And Peter, seeing it, answered the people, Men of Israel, why are ye astonished at this? or why do ye gaze on us as if we had by our own power or piety made him to walk?
A crowd has just run together in Solomon's Porch, staring at the two men who had healed a beggar lame from birth. His first words do not explain the miracle. They turn the crowd's eyes away from him, and his question touches the place where people so often get stuck.
The healing had made Peter the centre of attention. That is the moment when a servant of God is most at risk. The verse shows how Peter met it.
Now look at the twelfth verse. There is the great point of it all, where people so often get stuck. They all crowd round Peter, and they look at him. Here is a wonderful man... This is the moment of danger for Peter; but how does he meet it? How does it find him? It finds him dependent, it finds him self-emptied... It is not our own power, it is not anything to do with our holiness, nothing of the kind. It has to do with us only in this way: we are vessels in His hand, empty enough of self for Him to use us. We are vessels in His hand, willing to be nothing — like a spade, an instrument in the hand of the One who uses it.
Only minutes earlier Peter had told the beggar to look at him and John. Now he says the opposite.
At the start Peter and John had said, "Look at us," but only to turn the man's attention to another. Peter knew his own poverty well, and he had no doubt of the riches of his Lord when he said, "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!" The people were full of wonder at the miracle, and he is quick to deny himself.
The verse pairs power with "piety." Older translations say "holiness" here, but the Greek word behind it has a different sense.
The words eusebeia and eusebeo mean "to exercise piety, reverence." They point to a reverential sense of having to do with God. The creature should show it to the Creator, and it should mark the saints above all towards God their Father and towards the Lord Jesus... It is rendered "holiness" in Acts 3:12 and "worship" in Acts 17:23. In all other places it is "godliness." "Piety" is a better translation.
So Peter turns down both halves of the credit: the power and the devotion. One writer sets him beside Simon Magus, a magician who appears later in Acts.
They would take no credit for themselves. They would not let the people think, even for a moment, that they were something extraordinary. How different this was from Simon Magus, who used satanic power and made himself out to be someone great.
Peter's first question is not modesty alone. Given the name he had called on, a healing like this is no surprise.
Peter says to them, "Why do you wonder at this?" It was only what Christ was worthy of. Peter had this in his soul: My Master is worthy of anything, and there is no limit to the power of His name. The people wondered because they had no faith. Christians often wonder in the same way now, when the Lord works with power, and the reason is that they have so little faith. They were looking at the instrument — a very foolish thing to do in divine things.
With himself out of the picture, Peter points to the God of Israel's fathers. The title he gives Jesus here is worth noticing.
There was nothing unclear about this. And it all fits together. It is the God of our fathers who glorified the Messiah, His Servant Jesus. "Son" is not the thought here, but Jehovah's "Servant" as in Isaiah 42, 49, 50, 52, 53. The Jews had denied Him before the Roman judge, at the very time that judge was willing, and even determined, to let Him go.
What Peter refused in the porch is a standing rule for anyone God uses.
The truth, we judge, is this. The power that really does God's work comes from God and not from us. So the first thing that matters is that the work should plainly come by God's power and go to God's glory. Ability, gift and intelligence in the servant are good things, and we should not despise them. But if a servant with them is at all tempted to lean on them, or, worse still, to show them off, God will pass him by. He will use some foolish or unimportant instrument instead, to our astonishment.
- Danger — Public success is the servant's most dangerous moment. The crowd's stare found Peter already self-emptied and dependent.
- Denial — He turns down both halves of the credit: not his power, and not his piety. "Piety" reads that word better than "holiness."
- Direction — The man who had said "Look at us" now says the reverse. He moves every eye from the instrument to his Lord.
- Deficit — Their amazement exposed their unbelief. Nothing done in that name is more than Christ is worthy of.
- Displacement — Peter names the God of the fathers as the One who glorified His Servant Jesus. And God still passes by the servant who parades his gift.
The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus, whom *ye* delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when *he* had judged that he should be let go.
Peter has just healed a lame man, and a crowd runs to him in the temple. His first move is to turn every eye off himself and onto the One God has glorified. The verse ties three things together: the God of Israel's ancestors, the title "servant," and the crowd's part in handing Jesus to Pilate.
The miracle carried no credit for the men through whom it came. One writer says what the miracles were for, and who they pointed to.
These miracles brought no honour at all to the men who performed them, though of course they proved the divine character of their ministry. They were wholly a testimony borne to the Living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, and all He taught... So in Acts 3:13, Peter refuses all regard for himself or John, putting Jesus alone forward. The Lord's power and resurrection are what the miracles testified to.
Peter names God by the three ancestors every listener revered. The point is continuity: the God of their fathers is at work in front of them, and now He works for Jesus.
The God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of their fathers, was working still among them. But now He was working for the glory of His servant Jesus. Peter is bold indeed. In the temple court he stated that Jesus, the rejected and crucified One, was Jehovah's servant.
Some older translations read "His Son Jesus" here. Commentators say the word is "Servant" — the title Isaiah used.
It is the God of our fathers who glorified the Messiah, His Servant Jesus. "Son" is not the thought, but Jehovah's "Servant," as in Isaiah 42, 49, 50, 52, 53. The Jews had denied Him before the Roman judge, who was willing, in fact determined, to let Him go.
This was not a gap in Peter's knowledge. God unfolded the glory of Christ by stages, and this sermon stands at an early one.
We know Him — and the Spirit of God, who wrote this book, knew Him infinitely better — to be the Son of God. But we must always hold to what God says. God's testimony had not yet set out all the glory of Christ, above all in dealing with the Jews. He brought it out by stages. The more man's unbelief grew, the more God defended the Lord's glory.
"Glorified" is not a compliment paid to a dead teacher. It describes where Jesus now is, and it explains where the lame man's strength came from.
Everything is now connected with the glory of the Lord Jesus. He entered that glory after His sufferings and death, and because of them... Peter credits the healing of the lame man at the gate of the temple to the power of Jesus glorified. This marks the whole teaching of the apostles. A glorified Christ is the source of every blessing, and of the power that shows it, through the Holy Spirit.
Pilate wanted to let Jesus go; the crowd would not have it. One writer weighs the guilt of everyone involved and finds it uneven.
All are guilty, but there are degrees of guilt. Herod was a vile, pleasure-loving man. He would mock the Lord and treat Him as nothing, yet he finds nothing in Him deserving death. Pilate will go further than Herod. He will hand Christ over to the murderous hatred of the Jews. But he has no personal hatred, and he will at least make some weak effort to save One he knows is innocent from death.
Notice who Peter does not blame. He passes over the obvious culprit and speaks to the people standing in front of him.
He does not speak of Judas, though no doubt Judas was the immediate instrument of handing Him over... they denied the One whom he declares to be the Messiah, and whom God declares to be the Holy One and the Just.
There is one more layer. The man who charged Israel with denying Jesus had denied Him himself.
What a living picture Peter gives in Acts 3:13 of a worshipper once purged, with a clear conscience! How else could he charge the men of Israel with denying Jesus? Had he not denied Him openly, recently, and repeatedly with oaths? Now he was so completely cleansed by the Saviour's blood that he boldly charged them with that sin. If it had not been wiped away, he would have been ashamed to whisper the words.
- Name: Peter lets no one credit him or John. The miracle points to Jesus.
- Covenant: The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is still at work among Israel. Now He works for the glory of Jesus.
- Servant: Commentators read "Servant" here, not "Son" — the title Isaiah used. God unfolded the glory of Christ by stages.
- Glory: A glorified Christ is the source of every blessing and of the power that shows it. That is why a lame man walks.
- Grace: The man who made this charge had denied Jesus himself. The Saviour's blood had cleansed him, so he could name the sin out loud.
But *ye* denied the holy and righteous one, and asked that a man [that was] a murderer should be granted to you;
Peter is speaking to a crowd at the temple, where a lame man has just been healed. He turns their wonder into a charge: the God of their fathers glorified Jesus, and they disowned Him. The verse names what they did by naming who He was — and it names the man they wanted instead.
Heaven had used the first of these titles for Jesus before Peter did, and so had His enemies:
He Himself was the Holy One. "The child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God," the angel said to Mary (Luke 1:35). The very demons in Capernaum said to Him, "I know who you are — the Holy One of God." And what charge did Peter lay against the Jews after Pentecost? "You denied the Holy and Righteous One" (Acts 3:14). The fact was that the Lord Jesus had been presented to His people as the Holy One.
The verse adds a second title: Righteous. Kelly sets both titles against what Israel asked for, and against what God then did:
How desperate their position! They denied the Holy and Righteous One (Isaiah 53:11). They asked for a murderer as a favour. God was clearly against them, for He raised from the dead the Author of life whom they killed.
Peter does not soften the swap. He sets the man they asked for against the One they refused:
The apostle put their guilty deed in the strongest form. They had deliberately preferred a taker of life, in the person of Barabbas, to the divine Author of life — the Son of God!
The murderer they asked for was Barabbas, and his record was public:
John 18:40 describes him as a "robber," and Matthew 27:16-26 calls him "a notorious prisoner." He had started an uprising and had committed murder (Mark 15:7-15). Yet the Jews, led by the chief priests and elders, asked for this man to be released instead of the Lord Jesus. Why they asked for this particular prisoner is not known. But their choice shows their ungodliness in the clearest way. They could choose such a notorious criminal over the Lord of life and glory, their Messiah.
The man making this charge had denied Jesus with oaths only weeks earlier:
And who is this that so boldly charged the Jews with denying their own Messiah? The very man who not many weeks before had denied Him with oaths. But Peter broke down at once in a sorrow that produced repentance according to God. He judged not only the ripe fruit but the root of his sin. Now restored, his feet washed, he is fully cleansed from the defilement. So he can charge the men of Israel with the very sin he had so recently been freed from himself, without a blush or a waver... None can preach, any more than worship, like a soul once cleansed, having no more conscience of sins.
The choice made in front of Pilate was not only Jerusalem's crime:
Pilate might wash his hands. The people might say, "His blood be on us and on our children." But the fact remains: the world united to murder Him. The world, therefore, to this day stands charged with the murder of the Son of God.
Peter piles the charge high, but not to close the door:
Israel broke and despised everything that should have bound them. Their act held everything that could magnify their rejection of Him. And yet, as the whole passage shows, this very sin of theirs, this very killing of the Prince of life, was only the occasion of fresh grace. The rock in the wilderness, when struck, poured out the refreshing streams the people needed. In the same way, this murdered Prince of life now stands before them as the One who brings more than gifts of healing. Through Him God offers Israel here and now all the things He had spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.
- Denied. They refused Him as the Holy and Righteous One — the very One heaven, and even demons, had already named.
- Preferred. They asked for a man guilty of uprising and murder as a favour, and they killed the Author of life. That was the trade.
- Exposed. The choice made at Pilate's seat was not Jerusalem's alone — the world united in it and still stands charged.
- Cleansed. Peter could press this home without flinching. He had judged the root of his own denial, and he stood restored and clean.
- Offered. That same sin became the occasion of fresh grace. God held out to the guilty everything the prophets had promised.
but the originator of life ye slew, whom God raised from among [the] dead, whereof *we* are witnesses.
Peter stands in the temple courts after healing a lame man. He tells the crowd what they did to Jesus, what God did in reply, and who saw it.
Older translations read "Prince of life" where newer ones read "Author of life," and the writers quoted below use the older wording. The word behind that title also describes Christ in two other places.
The Greek word archēgos means "beginner, leader." In Acts 3:15 older translations say "prince," with "author" in the margin: the Lord Jesus is the originator of life. In Hebrews 12:2, the Lord Jesus is the "leader" and completer of faith: He began and finished the whole course. In Hebrews 2:10 older translations say "captain": He was the "leader" of their salvation through suffering.
Peter's charge has weight because of the choice behind it.
They had had before them "the Prince [Author] of life" and "a murderer;" that is, a taker of life. They killed the One and chose the other. Yet God had raised the One they killed, so they were caught red-handed in rebellion against God.
That choice was not a one-off failure by one crowd. One writer reads it as a test of the human heart itself:
It is the deep, full sifting of the heart of man, and it tells me that the heart of man in Luke 23 is exactly what it was in Genesis 3. Man in Genesis 3 preferred the lie of the serpent to the truth of God. Man here preferred a murderer to the Prince of Life!
The second half of the verse is not extra information. It is God taking a side.
When Peter says, You "killed the Prince of Life," I can imagine their souls trembling, because they knew it was true. No one could deny this charge from the Holy Spirit. True, He allowed Himself to be slain; but Peter says, You killed Him. Now look at the gulf between the world and God. See how the thoughts of the world stand against God's thoughts of Jesus, "whom God raised from the dead." Could there be a greater contrast? — You killed Him, but God raised Him from the dead.
"To this we are witnesses" was not a closing formality. It names the theme the first preachers kept returning to.
The apostles especially drew the earnest attention of those outside to His resurrection. It was one of the great subjects of early apostolic preaching (Acts 1:22; 2:24-32; 3:15; 4:2-10; 5:30). Much hangs on it. If the Lord is risen, it is because God has raised Him from the dead, and has thus openly taken up His cause. He is risen, not like Lazarus, Jairus' daughter, and others, to return to corruption, but never again to die (Acts 13:34). Death has no more power over Him. He is alive, then, forever — the living One. He was raised because it was not possible for death to hold Him. He was holy and righteous, and His resurrection proclaims that.
Notice who is making this charge.
And who is this that so boldly charged the Jews with denying their own Messiah? The very man who not many weeks before had denied Him with oaths. But Peter broke down at once. His sorrow produced repentance according to God, because he judged not only the ripe fruit of his sin but its root. Now he is restored, his feet washed. He is so completely cleansed from that defilement that he can charge the men of Israel with the very sin he had only just been freed from himself — without a blush or a waver. No one can preach, or worship, like a soul once cleansed, with no more conscience of sins.
The charge sounds crushing. One writer finds the ground of assurance inside it.
The certainty of salvation is something God reveals to me as a result of the work of Christ. If God says to me, You have killed the Prince of life, then by this very means I know that all my sins are washed out. God says, This is what I have done: I have washed out all your sins by the sin you committed in killing the Prince of life. Faith alone can make me understand that. The heart torments itself while the thing is simple.
- Author — The word means beginner or originator. Jesus starts life, and the same word names Him leader of faith and of salvation.
- Exchange — They chose a taker of life and killed the giver of life. Commentators see in that swap the human heart itself, not just one crowd.
- Answer — God raised the One they killed. The world's verdict on Jesus and God's verdict now stand in open opposition.
- Witness — The resurrection was the main theme of the first preaching. This risen One will never die again.
- Outcome — The charge is not the end. God washes sins away by that very sin — the killing of the Author of life. And the man preaching it had denied Him too.
And, by faith in his name, his name has made this [man] strong whom ye behold and know; and the faith which is by him has given him this complete soundness in the presence of you all.
Peter and John had just healed a man lame from birth. The crowd came running and stared at the two men as if the power were theirs. This verse is Peter's answer. In one sentence he moves the credit from the apostles to a Name, and to the faith that rested on it.
Peter had the whole crowd's attention. He used it to point away from himself.
God has fulfilled His word. God has given His Son. And Peter says, "Do not look at us, as if it had anything to do with our power or holiness." It is a wonderful thing to find a man actually in the presence of God in days like these. Here is a man in the presence of God, and as soon as God used him for blessing, he says, "Don't look at me. Look up there. Look at Him, the glorified One there, the despised One here. I am only the vessel through which it came."
Peter healed by calling on a name. Jesus never did.
When our Lord performed miracles He invoked no name as His authority for performing them. By contrast, Peter cured the lame beggar at the Beautiful gate of the temple by saying, "In the NAME of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." He also took pains to tell the people that the miracle came not by his own power, but in "His [Christ's] NAME, … by faith in His NAME" (Acts 3:6, 16). At the raising of Lazarus our Lord cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." … He acted as a Divine Person.
Where the miracle happened mattered as much as how.
Inside the courts of the Lord's house, a miracle had taken place in the open, in the name of the One whom the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, had judged not long before to be a blasphemer worthy of death. And this is the God who never gave His glory to another. The controversy about His claim to be a Divine Person was more than settled, but in a way the Jews never expected. God had glorified His servant, Jesus of Nazareth, by allowing a miracle in His own house in that name. Jesus Christ of Nazareth was the only one Peter had named to the lame man. So if His name had power in that holy place, with no mention of the God of Abraham, then the crucified One must be more than a mere man. By what had happened, God plainly owned Him as His equal.
The verse does not stop at the Name. It also says where the faith came from: it is "through Jesus." One writer names the source of that faith.
Second, faith in its own proper place, the gift of God, not of self.
One man stood up. Peter was speaking to a whole nation.
It was a sign perfectly suited to wake the Jews up. It proved the grace of God toward their utter weakness. It showed the power of the risen and glorified Messiah. And it did so all the more because Christ was not there in person. This was His answer from heaven to the power of His name, which His servant on earth had called on. If such was the instant power of the name of Jesus for the lame man, what would not follow faith in that name if Israel believed?
One writer turns from the healed man to the reader.
Only faith in His name can do anything now for you, my friend. It is His name, and faith in His name alone, that secures blessing for the soul. This man rose up and walked in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. And I say to you: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise out of your bed of sins and come to Him. You may be saved this very moment if you have faith in the name of Jesus.
- The Name first. The power was not in Peter or John, but in the name of Jesus called on from earth and answered from heaven.
- The Name despised. The rulers had condemned Jesus of Nazareth. God honoured His name inside His own house.
- The Name received by faith. Faith comes second, in its proper place: the gift of God, not something produced from self.
- The Name proved. The result stood in front of everyone: a man once lame, now strong and in perfect health.
- The Name offered. One lame man walked. The same Name went out to a whole nation, and it still reaches anyone who trusts it.
And now, brethren, I know that ye did it in ignorance, as also your rulers;
The healing of the lame man has drawn a crowd. Peter has just charged them to their face with crucifying the Lord Jesus. Then the tone turns. He calls them brothers and says they acted in ignorance. Does ignorance make a crime smaller? And why would God say it at all?
This is no compliment. The people who should have known their Messiah understood Him least.
In one way this might make the degraded condition of God's ancient people worse; for how did they and their rulers come to be so ignorant? They knew neither the Scripture nor the power of God. They valued neither grace nor truth. They saw works and heard words such as no one had ever known before. Yet they were more stupid than the nations around them, duller than their own beasts of burden. But He who suffered for them on the cross prayed to His Father to forgive them, for they did not know what they were doing. And now the Holy Spirit, through the apostle, assures them that this was so, as a plea for divine compassion.
Writers tie this verse back to what Jesus prayed on the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). Peter is not guessing at their motives. He is announcing a verdict.
After such a total condemnation of Israel we might have thought it was all over with that nation, and that God would step in to destroy them. But no. Through Peter, God made this known to the nation of Israel: because His Son had interceded for them on the cross, He was treating their terrible sin as a sin of ignorance and not as a wilful sin.
Israel's own law separated the killer who planned it from the one who did not. It gave the second man somewhere to run. Writers place the killing of Jesus in that second class.
What amazing grace this is! To our poor minds it looks as though they committed that terrible sin with open eyes! Peter took the same line as his Master did on the cross. Under the law the Lord drew a distinction between a manslayer and a murderer. For the murderer there was to be no mercy; for the manslayer there was safety in the cities of refuge (Num. 35). In grace God is pleased to regard Israel — the slayer of Jesus — as a manslayer. So there is still mercy for that blood-stained nation.
The law also appointed a sacrifice for sins done in ignorance. The timing is striking.
For sins of ignorance a sacrifice was available for Jews (Leviticus 5:14). In fact, their Messiah accomplished that sacrifice at the very time they were guilty of crucifying Him.
Being ignorant did not make them safe. It left them needing mercy, and that mercy needed Christ's prayer.
They were ignorant of what they were doing, and that is why He prayed for them. Yet their ignorance was no valid plea for acquittal in God's sight, so the Lord's intercession was needed. God does show mercy to those whose grave sins are done in ignorance of what pleases Him. Look at Paul. He thought he ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth. "I received mercy," he writes, "because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief." God could be gracious, but He could not gloss over his wrongdoing. The same is true of those who crucified His Son.
Peter has just made an accusation. Now the same sermon turns into comfort.
He has pressed their terrible sin home on the consciences of his hearers. Now he applies the healing, soothing balm of the gospel, in words of wonderful power and sweetness: "And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He thus fulfilled." Nothing can exceed the grace of this. It recalls Joseph's words to his troubled brothers: "It was not you that sent me here, but God."
God counted the sin as done in ignorance, so the sentence did not fall at once. Something far larger came instead.
They had indeed committed an unmatched crime in crucifying the Lord Jesus... But the vinedresser had pleaded for the barren fig tree (Luke 13:8). Their ignorance, pleaded by the Redeemer on the cross, is exactly what the Holy Spirit admits through Peter here. In answer to the intercession of Jesus they were forgiven so far as this: judgment did not fall at once, and full, free, absolute forgiveness was proclaimed to them on condition of their repentance.
- Charge. Peter first fixes the guilt for an unmatched crime: the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. He names the crime first, the ignorance second.
- Plea. The word "ignorance" is not their excuse. It is God honouring Christ's prayer, treating the nation's sin as a sin of ignorance and not a wilful one.
- Provision. Ignorance never acquits; it qualifies for mercy. The law gave the manslayer a city of refuge and the ignorant sinner a sacrifice — and their Messiah was making that sacrifice as they killed Him.
- Offer. Judgment did not fall at once, so Peter could proclaim full forgiveness to them, on one condition: repentance.
- Reach. Paul received mercy because he had acted in ignorance and unbelief. The same door stands open to anyone whose worst sin was done blindly.
but God has thus fulfilled what he had announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ should suffer.
Peter has just charged the crowd with crucifying their Messiah. Now he tells them God had announced that suffering long in advance — so what becomes of their guilt, and what does it open up for them?
Peter's answer starts with the prophets.
Again, as in his first sermon, Peter appeals to the Scriptures. What his hearers had done had not taken God by surprise, for He had before shown by the mouth of all His prophets that Christ should suffer. And He had fulfilled His word as to this, as He will fulfil every other word that He has spoken.
Commentators point to one gap in how the crowd read the prophets.
There was one thing they all seemed to fail to grasp about Christ: the necessity of His sufferings. It was foretold that the Christ would be the centre of all the coming glory. But it was also foretold — and here is where the difficulty came, a difficulty for thoughtful Jews even today — that "the Christ must suffer." They might believe all those glowing prophecies about Him, the throne, the dominion and the glory. But the word that He would be wounded for their transgressions and bruised for their iniquities they seemed unable to connect with the Messiah, the Christ who is yet to reign in glory.
Verse 18 follows straight on from Peter's word about their ignorance. That ignorance cuts two ways at once.
Then the apostle explains how they could do so dreadful a deed… In one way this might make the degraded condition of God's ancient people worse. How did they and their rulers come to be so ignorant? They knew neither the Scripture nor the power of God… But He who suffered for them on the cross prayed to His Father to forgive them, for they did not know what they were doing. Now the Holy Spirit through the apostle assures them that this was so, as a plea for divine compassion. That His Christ should suffer was no afterthought of God. He predicted it by all the prophets, and He fulfilled it. So the people must learn their blind wickedness; and so God would show His mercy, He who gave Christ as a propitiation for their offences.
Propitiation means a sacrifice that satisfies God about sin — here, the death they themselves brought about.
God's law drew a line between murder and a killing done without knowing.
Verse 17 shows that God was willing to treat their dreadful crime as a sin of ignorance. It was manslaughter, for which the law provides a city of refuge, and not murder. This was a direct answer to the prayer on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." By their sinful act God had accomplished His purpose about the suffering of Christ. So there was still an offer of mercy for them as a nation. Peter went on to make that offer. Everything hinged upon their repentance and conversion.
Under the law of Moses, a killer who did not mean to kill could flee to such a city and live. The timing of God's remedy is striking:
For sins of ignorance a sacrifice was available for Jews (Leviticus 5:14). In fact, that sacrifice was accomplished by their Messiah at the very time they were guilty of crucifying Him. God had declared this beforehand by His prophets. What they needed, then, was faith in this gracious Substitute, the one sacrifice to take away their sins.
Saying God announced it beforehand is not saying the men who did it were only playing a part written for them.
No doubt the purpose of God stands… But should this weaken our moral judgment of creature wickedness? Does it deny that Satan and man are responsible for all they do against Him, or that both must be punished for it? So Peter charges the men of Israel with the guilt of crucifying the Messiah… The holy and perfect word of God puts everything in its place, not one side only but both. God has His definite plan and foreknowledge. The Jews played their evil part, the Gentiles theirs… but in that very same act they fulfilled the prophets. That act gave occasion for God to display His holiest judgment and to accomplish the work of His grace.
- Foretold — God announced the sufferings of Christ through all the prophets. The cross took Him by no surprise, and it proves He keeps every word He speaks.
- Missed — a glorious Messiah they could accept; a wounded, bruised one they could not. That blind spot in their reading of the prophets became their crime.
- Fulfilled — God announced it and God accomplished it. Fulfilled prophecy never cancels guilt; both sides stand together, man's evil and God's plan.
- Covered — God treated the deed as done in ignorance, answering the Lord's prayer from the cross. That left them a refuge instead of a sentence.
- Offered — mercy still stood open to the nation, for God gave Christ as a propitiation for their offences. Everything hinged on their repentance.
Repent therefore and be converted, for the blotting out of your sins, so that times of refreshing may come from [the] presence of the Lord,
Peter speaks these words in Solomon's porch, to a crowd from the nation that had just crucified Jesus. His call ties a change in the hearers to a change in the world's future.
The verse gives one appeal in two words, and writers keep them distinct. Repentance is what the mind does; conversion is what the will does.
It is literally an after-thought, or changed thought. It is a judgment the mind forms on reflection, after it has already held another one. In Scripture it usually means the judgment I form in God's sight about my own past conduct and feelings... Conversion itself may follow repentance. By conversion I mean the full, deliberate turning of the heart to God. "Repent," says Peter, "and be converted." Conversion is the turning of the will to God.
The appeal in Acts 2 and the appeal here are not aimed at the same target. One gathered people out of the nation. This one puts a proposal to the nation itself.
Peter made a very remarkable proposal to Israel that day in Solomon's porch. In Acts 2 his appeal was to individuals, and those who responded at once stood apart from "this crooked generation." In Acts 3 the same preacher appealed to the nation as such... The heavens had received Him until the times of the restoring of all things. Now it was for Israel to say whether that time of universal blessing should begin at once.
After such a crime, an offer of blotted-out sins seems impossible. Commentators trace it back to what Jesus prayed on the cross.
Yet Israel is not at once set aside; on the contrary, "to the Jew first" the message of grace is proclaimed. Not only as individuals, but as a nation too... So, at the cross, the Lord intercedes: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Peter then proclaims to them that God accepted that prayer: "And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers."
Some older translations link the two halves of the verse with the word "when." One writer works from a rendering that reads "so that," and draws out what that changes.
The verse ends with a promise, however. It does not say "when," but "so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and He may send Jesus Christ, who was foreordained for you." Jesus had returned on high because the Jewish nation rejected Him. Yet the nation could still repent and turn to Him. If it did, God was ready to send Him back and bring in the times of kingdom refreshing. God made this promise in complete good faith. Yet He also knew that the nation as such would not change its mind about Christ. However rebellious Israel was, God would give them full opportunity to repent.
The blotting out is God's act, but it is not detached from what happens inside a person. One writer draws out both the ground of the pardon and the road to it.
They judge themselves before God and acknowledge their sins. Then divine grace blots those sins out, in the blood of their own Messiah. There is no other way. But oh, how moving beyond words for them above all people! But again, the power of the blood of Christ is precious. Yet no soul ever receives real blessing apart from the judgment of sin — of self — in the conscience.
The phrase is not vague comfort. It names a coming era, and it comes in a fixed order with the restoring of all things.
The times of refreshing would seem to be the gracious prelude to that great climax, "the times of restoration" of all things. Then righteousness shall reign. It would seem also that repentance and conversion of sinners will hasten the times of refreshing.
- Repent — a changed judgment of yourself, formed in God's sight. The mind reverses its verdict on your own past.
- Turn — conversion adds the will to the mind: the deliberate turning of the heart to God, which is why Peter says both.
- Blotted out — the pardon rests on the blood of the Messiah they rejected. It reaches a person through self-judgment, never around it.
- Refreshing — repentance does not just precede blessing; it aims at it: "so that," not "when."
- Restoration — Peter put his proposal to the nation. The world's wider blessing still waits on Israel's repentance, and on God sending Jesus back from heaven.
and he may send Jesus Christ, who was foreordained for you,
Peter's second sermon follows the healing of the lame man at the temple gate. It ends with an offer: if the nation turns back, God will send Jesus to them again. Two questions follow. What is this "refreshing"? And was the offer real?
Writers note a shift between Peter's first sermon and this one. In Acts 2 people were called out of a guilty generation one by one; here the nation itself is addressed.
A very remarkable offer was made to Israel that day in Solomon's porch. In Acts 2 Peter appealed to people one by one, and those who responded were at once separated from "this crooked generation." In Acts 3 the same preacher appealed to the nation as a whole. He called on the people to repent and turn to God. He promised them that if they did, their sins would be blotted out, and times of refreshing would come from the presence of the Lord. What is more, God would send Jesus back... Note carefully that the world's blessing waits for Israel's repentance. While that nation stays in unbelief, Jesus remains in the heavens, and the evil rule of the devil goes on.
Older translations read "when the times of refreshing shall come." Commentators press for "so that": repentance brings the refreshing. The ESV agrees.
It is clear that the apostle calls on the Jews to repent and turn to God, so that their sins might be blotted out. And this is so that (not when) the times of refreshing might come from the presence of the Lord, and He might send Jesus Christ... We do not doubt that Peter then saw the repentance of Israel as possible, if not likely. The passage itself shows that, if they repented, Jesus would certainly be sent from heaven without delay.
If the offer was real, why did nothing come of it?
Jesus had returned on high because the Jewish nation rejected Him. Yet if the nation itself would repent and turn to Him, God was ready to send Him back to bring in the times of kingdom refreshing. Of course, this promise was given in perfectly good faith, yet at the same time God knew that the nation as such would not change their mind concerning Christ. However rebellious Israel was, God would give them full opportunity to repent.
Another writer draws the same line between what we owe God and what God has planned.
God knows beforehand how people will receive the testimony, and He acts in that knowledge. Our responsibility is quite another thing. Christ presented Himself as Messiah to the Jews to confirm the promises, and they were bound to receive Him. Yet His rejection became the basis on which God accomplished all His purposes.
The wording marks Jesus out as the One already designated for this people — the very Man they had driven away is the One God holds in reserve for them.
Verses 19, 20 are given accurately: "Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send the Christ who has been appointed for you, even Jesus."
Some read the refreshing as a fresh outpouring of the Spirit. Commentators answer that the Spirit had already come — it was the Spirit speaking through Peter who pointed forward to something else.
It is impossible to apply this passage to the Holy Spirit. He had already come down at that time, and had said through the apostle, "whom heaven must receive until the times of restoring all things." And in truth, the Holy Spirit has not restored all things.
The timing of Peter's words is itself the argument. Pentecost was the high point of the Spirit's power, and Peter spoke at that very moment.
This was the exact moment the Holy Spirit seized, through the apostle Peter, to declare as strongly as possible that these times are still future. A further mighty change must still take place. It will not come by fresh or repeated missions of the Holy Spirit on Christians or for Christian purposes, but by sending Jesus — that Jesus who has gone away to heaven.
Christ is sent to repair, not to wipe out. Writers also mark the limits of that repair.
Christ will be sent, according to these testimonies, not for the destruction, but for the restoring of all things.
Some have pressed the apostle's words to make them include even the unpardoned dead. The restoration does not go beyond what "God has spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets." No prophet tells us to look for the restoring to God's favour of men who have died in their sins.
The offer stood open until Stephen. His death was the reply.
Jesus was still "standing" in glory, ready to fulfil what Peter had said in Acts 3:20, if only they had repented. They did not repent, but gave a violent refusal by stoning Stephen and sending him after his Master.
- Offer. Peter addresses the nation as a whole and lays before it a return of the very Messiah it had rejected.
- Condition. The sense is "so that," not "when." Repentance comes first. Then the refreshing, and Jesus sent without delay.
- Person. The refreshing is not a further work of the Spirit, who had already come; it waits on Christ being sent from heaven.
- Scope. He comes to restore, not to destroy. But the restoring reaches only as far as the prophets spoke. It does not reach those who died in their sins.
- Result. Israel refused, and Stephen's death sealed the refusal. The times are put off, not cancelled. They wait for Jesus to be sent.
whom heaven indeed must receive till [the] times of [the] restoring of all things, of which God has spoken by the mouth of his holy prophets since time began.
Peter is speaking in the temple, just after the healing of a lame man. He tells the crowd where Jesus is now, how long heaven will keep Him, and what will end that stay.
Peter's appeal here is not to individuals but to Israel as a nation. The world's future hangs on their answer.
A very remarkable overture was made to Israel that day in Solomon's porch. In Acts 2 Peter's appeal was to individuals. Those who responded were at once detached from "this crooked generation." In Acts 3 the same preacher's appeal was to the nation as such. He called on the people to repent and turn back to God. He promised that if they did, their sins would be blotted out, and that times of refreshing would come from the presence of the Lord. What is more, God would send back Jesus. The heavens had received Him until the times of the restoration of all things. Now it was for Israel to say whether that time of universal blessing should begin at once.
Older translations read "restitution" where the ESV has "restoring." Which period does Peter mean? The test is what all the prophets actually spoke about.
Has God spoken of the final judgment at the end of the world by the mouth of all His holy prophets? No. Certainly all the holy prophets of the old covenant have not spoken of it. What times, then, have they all spoken of? Plainly the millennial times — the times when all the nations of the earth will be brought under the Messiah's rule. The word translated "restitution" means restoring what has fallen into disorder, brokenness, and confusion.
Christ's absence from earth has a cause. Peter traces it to Israel.
Israel's sin had driven Him out of the world, and He was now in heaven. Earth can know no millennium of blessing while He stays away. His continuance in heaven, as Peter showed, depends on Israel's attitude toward Him. God chose that nation to be the centre of light and blessing for the earth. While it stays stubborn and unbelieving, Christ cannot return, and universal blessing cannot begin.
Some read the verse as if Christ waits in heaven while the world slowly improves. On this reading He arrives only at the end. The Greek will not allow it.
Heaven must receive Him till the times for restoring all things according to prophecy. That is, Jesus will be sent to bring in these blessed times when all things will be reconstituted — not destroyed — as the prophets of old testified. Christ will come from heaven to earth to establish millennial blessing. You would have to change the Greek completely to get the meaning "till all be accomplished." Christ is on high till the times of restoring all things come, not till all has been restored.
The phrase has been stretched to teach that everyone will finally be saved. Peter's own clause rules that out.
People have misused the term "restitution of all things" to back the idea that God will save and restore everybody in the end — even the devil himself. But the passage reads, "the restitution of all things, which God has spoken…" It is things, not persons — things He had spoken of by His prophets from the very start.
The same clause sets a second limit. It concerns people who die in their sins.
The restoration does not go beyond what "God has spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets," and certainly no prophet tells us to look for the restoration to divine favour of men who have died in their sins. The prophets' standpoint was the earth. In stirring language they describe how God's power removes every scar that sin has caused. He does it so that He may once more have pleasure in the works of His hands, and that men may enjoy His mercy. The healing of the lame man was an example, strikingly illustrating Isaiah 35:5-6.
Every trust God placed in human hands has failed. The coming age answers the whole list.
Throughout the ages God has brought out before men many things that are His purpose for this world. He created Adam as head, and he sinned. He established government in Noah, and it was corrupted. He gave His law through Moses, and it was broken. He set up priesthood in Aaron, and it was perverted. He established kingly authority in David, and it collapsed. These things, and every other good thing in His purpose, will be restored in the coming age. And not only restored, but established in far greater fullness and in absolute perfection, because all will then be centred in Christ.
- Withheld — heaven keeps Christ while Israel stays unbelieving, and the earth waits with Him.
- Until — He stays above till those times begin, not till they are finished. His return opens the age; it does not close it.
- Things — God restores things, not persons. The verse gives no ground for saying every person will be saved in the end.
- Spoken — the prophets' words set the limit. The restoration reaches as far as they reach, and no further.
- Restored — headship, government, law, priesthood and kingship all broke in human hands. Christ recovers them all and perfects them.
Moses indeed said, A prophet shall [the] Lord your God raise up to you out of your brethren like me him shall ye hear in everything whatsoever he shall say to you.
Peter is preaching to the men of Israel. To show them that Jesus is the one they had waited for, he does not start with something new. He quotes Moses.
Peter's argument gains its force from who said it.
God has fulfilled His word through Moses the prophet. Moses in no way took the place of being Israel's deliverer. He was only a witness to it, a partial display of God's power at the time, but looking on to the great Prophet and Deliverer who was coming. Now He had come.
The promise did not appear out of nowhere. It answered something Israel had asked for.
The prophets of idolatry were deluded. In contrast, the Lord would raise up a prophet like Moses — but infinitely greater than Moses — from among Israel. Israel must listen to Him. Moses was about to die. But God remembered Israel's fear at Sinai. They were terrified at the thought of hearing God Himself speak, and had asked for someone to stand between them and God. So the Prophet spoken of is the "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."
The phrase "from your brothers" points to someone truly human, standing among the people He speaks to.
Peter's use of these words in Acts 3 makes it clear that the One in mind is Christ Himself. In Deuteronomy 18 the stress seems to fall on the precious fact of Christ's humanity — "a prophet like me from your brothers." Perhaps the outstanding feature in Moses was the closeness he enjoyed with God, and his freedom in going into the Lord's presence. The words "like me" remind us of the perfect communion between the Lord Jesus as Man and the Father.
The fit is exact, and history has produced no rival:
Peter quotes Moses: God would raise up a prophet from the Jewish nation, similar to Moses. But He would speak with such authority that no one could ignore His words... This could apply to no one but Christ. Leaders in Israel knew that Scripture. They had asked John the Baptist whether he was that prophet. But John testified that the Lord Jesus was far greater than he, and the evidence of Christ's own life and ministry was clear for all to see... In fact, Israel knows that neither before nor since has there been such a prophet.
Some have tried to attach this promise to other men, or to spread it over a whole line of prophets. Kelly tests each idea against the wording.
The theory of Aben Ezra and others, that Joshua is meant, cannot stand. Joshua only added to Moses' work, and in little more than one direction. He does not stand out in any adequate way as the prophet raised up from his brothers like Moses. So some of the most distinguished Jewish teachers tried to read this one unique prophet as a whole line of prophets! That reading fits neither the language nor the facts of their history... The place of mediator, whose words must be heard on pain of death, points to what marked Moses out. In the highest degree it is true of no one but the Messiah.
The command attached to the Prophet has no limits in it. Moses had delivered a law; this Prophet opens something wider.
Moses had predicted the coming of a prophet — a man like himself, to whom the nation must listen or be destroyed. Jesus fulfilled this prophecy. Though He is the Eternal Son, He stooped to become Man among us — as truly human as Moses or anyone else. He was no mere explainer of Moses' law. He announced a new and more glorious order of things altogether. The words themselves show it: "You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you."
The command to listen still stands. Fereday points to where the Prophet's words can be found.
The Prophet is Christ. He has come. Men have heard His voice with their own ears, and we may still hear His voice in Holy Scripture. Here is one of His sayings: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." What words are these! How divinely suited they are to meet every need of the human heart!
- Promised — Moses never claimed to be Israel's deliverer. He was a witness pointing forward to the greater Prophet still to come.
- Provided — At Sinai, Israel asked for someone to stand between them and God. The promise answered them, and Christ Jesus is that one mediator between God and men.
- Person — "A prophet like me from your brothers" marks out real humanity. No one else fits — not Joshua, not a line of prophets. Only the Messiah is the mediator whose words must be heard on pain of death.
- Priority — He does not merely explain Moses' law. He announces something new, and we owe Him a hearing in whatever He says.
- Present — That voice is still heard in Scripture, and its words meet the need of the human heart today.
And it shall be that whatsoever soul shall not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people.
Peter has just offered his listeners forgiveness and the return of their Messiah. Now he quotes Moses, and the offer comes with a warning: everything turns on whether people listen to the Prophet God raised up.
Peter did not invent this threat. He took it from Moses — the very lawgiver his hearers claimed to follow.
God has fulfilled His word through Moses the prophet. Moses never took the place of Israel's deliverer. He was only a witness to it — a partial picture of God's power at that time, pointing on to the great Prophet and Deliverer who was coming. Now He had come. So Peter set before them the arrival of the One who came to bless, His rejection among them, and how terrible a thing it is to treat that lightly. Whoever would not bow to Him was to be cut off — by the declaration of their own Moses.
Their defence was that they followed Moses. That defence collapses.
So by refusing to listen to Christ, they were guilty of direct disobedience to Moses. The lawgiver would be their accuser. The people who claimed to be Moses' disciples, so eager (as they imagined) for his honour, would find themselves accused before God by him!
The threat is this heavy because of who the Prophet is. Moses did not promise another teacher of the old system. He promised the start of something new.
Moses had declared that Jehovah would raise up for them a Prophet like himself. He firmly affirms this Prophet's authority. He is not a mere explainer of what had been spoken before. He is the Originator of a new order of things, as Moses was, and so must go beyond what Moses had begun... Had Moses been enough, there would have been no need for another. But the law was bound to fail to bring people near to God. There must be, then, another Prophet and a different message. If people hear Him, the way to God that is otherwise closed opens for the one who receives His message. If they do not hear Him, there is indeed no remedy: "every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people."
Only one thing was asked of Israel: listen to Him. Their own great creed began with the word "Hear" — and still they did not.
Israel boasted in their great "Shema," where the prophet Moses called them back to the privilege and responsibility of what the law revealed... But Israel was the "deaf servant" of Jehovah. Now God had raised up another Prophet, and of Him it was written, "You shall listen to Him in everything He says to you"... Moses had charged the people, "Hear, O Israel." Now One greater than Moses cried, "Who has ears to hear, let him hear." What if they did not hear? For those who refused to listen, that old prophecy held a warning just as serious: "whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him."
The wording in Acts is sharper still. Moses said God would require it of the man; Peter says the soul is "destroyed from the people."
One writer checks the Greek word behind "destroyed," and a related noun, in a standard Greek dictionary.
The first of these words occurs only once (Acts 3:23). The second appears four times — three of them about the destruction of the ungodly. Liddell and Scott give exolothreuo as "to destroy utterly," and olethros as "ruin, destruction, death."
The warning is personal. It sets two outcomes before every hearer.
See how serious the issues are that hang on hearing the voice of this Prophet... Everything depends, he says, on how you hear Him. To hear Jesus is to secure salvation. To deafen the ear and harden the heart against Him is to seal the soul's eternal doom.
The warning is not the whole sermon. Israel still had a future to wait for, and a duty in the present.
There was, however, a word for them in the present. The One who had been among them was truly the Prophet like Moses, to whom all were to listen. So a present responsibility rested on them while they waited for the future. For if that Prophet had come — and Jesus Christ was that Prophet — then all people were bound to listen to Him, or judgment would overtake the rebellious.
- Promised — Moses foretold a Prophet like himself. Refuse that Prophet, and Moses himself becomes your accuser.
- Greater — He does not just explain the old order. He opens the way to God that was closed, and refusing Him leaves "no remedy."
- Heard — the one thing required is listening. Israel recited "Hear, O Israel" and stayed the deaf servant.
- Destroyed — this verb appears only here in the New Testament, and it means "to destroy utterly."
- Offered — the warning sits inside an offer. The duty now is to listen to Him, before judgment falls.
And indeed all the prophets from Samuel and those in succession after [him], as many as have spoken, have announced also these days.
Peter is still speaking in the temple after the healing of a lame man, and he has just pressed Moses' words about a Prophet whom Israel must hear. Now he widens the appeal. Every prophet from Samuel onward spoke of the days his hearers were living in. Two questions follow: why the count begins at Samuel, and which days are meant.
Samuel is not named at random. One writer asks why, and finds the answer in what had collapsed in Israel — both the people and the priesthood.
Why "from Samuel"? Where was the great fitness in that? What moral reason led the Spirit of God to tie prophecy to Samuel's place? The people had failed completely long before. The priests were now just as plainly a failure... What remained to be done? No one is holy like the LORD; He is the One who never fails. But how does He act? Samuel and the prophets after him are the turning point. There the announcement of His Anointed as king first begins to dawn on Israel.
Peter starts the line at Samuel. That does not mean prophecy began there.
He was the first of the "successional prophets" (Acts 13:20; 3:24). Yet Moses, and even Abraham, were prophets before him (Psalm 105:15; Deuteronomy 18:18).
Prophets arrive when something has broken down. Their message then runs in two directions at once.
Prophecy is a special intervention, and it applied to their case of failure. So when Shiloh fell and the ark was captured, God raised up Samuel. That is why the Lord counts the prophets "from Samuel and those who came after him."... But while they showed the people their sins, they kept pointing to the Messiah, the great Deliverer... Prophecy judges the people in their responsibility. It also announces the sovereign purpose of God.
Commentators differ on what "these days" means. One reading ties them to the peace and blessing Peter offers if the nation repents.
Here Peter is still urging them to repent. If they do, he pledges the return of Christ to bring in the predicted time of peace and blessing. For Jesus was clearly the Prophet raised up, like Moses but far greater, as Moses himself testified in Deuteronomy 18:15. No one could refuse His words and escape; to refuse them was to bring on his own destruction.
Another writer takes the two phrases in Peter's speech as two different periods.
Again and again we gather that all the prophets bore witness to the sufferings of Christ. They spoke of the present interval of testimony to Him, rejected and glorified, under the title of "These days," and of the future glory as "Times of refreshing."
The verse sits inside an offer. Peter tells a nation that has just killed its Messiah that God offers to send Him back.
All the prophets from Samuel onward had pointed to His day. Israel was privileged indeed: first the prophets in long succession, and at last the Son of God Himself speaking among them. And now, despite their killing of Him, God proposed to give Him to them a second time. So blessing — full and final — would come in, not for Israel only, but for all the nations of the earth. Alas for the hopeless evil of the human heart! The gracious offer was refused. So the world drags on, century after century, in its weary way. It feels its need of peace and rest more deeply all the time, yet never finds it. The rejected Jesus is the only true hope people have, if only they could see it.
Peter is not laying out history. He is proving that the Prophet Moses named has come.
That Jesus was this Prophet is plain. Peter goes on to say, "And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days." Everything depends, he says, on how you hear Him. Nothing could be plainer. To hear Jesus is to secure salvation. To close the ear and harden the heart against Him is to seal the soul's eternal doom.
- Failure — Peter dates prophecy from Samuel because that is where people and priesthood both broke down. God answered the ruin by pointing to His Anointed.
- Succession — Samuel was not the first prophet of all. He was the first of the unbroken line, so "from Samuel" traces a chain, not a start.
- Two voices — Every prophet in that chain did the same double work. They exposed sin, and they named the Deliverer to come.
- These days — The whole line pointed to the days Peter's hearers were standing in. Commentators differ on whether that means the present time of testimony or the promised season of blessing.
- Decision — All this witness leaves one question. Will you hear this Prophet? Salvation and ruin hang on your answer.
*Ye* are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God appointed to our fathers, saying to Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
Peter tells the crowd in the temple what they are by birth: heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with Abraham. But does that birthright save them?
Peter names a real title here. It rests on a promise older than the law of Moses.
The apostle now presses these things on his hearers. They are the rightful heirs, the sons of the prophets, and heirs of the wide-reaching covenant of promise. That covenant was given before the Law, and the law's weakness never crippled it. In Abraham's Seed all the families of the earth would indeed find the blessing.
Israel had more than one covenant with God. Peter reaches past the law given through Moses, back to Abraham.
Now Peter appeals to the people as children of the prophets, and as children of the covenant God made first with Abraham. He does not speak of the covenant of law given by Moses, but of God's unconditional covenant of promise to Abraham and his seed. That promise finds its answer only in Christ, the one seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:16). Through Him alone blessing could come, and will yet come, to all the families of the earth.
Peter's hearers had not yet believed. So who is the offspring the promise points to?
The apostle Peter, speaking to unconverted Jews, calls them sons of the prophets and sons of the covenant God made with their fathers, the covenant that promised Abraham blessing for all the families of the earth. He spoke during the time of the church, and in that sense his words belonged to it. But in that time, in any spiritual or moral or real sense, are unconverted Jews the seed of Abraham in whom all the families of the earth are to be blessed? Whom does Paul call the seed of Abraham in whom the nations are to be blessed? "It does not say, 'And to offsprings,' referring to many, but referring to one, 'And to your offspring,' who is Christ."
Birth inside the covenant line brought real privilege. It brought no guarantee. The same test falls on anyone who trusts a religious upbringing.
No one is a Christian by nature. He may be born of Christian parents, brought up under Christian discipline, and hold to Christian ordinances. But unless he is born of God, all such outward privileges are worth nothing to him. Here is the real point, and how few ask themselves — am I in Christ? Now the Jew had natural hereditary privileges. He was born a Jew, and the Jews were "children of the kingdom," "children of the prophets," "children of the covenant"; but they were cast out.
Peter's words were a real offer to the nation. Their answer changed how the message went out afterwards.
Is it not clear that here is God's distinct offer, through His servant, to make good all that was promised to Israel? But they refused, and His offer lapsed entirely for the time. … After that no one presented the word of the Lord in that way again, and no later offer came to Israel on any such ground. Yet the covenant of grace is not gone for ever. It will reappear, under the returning Son of man, for both houses of Israel.
Their refusal did not cancel the promise God made to Abraham. Its reach was never limited to one nation.
The promise was unconditional and absolute. God gives it as the revelation of a purpose He will carry out. He addresses it to Abraham, so as to fix the person in whom it was to be fulfilled. God steps in to bless, and He makes clear that the blessing rests on His own faithfulness alone. He blesses because He is pleased to bless. Notice too that the promise reaches out to the whole world. "In you shall all the nations be blessed." Its reach is universal, its character absolute, and its fulfilment rests on the faithfulness of God alone.
- Birth — Peter's hearers were true heirs of the prophets and of a covenant of promise older than the law.
- Covenant — the covenant here is Abraham's, not the law given through Moses. It is unconditional, and it rests on God's faithfulness alone.
- Seed — the promise finds its answer in one offspring, Christ. Through Him blessing reaches all the families of the earth.
- Refusal — an inherited title saved nobody. God offered the nation everything He had promised; they refused, and the offer lapsed.
- Reach — man's failure does not undo God's promise. The blessing still goes out to all nations, and it comes only through Christ.
To you first God, having raised up his servant, has sent him, blessing you in turning each one [of you] from your wickedness.
Peter ends his temple sermon with a promise to the very crowd that had handed Jesus over: God sent His Servant to them before anyone else. The blessing He brings is named in the same breath: each hearer turned from his own wickedness.
The phrase sounds like resurrection. Commentators point somewhere else.
We may need a caution here about what that raising up means. It does not point to the Resurrection. It points to the Lord's first coming to earth, in line with the words just quoted from Deuteronomy 18:18: "I will raise up for them a prophet like you," and so on.
The distinction shows in the Greek. Peter uses a sharper word when he means resurrection.
Here the word is no longer the ambiguous anestesen, but the more definite egeiren. It does not just mean raising Him up as a living Messiah on earth, as in Acts 3:22, 26; Acts 7:37; Acts 13:33. It means waking Him up after death.
Older translations read "his Son" or "his Child" here. Later translators changed it, and Isaiah shows why.
In Acts 3:18, 26, as in Acts 4:27, 30, the Revisers rightly give, not Son or Child, but "servant," referring to Isaiah 42:1; Isaiah 52:13; Isaiah 53:11.
The word choice fits the whole shape of Peter's preaching.
The burden in Acts is that the Jews rejected Christ whom God raised up… but we do not find grace coming down in its completeness… Peter does not even go so far as to call Him the Son of God. When Peter speaks here, the word is really "servant" in that passage.
The people standing in front of Peter were the ones who had called for the death of Jesus. They are the first named recipients of the blessing.
If we needed any further encouragement, here it is: the ambassadors were to "begin at Jerusalem" — the guiltiest spot on the face of the earth. They were to make the earliest offer of pardon to the very murderers of the Son of God. Peter does exactly that in this verse, in words of wonderful and surpassing grace.
Peter had denied the Lord himself before he ever announced pardon to others.
What a fitting vessel Peter was for the grace of God to flow out through, since he had tasted it so sweetly and fully himself! How his heart must have glowed as he closed his sermon to these very people who had denied and crucified the Lord… Here was the announcement of repentance and forgiveness of sins that was to go out to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. God is the source of all blessing. Jesus is the One by whom it reaches men, and the effect of it is to turn men from their iniquities.
The verse says plainly what the blessing is.
In the last verse of the chapter he added this: whatever their response, God had raised up Jesus to bless them by turning them from their sins. We all need two things. First, the judicial blotting out of our sins. Second, to be turned away from our sins, so that they lose their power over us.
So where must that turning reach?
The blood of Christ has precious power. Even so, no soul is ever really blessed except through the judgment of sin — of self — in the conscience.
Peter is not just gathering people one by one. He speaks to the whole nation, and that ministry had an end.
Peter presents Him as the exalted Man. To my mind Peter presented Him this way to the nation, not to a small faithful group inside it, as we read in Acts 3:26… But they rejected the message Stephen brought them, and they killed him, and that closed this ministry.
- Raised up — God brings Jesus forward as the Prophet promised through Moses. This is not yet His resurrection. Acts uses a different Greek word for that.
- Servant — the title is "servant," drawn from Isaiah. It fits Peter's message in Acts: they rejected the One God raised up.
- First — the offer opens at the guiltiest address on earth. It goes to the people who called for the death of Jesus. It comes from a preacher who had tasted that grace himself.
- Blessing — God is the source and Jesus is the means. The effect is the measure: sins blotted out, and sinners turned from sins that once held them.
- Every one — the turning is personal, and it goes through the conscience. The offer went to the whole nation. When the nation refused it, that ministry closed at Stephen's death.