At a period in the early church at the beginning of the second century, long before the threat of Marcion, the book of Acts served to establish the legitimacy of the Pauline interpretation of the gospel, along with the other apostles, as the truthful apostolic witness to the crucified and resurrected, living Lord of the church. (The Church's Guide for Reading Paul, p. 226)
Childs argues this because Acts did not circulate as early as the Gospel of Luke as an authoritative document for the church. While modern scholarship focuses on the connection between Luke-Acts (because it has the same author), Childs emphasizes that the canonical shaping of the New Testament first split Luke and Acts so that Luke could be included in the circulating four-fold Gospel (which along with the developing Pauline corpus begins the earliest authoritative "canons" that went from church to church). Acts meanwhile did not enjoy the same quick acceptance.
Acts therefore began to find its place in the canon not as Luke-Acts, but rather after the Fourth Gospel and before the Pauline corpus, as a means of connecting the authoritative Gospels of Jesus with the authoritative writings of Paul. Acts moves from Jesus to the apostle to most specifically the Apostle Paul as such:
Gospels (the Jesus stories) ----> Book of Acts (Jesus to Paul)
-----> Pauline Corupus
The Book of Hebrews and the Catholic Epistles that follow are also, according to Childs, effected by this canonical ordering which mentions those like James and Peter, and therefore validates those New Testament works attributed to them. As Childs says,
...the canonical function of Acts emerges with clarity. It consists primarily of presenting the apostles as the legitimate guardians of the Jesus traditions, strengthened by the connection with the catholic letters of Peter, James, and John, and the portrait of Paul in Acts as in agreement with that of his letters. (p. 231)
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