Clarification (07/10/26)

I am going to begin by attempting to clarify the setting for this occasion, because it seems as though it conflicts with what I thought I had learned in the previous section.  Admittedly, the temple layout is not something I am particularly clear on.  However, I was given to understand that the Beautiful Gate, at which this man had been seated, was a gate between the court of the Gentiles, and the court of the women, and that Solomon’s portico was along the inside of the outer walls enclosing the court of the Gentiles.  But if he had been seated at the gate, and after rising, went in, that would suggest they all entered the court of the women, but this places us back out in the court of the Gentiles once more.

So, then, let me first confirm that I have those locations correct.  So, the ISBE indeed sets Solomon’s Porch, or portico, along the east wall of the court of the Gentiles, so to the sides of what is known as the Golden Gate, though the form of that familiar to us comes of work done in the Byzantine era.  The court of the women, and the remainder of the temple proper, were on somewhat higher ground at the north end of the larger court of the Gentiles, set off by walls.  The article notes that while these walls were 40 cubits high from the outside they were only 25 cubits on the inside, due to the difference in elevation.  And, while they allow that there remains some debate on the matter, it does seem the eastern gate between the outer court and the temple proper was the Beautiful Gate.  Note that it would include some fourteen to twenty-three steps to climb up to that higher court.  I will also note that notices were posted, carved on tablets, warning against foreigners entering beyond this point.

So, then, if, after his healing, they all went into the temple (which we presume means going through the Beautiful Gate), how is it that they are now found back out by the outer wall?  That does not compute, does it?  Well, let’s read that opening section a bit more closely.  Peter and John were on their way to temple, and this man was being carried along.  The note about him being a bit of a fixture outside the Beautiful Gate is not locative, but descriptive (Ac 3:1-2).  This is where one usually found him.  But at the time of his healing, he is still being brought to that place.  He is not yet there.  That is to say, the healing itself took place outside the temple grounds – how far outside we do not know, but probably quite near.  Their entrance into the temple, then, was into the court of the Gentiles, through the Golden Gate, which would make Solomon’s portico a very short walk, since it was practically adjacent, if not literally so.

Okay, so this also changes somewhat the reaction of the people we are encountering in this scene.  Recall that in Acts 3:9-10, Luke says they recognized this man.  We are not told what it was about him that made him so readily recognizable.  If I consider how easily we can fail to recognize somebody quite familiar to us when seen in an unfamiliar setting, it could seem almost surprising that anybody within the temple made that connection.  But not impossible, certainly.  He was well known to them.  They had seen him there most every day.  They may not have given him a great deal of notice, but his face would register, I suppose.  It might be enough.  And his leaping and shouting would certainly have drawn attention.

So, I would suppose that some of this crowd consists of those coming in from outside, who had in fact witnessed the event.  I don’t know how many that might have been, especially if Peter and John were accompanied by others from their growing church.  That is not said, of course, so it may well be that the two had gone there by themselves.  But given what we are told of that congregation, it would seem at least a little surprising to find nobody else gone to temple for prayer, and to gather under the teaching of the Apostles.  Still, if they were coming each from their own homes, both the approach and the timing would vary, I suppose.  But let us say that some of this crowd is coming through the Golden Gate, as did Peter, John, and our friend here.  Others are no doubt drawn by the commotion.  He’s leaping about and shouting praises to God.  I don’t know just how unusual such a thing would be in that setting, but I could readily imagine that it would be rather like a Pentecostal exuberance suddenly on display in our conservative church setting.  It’s going to be noticed, wondered at.  It may tend to elicit more of derision and concern than excitement and awe, but that’s our own issue.  For these, when exorcisms and faith healings were still relatively familiar ground, perhaps it was not so off-putting.  It was, however, quite noteworthy.  They knew this guy.  They may not have seen how it was done, but the fact that he was now walking about in perfect health could not be dismissed.  Something happened, and human nature is such that curiosity would pull them to the site to find out what, exactly.  Was it really him?  How could this be?  Had he been faking all these years?  But, no!  I mean, if he’d been like this from birth, his legs would have been quite evidently incapable of bearing weight, I should think.

So, then, perhaps I can set aside the mystery of seemingly conflicting setting.  And for anybody reading, perhaps it is a lesson worth learning.  Where there appears to be contradiction in this marvelous book of Scripture, whether in passages near to each other, or passages by different authors, we do well to seek greater understanding, allowing the Spirit to bring us to clarity as to the reliable, coherent truth, rather than seeking grounds to dismiss the whole thing as just a collection of random ramblings.  Stated more succinctly, the Truth will remain cohesive and free of contradiction.  Apparent contradiction is but evidence that we have not yet understood the Truth fully.

Connection (07/11/26-07/12/26)

The NET observes something of a pattern in the sermons of Peter, at least those which we find recorded here in Acts.  As that text describes it, “event has led to explanation.”  The sign given in this man’s healing is explained in Peter’s impromptu sermon.  I say impromptu because it really does not seem at all possible that he had prepared his message in advance.  We are used to pastors who spend the whole week, if not preceding months, to prepare the message they will deliver in a half hour or so.  Not so on these occasions.  These are an exercise of that which Jesus had both taught and promised.  “The Holy Spirit will give you what to speak.”  I am thinking of Mark 3:11, it seems, or Luke 12:12.  There, the context is court testimony in one’s defense when convicted for matters of faith, which is not, at least as yet, what we are observing in Peter’s activities.  Yet, can it not be said that all which we do is, or ought to be, testimony to Christ?  And certainly, whenever we seek to present the Gospel it is as testimony before the court of public opinion.

What I find most telling about this pattern of Peter’s is that it closely models the practice he saw in Jesus.  We see it over and over again as Jesus draws a parable from the things in view around Him at the moment.  It’s a very visual teaching style, I think, for as He uses His words to paint the picture for his message, He can point to the symbolic image to give concrete substance to it.  “Consider the lilies.”  It’s one thing to use that in the sterile confines of church or synagogue, when one must use one’s recollection of such flowers as the source for imagery.  But sitting in a garden, surrounded by lilies and other flowers, that hits more fully.  You are surrounded by the objects you are called to consider, and the wonder of them fills your senses, both sight and scent.  You may well be transported by the experience of it all, especially with attention drawn to it in this fashion.  And that just makes the message to follow hit that much more soundly, and the greater wonder of God’s care for us that much more wonderful to realize.

So, on a first level under our heading of “Connection,” we have this learned style of utilizing the event, the surroundings, and so on to illustrate the higher point.  We have observed repeatedly, as we see these signs and wonders that signs are only useful if we understand what it is they direct us to.  A sign that points falsely is less than useless; its misdirection potentially costing us time lost, or even directing us into danger.  A sign which cannot be understood is of no use whatsoever.  I might suggest that much of what passes for modern art might well fall into such a category.  A painting, certainly, is intended to show us something.  It may be utterly prosaic.  Here is a figure well-known at the time.  Or, here is a vase and some fruit.  But even then, there is something more than the object or person shown which the artist seeks to convey.  Subtleties of setting or light play may seek to inform us of some characteristic of the person shown, or the colors chosen, the particular play of light, may be seeking to evoke thoughts of a particular place or season.  Even the ugliness of modern art (yes, that’s a value judgment on my part) seeks to convey a message, though it may be beyond us to discern what exactly that message is.  Perhaps it is simply that life is ugly.  I digress.  The sign which is not understood must be explained in order for the sign to have value.  The sign that is misunderstood will do harm rather than good unless one corrects the misunderstanding.  So, Peter is explaining the sign, and he begins by making sure they understand where it points.  “It’s not us.  We are not the point.”

Then comes the second layer of connection in this message Peter delivers.  He connects with those to whom he is speaking.  He talks to them in familiar terms, in ways designed to be understood.  If you have taught at all, you have likely come across the advice to know your audience.  Teaching a roomful of thirteen year olds, and going into matters of theological depth where college-level language comes to be required will probably not succeed in teaching much.  Delving into niceties of Greek syntax or Hebrew linguistic patterns probably won’t get their attention.  I confess I find it a marvel how pastors can manage to deliver a sermon that satisfies both the matured believer and the fresh young convert.  The congregation, by its nature, consists of such a wide spectrum of mindsets, educational levels, lived experiences, and current needs as would defy the best of orators to meaningfully engage all at once.  And yet, week after week, that is the call, is it not?  It may be that some weeks seem geared for one sort, and other weeks for another, but more often than not, it seems to me that all these varied parties go home satisfied, or at the very least, with something worthwhile to contemplate.

For Peter, this connection with his hearers and his setting lead naturally to shared heritage.  As he clarifies that the sign isn’t pointing to him, he makes plain where it does point.  He also makes plain who is doing the pointing.  “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers,” He is the One Who has done this.  He is the One who put this sign before you.  This is language designed to engage.  It is biblical language, and as such, invites the hearer to think across those various places in Scripture that have used a similar formula.  Indeed, mention of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob intends to do far more than indicate shared heritage.  We know full well how deeply the Jews, particularly those inclined to come to temple at 3 in the afternoon, identified with Abraham particularly, and their very national identity is so tied up in Jacob as to take his name as their own.  Jacob, of course, was renamed Israel by God, and that name stuck.  It sticks to this day.  It is not the nation of Shem, nor of Abel.  It is not the nation of the Abrahamites.  It is Israel, populated by Israelites.  And I shouldn’t wonder but what there remains something in the national conscience of that which led to Jacob’s new name:  “Wrestles with God.”

But there is far more packed into this mention of the patriarchs.  Yes, it speaks to a shared heritage, and we’ll find that personal connection between the Apostle and his hearers reinforced in verse 17, as he speaks to them as brothers.  Here, as he moves to direct their attention to that which the sign indicates, Jesus Messiah, he begins by establishing that the God he serves, the God who has brought about this miraculous healing, is the same God they have worshiped for centuries.  You may recall the late stage advertising of Oldsmobile, before they folded.  “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.”  They wanted to present a new image, connect with a new generation.  Peter’s going the other direction.  “This is your father’s God.”  Nothing’s changed there, but something new has come to pass.  This God, our God, your God, has glorified His servant Jesus.

For purpose of establishing connection, I want to put a lengthy pause at that point before we move to the implications which Peter proceeds to lay out.  We are put in mind of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and while they may seem barely connected with the message to follow, we ought to at least pause to consider why they are included at all.  Is it just to establish the continuity between Old Covenant and New?  Honestly, I’m not sure that continuity is intended to exist at all, at least not as we tend to think of it.  Yes, the God of the Old Covenant is very much the same God we find in the New Covenant.  We haven’t traded Him in for another, and that point is being made clear here.  What is declared far more circumspectly is that Jesus is not just a man whom God used, but God Incarnate.  That message is here, but much more veiled.  We’ll get to that, perhaps.

But who were these three?  I have no intention of delving into the whole of their history, for that would be a years-long exercise in itself.  But we’re dealing with signs and explanations, so let us look briefly at the gospel significance of these three.  And I do mean briefly.  There are a few points in Abraham’s life that we might account as signal events.  Certainly, that occasion when he was called to prepare the sacrifice to seal his covenant with God, and God Himself undertakes to complete the ceremony solo, leaving Abraham to observe from his sleep, is highly significant.  Abraham must have been filled with, shall we say, a holy dread, contemplating what he was being called to sign onto.  He would have been quite clear on the impossibility of him holding up his end of the deal.  And that covenant ceremony was a bold declaration, wasn’t it?  “What has been done to these animals, let it be done to me should I fail to abide by this agreement.”  It would have been for him a death sentence.  So it would prove to that nation born from his line, when God brought them out of Egypt, and delivered the terms of His covenant with them through Moses.  “Oh yes!  We will do as You have said,” they proudly declared.  Proudly, and quite thoughtlessly.  And so, they signed and sealed the outcome for themselves, and but two out of that whole nation as it stood that day lived to enter the land promised to them.  Not even Moses would make it, at least so far as concerns the earthly land of promise.

But while that event, and the significance of God saying to man, “Thus you may do to Me should I fail to uphold My covenant with you,” should serve to strengthen our faith and trust in Him, it is a later sacrifice that truly comes to the foreground of thought in this setting, particularly given the message which follows.  I think, of course, of that time when, after long years of waiting, God had fulfilled His promise to give Abraham a son, and now called upon Abraham to offer him up as a sacrifice.  What may be the most amazing aspect of this whole episode is that Abraham never questioned God about that command.  Really God?  You want me to do what now?  Isn’t that kind of out of character for You?  You are the God of Life, after all, and how can you be calling on me to take the life of this child which You Yourself caused to come into being against all odds?  I can only conclude that Abraham understood that this was a test, and only a test.  Scripture explains it as being the case that he recognized that God could raise up a son for him from the stones of the earth if need be.  The point being made is, of course, that he trusted God to keep His word.  He had, after all, seen God walk out that covenant promise.  “Thus may you do to Me if I don’t honor My word to you.”  But I think there had to be more.  The Law had not as yet been given, to establish the holy standard, “Thou shalt not kill.”  Yet, I have to think this was already evident to him.  It is enough of a universal as to serve as evidence that however much men may deny knowledge of God they have His law engraved on their minds.

Then, of course, we might consider Isaac, who was old enough to have some awareness that whatever it was dad was calling him to participate in was a bit off.  “Where’s the sacrifice, dad?”  Something’s not right.  And, “God will provide,” sounds all well and good, but it doesn’t really answer the situation for a curious son.  And then, too, how does he end up on the altar?  Was he bound by Abraham?  Not that we learn of.  Was he unconscious somehow?  Not that we are told.  It would appear to have been a voluntary act on Isaac’s part, as unimaginable as that may be.  Perhaps he, too, thought it but a test.  Perhaps he thought dad was examining his faith in God, and so he went along with the charade.  But then, there was dad above him, knife held high.  What must have flashed through this young man’s thoughts in that moment?  And did he hear the voice that stayed Abraham’s hand?  I don’t know.  I do know that in very many cases, when we see this formulation identifying God with the patriarchs, He is the God of Abraham and the God of Jacob, but He is the fear of Isaac.  Interestingly, the first occasion I find for this comes from Jacob himself.  “If the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac, had not been for me, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed” (Ge 31:42a).  It gives you a sense of the things Jacob had been taught around the family encampment.  Of course, fear has that sense of reverence as well, but I suspect for Isaac, it kept something of that tinge of terror, memories of that knife hovering before his eyes.

But as a sign, what do we take away from this?  We have a clear type of the substitutionary death of Jesus, who Peter will shortly remind his hearers, “you put to death.”  Blood must be shed, though so far as I know this sacrifice Abraham offered was not a sin offering.  But even in consecration, there is the need for blood to cleanse.  As Hebrews 9:22 observes, “According to the Law, almost all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”  Of course, again, the Law had as yet not been given, yet it’s not as if God had changed in that moment of laying out the Mosaic covenant’s terms.  It had already been true back when Cain slew Abel.  “Thou shalt not kill.”  It was true even earlier, when Adam and Eve partook of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, breaking the one restriction their covenant with God placed upon them.  Forgiveness required blood, and God undertook, on that occasion to take the required life in supplying them with skins to wear over their nakedness.  Substitution:  It’s always been in the teaching.  And yet, the severity of sin, the costliness of sin, remains a matter for serious consideration, and our failure to steer clear of it a matter for great concern.

Let me turn to Jacob now.  He is largely a case of the child who lives up to his name, or in his case, down to his name.  He was the trickster, always seeking to gain the advantage.  Even from birth, he was trying to connive his way past his brother so as to be firstborn, and failing of that, he later managed to obtain the firstborn’s blessing by further trickery.  In spite of this, he was in fact the child of promise, and received the promise of God.  And here, let me turn in the direction that Smith’s article identifies for us.  Yes, he received the promise, but because of the means he chose to use, it came to him with trouble and sorrow.  He tricked his way into obtaining the blessing that ought rightly to have gone to his brother, and yes, he got the blessing, but it led to such enmity as persists even to this day for his progeny.  Sent to his uncle to find a wife for himself, he is victim to a good deal of trickery in his own right, but gives as good as he gets.  Oh yes, he was a faithful servant to his uncle through those years, and yet, he was serving himself to come away with the better share of the flocks he tended.  And he came home, as we find, with not one wife, but two – and sisters at that.  Not surprisingly, the end result was not only strife with his uncle, but strife in his own household, as these two vied for his affections and for pride of place, even contributing a concubine each to his bed.

I recall a dear brother of mine observing how needful it was to discern the maternal lines in the sons of Jacob, as by these one could see cause and effect in much of what followed, so far as their interactions were concerned.  Jacob’s trials continued.  He was not a particularly adept father, it seems, clearly favoring the sons of the wife he had originally desired, all the more now she was dead.  And strife grew between his favorite son, Joseph, and the sons of his other wives, leading to further trouble, though Joseph was spared being murdered by them.  And they in turn tricked Jacob into believing Joseph killed by wolves.  Then, of course, there were the dealings with Egypt during the years of famine, and the trials that came upon his line due to settling in that land.  Where was the promise?  It remained back in Canaan, where God had said it would be.  And He would be faithful, for He is a covenant God.  But again, that promise came with trouble and sorrow.  Understand clearly that this was not the case because God was some sort of perverse tyrant.  It was the case because those to whom He had made promises dealt treacherously, trying to take matters into their own hands so as to gain the result by main strength.  Thus it had been even with Abraham, whose trust in God was so great that twice, he played the card of, “Take my wife, please.”  He was not alone in this, for Sarah contributed her own impatience to the mix, giving him her servant as concubine so that maybe he could get on with fathering the child of promise.

But the promise will come as God designs, not as man devises.  He may act in spite of the man, and often does.  For He has said it, and so it must be.  But He plans with perfect knowledge and wisdom.  He knows what is in the heart of a man – knew it before that man had a heart.  From before the beginning of Creation, He has known each and every one of those who would become His children.  By His choice of them, and for no other cause.  Each one of these patriarchs stands as evidence that this is so.  Not one of them produced anything in themselves by which to claim worth in His holy sight.  The most they could claim was that they believed.  And even that, Paul takes pains to explain to us, was the outworking of a gift from God, not a result of their own wisdom and insight.  After all, look how action followed on belief.  They believed, but they would tend to make of belief an excuse for taking matters into their own hands, presuming on the promise.

Okay, so how does all of this inform the message before us?  Why, after all, did the Holy Spirit prompt Peter to take this particular course?  Was it simply to gain a hearing?  Was it just speaking in terms familiar to his hearers?  I think it goes farther.  How much farther it went in the minds of those listening, in that moment, is questionable.  But mention of these illustrious forebears could not but stir them to recollections of the stories they knew of those men.  Israelites were, after all, particularly keen on knowing their lineage, of tracing themselves back to whichever tribe, and through them, back to Abraham.  It was important to them to be able to identify the whole linkage back to him who had first received the covenant promises.  Somewhere along the way, though, it seems they lost the thread, decided it was a matter of flesh and blood rather than of God’s choosing.  Yet, this theme of God choosing what man did not continues through the whole of Scripture, and that thread is evident in the connection that Peter now makes.

First, let us follow his connection here.  The same God who blessed your fathers, and who you have come here to worship, or to be seen worshiping (for who knows the true motive of any given attendee?) has glorified Jesus, who is His servant.  Now, servant, in this context, is hardly a humiliating label, but rather, a signal honor; an honor that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would gladly accept as their own in their more righteous moments.  To serve the king was no shame.  To serve the King of kings was to participate in His own glory and honor in some small degree.  But the honor was not one that could be taken to oneself.  It cannot be gained by trickery or exercise of the will.  It must be given.  It must be granted.  And God, who blessed the patriarchs, glorified Jesus.  And with that, the hammer comes down:  “The one you disowned and handed over for execution.”

Each one of these patriarchs, then, serves as something of a type for humanity.  Smith’s makes the case particularly for Isaac.  As compelling as their description of the case may be, I’m not sure I can quite receive it.  They identify Isaac as a type for a humanity, “devoted to death for sin,” in that he was laid out as the sacrifice offered to God.  Yet, I don’t see anything in that event to indicate that this was to be a sin offering.  Not every sacrifice is for sin, after all.  Many a sacrifice was given in thanksgiving to God.  Or perhaps we would be better to suppose that even in such gift offerings, sin remains a factor.  I wonder.  There is no mention, after all, of sacrifices offered in the real temple in heaven, where angels praise God.  Another mystery, I suppose, to be resolved when we have come home once for all.

What is abundantly clear, though, is the type of Christ’s substitutionary death on behalf of all those whom God is pleased to make His own.  It is surprising to me just what a sticking point it is for so many that they must see His sacrifice applying to all without distinction.  Yes, we have those passages that speak of God desiring that all would be saved, and certainly, what He wills and speaks into being comes to pass.  Yet, it is also very much evident that there are those who are excluded from this promise.  “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Ro 9:13 taking from Mal 1:2-3).  One could go farther.  Why Isaac, and not Ishmael?  Why Noah and no other?  Why Shem?  Why me?

But Peter has a purpose in view, and that is to establish the connection of the covenant promise made to Abraham, upon which the whole Jewish identity depends, with Jesus of Nazareth.  Weymouth’s translation, it seems to me, does a fine job of making this connection clear.  Leave off the appeal to the patriarchs, and allow the continuity to be the point.  “The God of our forefathers has conferred this honor on His Servant Jesus.”  This honor, of course, points back to the miraculous healing of the man now standing before them.  There is evidence before their eyes of the honor.  Now, there is evidence before their ears of the recipient of that honor.  And upon that connection, he will now proceed to build.

I shouldn’t wonder if perhaps we are receiving a shortened version of Peter’s message that day.  It would not surprise, for instance, to find him elaborating on this connection back back to Isaac, and the ram provided by God to save his life.  Jesus was identified as fulfilling that type even back at the beginning of His ministry, as John the Baptist beheld Him and said, “Behold!  The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn 1:29).  This Jesus.  I can’t seem to break free of the need to emphasize the adjective in that statement.  This one!  The one you saw fit to have killed, the one you rejected in favor of freeing a murderer!  This one!  The very Author and Upholder of life, whom you had put to death.  Could there be a more unthinkable deed?  Could there be a more unforgiveable crime against heaven? 

And yet, God acted.  We return to our theme, God’s theme.  There ought to be music swelling in the background, tuning our attention to the plot point.  You killed Him, but God raised Him from death to life.  You likely looked upon this man as condemned, his lameness evidence of sin somewhere in that family’s lineage.  But God raised him from his pallet.  Now, he, too, serves as a type, but the antitype, the fulfillment, has already come to pass.  The question you all need to now be asking yourselves is why?  Why this healing?  Why this Jesus?  What are we to do with this?

Of course, we know the answer.  Interestingly, looking to the remainder of Peter’s message as we have it before us, it does not appear that he got around to making the gospel appeal to repent and believe.  But he has certainly made the case.  It may be that the arrival of the temple representatives prevented him completing his message.  But, as Paul would later observe from his imprisonment, the message was not in fact prevented from finding its targets.  Those listening were not stupid.  They were not ignorant of the Scriptures.  They would, as the Spirit gave impetus, think about what Peter had said and draw the connections, even as I have been trying to do in this section.  And they would arrive at reasonable conclusions, not least of which would be their need to repent of those acts done in ignorance, seeking forgiveness from their God.  And perhaps, just perhaps, as their minds reviewed the stories of their forebears, they would arrive at realization that forgiveness was in fact on offer.

Consecration (07/13/26-07/15/26)

Throughout verses 13-15, Peter sets forth a series of contrasts between God and man, as concerns Jesus.  It begins with that connection back to the patriarchs.  The God they knew and covenanted with, the God whose temple we stand within, to whom we pray as did our fathers before us:  He glorified Jesus.  You, on the other hand disowned Him, and insisted on His execution.  I tend to hear this with just a tinge of anger in Peter’s voice.  It sounds so very accusatory, doesn’t it?  But recall.  This is Peter; Peter who had spent the course of Jesus’ trial denying all association with the Man.  Perhaps, then, we ought to hear it rather with a sense of sorrow and regret instead.  He may not have shouted for execution, but he hadn’t done much better, really.

But to my point, it’s a contrast established.  God honored, you disowned.  It gets stronger from there.  Move on to verse 14.  The Holy and Righteous One was there with you and you disowned Him, even when Pilate offered to release Him.  You could have stopped the madness, but instead, in your madness, you requested of Pilate that he release a murderer to run free amongst you once more.  You know, it seems so hard to accept such madness as transpired that day.  And then, I look about the landscape of modern society, and see people raging in support of murderous criminals while reviling those whose efforts seek to keep society safe to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.  We have become a people offended with the idea of defending our ways, preferring instead to advocate for the overthrow of everything which might find some connection to Christian influences and ethics.  Interesting, isn’t it?  We are not so very different, in the end.  We have not progressed, except in the wrong direction.

But let us pause on this title given to our Savior.  He is the Holy and Righteous One.  I could have kept this part under the heading of “Connections” I suppose, for by this title Peter is reinforcing the connection of Jesus with God.  Arguably, he is making a tacit claim in regard to Jesus’ deity.  That connection is made firm in Isaiah 55:5.  The prophet makes bold declaration to the people of God, and indeed, his declaration speaks to events beginning to unfold through the agency of the Apostles, but only beginning.  “Behold!”  Pay attention!  “You will call a nation you don’t know, and a nation that doesn’t know you will run to you because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel.”  Isaiah is clearly speaking of one God.  How could he not?  For Moses had declared it as bedrock truth long before Isaiah came along.  “Hear, O Israel!  The LORD is our God, the LORD is One!” (Dt 6:4-5)  And to this is appended the command to love Him – not to cringe before Him, but to love Him – with everything that is in us.  Heart, soul, mind, and might; all fully involved in the love of this One and Only God.  And now, here comes Peter identifying Jesus as this very Holy One.

A quick scan of the Scriptures reveals that with effectively one exception this phrase is never used of any other but of God.  That one exception is, at least in translation, distinct in that the definite article is absent.  Daniel, referring to the angel that spoke to him, identifies that angel as a holy one.  Everywhere else, it is the Holy One.  Even The LORD Himself identifies Himself in these terms.  “I am the LORD, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King” (Isa 43:15).  Indeed, that’s the second time He thus identifies in that message.  “For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” (Isa 43:3).  This adds weight to the response of the Apostles on that occasion when many were walking away from Jesus because His message was becoming too hard to accept.  He asked them, “You’re not thinking of leaving, too, are you?”  And Peter answered on behalf of them all, “Lord, where else should we go?  You have words of eternal life, and we have believed.  We have come to know that You are the Holy One of God” (Jn 6:67-69).  I wonder if even Peter grasped the full force of what he once again confessed on this occasion?  That he conditions it with ‘of God’ makes me think perhaps not.  But he would, and I dare say, but the time we meet him here in Solomon’s portico, it has become clear to him.  This is the Holy and Righteous One.  Period.  Not some created being submitted to God, but God Incarnate.

Okay, so what does it mean to say that He is Holy?  For years, R. C. Sproul made this the central point of his ministry; reminding us of the holiness of God.  It is necessary, for while we use the word readily enough, giving it proper definition is a much different matter.  I think by and large we tend to construe it as something of a synonym for goodness.  We connect it with piety, though piety perhaps better connects with righteousness.  For piety is an assessment of character and deed, but holiness gets to something deeper.  Deeper than character?  Yes, I think so.  Or perhaps we can simply call it a deeper degree of character.  Here is the essence of deity.  But wait, you say, God is Love.  Why, yes He is.  He is also Holy.  Perfectly Holy.  He is also Jealous.  Perfectly Jealous.  But, we are focused on that matter of holiness.

God is perfectly holy.  He defines holy.  For God to cease for even a moment from being holy would be for God to cease being God.  It would put the lie to the whole business.  Why do you suppose so much effort goes into leveling accusations of evil against God?  If we can get the charge to stick, then He is not holy, and if He is not holy, he is not God.  We establish grounds to dismiss Him.  Except, of course, no such charge can be laid upon Him, not with any validity.  After all, we hit this iceberg:  God is Good.  Perfectly Good.  He defines Good.  It is as much of His essence as is Holiness.

This, however, leaves us no closer to defining our term, does it?  Well, in fact it does, if only obliquely.  One fundamental of the term is to identify those things which are connected with God, and how could it not apply in that case?  For if God defines Holiness, there can be nothing holy which is not connected with Him.  John makes a similar case in regard to love.  “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  The one who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love” (1Jn 4:7b-8).  Mind you, we have to bear in mind the nature of that love which John is describing here.  It’s not the stuff of Hallmark movies, nor the feelings we have for friend or family.  It’s something much deeper, much different.  For John, as it should be for us, the defining example of this love is God giving His own Son over to death for the love of us sinners.  That’s the defining feature; caring enough to suffer incalculable personal loss if by doing so we may give aid to the object of our love.  Few indeed are to be been tested on the grounds of such love.  But all who know such depth of care for another have felt God’s touch and, per John’s testimony, they know it.

Holiness hits in like fashion.  We could paraphrase John’s testimony to love.  “Everyone who pursues holiness is born of God and knows God.  The one who doesn’t pursue holiness doesn’t know God, for God is Holy.”  It still holds up, doesn’t it?  But again, what does it mean?  Well, that which is holy is that which is sacred to Him.  But now, we’ve just set ourselves in need of yet another definition.  What does it mean to be sacred?  There’s a base-level significance of being set apart for His exclusive use.  Of course, we also know that such places as are demarked as sacred are seen as being particularly His property, devoted to Him.  And that gets us back to another aspect of both sacredness and holiness.  To be holy is to be devoted to the Lord.  What does it mean to be devoted to the Lord?  It means nobody else gets to use it.  The offering devoted to the Lord is for His consumption alone.  The priest doesn’t get to have it.  The offerer doesn’t get to have it back.  The temple, having been devoted to the Lord, is for no other use but for His worship.  This was at least a portion of what led Jesus to clear the merchants out of the court of the Gentiles.  I think it was more than that, but it was not less.  “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves” (Mt 21:13).  He quotes Isaiah 56:7, and it’s worthwhile to observe the original.  “My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.”  Not just the Jews, but the Gentiles as well.  And by this racket of commerce, condoned, indeed encouraged, by the priests who profited thereby, the prayer of Gentiles was rendered all but impossible.  Who could focus on the Lord amidst such madness?

And yet, this is the scene in which we find the Apostles at the hour of prayer:  Gathered in that very place to proclaim the incredible news of the Gospel.  And observe to whom he is preaching at the moment.  It’s not the Gentiles, but to the pious Jews of Jerusalem.  I think this significant.  It’s another tacit declaration that they have alienated themselves from God in alienating themselves from Jesus.  They are, at least as things stand in that moment, unfit to enter the court of Israel.

To be holy is to belong exclusively to God.  It is the obverse of loving God with all your strength, heart, mind, and soul.  If I love Him to that degree, I will be exclusively His, devoted to His mission, His decision, His command.  “We know we love Him because we keep His commandments, and we do not find His commandments burdensome” (1Jn 5:3).  It has been well to be back in 1John as our men’s prayer and study time works through that book.  But it connects here.  Holiness, particularly now we find it connected to righteousness, addresses conformance to His standards.  But again, holiness strikes deeper, being concerned with the essence.

To be holy, then, is to share in God’s essence, a thing we most assuredly cannot achieve by main force.  Indeed, left to ourselves, we cannot achieve it at all, let alone maintain it.  But we are not left to ourselves.  That is the marvel of the Gospel.  We will get to that, Lord willing.  Holiness, I would maintain, does not need the Law any longer.  The Law, after all, was given for those who are sinners, not the righteous (1Ti 1:9).  I am seeking to avoid conflating the two, righteousness and holiness, but they are, after all, closely entwined.  But what is holy is exclusively connected to God.  It has no thought for anything else.  It is not enticed by temptations, is dead to sin, cannot be moved by the stuff of this life.  Yet, as with our Lord Jesus, and as He instructs, we are not thereby called to dismiss or disregard the world in which we continue to live and move.  We are not to withdraw, but to engage.  Yet, we are to engage as foreigners, as emissaries of that kingdom of which we have been made citizens.  We are called to represent, and we cannot represent if we are not present.

Still, to be holy is to be wholly unstained by sin, untouched by worldliness, free of any defect of character.  And by that standard, it’s not hard to perceive why our Lord is identified as the Holy One.  Only God Himself could maintain such a standard – even as He walked this land in the flesh and bone of man!  And it showed.  Even the demons recognized it.  Indeed, it seems they recognized it more readily than those whom Jesus came to save.  “Have You come to destroy us, Jesus of Nazareth?  I know who You are.  You are the Holy One of God!” (Mk 1:24).  Every tongue will indeed confess, though that is hardly to say that every confessing tongue will do so gladly, nor unto salvation.   It is simply to say that the truth becomes undeniable.

Okay, so holiness drives to the very core of character, and finds that character defined by full and utter devotion to God, to that which pleases God.  Righteousness, which I have repeatedly noted as being so close-coupled to holiness as to be indivisible from it, takes on more of a judicial flavor.  It speaks to God’s measure of the man.  To be holy is to be set apart for His exclusive use.  To be righteous is to be found acceptable by Him, to be approved by God.  The two together form, if you will, a highway leading to heaven.  By holiness I set myself to travel heavenward.  By righteousness, God comes to meet me with welcoming arms.  I’m not sure I paint that picture particularly well, nor that the picture fits the situation as well as it did in the flash of thought, but I hope you take my point.  It’s a communication:  Action in one direction leading to judgment in the other.  Holiness seeks to honor.  Righteousness declares holiness accepted.

Okay.  Back to our passage.  “You disowned the Holy and Righteous One.”  Here – in the temple – the man of God declares to the one come to pray to God that they have no business coming.  You disowned your God.  What are you doing here?  No, he doesn’t state it in those terms, but that’s the weight of it, isn’t it?  You wanted a murderer.  You got him.  So, why come back here now?  You observe, though, how this builds on his starting point.  Jesus was God’s servant, like our fathers (though infinitely better in His obedience to that service).  God glorified Him, while you disowned Him.  Who did you disown?  The Holy and Righteous One?  And what did you seek in return?  A murderer.  And he will continue to build up the message going into verse 15.  You asked for a murderer, thereby refusing to receive the very author of life! 

The NASB gives us the “Prince of Life,” but while that is more majestic, it seems to lose somewhat the force of the statement.  It’s a legitimate translation of archegos, but not the only one possible.  There are three primary meanings we can apply to this term.  The first would indeed be that which the NASB follows, a chief leader, a prince.  We can move to a second signification as being one who takes the lead, or sets the precedent.  And we would certainly have that in Christ, the firstborn from the dead.  But then we arrive at the third meaning, as being the author, the first cause, and that, I believe, lands us far nearer Peter’s intent here.  His title as Author of Life stands in stark contrast to the one they chose, who was a violent taker of life.

The Author of Life:  As Paul would later preach, in Him we live, and move, and have being at all (Ac 17:28).  That, of course, gave answer to the great questions of philosophy as he spoke in Athens, the place in which philosophers came to pursue their answers.  Here it is.  Jesus of Nazareth, the long-awaited Messiah of the Jews, is, and always has been both the source and the reason.  It is in Him that we have life.  It is for Him that we live.  And this matter of life to which our attention is now directed, it is not the mere mechanics of the living being, the bios.  We have become more familiar with that term, as it has been adopted by the world of computers to describe that core bit of code which forms the basic operating system of the machine.  In animate life, we can speak of that aspect of being alive which serves a similar function.  There are those mechanics of the body which proceed apace without so much as a thought from us.  Animals know the same mechanisms.  That insect crawling along the railing of your porch shares this much with you.  Its legs ambulate.  Its system takes in oxygen, absorbs nutrients, excretes waste products.  The system of biological life proceeds.  Even an amoeba can claim as much.

But then, there is that which sets man apart.  In spite of current states of wonder at the animal intelligence found in some species such as dolphins, elephants, chimps, and crows, there remains something entirely unique in the life of mankind.  It’s not necessarily what we deem the power of reason, though I would still maintain that mankind has been endowed with powers of reason far in excess of that which we find in even the most curious and inventive of animals.  It goes beyond even this.  It gets to that moral core which makes us unique amongst all forms of life.  Animals may think, and explore, and devise.  They may even have a certain sense of fairness, as seems evident from some experiments.  But they do not act as moral agents.  They are not ultimately responsible for their actions.  They cannot perceive the law of God written on their hearts, for it would seem this has not in fact been done.  Had the law of God been written on their hearts, there would be no cause to have assigned Adam the task of ruling over these creatures, for He would have ruled them directly, even as He rules mankind.  And let me just stress this point.  He does rule mankind, however unruly mankind proves to be.  It is much the same in our position as regards these other creatures.  They may not acknowledge our rule.  We may often go about blithely unaware of our rule.  But that doesn’t change a thing as regards that arrangement.  It may impact outcomes, but it doesn’t impact the fundamentals.

So, then, when we find the Prince of Life, the Author of Life set before us, what is in view is something far and away beyond merely eating, breathing, and mobility.  What is in view is far beyond powers of reason, intellect, and invention.  It encompasses all of these, but it transcends them utterly.  Here, we arrive at what our lexicons describe as the fullness of life ‘in essence and ethic.’  That fullness, rightly understood, belongs to God alone as an inherent quality.  He is Life with the same force as He is Love or Holiness.  This is encompassed in that title as well.  Here is the Original.  We, if we have been born again (which, if we are in fact Christians we have been) have had life imparted to us.  It’s not the act of breathing or eating that gives definition to this.  These do not declare our parentage in God.  But that shift of essence and ethic, the new creation evident in the new spirit set within us:  This changes everything.  Now, we who were dead from the first moments of our conception, walking under the inevitable sentence of not merely physical death as this body decays, but of, shall we say, real death, perishing utterly from the presence of God and fully, finally excluded from His domain, have been granted to know life as it was ever intended to be with us.

Now, I don’t know but what, at the end of days, even those animals over which we have exercised dominion in whatever capacity, may come to experience of life.  We do have some suggestion of transformation even there, as Paul describes all creation as longing for that day when the sons of God are revealed in full (Ro 8:19).  He indicates that “creation itself also will be set free from its slaver to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Ro 8:21).  Even with that, though, I for one cannot begin to tell you what that looks like.  Perhaps it is simply the fulfillment of the prophetic promise, that lamb and lion will dwell together in peace, no fear of one rending the other apart as food.  What of plant life?  I don’t know.  It does not seem that Scripture ever places plant life on the same level.  But I suppose nothing is precluded in that perfection of existence we shall know in heaven.

But God imparts life to man.  This has ever been the case.  The first man was formed of the earth, and God breathed life into him.  This was more than a statement about animation.  And it’s discussing something that evolution, to whatever degree that proves to hold true, fails to explain.  How has man come to be a moral agent?  In what fashion did random cosmic events and chemical reactions give rise to a being with ‘essence and ethic’?  It didn’t come by chance.  Chance has no power of causation.  Nothing cannot of itself give rise to something.  And chance is, at core, nothing.  Neither did it come about by pressures of evolution.  It is clearly not necessary to biological survival.  But, God breathed, and life – this real and most significant life which sets man apart – began.  Adam was aware.  Adam was responsible for his actions.  Adam was able to walk with God, hear from God, enter into covenant with God.  And he failed.  And with his failure, this particular, most crucial aspect of life fled away.  But God did not.

As He saw fit, He restored life to various individuals amongst mankind.  And while it is but a remnant, when measured against the whole of humanity, yet it is not few in number.  Heaven, we shall find when we arrive, is not sparsely populated, but teaming with life, as all those who have died in faith are present and accounted for in that place.  Going back to our connective thread in mention of the patriarchs, Jesus testified, “God says, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’  He is no the God of the dead, but of the living” (Mt 22:31-32).  This He spoke in regards to resurrection.  And continuing that connectivity we observe that while man put Him to death, this Jesus, God raised Him from death.  “I AM the Life!” (Jn 14:6).  Therefore, for all the machinations of man and devil, it was impossible that death should hold Him, as Peter had said in that first sermon (Ac 2:24).  The theme and flow here is much the same, though the specifics vary.

Now, perhaps, we can begin to feel the full force of Peter’s declaration here.  You put to death the very Prince of Life, the One apart from Whom there can be no life!  I have to pause us here, much as I would prefer to rush along with Peter to the contrasting act of God.  You put Life to death.  For those listening in the temple, this would, of course, be quite literally true.  Y’all were out there that morning before Pilate’s pavement, clamoring for His death.  He wasn’t proving to be the hero you had in mind, so rather than seek to understand the move of God more fully, you decided to reject it utterly.  You killed Life!

But we cannot afford to stop at this historical view of the event, even though it is very much an historical event.  Here is the point where we really need to feel the effect of being there ourselves.  This same declaration ought to hit us in the gut full force, because it is every bit as true of us as of them.  It doesn’t matter that we weren’t there that day.  It doesn’t matter that many a believer had died still looking for that day.  They would see it and rejoice – at least at the outcome.  It doesn’t matter that said day occurred long ages before we were so much as born.  The full force of it is still laid to our account.  We, through every sinful act, through every refusal to grant God His rightful place in our lives as Author and Ruler, and only object of our devotion, have just as effectively put Him to death.  We, too, rejected Him in favor of the murderer.  For in every sin, we are choosing, willfully choosing, to pursue the instruction of him who was a murderer from the outset (Jn 8:44).

We are culpable.  We have been granted this ethical core in our being, and we have failed to follow its directions.  We have, as Paul so strongly convicts us, suppressed the truth in unrighteousness.  We have sought to have it our way, to be a law unto ourselves, the same original sin which caused Adam to fall from grace and be expelled from Eden; the same sin which caused the devil to fall and be expelled from heaven.  In sum, we have made this same choice – death rather than life – and stand accused even as these stand accused.  We need the same gospel, the same Savior to become sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2Co 5:21).

How long has it been since you felt this depth of conviction?  You disowned the Holy, Righteous, Author of Life.  You chose this existence amidst murder and lust and destruction, and continued to call it your desire.  If nothing else drives you to prayerful confession and repentance, this ought to to do so.  How I wish I could be as mindful as my old prayer partner sought to be, that every sinful lapse on my part somehow mystically contributes to the depths of agony my Lord, the Prince of Life, had to suffer.  And how can I, who have come to love Him, prove so willing to keep on adding?  Father, forgive me.  Father, far be it from me!  And yet… And yet apart from You I can do nothing, even when it comes to so heinous a mindset as this.  How deep is my need.  And how rich is your mercy!

This something I observed in Peter’s first sermon, and it remains the same here in his second.  The reality of our sinfulness is laid bare before us, rendered inescapable.  This was all the more needful, I suppose, in that those to whom he is bringing the gospel supposed themselves pious.  I mean, look at us!  We’re here in the heat of the day to observe the time of prayer.  We have our offering to put in the coffers.  We have been faithful, obedient Jews.  Surely we’re doing okay.  We’re not like those dogs, the Gentiles.  But Peter, as Jesus before him, is laying bare the true condition.  You killed Him who knew no sin.  Had the message stopped there, could there be any people with less reason for hope?

But we need to see that in ourselves as well.  We cannot truly receive the good news of gospel hope except we come to the realization of our true condition.  We talk of it all the time, how we present the gospel to this or that person in our acquaintance, and they counter with the defense, “But I’m a good person.”  How deceitful the heart!  How ready the mind to paint ourselves in the most positive light.  It doesn’t matter that it’s entirely a fiction.  We’ll accept it, because we’re rather keen to think well of ourselves.  So, it takes these hammer blows to chisel through the shell of our misconceptions of self and allow the rotten core to be exposed to the light of day, that real healing may happen.  I am no doubt mixing metaphors faster than a blender.  But so be it.  The hard message of sin and sin’s result must hit home before ever the hope of the gospel can come to fruition.

But how terrible if all we deliver is that foundation!  How terrible if we refuse to begin the building.  We may have flattened the building site, but if we leave it at that, what have we got but the bare ground of dismay.  No!  The hope of the gospel must be laid out, and with immediacy, else all we have done is destroy.  And if all we have done is destroy, whom, we must ask, have we served?  It wasn’t God.

As we come to the last verses of this portion of Peter’s message (which I might better have left connected to what follows rather than what precedes), we find Peter doing exactly the right thing, bringing the gospel in to address the wounds inflicted by forced recognition of the depths of our sin.  You can feel it in his softening response.  Look.  I know you didn’t realize what you were doing.  Neither did those goading you on.  That, I have to say, is a most generous concession on his part.  I incline to think it over-generous.  But then, as is made clearer elsewhere, had they known, they would never have undertaken to put Messiah to death.

The stronger statement, though, is to be found in verse 18.  You acted from ignorance, but God was acting through it.  This does not excuse you, any more than did your ignorance.  We have a long-standing tenet of law, that ignorance is no excuse.  The law is just as broken whether you knew its dictates or not.  There might perhaps be some amelioration of penalty, but the fundamental fact of guilt is undiminished.  As concerns acts against God, well, as I said, being in possession of this real life of which He is the author, we are moral agents, responsible for our choices and our actions.  So, no, you’re not off the hook.  However, throughout the actions we have in view here, God remains the main actor.  He has fulfilled what the prophets wrote regarding Messiah, who was pierced for our transgressions.  There is hope, for God has a purpose in all this mess, and His purpose is inherently good, for He is good.  You put the Prince of Life to death, but you did not exterminate God.  The modern philosopher, with his insistence that God is dead, has not in fact achieved that end, nor could he.  The communist dictator, demanding that we declare there is no God, has not erased God, nor even diminished His rule in the slightest.  And that, for those made aware of their most heinous mistake, and at a loss to know what to do to make things right, this is hope indeed.  God was in it, even though your guilt remains.  He had purpose, and His purpose is Good.  Now, let me guide you into His hope.  Because there is hope.

And there is hope because this is real.  The things set before us in the pages of Scripture are not the stuff of fantasy.  They are not the mad mutterings of some drug addled mystic.  The things of which Peter speaks are things which those who were listening had not merely witnessed for themselves, but events of which they had been a part.  “You disowned the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer’s release instead.”  This wasn’t hyperbole.  This wasn’t gaslighting.  This was statement of facts to which they could not but acknowledge.  Jesus was a real man, and He really died.  Some there had no doubt seen the soldier stick the spear into His side, seen the blood and water that burst out.  They knew full well that He was dead.  Even if they hadn’t witnessed that firsthand, they would be keenly aware that this was not a business which Romans left to chance.  If He had been taken down from the cross, one could be quite certain He was dead.

Now, these people had likely not encountered the risen Christ after He exited the grave.  They may have heard rumors of the empty tomb, but they would also have heard the accusations made by the Sanhedrin, that His followers had come and stolen the body away.  Just how they would do that from under the noses of both Roman and Jewish soldiers nobody cares to explain, but still, the word of the Sanhedrin would carry weight, and given no countervailing evidence, they would likely be accepted without any much scrutiny.

Then comes this day, this event.  A man they are quite familiar with, a man whose physical defect was quite evidently real, is suddenly, as Peter describes him, “in perfect health.”  He is not merely limping along on those withered limbs he had for legs.  He is walking briskly, jumping in excitement, even as he belts out praises to God for what has been done for him.  Something happened here.  It’s undeniable.  And of course, we’ll find the Sanhedrin facing the same problem.  This can’t be denied.  It can’t be brushed away by proclamations of denial.  Healing happened, and the only question remaining to ask is how, maybe what does it mean?  And Peter has now answered the how.  That resurrection they had heard about and heard explained away was in fact as historically real as was the death they had witnessed.

This is the bedrock of faith.  Faith does not come with demands of believing on the basis of nothing.  It comes as an appeal to undeniable, incontrovertible evidence.  This is the thing which various departures from Christianity seek to deny, to reject.  This has been the case since first the Church appeared on the scene.  It had been the case before Peter delivered this message to those who had just witnessed the now ascended Christ in action.  As I said, the Sanhedrin had been pedaling a lie to explain away the missing body.  That, too, had been clearly witnessed.  Those guards had not been unaware or asleep.  They had been overawed by the angelic presence which came to roll away that stone which enclosed the tomb, to aid Jesus out of the wrappings in which Joseph and Nicodemus had wrapped Him.  But they had been bribed to silence, sworn to it on penalty of death for dereliction of duty.  They had been removed from the scene lest anything believable be found to counter their lies.  And on that account, a bunch of Galileans would not prove believable.

But this changed everything.  This put meat on the bones of their claims.  This was evidence, real evidence, and it could not be dismissed out of hand.  This was the problem they faced, and they would recognize it in due course.  But that lies a few studies ahead yet.  For those in the court of the Gentiles, listening to Peter, that moment of recognition was now.  They had seen the healing.  They had seen a man made whole, whom they had observed for what?  Thirty years or more now?  He wasn’t faking it.  His healing could not have been faked.  And the explanation comes.  “It wasn’t us.  It was this very Jesus whom you put to death.  And how?  Because God raised Him back up from death.”  This would not have been so hard to accept, I think, for those of that day and faith.  A fair portion of the Jewish populace fully expected resurrection, though perhaps not in such near terms.

Add that they had already been witness to Lazarus.  He was, it seems, a well-known man around Jerusalem, son of family of means.  His death had been mourned by many, and his restoration from death had been the talk of the town.  This, as much as anything, had goaded the Sanhedrin to act against Jesus, lest His fame and influence become any bigger.  This was too real, and it was a threat to their power and prestige.  It must not stand.  It must be squashed.  But in squashing it, they only made it spread.  And Peter has the explanation for that as well, even for the parts that had not as yet transpired.  “God announced all this beforehand by the prophets.  He told us that His Christ would suffer.  And for all the criminal awfulness of these events, it is thus that He saw fit to fulfill His word.”

How often do we see this play out?  Earthly powers, no doubt goaded to action by the dark powers that rule the world, sought to remove this Christian business from their presence.  It was a thorn in their side, to borrow Paul’s description.  Christianity presents an issue to the totalitarian ruler.  It’s not that this religion promotes revolution.  Far from it!  In point of fact, it encourages submission to earthly authorities as having been appointed by God.  And that’s not to be merely pretending it is so.  It is based on the reality that it is so.  And if that is reality, then the totalitarian is not left to act however he pleases.  There remains One to whom he must answer.  And that is something he finds intolerable.  The impact of the Church does not come by revolt, nor does it come by exercise of political power.  That has been shown repeatedly in the course of her history.  It comes in lives lived in submission to God.  It comes in godly example, in godly thinking.  It comes in lives changed, and being changed, no longer able to contemplate adherence to the sinful and frankly insane dictates of the world system.  What was once normal becomes unthinkable.  And the reality of a new and better normal becomes evident in that they are living it.

I commented above that by seeking to squash the Church they spread it.  That is somewhat the story of Acts isn’t it?  It’s the story of Redemption.  It’s the record of the Church as it spread throughout the empire.  It’s the record of the Church when political power and the lust for riches had so corrupted its leaders that reformation became needful.  Then, too, they came to squash the nascent movement seeking to restore faith to its foundations.  But it only served to make the movement grow.  The Soviet Union tried it, but her churches survived and even strengthened, to emerge once more when that political order shattered.  China, it seems, is in the throes of rediscovering the self-same truth.  I have little doubt but that here in America we shall experience the same in due course.  It already happens, if in less violent fashion for the most part.  One could look at those denominations which have lost their way and now proclaim a belief system that has no place for Christ Jesus.  And still they claim to somehow be Christians.  But the word has lost meaning as they have lost their way.  Yet the true Church stands, holds fast to the testimony passed down through the ages.  How do we stand?  Quite easily, really.  For we stand on truth.  We stand on rock-hard reality.  We stand on the witness made sure.  And we do so in the strength of the Spirit Himself, Who indwells us, our most certain testimony to our own souls that we do indeed stand as citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

May we not merely stand in stolid silence, but stand as bold witness to the One Who has redeemed us, the One we have confessed as Lord and Master over our lives.  Let us be pleased to declare ourselves bondservants of Jesus Messiah, even as these first witnesses did.  And may He be pleased to use us to as great an effect as He did them; not for our fame, but for the achieving of His glorious purpose.

Faith (07/16/26-07/17/26)

We need to spend some time on verse 16.  It combines two concepts for us, that of the name of Jesus, and that of faith.  It seems to me that we often misconstrue the nature of both concepts.  I have discussed the matter of the name often enough, even in recent studies.  But here, with Peter’s double usage of the term, it seems to me the real meaning is made more evident.  Follow the NASB here.  “On the basis of faith in His name, it is the name of Jesus which has strengthened this man.”  Alternately, we can try on Weymouth’s translation here.  “It is His name – faith in that name being the condition – which has strengthened this man.”  As I have so often observed, this is not some matter of incantation.  The sons of Sceva, whom we will encounter later on, thought it so, and learned of their error the hard way.  It’s not the word, nor even the meaning of the word Jesus that is set before us here.  It is His authority, His power, His character, His essence.  It is all that He Is.

It is His authority and power which has strengthened this man.  And if it is His authority and power, it is not ours, nor is it any man’s, to direct and manipulate as we please.  That, too, shall be made clear as events unfold, and we meet another Simon who by all appearances supposed it to be something of that nature.  No.  For all that prayer is needful and impactful, it remains His authority, His power, and He remains fully in control of it.  I am reminded of that which we read in 1John 5 this last week.  Whatever we ask we have, says John.  But it comes with one critical caveat.  There is a condition set forth.  If we ask according to His will (1Jn 5:14-15).  And this is set forth as something in which to have confidence.  Should we ask on such terms, we ought not to be double-minded about it.  We ought not to be doubtful as to whether God will rise to the occasion.  The only cause we have for doubt is our own clarity as to His will.  That does not mean that we must first agonize for long hours seeking to ensure our prayers are perfectly aligned with His perfect will.  Honestly, He has no other will than that which is perfect and holy and righteous and just, for He is perfect and holy and righteous and just.  He could will no other.

Far more to the point is that prayers offered for selfish motive, or perhaps out of misplaced or misguided sympathy or zeal, are not assured of such answer as may meet our expectations.  This is no more the case than that the prayers of those in Jesus’ day, with their misguided preconceptions as to what Messiah would be, were going to be answered according to their desire.  I will stop short of saying such prayers are not heard.  They are heard.  And they are answered.  But they are answered in accord with God’s will, whether or not the request which was made properly does so.  God cannot, after all, be moved to sin by the ill-considered prayers of His children.  But God may choose to act up on the hearts of such children so as to respond to those prayers by way of producing in them a change of heart.  See any number of David’s Psalms for examples.  He begins with heartfelt plea for vengeance, but something shifts.  The Spirit moves.  And David moves with the Spirit, and arrives at a new place in his thinking and in his prayer, a place more reflective of the heart of God, moved from vengeance to mercy, seeking restoration rather than perishing.  It is not always so, for he is a warrior and a king, but it is often so.  We do well to take his example, to recognize that prayer is a two-way communication, and to open our hearts and minds to perceive the answer God provides, rather than wallowing in disappointment should His answer look different than our expectation.

Isn’t that in part the way Peter’s message is delivered here?  I’m jumping from my topic a bit, but it seems a useful detour.  This was a people who had expected the Warrior King.  They wanted a Messiah who would kick out the Roman interlopers and restore the dynastic splendor of David’s kingdom, only this time with permanence and power.  What they got was the Messiah God had planned all along.  The time for the Victorious Warrior King will come, but it is not yet.  For this season, what God’s will and purpose called for was the Suffering Servant.  And Peter reminds them, at the close of this part, that this, too, had been foretold.  It was there in Scripture all along, but we dismissed it, disregarded it, preferring instead the conquering hero portions.  But you don’t get one without the other.  You don’t get to pick and choose from Scripture what you will believe and what you won’t.  That, after all, is no basis for faith, and faith is our main subject here.

So, we are told outright, that it is His name, His authority and power, which has brought about this wonder.  There is your efficient cause.  Now we come to that condition placed upon its operation: faith in that name.  But what is faith?  Most basically, faith is belief.  But it is belief established on the acceptance of the evidence.  I must observe, however, that as concerns the man who was healed, such faith could not as yet be present, could it?  He had not the evidence.  It may be that he had heard about Jesus.  It may be that he had even seen Jesus coming and going from the temple.  No doubt, he was well enough aware of the riotous events which had led to His crucifixion, and he may have heard the talk of that empty grave.  Who knows?  But had he witnessed anything that might count as evidence upon which to establish trusting belief?  That is not at all clear.

Of course we know the general formula that we find operating on those occasions when Jesus healed.  “Your faith has made you well.”  It’s there when the woman with the issue of blood came to His attention (Mt 9:22).  It’s there when He heals the blind man (Lk 18:42).  And on the basis of that declaration, as well as a few other points, whole movements of faith healing have arisen.  But they have arisen with misunderstanding in many ways.  I’m not finding the reference this morning, but there is that point in His ministry when in Galilee that we are told that He could not or would not heal many because of their lack of faith.  And upon this has been built the opinion that where healing doesn’t happen it’s because the individual’s faith isn’t strong enough.  But this misses the point.  For one, it misses the point of such healings.  It’s not about physical health and happy days.  After all, healed as one may be, it remains appointed once to die (Heb 9:27).  Lazarus, for all that he was called out of the grave by Jesus, would eventually return once more to the dust to await that final call.  His resurrection was of a different sort than that to which we look.  It was temporary.  It was not transformation to that body fit for eternity.

But we come to faith:  belief.  And that belief consists in knowledge of divine truth.  But merely knowing the truth is insufficient.  Demons, after all, know the truth, and quite probably far better than we do.  There’s another component to it, which Zhodiates describes for us as confident assent.  I don’t just know it, I’ve internalized it.  It has become integral to my character, to my being.  This confident assent results in firm reliance:  Not on me, not on my cogent awareness, no.  It is firm reliance upon Him Whom I have believed.  Think about that bold declaration Paul makes, even as he faces his own death.  “I know whom I have believed, and I am fully convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day” (2Ti 1:12).  There is the confidence to face suffering for His name’s sake.  There is the firm foundation from which to minister regardless the cost.  “I suffer, but I am not ashamed.”  It is faith in His named, to come back to Peter’s message once more.

All people, I should think, have faith in such convictions as they may have.  I have no reason to doubt that the devout Hindu or the devout Muslim is fully convinced that they are on the right track, and that by their pursuit of their beliefs they shall attain to such promises as they are pursuing.  But faith is only as valuable as its object.  It is not faith itself, as if faith in itself had some power to achieve anything.  It is that faith is in His name.  Our confidence, our trust, rest upon His power and authority.  Our confidence is in the Son of God, God Incarnate. And being firmly established upon that Solid Rock, our faith is in fact in the fullness of the Godhead – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit alike and together.  And indeed, the Holy Spirit has been sent forth into us to establish that very faith in us and encourage its steadfast confidence.

In His name.  Firmly established upon His being, His essential goodness, His inherent power, and His willingness to pursue that which accords with His will, the will of God.  Now, this tells you something about Peter’s actions this day, both in calling this man to rise up and walk, and in preaching this message.  He knows he is acting in accord with God’s will in what he is doing.  He’s not just acting on a whim and hoping God will back him up.  No!  He is acting on awareness, prompted by the Spirit indwelling, assured that yes, this is the step to take.  Yes, this is to My purpose.  Indeed, it is the good work I have prepared in advance for you to do (Eph 2:10).

But observe.  Peter doesn’t stop with this matter of somebody’s – whether the man’s or Peter’s – confidence resting on the power of God in Christ.  He adds another aspect of faith here.  That faith which is in Christ also comes through Christ.  Just as He is the efficient cause of this man’s healing, He is also the efficient cause of faith.  Faith is not a thing we work up in ourselves.  While it is established on confident assent to the evidence, it is not something we work up in ourselves.  It is given, even as this man’s healing is given.  Faith, then, has both its source and its focus in Christ.  To act by faith is not, then, to go blindly forward and hope God will catch you.  To act by faith is to be, as Thayer describes it, “actuated by faith,” and to be actuated by faith, that faith must be such as has been authored by Christ.  And if faith is authored by Christ, it is utterly trustworthy, utterly reliable, utterly assured of finding its perfect answer in Him.

Faith has been given, and faith has given.  That’s the combined message of this passage.  Faith given by Jesus such that our faith rests on Him, on His power, His willingness, His merciful, steadfast love, has led to action, and that action has had its fulfillment by His power, His willingness, His merciful, steadfast love.  Why?  Not because it happened to be Peter’s desire in that moment.  No.  It has come to pass because it is according to the will of God, and serves the purpose of God.  The healing itself, wonderful though it was, was not the point.  It’s the validation, if you will, of both Christ Himself, and these, His messengers.  It’s a clear declaration from on high that this is real.  The word Peter is now speaking is deserving of wholehearted acceptance.  The full force of his message must bear down upon our conscience and produce in us the perfect work of repentance, in order that forgiveness may come.  But in all of it – in the healing, in the preaching – He remains the instrumental means, the efficient cause.  Apart from Him, we can do nothing (Jn 15:5).  Apart from Him, Peter could do nothing.  But with Him?  “All things are possible to him who believes” (Mk 9:23).  For he who believes, loves and obeys.  And loving obedience will both ask and do in accord with His will, for the love of Him who willed.

The author of Jesus tells us outright that Jesus I the author and perfecter of faith (Heb 12:2).  Again, it is the faith which comes through Him, has its source in Him, and finds its object, its foundation in the historical reality that for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross on our behalf, despising its shame and defanging its threat to us, and now sits at the right hand of the throne of God.  All of that.  His reign is real.  His death was real.  His resurrection is real.  His eternal presence in heaven is real.  His abiding presence within us is real.  This isn’t just feel good tales told to children.  This isn’t the stuff of fantasy and fiction.  It is documented history; as documented and more than any other event of the historical past.  It is sufficiently testified to as to establish its validity beyond all doubt, and that is accounting for more than merely the written testimony of those who, as Peter says here, are witnesses, eyewitnesses to all these things.  It includes the testimony of God.

Forgive me, but having completed 1John last week, there are points from that epistle which echo back into this scene before us.  The blood, the water, and the Spirit bear testimony to the truth of these things as well (1Jn 5:8-9).  And these do not bear the testimony of man, though they are, at least as some understand the blood and the water.  The events of His baptism and of His crucifixion and resurrection testify to His true identity as the Son of God.  Those who did not receive the evidence sought to kill Him for claiming such a thing, as I read this morning.  “For good works we do not stone you, but for blasphemy!  You, being a man, claim to be God” (Jn 10:33).  But He claimed nothing that wasn’t testified to by God Himself.  And so, “To as many as received Him, He gave the right to become children of God, to all those who believe in His name” (Jn 1:12).

We are back at that same combination of faith and the name.  It’s not “Jesus” that we must believe has some mystic power.  Nor does it make it any more effective to insist on saying Yeshua.  I have known several Jesuses and Joshuas, and naming any or all of them together will do nothing to cause rebirth as a child of God.  Honestly, the very concept of being reborn ought to put paid to any idea of working our way into that position.  Who ever caused themselves to be born?  Not a one.  Birth happens to you, not by your insistence or your effort.  Rebirth, and the faith which causes that new life to flow within us, is of the same nature.  It is from the Father, through Christ Jesus and in Christ Jesus, the Author and Upholder of Life.  In Him we live, and move, and have being (Ac 17:28).  Don’t let that get reversed in your thinking.  Yes, He lives in you, if you are a believer.  Yet, He does not have His life in you.  You are not His source, such that He depends on you for His being.

I think of that riot in Ephesus which comes much later in this book.  The artisans who made their living fashioning idols of Artemis to sell to the religious tourists were in an uproar, and why?  Well!  This new Christian thing was turning many away from worshiping Artemis, and my goodness, if enough people stop worshiping her, she might very well cease to be (Ac 19:24-27)!  She might be dethroned for lack of followers.  Not so Jesus.  Were there none to be found worshiping God in all the earth, yet He would remain on His throne, the ruler of all.  Indeed, if we follow sound doctrine, as conveyed to us in the Word of His Testimony, there are none found righteous, none who seek God, not even one (Ro 3:10-12).  And he, of course, is but relaying the message from of old (Ps 53:1-3).  Nobody was going to be found struggling their way towards the rebirth that is needful if we are to have this life of which Jesus is Author.  It takes the same for us as for Mary, if with less physical and significant a result.  And we, like Mary, have need of responding when the gift of faith is presented to us, by saying, “Let it be done to me as You have said” (Lk 1:38).

Faith is not manufactured, it is given, even as this man now standing before a crowd of witnesses who knew from long years of seeing him that his legs would never work.  That faith which comes through Jesus and rests on His power and authority gave him perfect health.  He didn’t earn it.  It wasn’t wages for piety, not on his part, not on the part of Peter and John.  It was a gift given, if you like, from Peter’s perspective a request granted.  Note well:  A request, not a demand.  We are in no position to make demands of God.  But He is ever willing to hear our requests, and to answer as accords with His will.  His answers may not always fit our preconceptions.  They may not produce the result we sought.  But they will always be for the best, and they will always be to the good.  God is too wise to simply give us our every desire.  What parent has ever done the like to good effect?  Such an attitude does not produce resilient and upright adults.  It produces spoiled children who become spoiled adults expecting the world to just be dumped in their laps.

And so, we come to Peter’s epistle, written years later, in which he declares to the Church, “Through Him you are believers in God – in God who raised Him from death and gave Him glory.  So your faith and your hope are in God” (1Pe 1:21).  Through Him.  It’s not your act, it’s His.  It’s not your wages, it’s a gift.  And we can add the observation that this faith which is firmly anchored in the Person of Jesus is thereby also anchored in the Father.  Our God, He is One.  That has not changed.  Father, Son, and Spirit, He is One.  There is no competition in the Godhead, as these each seek our affection and worship.  No!  All is in harmonious unity.  All is One in Him, and we who worship the Son worship Father and Spirit alike.  Who does not love the Son does not love the Father either (1Jn 5:1).  Likewise, we can incorporate the Spirit into that equation.  We cannot suppose our love and worship sufficient if it is for only One Person of the Trinity.  He is an all or nothing God, and He is never nothing.

Neither does He change.  There is, as James says, no shadow of turning in Him (Jas 1:17), no shifting shadow that we should find Him unreliable, or find that what He declared true yesterday has been declared false today.  On that basis, we can boldly declare that healing is still possible through the instrument of faith.  I will, however, observe that the same caveat applies now as then:  When and how God wills.  Should He choose to heal through miracles in this life, so be it.  Should He choose to heal in this life by means of the ordinary miracle of medical knowledge, so be it.  Should He choose to heal by transferring us out of this life and into eternity, so be it.  And, though it is perhaps hardest to bear for us, particularly if it should apply to a loved one, if He chooses to relegate to perdition, despite our most ardent pleas, so be it.  Thy will be done.  But don’t discount that which faith may receive in ardent prayer which accords with His will.  Our God hears and He answers.  Trust in that.  Trust in Him.  Trust in Him however it is that He answers, for however it is that He answers, it is good and for our good.

Ignorance and Guilt (07/18/26)

Notice of ignorance in the heading gives indication that we are now moving into verse 17.  This verse begins the bridge between what Peter has said thus far in explaining matters to what he will proceed to say as regards impact and response.  And it is an interesting bridge, isn’t it?  It offers something of a salve to the shock of “You killed the Prince of Life.”  And that had to shock.  It had to shock Peter just a bit to hear those words come from his mouth.  It shocks me, reading it here in my room some two thousand years and more later.  You killed the Prince of Life!  It hits with layers of realization. 

First to hit, at least for me, is that aspect of having killed the very Author of Life.  You knocked out the source of your own being!  Can you imagine?  Can you imagine that any such thing was even possible?  And yet, here it is.  This is what you did, though God rather thoroughly undid your doing.  And then, we hit layer number two.  If God undid that, what shall He do to me through whom this came to pass?  And that in turn moves us to the third layer.  He is the Prince.  He is royalty of the highest order, slated to inherit the throne.  And not just any throne, but the throne of heaven!  He is slated to take His seat as the true ruler over Israel, and, as may not have been so evident to them as it should have been, as true ruler over all that is.  And should He take that throne, how shall He respond to those who did this to Him?

You know, we have that saying, though I am forgetting the exact phrasing.  But it goes to the effect that if you would attack the king, you must be certain you kill him.  The obvious point is that should you fail, you will have made yourself a very powerful, and very angry enemy.  You will have, in effect, signed your own death warrant, cut off all hope for yourself.  That is where verse 15 leaves us.  You struck at the King through His Son the Prince.  But your attack has failed.  The Prince lives and shall be King.  And you… what hope can you have?

Now, comes this softening note.  The King’s representative, which he surely is, given what he has just done upon the authority of the King, says, “I know you acted in ignorance, and your rulers as well.”  There is a double mitigation here, it seems to me.  In acknowledging the ignorance of those to whom he is now speaking, there is at least a glimmer of hope.  In noting the ignorance of the leadership, there is perhaps indication that he’s quite aware how that leadership goaded them, pushed them to do what they did.  The question for us has to be, did either of these factors serve in the least to reduce the guilt?  Or, as I have phrased it in my initial considerations, is sin done in ignorance any less sinful?

This opens a rather wide field of exploration, doesn’t it?  Are there degrees of sinfulness?  If the wages of sin is death, would any such degree matter in the end?  I mean, after all, dead is dead regardless.  That in turn, pushes us to the question raised by John’s epistle.  Yes, I’m folding that back in here again.  We hit that curious passage in 1John 5:16-17.  He is discussing our reason for confidence in prayer, our assurance of being heard and answered when our prayers are offered in accord with God’s will.  And then he hits us with this.  “I don’t say you should pray for one who has sinned such sin as leads to death.”  Huh?  And then he adds, “All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not leading to death.”  Really?  But the wages of sin is death.  So, how does that work?

The only resolution I see to that conundrum is that John has in mind that perishing which is the second death.  That being the case, we arrive at this idea of the unforgivable sin, which of course brings its own question of what exactly that sin would be.  We have Jesus’ declaration that the blaspheming of the Holy Spirit is the sin that will not be forgiven (Mt 12:31-32).  Think about that.  The Son of Man says that what is spoken against Him is forgivable, but not what is spoken against the Holy Spirit.  The questions keep coming.  If we cannot love the one Person of God without loving the other Persons, can one truly blaspheme one Person without blaspheming the others?  Our God is One.  He who has not the Son has not the Father.  He who rejects the Son has rejected the Father.  Is it not the same if we replace either of those with the Spirit?  For the Spirit testifies of the Son and the Son glorifies the Father.  Perhaps that is where the issue lies.  In blaspheming the Spirit you have blasphemed the whole of the Trinity.  But I would still have to suppose that the same holds true if you blaspheme the Son.

But then, perhaps we can come to the particular role the Spirit plays in the work of redemption.  It is through His agency that salvation comes.  It is through His ministration that the Life given by the Son on the authority of the Father is applied to the man.  He indwells.  Yes, Father and Son have made their abode in you.  And yet it is the Spirit who indwells, the Spirit whose temple you have become by His work.  The picture, as we see, is too blurry to insist in distinctions with any great insistence.  But here, it seems, we arrive at that unforgivable sin.  It lies in rejecting the Spirit’s testimony, to do which must in turn leave us rejecting the salvation that has been offered in Christ Jesus the Son.  The free gift of God is salvation.  The death that is demanded by sin has been offered up by Him.  But it cannot have application to you personally except two conditions are met.  First, it must be that God has chosen to apply it to your case, and second, however passively it may be, you must accept that which has been offered.

I am at a precarious point here.  If I must accept, then does this not leave my acceptance as a work?  But Scripture insists the whole is by grace.  Well, obviously I could not accept what was never offered.  And I do believe the whole testimony of Scripture insists that without the inward working of the Spirit, even with the offer clearly before me I would have nothing to do with it.  I can add the testimony of experience to that.  The Gospel was presented early and often, and I would not have it.  But then came that one time, and lo!  Quite apart from any desire or even interest on my part, there it was.  I believe!  And I don’t even know just how that came to be, other than that God took pains to prove Himself to me, and I, by miraculous means, actually listened, actually observed, and could only conclude that He had made His point.

So, yes, the gift is of no value if you don’t choose to receive it.  Indeed, I should have to say that the gift having been held out to you by one most gracious, it would be a most grievous breach of etiquette to refuse it.  Think about the sort of exchanges we see between heads of state.  Think about the significance sought and the ramifications explored should one be seen to slight the gift that has been given.  I recall all the dismay in at least some corners of the political press when our former president removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the premises in the White House.  What could it mean but that Britain was no longer our official friend?  And how would they respond?  The gift has been spurned, and that must mean friendship spurned.  Add the play of power and authority into the mix, and it could well mean war, or at the very least, lack of mutual aid should war befall.

So, then, what can one expect if he refuses the proffer of salvation by the Almighty God of all Creation?  Here was peace on offer, and you chose war.  And yet, even here, as again my own history bears witness, that one time rejection may not be the end.  It may yet prove forgivable.  But on what basis?  Is it because my rejection came about in ignorance?  I suppose on some level we could say that most any sin had to have been done in ignorance.  It may have been willful ignorance.  It may have been that we really didn’t quite believe God was all that after all.  It may be that even those sins which we have committed subsequent to coming to faith must indicate at least a momentary disregard for His true Being.  What else could it mean?  If we truly believe that He is who He says He is; if we truly accede to His rightful rule over all, and His power to judge and to punish any and every breach of contract; how else are we to explain our continued failure to comply?

I have taken a rather winding road this morning, but only because these are big concerns.  I do not wish to find I have come to a place of complacency as concerns my God. I do not wish to presume upon His mercy as making it an excuse for not bothering about sin.  I don’t wish to take my sin lightly.  Yet I know there is forgiveness.  I know He has paid the price.  I know I have been as responsible for His death as any man standing there listening to Peter that morning.  To the degree that I could claim to have acted in ignorance, does it make the least bit of difference?  If I look to the law of the land, which has its roots in Christian doctrine however much the world seeks to deny any relation, we know that ignorance of the law is no excuse.  It may serve to mitigate the penalty meted out, but it does not in any way make the act less illegal.  So, in that regard I would conclude that no, the sin done in ignorance is every bit as sinful as the sin done deliberately with intent to stick a thumb in the eye of God, as it were.

But I must also recognize that Scripture itself, indeed, the Lord Jesus Himself, declares degrees of sinfulness.  Standing before Pilate, with the certainty of death before Him, He observes that whatever authority Pilate had over Him, he had solely because God had given it to him (Jn 19:11).  That is a profoundly impactful declaration in its own right.  It is the basis on which Paul proceeds to urge us to honor all earthly authorities, knowing that all earthly authority comes from God.  This is not some sort of Platonic thinking, with God’s authority as the ideal and man’s authority as some lesser echo.  This is, rather, delegation on God’s part, He assigning authority to that earthly authority.  And this happens repeatedly over every level and layer of society.  It is there in the halls of government, whether they acknowledge it or not.  I rather doubt that Pilate had any particular sense of being appointed to his office by God.  I rather doubt that he had much regard for God at all, beyond the sort of pagan superstitions common to Rome in that age.  His conceptions of deity would have been insufficient to the task anyway, given the myriad gods of Roman practice down to and including the emperor.  It just meant power, and more often than not, power in the hands of somebody unreliable; somebody like Pilate himself, bendable, coercible, less concerned with justice than with self-preservation.  And to him, exercising power in his fallible way, Jesus declares that because he acts on the delegated authority of God – even in so perverting the course of justice, which is a conundrum of the highest order – “He who delivered Me up to you has the greater sin.”

Now, I must observe that this is a far cry from saying that Pilate was without sin.  It is but declaring variation in the degree of sinfulness involved.  Yet even with the slightest sin, it remains the case that the wages of sin is death (Ro 6:23).  Are there degrees of death to answer to the degrees of sinfulness?  I think not.  Death is death, particularly applied at the level of perishing.  Are there levels in hell, as Dante posited?  Perhaps.  But still, dead is dead.  Separation from God with no opportunity for parole is full and final, even if there are such levels.  The fundamental aspect remains unaltered:  Eternal doom, utterly removed from every beneficent influence of God’s presence and care.

Now, Zhodiates seems to insist that such ignorance somehow ‘forbids unconditional imputation of the guilt.’  I’m not at all certain on what basis he could draw any such conclusion.  Thayer, in fact, takes a fully opposite view, observing that ignorance of divine matters is moral blindness, and we being moral agents, such moral blindness is in fact inexcusable.  How could we, who are made in the image of God, and upon whose hearts He has written His law, suppose a claim of ignorance could have any value whatsoever?  If anything, it ought to deepen the guiltiness, come as being an additional charge.

With that, I come to Paul’s declaration in Ephesians 4:18 in regard to the pagan, unbelieving Gentiles.  “They are darkened as to understanding, and excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their heart.”  Observe something here.  Ignorance comes of a hardened heart.  Ignorance in regard to the law of God is ever and always willful.  And ignorance does not lead to being excused, but rather to being excluded.  What hope is there, then?  Our hope – our only hope – is in Christ Jesus, who willingly died for our sins, having sinned no sin Himself, and this, as with His suffering, according to the predeclared will and purpose of God.

This is what we have declared in verse 18.  The prophets of old spoke not only of Messiah as the conquering hero, but as the suffering servant.  They spoke, but as Peter makes plain, what they spoke is what God announced.  That is to say, they spoke on God’s authority.  And I love what Thayer adds for description of their speaking.  They spoke, he says, “in words of weight plead[ing] the cause of God and urg[ing] the salvation of men.”  They pointed any who would listen to this future hope, this Suffering Servant, whose obedience would bear the cost of their guilt, our guilt.  And they declared this as authorized spokesmen of God.

Don’t miss this.  Peter is likewise speaking as an authorized spokesmen of God.  That authorization has been made plainly evident to those who are listening to him in that this man – whom they see standing before them and whom they know has been incapable of doing so – is now present before them in perfect health.  It is plainly evident that God is working through Peter, and this in turn makes it inescapably evident that God is speaking through Peter.  Such evidence demands a hearing, and it demands a response.

Here is a rather amazing edge to Peter’s notice in these transitional points.  Their ignorance is fully answered in God’s foreknowledge.  You didn’t know what you were doing, but God know you would do it.  He who had spoken long ago of this One in which all are to place their hope, in which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were to place their hope, had in fact planned every least detail of the events which transpired.  He had spoken.  He had determined that this must come to pass.  And being all wise, He had factored in every unforeseen, unthinking act of this people at this time in this place.

And that fact, the full and unaltered exercise of God’s purposeful directing of events, changes everything.  It no more changes the sinfulness of sin than did ignorance.  It offers no mitigating circumstance for your actions.  You remain a moral agent, responsible for your own choices, even if those choices have been so arranged as to serve God’s good purpose even in your sin.  Judas was no less guilty for having served God’s purpose.  Balaam stands no less condemned for his wickedness, given that he prophesied truly when left no choice.  You and I stand no less guilty of our sins.  And yet, we stand forgiven.  Because Jesus Messiah, our Lord and Savior, has paid the due penalty for our sins in His own eternal blood.  He suffered that we might know mercy.  He died that we might live.  And now, we who live in the blessing of His mercy, how shall we then live?  Shall we not live as those who are merciful?  Shall we not live as those whose strongest desire is to walk worthy of this most amazing turnabout?

Here we are, face to face with the recurrent theme of this marvelous book.  “And yet God was with him.”  And yet God was with those listening to Peter, in spite of their involvement in the crime of the ages.  And yet God is with us, with me, here in this back room this morning, painfully aware of my iniquities, put off by my own internal conversations, which so often struggle to arrive at godliness in deed, let alone thought.  But He is merciful, and He is here.  He has offered forgiveness, and I have received it.  I can only pray that I shall continue to grow in Him as He continues to work in me.  And I put my trust in His finished work, knowing that in due course, He shall in fact welcome me home to whatever reward may be mine.  And honestly, that homecoming alone is reward enough and more.  Praise be to His name forever.  Amen.