The Church of God’s Truth
Most churches don’t wake up one morning and decide to abandon God’s Word. Theological drift happens gradually, almost without being noticed at first. It begins when deep convictions that are centered on God’s Word start to be abandoned for the sake of ease or to not make people offended. When core doctrines are taken for granted or just assumed instead of blatantly taught and proclaimed and reinforced. Over time, in those instances, the church still gathers. It still sings. It still serves. It still does all the churchy stuff. But it has slowly shifted away from Christ. And its because it is full of people who know very little about the Christ they say they love.
We’re at that point right now in the American church. Ligonier ministries and Lifeway research team up together to produce a “State of Theology” survey.[1] The results for 2025 aren’t good. And this survey is just for evangelicals, people who claim the Bible as their greatest authority.
53% of American evangelicals agree that “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.”
53% think that “The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being.”
47% believe “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.”
That’s why the church constantly needs Scripture to interrupt us. We need a voice outside of our own preferences and predispositions to say, “This is what faithfulness actually looks like.” In the book of Acts, God gives us a church that functions as a beautiful model for us. That church is the church at Antioch.
Antioch was culturally diverse and spiritually all over the place. And yet, Antioch became one of the most important churches in the New Testament. And it became the launching point for global missions, a place really that ended up changing the world for Christ.
Why? First, we’ll see today that it’s because Antioch was shaped by the Word of God.
In this new series we will also be hearing from another voice from outside of us: Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer, when speaking in 1974 to the International Congress on World Evangelization in Switzerland alongside the likes of John Stott, Billy Graham, and others, said the church must recover what he called two contents and two realities. That’s what we’re going to see throughout this 4-week series. But everything begins with the first content. Sound doctrine. Without it, he warned, the church ends up with “an insufficient content” and therefore “a weak power.”[2]
The church is formed, effective, and united through orthodoxy (right doctrine). (11:19–21)
Luke begins this section by taking us backward before he takes us forward.
Verse 19 says, “Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch.” That sentence assumes you remember Acts 7 and Acts 8. Stephen has been killed. The church has been shaken and scattered. Believers are fleeing Jerusalem not because they want to plant churches, but because they are fleeing for their lives. This matters because Antioch isn’t the result of people trying to make a name for themselves or having great brand recognition. It’s the result of faithfulness to God under intense pressure. The gospel advances not because the church is comfortable, but because God’s Word can’t be silenced.
Luke then tells us what these scattered believers did as they traveled. They traveled… “speaking the word.” Do you see that? Luke doesn’t say they were sharing ideas for church growth. He doesn’t say they were offering classes on marketing. He says they were speaking the word. The gospel had definable content. They had news to share. They had true truth content to proclaim. And wherever they ended up, they proclaimed that truth.
At first, Luke says, they spoke only to Jews. That wasn’t because of racism. That was more so their habit. The gospel always moves first along familiar lines. You have an open door to share Christ to those around you—to your family members, to your coworkers, to your neighbors. But then notice verse 20. It shifts to others. “But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus.”
What were they preaching? They were “preaching the Lord Jesus.” They are proclaiming Jesus as Lord. The Messiah. The Risen King. They are announcing who Jesus is, what He has done, and what His lordship demands. Again, definable content. Jesus, risen and reigning, our only hope in life and death. Luke then tells us the result in verse 21. “And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.” That right there is the power of God for salvation.
Right doctrine isn’t cold and dusty. It is precisely what leads to life. Francis Schaeffer put it this way:
“The first content is clear doctrinal content concerning the central elements of Christianity. There is no use talking about meeting the need of our age unless we consciously help each other have clear doctrinal position…Christianity is a specific body of truth; it is a system and we must not be ashamed of the word system. There is truth and we must hold that truth.”[3]
Antioch proves that point. They met the need of the age. These believers had no platforms. You know what? We have no clue what their names are. But you know what they had? They had the truth. And God used that truth to turn people to Christ. God uses ordinary people who refuse to dilute the gospel to change the world. This was ordinary Christians who spoke the word faithfully.
That leads to a necessary diagnostic question for each one of us. Ask yourself this: Can I explain the gospel clearly enough that someone could actually believe it? Not repeat a slogan. Not pass out a Bible tract. But explain who Jesus is, what He has done, and why it demands a response.
God’s grace becomes evident when the church remains faithful to the truth it has received. (11:22–24)
When real change is happening, word gets around. Verse 22 tells us that news about Antioch reaches Jerusalem. And the apostles don’t rush. They respond wisely by sending Barnabas. They send someone trusted to discern what’s going on. Verse 23 says that when Barnabas arrives, “he saw the grace of God.” I love that.
When the truth of God’s Word gets into people’s hearts, it changes them. It becomes visible. That’s what it’s intended to do. That’s the grace of God on display. Barnabas saw real lives transformed. Then he urges them “to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose.” The grace of God calls us to believe the truth and to also keep pursuing the truth. Schaeffer warned about this exact danger:
“We must be very careful not to fall into the cheap solution of just moving people to make decisions without sufficient content, without their really knowing what they are making a decision about…If we “evangelize” by asking for such “acceptance of Christ as Savior,” all we have done is guarantee that they will soon drift away and become harder to reach than ever. Not everybody must know everything –nobody knows everything; if we waited to be saved until we knew everything, nobody would ever be saved – but that is a very different thing from deliberately or thoughtlessly diminishing the content.”[4]
That’s why discipleship is of utmost importance. Luke then, in verse 24, describes Barnabas as “a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.” And again the result follows. “And a great many people were added to the Lord.” Grace multiplies where truth is preserved and proclaimed.
I wonder, if Barnabas walked into our church, would he be able to see the grace of God? Not just in our words, but in our convictions and the way those convictions shape our lives?
Jesus builds healthy churches through sustained, substantial teaching that shapes a people over time. (11:25–26a)
Hear what Luke tells us in verse 25. “So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul.” That sentence only makes sense if we understand what Barnabas has already seen. He has seen grace. He has seen fruit. He has seen a church growing rapidly in a complex, Gentile city. And Barnabas knows that growth without a solid foundation built on God’s Word is dangerous. So—and this shows his humility—he goes looking for Saul.
This isn’t a convenient or easy decision. You know what this is? This is a theological decision. Barnabas understands that this church won’t survive on momentum alone. It will require sustained teaching. It will require doctrinal depth. It will require leaders who can patiently form people in the truth of God’s Word.
Luke then tells us in verse 26, “And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch.” That matters. He is brought into a local church. He submits his gifts to the slow, ordinary work of teaching a congregation. No glitz and glamour. Paul and Barnabas teaching God’s Word and living life alongside the brothers and sisters in Antioch. And then Luke slows the narrative down even more. Are you ready for this? “For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people.” A whole year! This wasn’t quick instruction. This was prolonged, sustained formation. Week after week. Month after month. Patient discipleship.
This is where we need to let Luke correct some of our modern inclinations. We often act like healthy churches are built through events, experiences, or rapid growth. Luke shows us here something different. Jesus builds healthy churches through long obedience in one direction.[5]
There are no shortcuts when God is forming his people. This runs straight against the grain of our hurried, consumer-driven world. We're surrounded by a culture that craves instant results and quick fixes. But the church is built the slow way—through daily habits and yearly rhythms, and steady, repeated immersion in the Word of God.
Christians are to grow like babies are to grow.[6] We feed our baby every three hours. He will slowly change the intake of formula. He will slowly change to eating baby food, then real food. Then he will feed himself. Then one day he will feed others. That is how Christians are to grow. It is slow. It is tedious. It is monotonous. But it is constant, prolonged exposure to the Word of God.
So here is a practical way to hear this. What if we viewed participation in corporate teaching and smaller groups not as optional add-ons, but as a one-year Antioch experiment for us? Not asking, “Did I enjoy it?” but instead saying, “I know this is shaping me.” Jesus builds healthy churches through sustained, substantial teaching that shapes a people over time. That includes each one of us.
A church that both believes and lives the truth will be known as a people who belong to Christ. (11:26b)
Luke wraps up this section in verse 26 with a line that’s deeper than it might seem on the surface: “And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.”
Pay attention to that word “called.” They didn’t pick the name for themselves. No, this name was given to them. The people of Antioch came up with it because they needed a word for what they were seeing with their own eyes. Something had happened in that city that they couldn’t describe. Their doctrine had become visible. And the watching world had to call them something new because of it: Christians.
These people talked about Christ. They lived under Christ’s lordship. They oriented their lives around Christ. And over time, the city could no longer describe them by their ethnicity, background, or social class. They needed a new word. Christians. Christ people. Little Christs. Those who belong to Christ.
That's the picture Luke really wants us to linger on. Sound doctrine never stays neatly tucked away in the head as just correct belief. What we believe always works its way out into our lives. And this is one of those points where Francis Schaeffer's warning hits close to home. He insisted that if truth isn't lived out openly, in full view of the watching world, it starts to lose its power. Its very credibility begins to fade. He wrote,
“It will not do in a relativistic age to say that we believe in truth and fail to practice that truth in places where it may be observed and where it is costly. We, as Christians, say we believe that truth exists. We say we have truth from the Bible. And we say we can give that truth to other men in propositional, verbalized form and they may have that truth. This is exactly what the Gospel claims and this is what we claim. But then we are surrounded by a relativistic age. Do you think for a moment we will have credibility if we say we believe the truth and yet do not practice the truth…?”[7]
Antioch embodied the truth so clearly that the city had to take notice. That leads to a sobering but necessary question. If our city watched us for a year, what name would it give us? Not what we call ourselves. What would they call us? Would our teaching sound clear, but our lives look confusing? Would our convictions be strong, but our relationships not match up? Or would the truth we believe be visible in the way we live out there and in here?
This is where repentance becomes necessary in two directions. Repentance for cold orthodoxy that knows the truth but doesn’t live it. And repentance for doctrinal drift that would rather not care about doctrine at all so it can just be easier for you.
Luke shows us something better. A church after God’s own heart is birthed by the Word, built up by the Word, and branded by the Word, so that the risen Christ becomes publicly visible.
That is what Antioch was. And that is what God still desires to form among His people. And it starts right here with you and me.
[1] https://thestateoftheology.com
[2] Francis A. Schaeffer, “Form and Freedom in the Church,” in Let the Earth Hear His Voice: International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland; Official Reference Volume: Papers and Responses, ed. J. D. Douglas (Minneapolis: World Wide Publications, 1975), 368; also https://lausanne.org/content/form-and-freedom-in-the-church
[3] Schaeffer, 368–369
[4] Schaeffer, 369–370
[5] An impactful book in my life is Eugene Peterson’s “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction”
[6] See Hebrews 5:12-14
[7] Schaeffer, 371–372.
