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King James Version (en)

Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 3, verse 25

¹⁹ he exhorteth them by repentance and faith to seek remission of their sins, and salvation in the same Jesus

²⁵Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed.

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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.

NOTES

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.

The apostle Peter addresses the descendants of Abraham, reminding them of the covenant and showing that the time has come for the fulfillment of God's promise, the blessing of all the families of the earth through...

Explaining the healing that had taken place, Peter again returns to what he had already spoken about on the day of Pentecost. He again points to Jesus as the Messiah glorified by God. And he connects everything that is happening with this glorification. The matter is still the same: the spiritual process that we usually call salvation. Only for us, salvation often appears to be something deeply personal, touching, if not exclusively then first of all, ourselves. Of course, we understand that we are not the only ones being saved, but still we usually see salvation itself as an individual matter. Meanwhile Peter and the other apostles viewed it as a universal, cosmic process. First of all it includes the people of God, and then all humanity.

All the prophets point to the Messiah, and whoever listens to the prophets cannot fail to recognize the Messiah: such is the apostle's thought. But the prophets spoke about what God revealed to them, and if He revealed to them something that forms a whole picture with the Messiah at the center, then our relationship with the Messiah, with Christ, is not only our personal affair and touches not only us alone. It is part of God's plan and one of the elements in the realization of that plan.

We can, of course, ignore everything connected with Christ and with the Kingdom, but if we want to participate, we must be aware that we are participating not in some experiment whose result concerns us alone. The Kingdom is entering the world, and our salvation is connected with this movement. Whether we are saved or not will become known only when the Kingdom is revealed in fullness, at the end of time. Still, it is not peoples and not collectives who are saved, but concrete human beings.

The process of salvation itself is truly universal, but each person participates in it personally. That is why the apostle speaks of the killing of Christ, saying that the people listening to him did it "in ignorance." Of course, in any society there are always those who act fully consciously, and guilt is not removed from such people, at least until repentance. But in every society there are also those who do not understand what is happening and take part in events without realizing their meaning and significance, following the majority.

Of course, this too is a choice, but often without understanding exactly what is being chosen. In this case repentance is certainly also necessary, though not for conscious sin, as in the case of those who understand everything to the end. Still, without repentance for unconscious sin, or more precisely, for the sin of refusing awareness, it is impossible; for life in the Kingdom requires full awareness of all one's life and actions. And therefore the fullness of responsibility, without which one cannot enter the Kingdom.

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