When the Church was Fire

The days after Christ’s ascension were not marked by speculation or strategy. They were marked by fire. Tongues of flame rested on ordinary men and women, and they spoke in languages they had never learned. Rooms shook. Bodies were healed. The dead were raised. Prayers were not recited; they were answered. The early Church was not built with blueprints or bylaws but by the breath of the Spirit. This was a body born in power, and it knew no other way to live.

Those first believers gathered not around a doctrine, or a book, or a building, but around a Presence. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, yes — but also to fellowship, to breaking bread, and to prayer. These were not items to check off a liturgical form. They were the natural outflow of a Spirit-filled life. They met in homes, in courtyards, even in caves, and wherever they gathered, the kingdom of God was made manifest.

They did not hold Bibles in their hands. Many had no scrolls at all. Yet they lived in the Word because the Word lived in them. Christ Himself had taken up residence through the Spirit, and that indwelling was their foundation. Discipleship was not a curriculum; it was relationship. Catechesis was not a lecture; it was life shared. The invitation was simple: “Come, walk with me.” And in the walking, they learned to abide. Miracles were not rare. Prophecy was not exotic. Tongues were not strange. These were the ordinary signs of a kingdom not made with hands.

If anything seemed strange to the early Church, it was the idea of following Jesus without the power and presence of the Spirit. The Spirit was not an accessory to belief; He was their very life. That is why the apostles defended His holiness with such gravity. When Simon the sorcerer tried to buy the Spirit’s power, Peter’s rebuke was fierce. When Ananias and Sapphira lied about their offering, the Spirit judged it swiftly. These stories remind us that the early Church understood: the Spirit’s indwelling was sacred. To lie to the Church was to lie to the Spirit. To counterfeit fruit was to offend the root.

Theirs was a communal faith, rooted in the unseen. They shared possessions. They bore one another’s burdens. They expected the Spirit to speak — and He did. They expected persecution — and they endured it with love. Above all, they understood what we are in danger of forgetting: the kingdom of God is not first external, but internal. It is not a program but a Presence.

Jesus Himself had prepared them for this. Again and again He turned their gaze inward. “The kingdom of God is within you.” “Abide in Me, and I in you.” “Go into your inner room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret.” The promise was simple but staggering: to love Him was to become His dwelling. To open the door was to welcome His Presence into the secret places of the soul.

The apostles carried this vision forward. Paul asked the Corinthians, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” He confessed to the Galatians, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” He urged the Ephesians to be strengthened in the inner man, and Peter spoke of the hidden person of the heart, precious in God’s sight. John, with quiet confidence, assured the Church, “By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.”

None of this was abstract. It was the lived conviction of a people whose entire world had been turned inside out by Pentecost. They were the new tabernacle. They were the vessels of divine fire. And though they lacked buildings, budgets, and books, they carried the presence of God Himself — and that was enough.

We who live in an age of pulpits and printing presses must remember what they knew from the beginning. The Church does not thrive because of structures or strategies. It thrives because it is filled, led, and sustained by the Spirit of the living God. The Spirit has not changed, and the invitation into the inner life has never been withdrawn. What they found in the secret place is the same gift waiting for us today: Christ within, the hope of glory.