*We* also [are] witnesses of all things which he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem; whom they also slew, having hanged him on a cross.
Peter is standing in a Gentile home — a house of people outside Israel. He tells them the story of Jesus. They had heard the reports from a distance, but no one had ever offered them a share in Him. His summary of that life ends on a tree.
Peter is not passing on a rumour. He is telling what he saw. Everyone in the region could have seen the same things. So he can appeal to what his hearers already know.
He went about doing good, and Peter and his companions were witnesses of it; yet He was killed, hanged on a tree. All of this was public, well-known fact — he could say to his audience, "You know." But Cornelius and his relatives and close friends had never before heard that they had any interest in that blessed One. They knew His path among the Jews, and how He was presented to them; but they were Gentiles!
The evidence was open and public. So no one could plead ignorance for the rejection that followed.
The love of God for sinful man was clear in Him, and that love brought real deliverance. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, because God was with Him. He was the true Messiah. But in Himself and in His work He was more than that beyond all measure, and His rejection showed it most clearly. Yet there was ample testimony to Him before that rejection, so that man was without excuse.
One writer hears in Peter's summary the name Matthew opens his gospel with. He reads the whole sermon as three steps.
In the space of one short verse (Acts 10:38) Peter brings out the truth that Matthew opens with and unfolds in his gospel: "They shall call his name Immanuel (which means, God with us)." The preaching in the house of Cornelius brings three great truths before us: first, "God with us"; then "God for us"; and third, "God in us." God with us was the whole life of Jesus... Peter does not accuse his hearers of any share in the crime of killing Jesus. Even so, he states the truth.
The verse puts kindness and killing side by side without explaining the jump. Commentators locate the reason not in Jesus but in the human heart.
Why did man reject Christ, except that man hated God? That was the only reason men killed Christ in this world. They hated God, and therefore they hated Him. They hated the light... And this is their sin, that they have put the Light out of the world... Even Pilate said, "I find no guilt in him." The world has sinned against God in crucifying and killing Jesus. They hated God. So when God sent His Son into the world in love, they turned Him out.
Peter does not just say that Jesus died. He says how: on a tree. That way of dying carried a specific meaning in the law of Moses.
The curse the law pronounced was a perfectly just sentence... In the days of Moses, the curse belonged in a special way to the one who died as a lawbreaker by hanging on a tree. Many a person in ancient times read Deuteronomy 21:23 and may have wondered why the curse went with death on a tree, and not with death by any other means, such as stoning or the sword. Now we know. In due time the Redeemer was to bear the curse for others, honouring the law by hanging on a tree.
Peter's wording changes with his hearers. To Israel he presses home their guilt. To scattered believers he points to the same tree where Jesus bore their sins.
Peter brings home to Israel their guilt in crucifying the One whom God has made both Lord and Christ... When speaking to Cornelius, Peter referred to the Jews hanging Jesus on a tree. But when writing to the Jews scattered abroad he said, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree." Israel was guilty. Yet there was also "the definite plan and foreknowledge of God," and the wonderful grace that dealt with the question of our sins so that we might be forgiven.
- Seen — Peter preaches as an eyewitness. His hearers already knew the facts, so no one could call the rejection ignorance.
- Good — the life summed up here is "God with us": going about doing good, healing all oppressed by the devil.
- Hated — men met that good with death. The reason lies in man, not in Christ: they hated the light and put it out of the world.
- Cursed — "on a tree" is not a small detail. Deuteronomy 21:23 marked that death as the place of the curse, and there the Redeemer bore it.
- Purposed — the same cross exposes human guilt and carries out God's definite plan, so that God could forgive our sins.
This [man] God raised up the third day and gave him to be openly seen,
Peter is standing in a Roman officer's house in Caesarea. He is speaking to Gentiles about a Jewish Messiah they knew only from a distance. His summary turns on one line. Men killed Jesus; God raised Him and let Him be seen — but only by a small circle.
The verse follows Peter's words about men killing Jesus and hanging Him on a tree. Two opposite acts stand side by side. The second is God's reply to the first.
Here we get the second wonderful truth, that is, God for us. The One whom man refused, God raised up, and put into glory.
Peter had just told this household that they already knew the public facts about Jesus. The resurrection was different. People at the time denied it.
The death of Jesus had been a public spectacle, and everybody knew about it. Only a few had seen His resurrection. Common report denied it, and the religious authorities backed that denial, as we learn from Matthew 28:11-15. So Peter now announced the astonishing news. God had raised the crucified Jesus from the dead. He and his fellow apostles had seen Him themselves, eaten with Him, and received from Him a command about what they were to preach to others.
The word "people" here is not humanity in general. In Peter's speech it means one nation. That limit points to something God was starting.
"Not to all the people" — notice that "the people" here always means the Jewish people only. God was now forming a new people altogether.
The list of those who met the risen Christ is worth reading against the list of those who condemned Him. The two lists do not overlap.
The risen Lord showed Himself to certain of His disciples (John 21:1), but not to any of His enemies. He appeared to men like Peter and John, Thomas and Cleopas. He did not appear to Annas and Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod, or to any of their followers.
The risen Christ ate and drank with His followers. Those meals met a need — but not His own.
He whom they killed on a tree ate and drank with His own after He rose from the dead. He did not need the food. They needed the testimony that He was alive from the dead — a truly risen Man, who had loved His own in the world, and loved them to the utmost.
If this one fact fails, nothing else in the message stands.
The resurrection is what the gospel turns on and what clinches it. If unbelief still holds out against its testimony, what could be clearer? Man hates both the love and the truth of God, and will not be saved at any price.
The resurrection is not only a wonder in itself. Read backwards, it tells you what God thought of the death that came three days earlier.
At the moment of His death Christ accomplished atonement. He bore the sinner's sins, and was made sin so that we might escape its consequences. He sacrificed Himself, and so infinitely glorified God. What was the result? God raised Him up. So I can tell you of a risen, triumphant, victorious Saviour. That is the Saviour I know. He triumphed over sin, Satan, death, the grave, and the power of darkness; and as the risen man He lives before God.
- Man's verdict — men killed Him and hanged Him on a tree. That is where Peter's account starts.
- God's reversal — the One man refused, God raised up and put into glory.
- God's proof — the raising shows that the atoning death satisfied God. The Saviour Peter preaches is alive and victorious.
- God's witnesses — He appeared to a chosen few: His own, not His judges. They ate and drank with Him because they needed the certainty.
- God's new people — "the people" means the Jewish nation. That limit shows God was forming a new people, which is why a Roman household is hearing this at all.