NOTES for Act 3:1-26

The Gospels are full of stories of healings. And the Book of Acts continues this tradition: immediately after the description of the Savior's Ascension and Pentecost comes the description of a healing performed, true, no longer by Christ Himself, but by the apostles in the name of Christ. Of course, one could explain everything by saying that one of the Synoptic Gospels and the Book of Acts have the same author. But that is only the outer side of the matter. Something else is more important: the essential connection of the Gospel events with those described in the Book of Acts. And first of all, of course, this concerns the promise Jesus gave to the apostles during His earthly ministry, the promise that they too would be able to do on earth everything He Himself did.

But this is not all. The main point is that the history of the Kingdom in the world continues. And this means that Christian history continues. Not the history of certain Christian ecclesiastical institutions, or of what might be called, rather conditionally, Christian civilization, but the history of the Church. The one with a capital C. The one that is a community of people living in the Kingdom. In fact, Christ never created any other Church. What He left on earth was precisely a small community, at first, of inhabitants of the Kingdom. Or, more exactly, of those who were to become inhabitants of the Kingdom after His Resurrection, after Pentecost; those through whom the Kingdom would continue to exist in the world, transfiguring it.

The apostles' healing of the lame man who sat at the entrance to the Temple was precisely a witness that the apostles had become inhabitants of the Kingdom: it was the power of the Kingdom, its breath, that healed the lame man. It accompanied the apostles just as it had accompanied the Savior Himself when He walked on earth. Thus His work on earth continued. And so did the history of salvation.

When reading many passages from Scripture, it is hard at once to understand and feel the atmosphere of what is happening, the mood of the people, even though the Evangelists often mention them. The point is that the writers do not put into the lines their own attitude and emotions about what is being described.

To understand, we need to stop, perhaps read the passage again several times, think, and imagine the situation. The Word of God is more alive than any other book precisely because it is not obscured by the personality of the writer and gives us the opportunity to become participants in those events.

To "read" today's passage from Acts, one must not merely read the phrase, "...lame from his mother's womb..." and understand it as we usually understand the word "lame," that is, as having the ability to walk, but with effort and pain, but also see what was actually the case. This man was "carried and laid" there, that is, he could not move about on his own. One needs to see his gaze fixed on the apostles, waiting for alms. This man, unlike other healed people familiar to us (see, for example, Mark 10:51), did not think of asking for healing.

It is striking that such a seemingly unimportant detail is indicated: the hand by which Peter raises the lame man. But this detail brings the story to life and speaks of the importance of what is happening. Surely this man remembered for the rest of his life the touch after which he was able to walk. And then the one who perceived each day, in particular, in terms of how much would be given to him that day, leaps up and goes into the temple. Before, after all, he had sat only near the temple, and no one had carried him inside, and perhaps he had not asked...

And now this man glorifies God, who for him is now connected with His Son, Christ, in whose Name the healing was performed.

We see the first healing performed by the apostles after Christ’s ascension into heaven. A lame beggar who begged at the gates of the Temple is healed, a man like the millions of his fellows who would likewise beg at the gates of other temples for thousands of years. But the point is that this beggar had not been brought there by the apostles; he had long been visible to everyone who came to the Temple.

It is well known that, among beggars, besides people who have been cast aside and are genuinely in need, there have always been many professionals who earn their living this way and have no intention of changing their way of life. The apostles risked encountering one of those who did not need healing or who, even after being healed, would not bear public witness to the healing but would continue begging while pretending to suffer from his former illness. The beggar, however, acts “impractically,” and this means that he intends to change his way of life.

The man who was healed praises God, not the apostles, and there is no ingratitude in this. The apostles themselves bear witness that the healing comes from God. In this way, the healed man testified to his faith that the power by which they could heal had been given to them by God.

Everyone—the pilgrims who had come for Passover, the priests, the Pharisees—was content with the brisk trade going on around the Temple in Jerusalem. Did the cries of sacrificial animals drown out the Temple hymns? What could be done? At least the animals were always available for purchase. A pilgrim could hardly be expected to bring them from home, perhaps hundreds of kilometers away... Did the money changers haggle, argue, and quarrel with their customers so loudly that it was enough to drive even the saints away? It was regrettable, of course, but denarii had to be exchanged for drachmas and back again... Strictly speaking, no one approved of all this clamor in the Temple courts, but everyone put up with it as an inevitable evil, a kind of tribute to the eastern temperament.

Indeed, devout Jews tolerated all this not so much out of indifference as because they were intensely awaiting the Messiah’s coming. Through the prophets, the Lord had more than once angrily rebuked Israel for its lack of reverence. The words quoted by Jesus, “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers,” belong to the prophet Jeremiah and were spoken six hundred years before the events described in the Gospel. Yet there was a widespread conviction in Israel that the Messiah, who would come soon, would arrange the Temple service and, so to speak, “put things in order.” In carrying out this cleansing, the Lord acts precisely as that very Messiah who had been awaited for centuries. This is how the Jews understand His action, and therefore they demand a sign from Him.

One cannot fail to notice, however, that the dialogue between the Jews and the Lord takes place in raised voices, and the Jews react to Christ’s action with a certain hostility. This is probably because the Lord calls things by their proper names. His words, “Do not make My Father’s house a house of trade,” do not fit at all within the bounds of tolerance and indulgence toward lawlessness and irreverence. It is important to see this, because in our time, if someone tells us about what we mildly call “disorders” in our spiritual and ecclesial life, we react just as the Jews did then, in April of AD 27. Fear and uncertainty about God’s love make this kind of truth very hurtful to people. It is useful to remember this and notice it in ourselves, lest we become like those Jews.

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.

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.

Thus Peter and John performed a healing in the name of Jesus. The people’s reaction is understandable: delight, amazement... Peter immediately tries to put everything in its proper place. He says, “Why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” It is truly very important to Peter that people understand who performs the healing, that they know that he and John are only instruments in His hands. Glory and thanksgiving must be directed to the Lord alone.

Today we have before us two situations of witness. In both cases, moreover, those who bear witness point to Christ as the One who is greater than they are. The disciples run to John the Baptist, annoyed that everyone is going with repentance not to their beloved teacher, but to someone (Someone) else. But John explains to them that everything is going as it should. He is the herald who yields the way to the Lord who has come. He is the friend of the bridegroom, whose role is to step modestly aside when the Bridegroom meets face to face with His Bride, with the one for whose sake He came - with each person who comes to Him...

When the apostles Peter and John preach in Solomon's Portico of the Jerusalem Temple, they too "move aside," because everyone runs together to them after hearing about the miracle they have performed. And it is possible that, in order to stop the growing fame that is moving in the wrong direction, the apostles have to "shake up" their listeners a little. Sometimes it becomes necessary to take by the shoulders, and almost lift off the ground, a child rushing headlong somewhere. The apostles show the crowd gathered around them that the matter is not in them at all, but in the One whom this crowd had not merely seen, but had even crucified. And that it is His name that heals and raises up. And that glory is fitting for Him, not for them...

Such is the humility of the saints, who are ready to "move over" and "rejoice with joy" when people turn to the One whose friends they are (see John 3:29).

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 the "seed of Abraham," through Jesus Christ. It is clear that we can easily count ourselves among these "families of the earth" who have received the grace of salvation in Christ Jesus. But, as the New Testament points out many times, we are also descendants of Abraham, if not according to the flesh, then according to the spirit, because faith stands at the center of our life, the very faith that Abraham showed and that God counted to him as righteousness. So Abraham is the "father of all believers," and this means that we turn out to be heirs of the prophecies, revelations, and promises that God gave to the sons of Abraham. But then everything Scripture says about the responsibility of God's people before their God applies to us as well.