PEOPLE OF THE SPIRIT

Exploring Luke’s View of the Church

GRAHAM H. TWELFTREE

Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

Grand Rapids, Michigan

First published in Great Britain in 2009

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

36 Causton Street

London SW1P 4ST

Published in the United States by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakeracademic.com

Copyright © Graham H. Twelftree 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

SPCK does not necessarily endorse the individual views contained in its publications.

The author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the external website and email addresses included in this book are correct and up to date at the time of going to press. The author and publisher are not responsible for the content, quality or continuing accessibility of the sites.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are either the author’s own translation or taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC

SPCK ISBN 978-0-281-05536-4

Baker Academic ISBN 978-0-8010-3880-8

To

Mel Gilmour

and

To the memory of Ivan Wallis

Contents

About the author

Preface

Abbreviations

1 The issues

1.1 Back to the Bible?

1.2 Why Luke?

1.3 Luke?

1.3.1 Who?

1.3.2 When and where?

1.3.3 What?

1.3.4 Why?

1.4 The readers?

1.5 Which Church?

1.6 ‘Church’

1.7 The issues

1.8 Our goal

2 Origins and purpose

2.1 Between Easter and Pentecost

2.2 The apostles

2.3 Apostles and the nature of the Church

2.4 Apostles and the origin of the Church

2.5 Apostles and the purpose of the Church

2.5.1 The apostles (the Church) in the Gospel

2.5.2 The Church (the apostles) in Acts

2.5.3 Extending the apostolate

2.6 Conclusions

3 Jesus: the Church modelled

3.1 Jesus paralleled

3.1.1 The Holy Spirit

3.1.2 Teaching and preaching the good news

3.1.3 Healing and exorcizing

3.1.4 Parallels in prayer

3.1.5 Parallel qualities

3.1.6 Jesus, Stephen and Paul

3.1.7 Conclusions

3.2 The Church: Jesus modelled

3.2.1 The Ascension story repeated

3.2.2 The structure of Acts

3.2.3 The invitation of the end of Acts

3.3 Conclusions

4 Salvation and the Church

4.1 Salvation

4.1.1 The scope of salvation

4.1.2 The nature of salvation

4.2 Salvation and the Church

4.3 The Church dispenses salvation?

4.4 Conclusion

5 The Church as the people of God

5.1 The Church and Judaism

5.2 A synagogue?

5.3 A sect?

5.4 ‘The ...