Acts 8:5-25
Dear RTB’ers,
Jesus speaking, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) We saw this verse a couple of weeks ago as an outline of the book of Acts. Today we see Jesus’ words being fulfilled: Philip went down to the city of Samaria…(v. 5a) and Now when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans. (v. 25) We have seen the apostles ministering in Jerusalem in Acts 2-7. Now Philip has moved north (down!) to Samaritan territory. Recall that upstanding Jews had nothing to do with Samaria, believing that they were an unholy people who had been “infected” by intermarriage with people from other religions. [Recall Jesus and the “woman at the well” in John 4.] Yet we see Philip going directly to Samaria to preach. We’ll see more outreach to non-Jews throughout the book of Acts. In fact, it’s a major issue within the early church, whether Gentiles had to “become Jews” when they believed as Christians.
I am impressed by the early church’s apostolic oversight – sending Peter and John to Samaria, …when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God (v. 14a). Later the apostles will want to hear from Peter about his visit to Cornelius (Acts 10-11) and Paul’s outreach to the Gentiles throughout much of the rest of Acts. They provided us a good model for our own Anglican structure – from the parish (priest) to the diocese (bishop) to ACNA (archbishop). In our structure there is always oversight from above.
Blessings!