work, fulfilling God’s end-time promises. With its unity and joyful sharing, it also fulfilled certain ideals of the Hellenistic world, which would have been appealing to Gentile readers.99 Luke does not hide its weaknesses (cf. 5:1–10; 6:1), but he implies that the church in Jerusalem was a model of what could happen when people were bound together by a belief in the gospel, an understanding of its implications, and an enjoyment of its blessings. Elsewhere, he touches only on aspects of what believers