Setting the Agenda: The Prologue of Acts (Acts 1:1-5)

The opening verses of Acts are easily skipped over by readers eager to get to the action. Yet, even before the camera has made its way to focus on the characters of the drama, the narrator’s voice over tells us a lot about what’s at stake in this particular drama.

In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

-Acts 1:1-5, NRSV

Notice that we begin with a tight summary of the gospel of Luke, of which Acts is to be the sequel work: it was a book about all that Jesus did and taught. Luke centers the actions—healings, exorcisms, etc—along with the things Jesus taught. His life, including his suffering and resurrection, is the anchor that orients us to what’s important in Acts.This seems simple enough, but too many readers of Acts don’t connect this book with the things Jesus did and taught in the gospel. Everything we’re going to read in this sequel flows from the actions and teachings of Jesus. Indeed, I prefer the NIV translation of the first verse: “all that Jesus began to do and to teach” The former book contained the beginnings of his actions and teachings, which are going to continue in this book!

We may wonder if the phrase “the instructions that were given through the Holy Spirit” refers to all the teachings of Jesus in the first book, and it may, but I tend to think that particular phrase points towards this passage at the very end of Luke:

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

- Luke 24:44–49 NRSV

These words from the resurrected Jesus thus set the agenda for the book of Acts, and we wait the infusion of “power from on high”. When that Spirit arrives it will drive the story of Acts, just as it often drove the story of Luke. The same Holy Spirit that was on the move through Jesus in the gospels is going to move now through his disciples.

A Prologue to discipleship

Acts 1:1-5 is a fitting prologue for the book, but also worth considering as a prologue for our lives as disciples today. What if we thought of our own lives as being anchored in the actions and teachings of Jesus—a continuation fueled by the Holy Spirit of Jesus’s own story? The Jesus who “began” to act and teach in the gospels wasn’t finished—his actions and teachings continued in the stories of Peter, Paul, and the others. And the story of Jesus goes on today! He is still alive, and still working and teaching, still reaching towards the world through his Holy Spirit, at work in his disciples.