Acts Quotes

“We who follow Jesus are working in wounds, working with wounds, and working through wounds.”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“Some people learn a language out of gut-wrenching determination born of necessity. Most, however, who enter a lifetime of fluency, do so because at some point in time they learn to love it. They fall in love with the sounds. The language sounds beautiful to them. And if that love is complete, they fall in love with its original signifiers. They come to love the people—the food, the faces, the plans, the practices, the songs, the poetry, the happiness, the sadness, the ambiguity, the truth—and they love the place, that is, the circled earth those people call their land, their landscapes, their home. Speak a language, speak a people. God speaks people, fluently”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“God has, however, now revealed a mighty hand and an outstretched arm reaching deeply into the lives of the Son’s co-travelers and pressing them along a new road into the places God seeks to be fully known. This is first a miracle of hearing. “…[E]ach of us, in our own native language” (hameis akouomen hekastos tē idia dialektō hamōn en hē egennēthēmen. v. 8). The homes of mothers are announced in the mouths of those who were far removed from those mother tongues. This is not generic speech, formal pronouncements, but the language of intimate spaces where peoples inside talk to one another. The hearers query a past that does not exist for these followers of Jesus. “How do they know my language and know my people? When did they gain that knowledge?” But their miraculous tongues are not about the past but about the future, a future shaped by divine desire”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“They may have asked for the Holy Spirit to come, but they did not ask for this. This is real grace, untamed grace. It is the grace that replaces our fantasies of power over people with God’s fantasy for desire for people”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“The homes of mothers are announced in the mouths of those who were far removed from those mother tongues.”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“Almost no one is doing what they want to do. The Spirit of God is pressing every disciple to do precisely what God wants done and not what they might envision”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“Throughout the church’s history, Acts has been called a contemporary text. In every time it speaks to the current realities of the church in the world.”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“Luke’s story from this point to its end is simple: Paul in prison, Paul chained, Paul facing the threat of death yet faithful to the resurrected Jesus”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“Yet to free someone is never without cost,”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“Ministry in the name of Jesus Christ releases people to speak,”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“The long history of the church has turned the Damascus road into shorthand for a life-changing experience,”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“A line has been drawn that the followers of Jesus may not cross over. We are the people of resurrection, not death.”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“the apostles’ hands are not free to kill. There is no justification for killing in the name of Jesus. Indeed they speak no curse. They conjure no evil force. They give themselves no right to take life. Such will never be given to the followers of Jesus. But there is violence.”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead” (v. 10). The table is being turned over, an upside down world is being turned right side up in these words of Peter. Peter”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“Disciples are watched, especially by those in need. Disciples must be seen, especially by those in need.”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“The modern problem is born of the colonial enterprise where language play and use entered its most demonic displays. Imagine peoples in many places, in many conquered sites, in many tongues all being told that their languages are secondary, tertiary, and inferior to the supreme languages of the enlightened peoples. Make way for Latin, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, and English. These are the languages God speaks.”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“Some people learn a language out of gut-wrenching determination born of necessity. Most, however, who enter a lifetime of fluency, do so because at some point in time they learn to love it.”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“It is language that runs through all these matters. It is the sinew of existence of a people.”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

“The Miracle of Pentecost is less in the hearing and much more in the speaking. Disciples speak in the mother tongues of others, not by their own design but by the Spirit’s desire.”
― Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible