A good understanding of the Acts of the Apostles is of supreme importance for gaining a picture of the New Testament as a whole. It occupies a position between the Gospels and the Epistles and throws much light on those letters and on what the Lord was doing during those thirty years or so after He ascended into heaven.
Acts is Luke’s second treatise to Theophilus, and he begins by briefly referring to the first. There he had started at the beginning with the conception of Christ and continued to the end of His time on earth, when Jesus had been carried up into heaven.
The implication, however, is that this was just the beginning of Christ’s work. Indeed, some translations have “all that Jesus began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1; NIV, ESV), which suggests that this second document describes the continuing work of Jesus. It catalogues what the ascended Christ said and did by and through His Holy Spirit working in the lives of the Apostles and others.
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” (John 16:12-13)
