Acts 1:1 · World English Bible
Acts 1:1 Meaning The First Book I Wrote
The first book I wrote, Theophilus, concerned all that Jesus began both to do and to teach,
What does Acts 1:1 mean?
A careful piece of research opened by naming the reader it was written for. Theophilus is one man, and a dedication like this put the work into public circulation, offered to him to weigh.
From the Protestant reading below.
Acts 1:1 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Protestant
PROTESTANT
Protestant
A careful piece of research opened by naming the reader it was written for. Theophilus is one man, and a dedication like this put the work into public circulation, offered to him to weigh.
The writer's earlier volume, covering all that Jesus began to do and teach, leaves that beginning open at the far end. What follows carries the unfinished work on, and the one at work is still Jesus. Deeds come first in that pairing, so what was written down follows a working life, with the teaching rising out of what He did.
Protestant lensGo deeper in the app
Protestant lens
Live Acts 1:1 today
- Take one thing you have said you believe and do a small version of it today, before you say it again to anyone. Let the doing go first for once.
- Pick one person and tell them plainly what you are trying to live out, the way you would hand someone a letter to read. Saying it to a real face makes it something you can be held to.
- When you are rushed and the work is unfinished, leave it clearly unfinished rather than pretending it is done. Something still open is not something failed.
Is what I say about my life actually a description of how I spent today?
The same truth in other traditions
Confucius · Analects
The teacher said he would rather be judged by his conduct than his words, and his students recorded what he did before what he said. The sayings grew out of a watched life.
Zen
Zen masters are remembered for sweeping, cooking, and pouring tea, and the teaching is read off those actions. A teaching with no life behind it is a recipe nobody cooked.
Judaism · Pirkei Avot
Study matters most when it leads to doing, and the doing is the point the learning was aimed at. The two were never meant to come apart.
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