Lesson 5: Fellowship 57
BIBLE COMMENTS
Understanding the Context
These pivotal passages in Acts and Romans supply helpful insights about
fellowship within early Christian communities. Acts 2:42–47 offers a
snapshot of the church when it was only a few days old, providing a
type of thesis paragraph on the state of the early church. These verses
form the first long summary in Acts with verse 42 serving as an initial
outline, and the following verses (43–47) filling in the details about life
in the early Christian community. At this point in the church’s life, it
was composed of residents of Jerusalem as well as many others who had
journeyed to Jerusalem from various parts of the world for the festival of
Pentecost. These visitors became followers of Jesus and then prolonged
their stay in Jerusalem.
The second passage (Romans 12:3–13), comes at a critical shift in
Paul’s letter to the church at Rome. The first eleven chapters focus on
Christian doctrine while the latter five chapters emphasize faith in
action, a shift from the right way of thinking about God (orthodoxy)
to the right way of practicing our faith (orthopraxy). For Paul, what we
believe should have a direct impact on what we do. Romans 12:1–2 serve
as the transition from doctrine to practice. These two verses explain
that because God has been so merciful to us, we ought to respond by
devoting our lives to him as we are transformed through the renewing of
our minds. The following verses (12:3–13) clarify how followers of God,
in their various stages of transformation, should relate to one another
within the local body of believers.