Men of Israel, hear these words Jesus the Nazaraean, a man borne witness to by God to you by works of power and wonders and signs, which God wrought by him in your midst, as yourselves know
Peter is preaching to a crowd in Jerusalem, and here he names the Man at the centre of everything. He points them back to a life they had watched with their own eyes, and asks them to weigh what God had said about it.
Peter preaches a Man now raised to the highest place in heaven. Yet he keeps calling Him by the name people looked down on.
Along with all this, Peter sets out in the fullest way the weakness and humiliation of Jesus. And this is the same Jesus he kept testifying was now raised to the highest place in the heavens. This is very striking in these early sermons of his. Jesus had been slain, Peter says, treated as nothing, handed over, denied, seized, killed, hanged on a tree. He puts no restraint on language like this. And in the same spirit, he seems to glory in the despised name of "Jesus of Nazareth." He has it on his lips again and again.
The word sets God's verdict against the crowd's verdict. The works that filled His public ministry were God's own endorsement, publicly given.
Men despised Jesus of Nazareth, but God approved Him. The miracles that marked the whole course of His public ministry were God's witness to His worthiness and to His claims. They were the seal of God's approval placed upon Him. This verse is like a key, unlocking for us the real force and meaning of all miraculous signs and gifts.
Peter uses three terms, not one, and each looks at the same works from a different side. Notice too where he begins — not with the Son of God, but with the Man they had seen.
Peter then presses upon Israel the facts about this Lord Himself, "Jesus of Nazareth." He does not preach Him as the Son of God, as Paul did right after his conversion (Acts 9:20). He preaches Him as "a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs." The mighty works show divine power. The wonders stress their effect on people. The signs point to spiritual truth. Of these things the people themselves were witnesses.
Peter does not say Jesus did these works; he says God did them by Him. That phrasing describes the place the Lord had taken as a Man.
Acts 10:38 shows that this points to the service of the Holy Spirit, for there we read that "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power." He truly became Man — humble, dependent, obedient. Even if we cannot fathom the deep mystery of His Person, we may at least learn this. When He went about doing good, and healing all whom the devil oppressed, He did not do it by any divine, personal, inherent power as Son of God, though He is Son. He did it as Man by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Peter hands the proof to his hearers: they had seen it themselves.
The evidence of Christ's heavenly mission was full and undeniable, and open for all to see. It was so clear that Peter charged the Jews on the day of Pentecost with full knowledge of His credentials. The apostle declared that God had attested Jesus of Nazareth to them "with mighty works and wonders and signs … as you yourselves know" (Acts 2:22). Not one voice from that crowded audience rose in protest.
Yet such proof was not aimed first at hardened unbelief.
Though God attested Jesus of Nazareth "with mighty works and wonders and signs" (Acts 2:22), the main object was not to convince stubborn unbelief. It was to encourage and confirm weak faith.
One writer traces these same three marks forward to a coming deception.
According to Peter's testimony about the witness given to Jesus, the very things that proved Christ had come from God will be the very things that lead the Jews to receive the false Christ in the last days. Compare this with 2 Thessalonians 2:8-9: "Then the lawless one will be revealed … with all power and false signs and wonders." So, just as the Jews rejected what God did among them by Jesus of Nazareth, they will receive what Satan will do by that wicked one. And all this, as the apostle goes on to say, is because they did not receive the love of the truth.
- Approved — God's public seal on the Man that people despised; His verdict overturns theirs.
- Attested — the seal came in three ways: power shown, people amazed, meaning taught.
- Achieved by God — Jesus worked as a dependent Man in the Spirit's power, not by His own inherent power as Son of God.
- Acknowledged — the crowd had witnessed it all, and no one contradicted Peter.
- Answered by a counterfeit — the false Christ will come with the same three marks, so only a heart that loves the truth is safe.
-- him, given up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye, by [the] hand of lawless [men], have crucified and slain.
Peter's Pentecost sermon reaches its sharpest point here. He tells the crowd they killed their own Messiah. He also says God had planned that death long before. God's settled purpose and the guilty hands of men stand in one sentence, and neither cancels the other.
Peter first reminds the crowd of the life they had watched, and only then names what they did with that life.
Peter goes on to give a lovely testimony to the Lord. He points to the beautiful life of his Master: what He had been doing, and how He had been blessing people everywhere. They knew it well. But then what a charge he makes! He boldly lays their guilt on them. Terrible accusation! They were guilty of the murder of their Messiah, and of refusing the Son of God. Only seven weeks before, they had refused the Lord. They chose Barabbas instead — a robber and a murderer. They had cried, "Away with him, crucify him," even though Pilate, the Roman governor, had declared Him innocent.
Roman hands did the killing, but Peter puts the blame on the crowd in front of him. "Lawless" here means the Gentiles, outside Israel's law.
What then had been the outcome? They, the men of law, had used the hands of lawless men — of the Gentiles — to crucify and kill Him. That might seem to disprove His claims. But no. Everything that happened had its place in the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, and it was by that plan that He was given up. Apart from it, all man's efforts would have been useless!
The verb Peter uses here for the act itself is not the usual one.
Two different words are translated as 'crucified'. One is the common word, which comes from the word 'cross'. The other appears only once in the New Testament, and it means 'nailed' or 'fastened' to the cross. This shows the audacity as well as the folly of man in committing this act.
Someone handed Jesus over. Peter says God did.
How blessed it is to turn away from man and all his wickedness, and to learn this. The death of our Lord Jesus Christ was not only the result of man's evil. It was also the result of the counsels of God. He was "delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God," when men took Him with wicked hands to crucify and kill Him. God knew what men would do with His Son, and took the occasion of man's wickedness to work out His plans for the blessing of mankind. When Pilate delivered up Jesus to be crucified, God delivered Him up for our trespasses (Rom. 4:25).
The word behind "foreknowledge" carries more than advance information:
A knowledge of persons and events before they exist. It is one of the divine attributes of God, by which persons were foreknown by Him and events determined. It is a capacity altogether beyond the mind of man to grasp.
Does God's plan excuse the men who carried it out? This verse says no.
God had given Him up to this according to His "definite plan and foreknowledge." God knows how to make the wrath of man praise Him and carry out His purposes of blessing. Yet this does not lessen man's responsibility in the matter. Verse 23 clearly shows that the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man do not clash in practice. In theory we may still find the two hard to fit together.
The same cross displays two opposite things at full strength.
On one side, unbelief and rebellion and blasphemy were left free to run their course when the moment came. His own people rejected Jesus in the most shameful way, and they urged the Gentiles to crucify Him. On the other side, all of this was so that He might become a propitiation for the sins of His own who believed, yes, for the whole world. If that was man's inexcusable wickedness, this was God's sovereign grace. If they were the instruments of their own spite, He gave One who had been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
Peter was not teaching history. He aimed at their hearts.
First, as to conviction of sin, he brings home to them the fact that they rejected Christ. Here the Holy Spirit presses their sin home. It was not now a question of this or that wrongdoing. They had refused to believe in Christ — they had rejected Him.
- Delivered — Pilate handed Jesus over to men; God handed Him over for our trespasses. The same act has two authors and two meanings.
- Determined — foreknowledge is more than God looking ahead. He knows persons and events before they exist, and He determines them.
- Guilty — men of the law used lawless hands to nail Him down; borrowed hands never transfer guilt.
- Both true — God's plan and man's guilt do not clash in practice. Only our theories struggle to hold them together.
- Turned — man's worst wickedness became the occasion of God's sovereign grace. The event that convicts them is the same event that saves.