The Gospel and Words

Acts 8:4-5, 12, 25, 35 & 40

Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.

But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.

Now when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.

Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.

But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

D. A. Carson, For the Love of God (Vol. 1)

Thus the Gospel reaches outward in the book of Acts. All the first converts were Jews, whether reared in the Promised Land or gathered from the dispersion. But the beginning of Acts 8 witnesses the conversion of Samaritans—a curious mixed race, only partly Jewish, joined to the mother church in Jerusalem by the hands of the apostles Peter and John. The next conversion is that of the eunuch—an African, not at all Jewish—sufficiently devoted to Judaism to take the pilgrimage to Jerusalem even though he could never be a full-fledged proselyte; a man steeped in the Jewish Scriptures even when he could not understand them.

Small wonder then that the next major event in this book is the conversion of the man who could become the apostle to the Gentiles (July 21).

Aaron Orendorff,

The book of Acts relentlessly circles one driving truth: the gospel must be spread and it must be spread (literally) through word-of-mouth. Much is made in the early chapters (and much is made even here in chapter 8) of the miraculous works that accompanied this gospel preaching, but preaching (as the verses above illustrate) is what ultimately reveals and forwards the gospel. The gospel is not proclaimed by acts, but by words: conversational words, interpretive words, public words and private words. But regardless of the adjective, the noun (i.e., the vehicle) remains static: the gospel is spread through words.