“And sold their possessions and goods, and divided among all, as anyone had need.”
In the verse there’s a little nuance that changed my whole view of the early church. I expect the verse to say “(they) sold their possessions and goods, and divided among each other,” but that’s not what it said. It said that they “divided them among all, as anyone had need.” They didn’t divide their goods only among the church, but they divided them with “all,” among both believers and unbelievers.
The word strikes right into the separatist mindset of not interacting with unbelievers. This theory is foreign to the commission to make disciples of all nations. “Whoa, wait a second writer! You’re going off topic, first off there is no command from this verse, and there is definitely nothing about the great commission going on in this passage.” Well reader I would challenge that thinking. By “dividing among all, as anyone had need” they had “favor with all people” (v. 47). They were helping the economy and the poor of the community, and by doing so “The Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”(v.47)
Why do we, including myself, dismiss the possibility that the reason why people were being added to the church daily was because the believers were selling and giving possessions, doing business with the whole community.
The next thing that comes in verse 45 was that they were “dividing them among all, as anyone had need.” Notice how the believers weren’t trying to rip off any people from their community or doing strict business with them, but they gave liberally yet prudently to the people that needed their support. These early believers followed the exhortation of Jesus and the apostles to give and sell their possessions for the good of their own souls and for the earthly physical good of their neightbor.
In Mathews 25: 33-26, there’s a great division of the redeemed sheep and condemned goats based on how they dealt with the poor, the hungry, and the homeless. As a sheep of the Lord I hope to break my tendency to be too introverted and not notice the needs of my brothers and sisters in Christ and of my fellow neighbors in the world. Since I’ve already been crucified with Christ, and it’s no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, I should count my material possessions I don’t need and just feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give to the poor and homeless, and sell the luxuries to those who desire to feed their own flesh so that I may be a good steward of that money and give to my spiritual brethren and my needy neighbors.
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