What Is Reformed Theology? (Part 9)

by on December 15, 2025 | Comment

And they were devoting themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communion, that is, the breaking of the bread, and to the prayers. (Acts 2:42)1

Teaching

The first words to consider here are “devoting” and “teaching.” The first expression of their new faith in Jesus the Messiah was to give themselves over warmly and eagerly to the teaching of the apostles. The movement of these new Christians was not, as we too often see in our day, away from other Christians, but rather it was toward other Christians, toward what we confess in the Apostles’ Creed, “the communion of the saints.”2 This devotion to apostolic teaching, communion, and the prayers was not a one-time event. It was the pattern of the apostolic church.

Before his ascension, our Lord Jesus commissioned his apostles, and through them the continuing Christ-confessing covenant community, to “make disciples of all the people groups” by “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” and by “teaching them to keep everything I commanded you” (Matt 28:19–20).3 In the Reformed churches, we summarize this commission by speaking of “Word and sacrament ministry.” This is our Lord’s plan to fulfill the church’s mission in the world. The church, the Christ-confessing covenant community, is the mission agency established and ordained by the Chief Shepherd (1 Pet 5:4). The church is to reach the lost and to disciple those to whom the Lord brings the gospel.4

In Romans 10 the apostle Paul explains how central the preaching of the gospel by the church is to the mission of the church and the Lord’s plan for the church. He begins the chapter by declaring his heartfelt desire to see other Jews come to saving faith in Jesus the Messiah (Rom 10:1–4). After all, it is not through our law-keeping that we are saved, as the Pharisees and Judaizers said; rather, it is on the basis of Jesus’ law-keeping for us, through faith alone in Christ, by divine favor alone that we are saved (Eph 2:8–10). The way not to be put to shame is to believe in Jesus (Rom 10:8–11). In Christ, the old dividing wall between Jew and gentile has been broken down (Eph 2:14; Rom 10:12–13).

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Rom 10:14–17)

Faith comes through hearing, and the hearing happens when there is preaching, and preaching happens twice weekly in the Christ-confessing covenant community. This is the instrument that the Holy Spirit uses to bring his elect to new and life true faith. This is why the Reformed churches confess in Heidelberg Catechism 65:

Since then we are made partakers of Christ and all His benefits by faith alone, from where does this faith come?
The Holy Spirit works faith in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel, and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments.

We just saw this pattern in Acts 2. Those to whom the Holy Spirit gave new life and true faith, who had not yet been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were baptized. After that they joined twice weekly for the morning and evening worship services conducted by the apostles and the other ministers of Christ to be fed by God’s Word.

Communion

What does the word communion mean in Acts 2:42? The most basic sense in the New Testament, for the word that I have translated as communion is sharing. Sometimes in the New Testament it refers to financial support (Rom 15:26; 2 Cor 8:4; Phil 1:5; Heb 13:16). Other times it refers to the believer’s spiritual communion with the risen Christ (1 Cor 1:9; Phil 2:8; 1 John 1:6,7), or even to admission to the church and recognition of another as a fellow believer (Gal 2:9), but given the context of Acts 2:42 the word is best understood here as referring to the official administration of holy communion. We can confirm this understanding by comparing it with 1 Corinthians 10:16 where Paul writes, “the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ?”5 It is certain that, in this passage, communion refers to the administration of holy communion in the church, and the similarities with Acts 2:42 are too strong to ignore. In Acts 2:42 Luke connects communion to “the breaking of the bread,” and Paul here writes about both the “cup of blessing” and “the breaking of the bread.” The believers were not merely together casually, but rather they were gathered in corporate worship to receive the elements of holy communion: bread and wine.

The Prayers

Luke mentions a third aspect to the gathered life of the Christ-confessing covenant community: the prayers. I use the expression “the prayers” intentionally to point out the fact that this is not a reference primarily to private, personal prayer, as manifestly important as that is. Rather, Luke here is referring to another aspect of the gathered life of the church.

We know from studies of Jewish religion in the period before, during, and after the writing of New Testament that Jewish practice was to pray three times a day. The rabbis interpreted the phrase, “when you lay down and when you rise up,” in Deuteronomy 6:7 to imply that Jews were commanded to pray, as one famous rabbi wrote, once before noon, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening. We know what the Jews prayed: the Shema—that is, Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear O Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one.”6 We can see reflections of the Shema in the New Testament in Mark 12:29, when our Lord Jesus quotes it. Paul alludes to it in Romans 3:30 and Galatians 3:20, and James 2:19 gives a partial quotation. It was the basic Old Testament and rabbinical confession against surrounding polytheistic pagans. We also know that in the Synagogue (and privately) Jews also prayed a series of benedictions. The first three praised God and the last three thanked him. In between are prayers for knowledge, repentance, forgiveness, deliverance, health, fruitfulness, the diaspora, the rebuilding of the Jewish nation, the reinstitution of the temple worship, and the coming of the Messiah. We have other examples of Jewish prayers, some of which are not very different from parts of the Lord’s Prayer (e.g., Luke 11:2–4).7

The pattern and practices of the synagogue, which developed between the Old and New Testaments, after the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem, very much influenced early Christian practice. Our Lord Jesus himself said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). The Jews thought he was talking about the second, Herodian, temple (John 2:20). He was not, as John tells us: “But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken” (John 2:21). The apostle Peter calls believers the meeting place of God: “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (1 Pet 4:12). Paul calls the Corinthian congregation “the temple of God” (1 Cor 3:16–17) and “the temple of the living God” (2 Cor 6:16). Paul calls the church “a holy temple” (Eph 2:21). One of the major points of the book of Hebrews, written to Jewish Christians who were tempted to go back to the types and shadows, was to argue that Jesus is the high priest (Heb 3:1; 4:14; 5:1–10; 6:20; chs. 7–8; 9:11; 10:21).

So, the apostolic church (and the early post-apostolic church) gathered together twice on the “first day of the week” (Acts 2:7)—that is, every Lord’s Day (Rev 1:10; 1 Cor 16:2). This was to honor the fact that Jesus was raised on the first day of the week (Luke 24:1; John 20:1). The disciples gathered “on the first day of the week” after Jesus was raised and before he ascended (John 20:19). We know that they gathered twice every Lord’s Day because just as the creational pattern was “evening and morning” (Gen 1:19) so too the priests offered sacrifices morning and evening (1 Chron 16:40: 2 Chron 2:4) and the synagogue met twice, morning and evening, on the old sabbath. The Christian Sabbath is the beginning of new creation (2 Cor 5:17), but the pattern of morning and evening worship continued. Perhaps the most famous evening service in the history of the church was punctuated by Eutychus falling asleep, falling out of a third-story window, dying, and being raised again by the apostle Paul exercising his unique apostolic authority (Acts 20:9–12).

There are private aspects to the Christian life. Certainly, we read the Bible privately and we pray privately and we enjoy informal fellowship with other believers. But the focus in the New Testament regarding Christian formation and discipleship is decidedly on the corporate, public gathering for worship—hearing the Word preached and taught, using the sacraments, and discipleship.

Notes

  1. My translation.
  2. Heidelberg Catechism 55 explains this article of the creed:

    What do you understand by the “communion of saints”?
    First, that believers, one and all, as members of the Lord Jesus Christ, are partakers with Him in all His treasures and gifts; secondly, that each one must feel himself bound to use his gifts readily and cheerfully for the advantage and welfare of other members.

  3. My translation.
  4. On the Lord’s freedom in sending the gospel see Canons of Dort 3/4.7: “In the Old Testament, God revealed this secret of his will to a small number; in the New Testament (now without any distinction between peoples) he discloses it to a large number. The reason for this difference must not be ascribed to the greater worth of one nation over another, or to a better use of the light of nature, but to the free good pleasure and undeserved love of God. Therefore, those who receive so much grace, beyond and in spite of all they deserve, ought to acknowledge it with humble and thankful hearts; on the other hand, with the apostle they ought to adore (but certainly not inquisitively search into) the severity and justice of God’s judgments on the others, who do not receive this grace.”
  5. My translation.
  6. My translation. I have used the name for God given in Deuteronomy 6:7 but the rabbis refused to say “the name” and said rather Adonai or Hashem, which is Hebrew for “the name.”
  7. I am following here J. Julius Scott, Jr., Customs and Controversies: Intertestamental Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament (Baker Books, 1995), 141–42.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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    Post authored by:

  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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