Acts 2:42—47 gives us a quick glance into the very earliest group of followers of Jesus. We see them living in an intense community with one another. As the text says,
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
NIV
Hearing about this early church probably gets your blood pumping and excitement running. But… Wait… Hold on there. Sharing all possessions. Holding everything in common. Doesn’t that sound a lot like some type of commune, or maybe even communism? Were the early followers of Jesus communists? Should followers of Jesus today be communists?
Every so often the idea shows up that the early Christians were communists—or at least communistic—and that suggests we should be, too. It’s even here, in Wikipedia! Does this idea hold water? Let’s look briefly at the text and see what there is to see.
The (historically-specific) birth of the church
When we read the biblical text, it is helpful to remember that it happened in real history. The situation in Acts 2:42-47 was unique, and the unique factors are relevant. Let’s review what happened.
Pentecost, also known as the Feast of Weeks (see Leviticus 23:15-21), was a Jewish harvest festival held 50 days after Passover. By the time of Acts, this Festival of Weeks had morphed into a celebration of the giving of the Law. It was one of the three annual festivals for which Jewish people would travel from all over the known world to Jerusalem. On this particular Pentecost, probably sometime in May of AD 33,[1] God’s Spirit showed up with a roar. Jesus’ followers threw caution into the wind, preached the gospel boldly, and Jews from all over the known world responded, becoming followers of Jesus the Messiah.
The historical setting is important for grasping what is happening in Acts 2. People from the world over had traveled to Jerusalem on a religious pilgrimage. They were on vacation. They weren’t immigrating. When many non-residents of Jerusalem accept Jesus as messiah and stay there, the practical problem emerges of how to take care of everyone.
Cue spontaneous gifts of generosity. Widespread gifts of generosity, to such a degree that Luke characterizes it as:
44 All who believed were together and held everything in common, 45 and they began selling their property and possessions and distributing the proceeds to everyone, as anyone had need.
Acts 2:44-45 NET
This was clearly a communal way of supporting each other that is deeply foreign to most followers of Jesus today. But note how it is not communistic.
The early church versus Karl Marx
If we’re going to call them communistic, they are unlike any communism as it’s been practiced in the 20th-21st century. Notice that this is not a forced redistribution of wealth. It’s neither a profit-sharing endeavor nor the government forcibly controlling the means of production in society. It’s just people taking care of each other.
It’s organic, to use the criminally overused buzzword.
People shared what they had and what they could. People who had extra things, like the field that Barnabas sells (Acts 4:36-37), sold them to help other people. The fact that there are people who are “in need” makes plain that this “sharing everything” didn’t entail some sort of communal ownership of all the assets of each individual, otherwise, no one would be in need until the whole commune went bankrupt!
The actions of these early Christians have little in common with the government taking ownership of the means of production of wealth and sharing the profits in some sort of equal way (“all animals are equal; some animals are more equal than others”).
These early believers just were not concerned with addressing the questions which communism as a political theory tries to address at all. The sharing in the early church is more analogous to going and helping your neighbor move today than anything Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Mae Zedong, or Xi Jinping were ever up to.
Watching the growth, not just the beginning
Pay special attention to the way this pattern of extreme giving and communal living falls by the wayside as Acts progresses. This first account of the church is of a group of people in transition. After being scattered by persecution (Acts 6), they settle down elsewhere and start making longer-term commitments to the place they are at. Never again do we get a report of communities divesting themselves of their assets and living in a commune. Why? Are these later churches not hearing the same gospel? Aren’t they receiving the same spirit? Or did the apostles change the message?
To be clear, generosity and devotion to caring for each other remain a focus. Paul writes:
28 The one who steals must steal no longer; instead he must labor, doing good with his own hands, so that he will have something to share with the one who has need.
Ephesians 4:28 NET
But we see that the communal zeal and living on the means at hand fall by the wayside as not essential to the gospel community the Holy Spirit births. Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 3:10:
10 For even when we were with you, we used to give you this command: “If anyone is not willing to work, neither should he eat.”
NET
There is no freeloading, no taking care of people who simply won’t bother taking care of themselves. The gospel does not permanently remove people from the normal patterns of life, but redirects them on their way.
But, more to this point, working and sharing with one another remain a lasting mark of the church. Selling possessions and holding all things in common, however, don’t. Those are responses to an immediate concern at the birth of the church. While giving us a example to follow of passion, fervor, and generosity, they are not an economic or political theory about how to organize a local or national economy. Or even how followers of Jesus today should relate to those systems of politics and economics.
Community
The whole response of the proto-church in Acts is based on love and generosity and sacrifice for others. If that’s what you mean by communist, then you could call the early church communist. But a much better word for that is community. A community that loves and takes care of each other.
[1] Pentecost is 50 days (7 weeks and a day) after Passover. Passover was Nissan 14 on the year Jesus was crucified. This was either AD 30 or AD 33, with the later date probably more likely, though both dates have their advocates.