The book of Acts is the second volume of Luke's research. The first volume is an account of what Jesus began to do and this second volume is what Jesus continued to do after his ascension. Luke chose a narrow perspective, ignoring the spread of the gospel across North Africa or into the nations east of Jerusalem. What of the apostle Thomas in India or Thaddeus in Odessa? Whether Luke knew about these continuing works of Jesus or not, we cannot say, but what we do know is that Luke was a travelling companion with the apostle Paul. Luke wrote about the spread of the gospel to the nations that he was involved in. The apostles have a unique foundational place in that work, but the church today is also part of that ongoing work of Jesus. The apostle Paul became involved in an intense dispute about the place of foreigners in the people of God. We know that Paul found himself in a life or death struggle over the freedom of the nations of the world to be full members of the people of God through trusting Jesus. The Holy Spirit selected the lives of Peter and Paul to be recorded in the Bible in order to present the vital issues of global Christianity to the church in every age.
