Week 43 Acts 4-5
Along with quite a few admirable developments in the NT church quite a bit of hostility from opponents also got mixed right in – verbal-threats physical-violence imprisonment and like that.
One pretty interesting adversarial development was when the religious leaders put a gag order on the apostles.
They told them: never to speak or teach again about Jesus. (Peter & John replied: do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him?)
Before long the council re-arrested them: didn’t we tell you never again to teach in this man’s name? (The apostles replied: we must obey God rather than human authority.)
Later the leaders: ordered them again never to speak in the name of Jesus . (But: the apostles left the high council…and continued to teach and preach.)
So the disciples flat-out contravened that particular by-law. It’s not like they weren’t law-abiding citizens (but they weren’t law-abiding to the point of being 100% compliant no-matter-what the state decreed).
The sticking point for the church was their idea of a Command Structure (CS).
God was at the top of the CS. What he decided was absolute & final. The state was part of the CS and so it could make rules too. But any rules that violated the Lord’s rules – just based on how the logic of the CS worked – were illegitimate.
One of the early church’s jobs was distinguishing legitimate rules (which they obeyed) from non-legitimate ones (which they legitimately disregarded).
Note: quotes from Acts 4:18-19 5:27 29 5:40-42 (NLT)