Acts
Summary: Insights from Acts
Below is a brief summary of what I found in Acts concerning each of my four questions. The full evidence and commentary are available in the Acts Study Bible linked above.
1. Who is God?
God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the Sovereign Creator; the Father; the source of life, salvation, power, resurrection, and authority; and the One who raises and exalts Jesus.
The earliest Church prays to God as the One who made heaven, earth, and sea, while calling Jesus His holy Servant whom He anointed. Throughout Acts, this God sends Jesus, works through Jesus, raises Jesus from death, glorifies him, exalts him, and appoints him.
Acts therefore consistently distinguishes God from Jesus while placing Jesus at the center of God’s saving work.
Specifically, who is the Holy Spirit?
Acts gives exceptionally strong evidence that the Holy Spirit is a Person and God.
The Spirit speaks, teaches, testifies, knows the future, commands, forbids, chooses, calls, sends missionaries, appoints church leaders, gives supernatural power, and speaks through the biblical prophets. Most strikingly, Peter says Ananias lied “to the Holy Spirit” and then says, “You haven’t lied to men, but to God.”
The Spirit even says, “Separate Barnabas and Saul for me, for the work to which I have called them,” personally commissioning and directing the Church.
Thus, Acts strongly supports the conclusion that the Holy Spirit is a personal divine Being who works in unity with the Father. Acts itself, however, does not specifically identify the Spirit as Mother or discuss Her femininity; that conclusion depends on the wider biblical argument.
2. What is God's plan for the world?
Acts presents the universal scope of God’s saving purpose and explicitly states that there will be a “restoration of all things”. If all things will be restored, this includes every person. So yes, Acts reveals that universal salvation is biblical and God’s plan. Acts also continually expands the gospel from Israel to Samaritans and Gentiles—God shows no partiality, and His saving purpose reaches all nations. Acts also anticipates a resurrection “of both the just and unjust.”
3. Who is Jesus?
Jesus is God’s human Son, Messiah, Lord, Savior, Servant, Prophet, Righteous One, and appointed Judge—not God Himself. Acts repeatedly calls Jesus a man and distinguishes him from the God who works through him, anoints him with the Holy Spirit, raises him from the dead, exalts him, makes him Lord and Christ, and appoints him as Judge and Savior. The apostolic gospel centers on Jesus as the Christ whom God raised and exalted.
4. Who are Christians?
In Acts, Christians follow Christ’s pattern in a genuinely Spirit-empowered life, although the book does not explicitly promise final conformity to Christ as books such as 1 John do.
The same Holy Spirit who empowered Jesus also fills ordinary believers, enabling them to speak with divine wisdom, perform extraordinary works, endure persecution, and proclaim God’s truth. Stephen especially reflects Jesus’ pattern: filled with the Spirit, he remains faithful unto death and asks that his killers not be held guilty for their sin.
Thus, Acts demonstrates that Jesus’ Spirit-empowered life is genuinely reproducible in his followers, even though the book does not directly describe their final perfected likeness to him.
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