Sin in the Church

The congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul.
–Acts 4:32

In our study of Acts, we’ve seen a number of firsts: The first time people were baptized with the Holy Spirit. The first sermon in the new church. The first miracle of healing in the church. The first time the church faced persecution. This week, we’re going to look at the first time God judged sin in the church–and what a dramatic, heart-stopping judgment it was. God loves the church too much to let sin go unaddressed and infect the entire body of believers.

I want you to notice what was at risk because of sin in the church. In Acts 4, Peter and John were arrested for healing and preaching in the name of Jesus. They refused to back down, and their courage was infectious. Verse 31 says the whole church was “filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.”

The believers had already been baptized with the Holy Spirit. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is something different. Every Christian is baptized with the Holy Spirit, but not every Christian is filled with the Holy Spirit. To be filled with the Holy Spirit means to be controlled by the Spirit, to let Him direct every area of your life.

One evidence of the filling of the Holy Spirit is boldness in preaching the gospel. But in verse 32, we see another manifestation of being filled with the Spirit: “The congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul.” A church that is filled with the Spirit is unified.

Unity is not the same thing as uniformity. Wouldn’t it be boring if all Christians were just clones of one another–if we all looked alike, dressed alike, and thought alike? The early church was not uniform. There was great diversity in the early church–Jew and Gentile, slave and free, rich and poor–but everybody was united by the Spirit of God. They were of one heart and one mind.

And when there was sin in the church, God acted decisively to discipline His children and preserve the unity of the church.

Today’s devotion is adapted from “Sin in the Church,” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2021.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.