NOTES for Act 2:36-37
Christian historians and theologians have more than once expressed the opinion that the whole history of fallen humanity is, in essence, nothing other than a repetition of the fall in different forms. And, if we speak of Jewish history as the history of the people of God, the execution of the long-awaited Messiah, whom the greater part of the people never bothered to notice, is perhaps the best testimony to this.
Indeed, Jesus was sentenced to death not for false messianism and not even for religious crimes, for accusations of that kind brought in the Sanhedrin were only a screen, but only because He was hindering the authorities, both secular and religious, from playing their political games. And here a characteristic trait of fallen human nature appears, perhaps precisely what once, at the dawn of human history, became the cause of its fall: a distortion of spiritual perspective, because of which the most important thing appears to be a trifle unworthy of attention, while the unimportant, the illusions and mirages generated by human beings themselves, appears most important.
The whole spiritual horror of the situation may lie precisely in the fact that Christ was crucified in passing, with no thought of Him not only as the Messiah but even simply as a human being, not even to the degree to which any death sentence pronounced on any human being without exception demands thought. The Messiah whom they had so awaited in words was simply stepped over as an obstacle hindering the authorities. And readiness to step over people who get in the way and to go toward one's goal over corpses can be considered one of the most characteristic manifestations of fallen human nature.
But then the day of Pentecost came. The breath of the Kingdom burst into the world, and the apostles' preaching sounded. And those who listened to them found themselves in the Kingdom, where spiritual perspective is by no means distorted as the fallen world distorts it, where all things and all situations look as God sees them.
The answer to the preaching became a question entirely natural in such a situation: what are we to do now, when the most terrible thing has already happened and all of us, to one degree or another, have taken part in it? And such is the life of the Kingdom that this very question became the beginning of the path to salvation. For with God nothing is irreparable; the resurrection of Christ bears witness to that. Only one thing is irreparable: people's unwillingness to acknowledge the obvious, and above all their own sin.