NOTES for Act 2:22-32
22 Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: |
23 Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: |
24 Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. |
25 For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved: |
26 Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope: |
27 Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. |
28 Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance. |
29 Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. |
30 Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; |
31 He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. |
32 This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. |
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For Christians, the fact of Jesus' Resurrection from the dead has always served as proof that He is the Messiah. The apostles, however, look at this less simplistically: for them it is clear that the Savior's Resurrection is not only a manifestation of God's power, but also the culmination of spiritual processes that began long before the Savior came into the world. If it were otherwise, it would not have for Christians the meaning that it has, since, after all, God can raise anyone if that is His will; at the end of time the day will come when all who have ever lived on earth will rise.
A manifestation of God's power is always a sign, but signs have meaning only in the context of the events with which they are connected. Therefore the Savior's Resurrection has meaning only in the context of the whole history of the people of God and, more broadly, the whole history of Revelation, which begins with the creation of the world: God revealed Himself to the world from the very beginning of its existence. And although Peter in his sermon does not go back that far, he does remember David, precisely because promises were connected with David that went beyond the limits of earthly history. Peter sees in everything that is happening the fulfillment of the promises given to David. He understands that the kingdom promised to David, which will not cease and will not disappear, is not an earthly kingdom, but the very one that Jesus brought into the world, the Kingdom with a capital K.
The coming of the Messiah is both a break in earthly history and its culmination at the same time. The point is not only the manifestation of God's power at the moment of the Resurrection. The point is also that God's power, the power of the Kingdom, has now entered the world, and that the former history, the history of the fallen world, has ended there. Another history has begun, the history of the Kingdom. Pentecost became the beginning of this history, and the Resurrection was its source. If the Resurrection had been something absolutely otherworldly, it would have remained a single fact of earthly history; for us today it would be the greatest miracle, left far in the past. But it became the source of the Kingdom whose history continues today, and as Christians we have a direct and immediate relation to this history.
Readings for 6 April 2026
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