Acts 4:32 “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.”

Few things turn people off from religion so much as divisions. I have talked to many Christians who left the church because of the internal battles they saw, the congregational splits they experienced. Most large denominations go to annual or biennial conventions and argue about church teachings. This has been going on at least since the Jerusalem Council debated the importance of circumcision in Acts 15, about 48 or 49 A.D.

Local congregations develop competing cliques, and meetings where people are discussing God’s work sometimes get mean and nasty. I used to wince when some newly minted graduates of my membership class attended their first voters meeting and watched a couple of “mature” Christian men duke it out verbally in front of the rest of the congregation.

This takes some Christians by surprise. It shouldn’t. When we came to faith, our sinful streak didn’t disappear. Pastor Mark Gungor tells those surprised that he, a married man, notices other pretty women, “Just because I’m sanctified doesn’t mean I’m petrified.” To the people who asked him how he became an alcoholic after he got saved, evangelist Brennan Manning answered, “Coming to faith didn’t turn me into the spiritual equivalent of a patient etherized on an operating table.” The fact of the sinful nature still living in the Christian person means the church will experience rivalries, internal battles, and divisions.

We can all work and pray for more periods of church life like the church in Jerusalem was experiencing here: “All the believers were one in heart and mind.” This does not mean they merely tolerated each other. They didn’t agree to disagree. They functioned as though they all shared the same heart and the same brain. They believed the same things, they lived the same love, because Jesus lived in every one of them by his Holy Spirit.

When God led them to believe that, at the cross, Jesus removed the guilt for every sin, this gave them peace. They didn’t have to live in terror that God was going to punish them. Jesus had set them free from their sins. They were now convinced that God loved them all the time. Death was no longer the scary prospect of facing God’s angry judgment at the end of life. It was their final escape. It was the way home.

This was more than a new way of thinking. God himself was remaking them in his own image, restoring the purity, love, and innocence mankind lost when we fell into sin. When we come to faith, Jesus moves into each believer’s heart and makes it his own home.

This may all take place in the heart and mind on the inside. But this faith has a face. “No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.” Martin Luther once said that the last thing to be converted is the pocketbook. We will change all kinds of behavior after we come to faith. But ask me to let go of my stuff, suggest that I might sacrifice the security of a full bank account or lower my standard of living to take care of someone else’s need–that takes more than admitting that Jesus has some worthy ideas. We actually have to trust him!

That’s what these early believers did. Their shared heart transformed them into people who shared everything else, money and goods included. Such shared hearts still serve as a powerful testimony to the world that watches us today.