Commentary - Acts 1:1-8

Bird's-eye view

The book of Acts opens not with a bang, but with a briefing. Luke, the careful historian, picks up his narrative right where his Gospel left off, establishing a seamless connection between the life of Christ and the life of the Church. This opening section serves as the great hinge between the two. Jesus, having definitively conquered death, spends forty days with His disciples, not reminiscing, but instructing them on the nature of the kingdom of God. The core of this passage is a command and a promise. The command is to wait in Jerusalem. The promise is the coming of the Holy Spirit. The disciples, still thinking in the old political categories, ask about the restoration of a national kingdom to Israel. Jesus gently corrects their focus, shifting them from the timing of future events to the task of present mission. They are to be His witnesses, and the promised Spirit will be the divine power, the very fuel for that global mission, which will radiate out from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. This is the strategic overview for the spiritual conquest that the rest of the book of Acts will narrate.

In short, Acts 1:1-8 is the great commissioning. It grounds the church's existence in the historical reality of the resurrected Christ, defines the church's power as the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and directs the church's mission to be a global witness to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is the foundational marching order for the new covenant community.

Outline

Context In Acts

These first eight verses are the foundation upon which the entire book of Acts is built. They function as both a prologue and a table of contents. As a prologue, they connect the work of the church directly to the completed work and explicit commands of the risen Lord Jesus. The church is not an afterthought or a plan B; it is the organism Christ created and commissioned. As a table of contents, verse 8 lays out the geographical and spiritual progression of the book. The gospel witness begins in Jerusalem (chapters 1-7), expands into Judea and Samaria (chapters 8-12), and then, through the ministry of Paul, explodes out to the very ends of the known Roman world (chapters 13-28). This opening is the strategic plan, and the rest of the book is the after-action report of how the Holy Spirit began to carry it out.

Key Issues

The Engine of the Kingdom

Before any great endeavor, there is a final meeting where the leader lays out the mission. This is what we have here. The Lord Jesus Christ, having accomplished redemption, is about to ascend to His throne. But before He goes, He gathers His hand-picked officers and gives them their final orders. He is not giving them a suggestion, but a strategy. He is not offering them an option, but an imperative. What we find in these verses is the foundational charter of the Christian church. Everything the church is and everything the church does is to be governed by what is laid down here. This is the description of the engine that will drive the kingdom of God throughout history, and it has two essential components: the person of the Holy Spirit and the proclamation of the gospel.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1-2 The first account, O Theophilus, I composed, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when He was taken up to heaven, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen,

Luke begins by identifying this work as the second volume of a set. The "first account" is the Gospel of Luke. Notice the crucial phrase: what Jesus began to do and teach. This implies that the book of Acts is the story of what Jesus continued to do and teach, now from His throne in heaven, working by His Spirit through His church. The church is not on its own. It is the ongoing ministry of the ascended Christ. Luke also emphasizes that Jesus' orders to the apostles were given "by the Holy Spirit." From start to finish, the entire Christian enterprise is a Trinitarian work. The Father promises, the Son commands, and the Spirit empowers.

3 to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over forty days and speaking about the things concerning the kingdom of God.

Christianity stands or falls on this verse. Our faith is not based on a lovely idea, a moral philosophy, or a subjective experience. It is based on a historical fact: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Luke, the meticulous historian, stresses that this was not a hallucination or a myth. Jesus presented Himself alive by "many convincing proofs." He was seen, heard, and touched. He ate with them. This period of forty days was a crucial time of instruction. And what was the curriculum? "The things concerning the kingdom of God." The resurrection was not just a great miracle; it was the vindication of Jesus as King, and He spent over a month explaining the nature of His kingdom and its implications to His disciples.

4-5 And gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, “Which,” He said, “you heard of from Me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

Here we have a startling command. They have just been given the greatest news in human history, and the King tells them to sit still. "Do not leave Jerusalem." They were to wait. This is a profound lesson in dependence. The mission they were about to undertake was humanly impossible. They could not do it in their own strength, with their own wisdom, or by their own zeal. They had to wait for the power source to be switched on. This power is the "promise of the Father," which Jesus identifies as the baptism with the Holy Spirit. He contrasts it with John's baptism. John's was a baptism of water, an outward sign of repentance in preparation for the King. This new baptism would be an immersion into the very life and power of God Himself. It was not something they could achieve; it was something they were to receive.

6 So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?”

This question reveals that the disciples, for all the instruction they had received, were still thinking with a significant limp. Their eschatology was still shaped by nationalistic hopes. When they heard "kingdom," they thought of a political and military restoration of Israel's glory, throwing off the Roman yoke. They had the right subject, the kingdom, but the wrong paradigm. They were asking about the political timetable. It is not an entirely foolish question, but it shows that they had not yet grasped the true nature of Christ's kingdom, which is not of this world in its origin, but is most certainly advancing in this world in its effects.

7 But He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has set by His own authority;

Jesus' answer is a masterful redirection. He does not say that Israel has no future in God's plan, nor does He say the kingdom will not be restored. He says that the calendar of events is not their department. The "times or seasons" (chronos and kairos) are set by the Father's authority alone. This is a permanent rebuke to all forms of eschatological date-setting and chart-making. The temptation to become experts on the prophetic calendar is a distraction from the church's actual work. Our job is not to read the tea leaves of current events to figure out when Jesus is coming back; our job is to be obedient to the commands He has already given us.

8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to THE END OF THE EARTH.”

This is the punchline. Jesus pivots them from speculation to mission. Forget the when; focus on the what. The promise is power, the Greek word is dunamis, from which we get our word dynamite. This is explosive, world-altering power. But what is this power for? It is not for personal edification, spiritual goosebumps, or a private prayer language. The power is explicitly for the task of being witnesses. A witness is someone who testifies to what he has seen and heard. They were to be His witnesses. The content of their testimony was the person and work of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. And the scope of this testimony was to be global, radiating out in concentric circles from their starting point in Jerusalem, to the surrounding region of Judea, across cultural lines to Samaria, and ultimately to every tribe, tongue, and nation. This is the Great Commission in its Acts 1:8 form, and it is the central task of the church until the King returns.

Application

The modern church is constantly tempted by the same two errors that Jesus corrects here. The first is the temptation to rush into ministry and mission in the flesh. We create our own programs, rely on our own marketing savvy, and trust in our own charismatic personalities. But Jesus says, "Wait." Wait for the power from on high. All true Christian work is a supernatural enterprise, and if we are not operating in conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit, we are just spinning our wheels. Our first act of ministry is not to go, but to kneel and ask for the power of God.

The second temptation is to be distracted from our mission by endless speculation about the future. We get tangled up in debates about the timing of the rapture, the identity of the antichrist, and the meaning of the latest international crisis. Jesus' rebuke to the disciples is a rebuke to us: "It is not for you to know." The Father is handling the schedule. Our task is clear. We have been given supernatural power for one great purpose: to be witnesses to Jesus Christ. This means telling our neighbors in our own Jerusalem. It means taking the gospel across town to our Judea. It means crossing cultural and racial barriers to our Samaria. And it means having a heart and a vision for the gospel to go to the ends of the earth. The question for the church today is the same as it was then. Are we waiting for His power? And are we working at His witness?