Psalm 109 is similar. it concerns 'wicked and deceitful men' who without justification hate, slander and attack the writer. Then one particular person is singled out, perhaps the ringleader, and God's judgement on his is requested (Psalm 109:8): *May another take his place of leadership* (20b). This verse too, on what Dr. Longenecker calls 'the commonly accepted exegetical principle of analogous subject', Peter applies to Judas.

These two Scriptures seemed to Peter and the believers adequate general guidance on the need to replace Judas. Perhaps there was an additional factory, which Luke mentions in his Gospel (Luke 22:28-30), namely that Jesus drew a parallel between the twelve apostles and the twelve tribes of Israel. If the early church was to be accepted as enjoying direct continuity with, indeed being the fulfilment of, Old Testament Israel, the number of its founders must not be depleted. A few years later it was not deemed necessary to replace James, for he had not defected, but had been faithful unto death (12:1-2).

Without the Holy Spirit, Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, even impossible. There can be no life without the life-giver, no understanding without the Spirit of truth, no fellowship without the unity of the Spirit, no Christ-likeness of character apart from his fruit, and no effective witness without his power. As a body without breath is a corpse, so the church without the Spirit is dead.

Luke is well aware of this. Of the four evangelists it is he who lays the heaviest emphasis on the Spirit. Near the beginning of each part of his two-volume work he demonstrates the indispensability of the Holy Spirit's enabling. Just as the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus when John baptised him, so that he entered his public ministry 'full of the Holy Spirit', 'led by the Spirit', 'in the power of the Spirit' and 'anointed' by the Spirit (Luke 3:21-22; 4:1, 14, 18), so now the same Spirit came upon the disciples of Jesus to equip them for their mission in the world (Acts 1:5, 8; 2:33). In the early chapters of the Acts Luke refers to the promise, the gift, the baptism, the power and the fullness of the Spirit in the experience of God's people. The terms are many and interchangeable; the reality is one, and there is no substitute for it.

Yet this reality is multi-faceted, and there are at least four ways in which we may think of the Day of Pentecost. First, it was the final act of the saving ministry of Jesus before the Parousia.. He who was born into our humanity, lived our life, died for our sins, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, now sent his Spirit to his people to constitute them his body and to work out in them what he had won for them. In this sense the Day of Pentecost is unrepeatable. Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Day, Ascension Day and Whit Sunday are annual celebrations, but the birth, death, resurrection, ascension and Spirit-gift they commemorate happened once and for all. Secondly, Pentecost brought to the Apostles the equipment they needed for their special role. Christ had appointed them to be his primary and authoritative witnesses, and had promised them the reminding and teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit (John 14-16). Pentecost was the fulfilment of that promise. Thirdly, Pentecost was the inauguration of the new era of the Spirit. Although his coming was a unique and unrepeatable historical event, all the people of God can now always and everywhere benefit from his ministry. Although he equipped the apostles to be the primary witnesses, he also equips us to be his secondary witnesses. Although the inspiration of the Spirit was given to the apostles alone, the fullness of the Spirit is for us all. Fourthly, Pentecost has been called - and rightly - the first 'revival', using this word to denote one of those altogether unusual visitations of God, in which the whole community becomes vividly aware of his immediate, overpowering presence. it may be, therefore, that not only the physical phenomena (2ff), but the deep conviction of sin (37), the 3,000 conversions (41) and the widespread sense of awe (43) were signs of 'revival'. We must be careful, however, not to use this possibility as an excuse to lower our expectations, or to relegate to the category of the exceptional what God may intend to be the church's normal experience. The wind and the fire are abnormal, and probably the languages too; the new life and joy, fellowship and worship, freedom, boldness and power were not.

Acts 2 has three sections. It begins with Luke's description of the Pentecost event itself (1-13), continues with the explanation of the event itself (1-13), continues with the explanation of the event which Peter gives in his sermon (14-41), and ends with its effects in the life of the Jerusalem church (42-47).

1) Luke's narrative: the event of Pentecost (2:1-13)
Luke's narrative opens with a brief, matter-of-fact reference to the time and place of the Spirit's coming. *They were all together in one place*, hw writes, and is evidently not concerned to enlarge on this. We do not know, therefore, if the 'house' of verse 2 is still the upper room (Acts 1:13; 2:46b) or one of the many rooms or halls of the temple (Luke 24:53; Acts 2:46a). The time is precise, however; it was *when the day of Pentecost came* (1). This feast had two meanings, one agricultural and the other historical. Originally, it was the middle of the three annual Jewish harvest festivals, (Deut. 16:16), and was called either the Feast of Harvest (Exodus 23:16), because it celebrated the completion of the grain harvest, or the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost, because it took place seven weeks or fifty days (*pentekostos* means 'fiftieth') after the Passover, which was when the grain harvesting began (Exodus 34:22); Leviticus 23:15ff; Numbers 28:26). Towards the end of the inter-Testamental period, however, it began also to be observed as the anniversary of the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, because this was reckoned as having happened fifty days after the Exodus.

It is tempting, therefore, to find the double symbolism of harvesting and law-giving in the Day of Pentecost. Certainly there was a great harvest of 3,000 souls that day, the first-fruits of the Christian mission. As Chrysostom put it, 'the time was come to put in the sickle of the word; for here, as the sickle keen-edged, came the Spirit down'. Certainly too the prophets regarded as almost identical Yahweh's two new covenant promises, 'I will put my Spirit in you' Ezk.36:27) and 'I will put my law in their minds and write it in their hearts' (Jer. 31:33), since what the Spirit does when he enters our hearts is to write God's law there, as Paul clearly taught. Nevertheless, Luke does not draw out this double symbolism. So we cannot be sure whether it was important to him, even though Jewish traditions associated wind, fire and voices with Mount Sinai (cf. Heb. 12:18-19), the three phenomena which he is about to describe.

Next: Acts 2:1-47 - The Day of Pentecost

a) The three phenomena
*Suddenly*, Luke says, the great event took place. The Spirit of God came upon them. And his coming was accompanied bythree supernatural signs - a sound, a sight and strange speech.
First, there came from heaven *a sound like the blowing of a violent wind,* and it (i.e. the noise) *filled the whole house where they were sitting* (2). Secondly, there appeared to them
visibly *what seemed to be tongues of fire*, which *separated and came to rest on each of them* (3), becoming for each an individual possession. Thirdly, *all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues* (i.e. languages of some kind) *as the Spirit enabled them* (4).

These three experiences seemed like natural phenomena (wind, fire and speech); yet they were supernatural both in origin and in character. The noise was not wind, but sounded like it; the sight was not fire but resembled it; and the speech was in languages which were not ordinary but in some way `other'. Again, three of the higher senses were affected, in that they heard the wind-like sound, saw the fire-like apparition and spoke the `other' languages. Yet what they experienced was more than sensory; it was significant. So they sought to understand it. `What does this mean?' the people later asked (12). If we allow other parts of Scripture to guide our interpretation, it seems that these three signs at least represented the new era of the Spirit which had begun (John the Baptist had bracketed wind and fire (Lk.3:16)) and the new work which he had come to do. If so, the noise like the wind may have symbolized *power* (such as Jesus had promised them for witness, Lk.24:49; Acts 1:8), the sight like fire *purity*
(like the live coal which cleansed Isaiah, 6:6-7) and the speech in other languages the *universality* of the Christian church. In what follows nothing more is said about the phenomena like wind and fire; Luke concentrates on the third, the languages.

Luke's emphasis is on the international nature of the crowd which collected. They were all *God-fearing Jews*, and they were all *staying* (that is, residing) *in Jerusalem* (5). Yet they had not been born there; they came from the dispersion, *from every nation under heaven* (5). That we must not press Luke's `every nation' literally to include, for example, American Indians, Australian aboriginals and New Zealand Maoris, is plain from what follows. He was speaking, as the biblical writers normally did, from his own horizon not ours, and was referring to the Graeco-Roman world situated round the Mediterranean basin, indeed to every nation in which there were Jews.

Luke's list includes five groupings, as he moves with his mind's eye approximately from East to West. First, he mentions *Parthians, Medes and Elamites* and *residents of Mesopotamia*
(9a), that is peoples from the Caspian Sea westwards, many of whom will have been descended from the Jewish exiles who had been transported there in the eighth and sixth centuries BC. Secondly, in verses 9b-10a, Luke refers to five areas of what we call Asia Minor or Turkey, namely *Cappadocia* (east), *Pontus* (north), *and Asia* (west), *Phrygia and Pamphylia* (south). Because *Judea* (9) comes oddly between Mesopotamia and Cappadocia, some
commentators think Luke is using the word to refer to a wider area like the whole of Palestine and Syria, even including Armenia, while others follow an Old Latin version which reads *Joudaioi* (`Jews') instead of *Joudaian* (`Judea'), and so translate `the Jews inhabiting Mesopotamia and Cappadocia etc.'. The third group (10b) is North Africa, namely *Egypt and the parts of Lybia near Cyrene* (its chief city), the fourth (10b-11a) is *Visitors from Rome* across the Mediterranean (*both Jews and converts to Judaism*), and the fifth, which looks like an afterthought, *Cretans and Arabs* (11b).

This was the international, multi-lingual crowd which gathered round the 120 believers. *We hear them declaring the wonders of God*, they said, *in our own tongues (11c), that is, *each...in his own native language (8). Yet the speakers were known to be Galileans (7), who had a reputation for being uncultured (cf. Jn.1:46; 7:52). They also `had difficulty
pronouncing gutturals and had the habit of swallowing syllables when speaking; so they were looked down upon by the people of Jerusalem as being provincial'. it is not surprising, therefore,
that the crowd's reaction was one of bewilderment (6). Indeed, *amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, `What does this mean?'*(12). *Some, however*, a minority who for some reason understood none of the languages, *made fun of them and said, "They have had too much wine"* (13).

Acts 2:1-47. b). Glossolalia

What exactly was this third phenomena which Luke stresses, and as a result of which people heard God's wonders in their vernacular? How does Luke understand *glossolalia*? We begin our answer negatively. First, it was not the result of intoxication, of drinking too much *gleukos*, `sweet new wine' (13,BAGD). Peter is emphatic on this point: `These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning!' (15). As early in the day as that, Haenchen comments, `even drunkards and wassailers have not yet begun to imbibe'. Besides, the Jews fasted during festivals until the morning services were over. Nor, we must add, did the believers' experience of the Spirit's fullness *seem* to them or *look* to others like intoxication, because they had lost control of their normal mental and physical functions. No, the fruit of the Spirit is `self-control' (Gal.5:23), not the loss of it. Besides, only `some' (13) made this remark, and though they said it, they do not seem to have meant it. For, Luke says, they `made fun of them'. It was more a jest than a serious comment.

Secondly, it was not a mistake or a miracle of hearing, in contrast to speaking, so that the audience supposed that the believers spoke in other languages when they did not. Some of Luke's statements seem to support this theory: `each one *heard* then speaking in his own language' (6); `how is it that each of us *hears* them is his own native language?' (8); and `we *hear* them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!' (11). When, however, Luke writes his own descriptive narrative, he puts the matter beyond dispute: they began to *speak* in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them' (4). *Glossolalia* was indeed a phenomenon of hearing, but only because it was first a phenomenon of speech.

Thirdly, it was not a case of incoherent utterance. Liberal commentators, who begin with a prejudice against miracles, suggest that the 120 believers broke into unintelligible, ecstatic speech, and that Luke (who had visited Corinth with Paul) mistakenly supposed that it was literal languages. Thus Luke got in a muddle and confused two quite different things. What he thought was languages was in reality `inarticulate ecstatic babbling' or a `flood of unintelligible sounds in no known language'. Those of us who have confidence in Luke as a reliable historian, however, let alone as an inspired contributor to the New Testament, conclude that it is not he who is mistaken, but rather his rationalistic interpreters.

Fourthly, and positively, the *glossolalia* on the Day of Pentecost was a supernatural ability to speak in recognizable languages. Some think that these were Aramaic, Greek, and Latin, which would all have been spoken in multi-lingual Galilee; that `other languages' means `languages other than Hebrew' ( the sacred biblical language which would have seemed appropriate on the occasion); and that the crowd's astonishment was aroused by God's wonders not the languages, by the content not the medium of the communication. This is plausible, and could be said to do justice to Luke's account. On the other hand, his emphasis is more on the linguistic media (4,6,8,11) than on the message (12); it is natural to translate `other languages' as `other than their mother tongue' rather than `other than Hebrew'; the list of fifteen regions in verses 9-11 leads one to expect a wider range of languages than Aramaic, Greek and Latin; and the crowd's astonishment seems due to the fact that the languages, which to the speakers were `other' (4), i.e. foreign, were yet to the hearers their `own' (6,11), indeed their `own native language' (8), in which they were born (see AV). I conclude, therefore, that the miracle of Pentecost, although it may have included the substance of what the one hundred and twenty spoke (*the wonders of God*), was primarily the medium of their speech (foreign languages they had never learned).

So far I have concentrated on Luke's own understanding of *glossolalia* on the Day of Pentecost, which can be discovered only by the exegesis of Acts 2. Presumably, the *glossolalia* to which he refers in Acts 10:46 and 19:6 was the same speaking of foreign languages, since he uses the same vocabulary (though most manuscripts omit the adjective `other'). What, then, about the references to tongue-speaking in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14? Are the phenomena mentioned in Acts and 1 Corinthians the same or different? We must try to reach our answer with reference to the biblical text rather than to contemporary claims.

Some think the phenomena were in several ways different. First, they were different in *direction*, *glossolalia* in Acts being in some sense the public `declaring' (11) of God's wonders, sharing them with others, while in 1 Corinthians the tongue-speaker `does not speak to men but to God'. (1 Cor.14:2; cf. vv14-17,28). Secondly, they were different in *character*, *glossolalia* in Acts being languages which were understood by groups of listeners, while in 1 Corinthians 14 the speech was unintelligible and an interpreter was necessary. Thirdly, they were different in *purpose*. In Acts *glossolalia* seems to be evidential, an initial `sign' given to all, bearing witness to their reception of the Spirit, while in 1 Corinthians it is edificatory, a continuing `gift' bestowed on some for the building up of the church.

Others. however, point out that the Greek words and expressions are the same throughout the New Testament. *Glossa* (`tongue') has only two meanings (the organ of the mouth and a language) and *hermeneuo* (`interpret') usually means to translate a language. They therefore conclude that the Acts and 1 Corinthians passages refer to the same thing, namely languages. Even some who think the *purpose* is different, go on to affirm that the *character* is the same. For example, the Assemblies of God commentator Stanley M. Horton writes that `the tongues here (sc. in Acts 2) and the tongues in 1 Corinthians chapters 12-14 are the same' As the official *Statement* of the Assemblies of God puts it (para 8), they are `the same in essence', but `different in purpose and use'. To sum up, rejecting the liberal approach, which is to declare Corinthian *glossolalia* to be unintelligible utterance and to assimilate the Acts phenomenon to it, it is better to make the opposite proposal, namely that the Acts phenomenon was intelligible languages and that the 1 Corinthians experience must be assimilated to it. The main argument for this is that, although *glossolalia* is mentioned without explanation in several New Testament passages, Acts 2 is the only passage in which it is described and explained; it seems more reasonable to interpret the unexplained in the light of the explained than vice versa.

Discussion about the nature of *glossolalia* must not distract our attention from Luke's understanding of the significance of the Day of Pentecost. It symbolised a new unity in the Spirit transcending racial, national and linguistic barriers. So Luke is at pains to emphasize the cosmopolitan character of the crowd, not least by the expression `from every nation under heaven'(5). Although all the nations of the world were not present *literally*, they were *representatively*. For Luke includes in his list descendants of Shem, Ham and Japheth, and gives us in Acts 2 a `Table of the Nations' comparable to the one in Genesis 10. Bishop Stephen Neill has made this point: `Most of the people mentioned by Luke fall under the heading of Semites, Elam being the first of the Semitic nations mentioned in Genesis 10; but Luke is careful also to add Egypt and Libya which come under the heading of Hamites, and Cretans (Kittim) and dwellers in Rome who belong to the section under Japheth... Luke does not draw attention to what he is doing; but in his own subtle way he is saying to us that on that Day of Pentecost the whole world was there in the representatives of the various nations.

Nothing could have demonstrated more clearly than this the multi-racial, multi-national, multi-lingual nature of the kingdom of Christ. Ever since the early church fathers, commentators have seen the blessing of Pentecost as a deliberate and dramatic reversal of the curse of Babel. At Babel human languages were confused and the nations were scattered; in Jerusalem the language barrier was supernaturally overcome as a sign that the nations would now be gathered together in Christ, prefiguring the great day when the redeemed company will be drawn `from every nation, tribe, people and language' (Gn.11:1-9; Rev.7:9). Besides, at Babel earth proudly tried to ascend to heaven, whereas in Jerusalem heaven humbly descended to earth.

Next: Acts 2:14-41. Peter's sermon: the explanation of Pentecost