Peter does not doubt that the healing he and John performed was a witness to the reality of the Kingdom that entered the world through Christ and in Christ. From the very beginning he shifts the listeners' attention from himself to Him. This is not modesty and not an attempt at some kind of self-abasement, as readers of the Book of Acts sometimes think...
Peter does not doubt that the healing he and John performed was a witness to the reality of the Kingdom that entered the world through Christ and in Christ. From the very beginning he shifts the listeners' attention from himself to Him. This is not modesty and not an attempt at some kind of self-abasement, as readers of the Book of Acts sometimes think. Here there is a simple awareness of reality. The reality of how the Kingdom is arranged. And the Kingdom is, above all, relationships. Relationships with Christ first of all, since He is the King of His Kingdom. But also with His heavenly Father. And with other people. Here there is a whole system of relationships, forming that delicate fabric that can be called spiritual life.
This fabric forms the structure of the Kingdom and gives it shape. And a person has to be extremely careful about his intentions and purposes when the matter concerns spiritual life in general and life in the Kingdom in particular. Not in the sense of following some special etiquette. Etiquette is not needed in the Kingdom. But the ability to accept Christ's will as having priority over one's own is absolutely necessary. And not at the level of declaration, but in everyday life. Here it is precisely the experience of life in the Kingdom that helps one learn real humility.
For this is humility: to learn at every moment of one's life to put God's will, Christ's will, before one's own. And the experience of the Kingdom's life quickly makes one feel that the power of the Kingdom and its breath, without which there is no life, enter a person's heart only when one becomes completely transparent to every action of God. Transparent enough that He meets in your heart no resistance to any of His intentions, and in your life no contradiction to any of His plans.
It would seem that in such a case the person should disappear, dissolve, become an empty shell that God fills at His discretion. But in reality everything turns out differently: the more a person gives himself to Christ, the more he finds his true self. The apostles know this perfectly from their own experience. They know to whom they owe both their abilities and their life. And they bear witness to those around them about the One who, if they allow it, will enter their lives too. And having entered, He will open to them the doors of the Kingdom. And the path of salvation.
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3:12 Peter answered the people - Who were running together, and inquiring into the circumstances of the fact.
3:13 The God of our fathers - This was wisely introduced in the beginning of his discourse, that it might appear they taught no new religion, inconsistent with that of Moses, and were far from having the least design to divert their regards from the God of Israel. Hath glorified his Son - By this miracle, whom ye delivered up - When God had given him to you, and when ye ought to have received him as a most precious treasure, and to have preserved him with all your power.
3:14 Ye renounced the Holy One - Whom God had marked out as such; and the Just One - Even in the judgment of Pilate.
3:16 His name - Himself: his power and love. The faith which is by him - Of which he is the giver, as well as the object.
3:17 And now, brethren - A word full of courtesy and compassion, I know - He speaks to their heart, that through ignorance ye did it - which lessened, though it could not take away, the guilt.As did also your rulers - The prejudice lying from the authority of the chief priests and elders, he here removes, but with great tenderness. He does not call them our, but your rulers.For as the Jewish dispensation ceased at the death of Christ, consequently so did the authority of its rulers.
3:18 But God - Who was not ignorant, permitted this which he had foretold, to bring good out of it.
3:19 Be converted - Be turned from sin and Satan unto God.See Act 26:20. But this term, so common in modern writings, very rarely occurs in Scripture: perhaps not once in the sense we now use it, for an entire change from vice to holiness.That the times of refreshing - Wherein God largely bestows his refreshing grace, may come - To you also. To others they will assuredly come, whether ye repent or no.
3:20 And he may send - The apostles generally speak of our Lord's second coming, as being just at hand. Who was before appointed - Before the foundation of the world.
3:21 Till the times of the restitution of all things - The apostle here comprises at once the whole course of the times of the New Testament, between our Lord's ascension and his coming in glory.The most eminent of these are the apostolic age, and that of the spotless Church, which will consist of all the Jews and Gentiles united, after all persecutions and apostacies are at an end.
3:22 The Lord shall raise you up a prophet like unto me - And that in many particulars. Moses instituted the Jewish Church: Christ instituted the Christian. With the prophesying of Moses was soon joined the effect, the deliverance of Israel from Egypt: with the prophesying of Christ that grand effect, the deliverance of his people from sin and death. Those who could not bear the voice of God, yet desired to hear that of Moses. Much more do those who are wearied with the law, desire to hear the voice of Christ.Moses spake to the people all, and only those things, which God had commanded him: so did Christ. But though he was like Moses, yet he was infinitely superior to him, in person, as well as in office. Deu 18:15.
3:23 Every soul who will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people - One cannot imagine a more masterly address than this, to warn the Jews of the dreadful consequence of their infidelity, in the very words of their favourite prophet, out of a pretended zeal for whom they rejected Christ.
3:24 These days - The days of the Messiah.
3:25 Ye are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant - That in, heirs of the prophecies. To you properly, as the first heirs, belong the prophecies and the covenant. Gen 12:3.
3:26 To bless you, by turning you from your iniquities - Which is the great Gospel blessing.