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Luke makes it plain
that both waves of persecution were initiated by the Sadducees (4:1 and
5:17). They were the ruling class of wealthy aristocrats. Politically,
they ingratiated themselves with the Romans, and followed a policy of
collaboration, so that they feared the subversive implications of the
apostles' teaching. Theologically, they believed that the Messianic age
had begun in the Maccabean period; so they were not looking for a
Messiah. They also denied the doctrine of *the resurrection of the
dead*, which the apostles proclaimed *in Jesus* (2b). They thus saw the
apostles as both agitators and heretics, both disturbers of the peace
and enemies of the truth.
In consequence, they
were *greatly disturbed*, `annoyed' (RSV), even `exasperated' (NEB), by
what the apostles were teaching the people (2a), for this was
`unauthorized preaching by unprofessional
preachers'.
Led by *the captain
of the temple guard* (1), that is, the chief of the temple police, who
was responsible for the maintenance of law and order, and who held a
priestly rank second only to the high priest, *they seizes Peter and
John* and *because it was evening* and too late to convene the council,
*they put them in jail* overnight (3). Luke assures his readers
immediately that the opposition of men did not hinder the Word of God.
The Sadducees could arrest the apostles, but not the gospel. On the
contrary, *many who heard the message believed, and the number of men
grew to about five thousand* (4) - not counting the women and children ,
he seems to mean.
*The next day the
rulers* (that is, the Sanhedrin, which consisted of seventy-one members,
presided over by the high priest), including both the *elders* (probably
clan leaders) and the *teachers of the law* (the scribes who copied,
conserved and interpreted it), *met in Jerusalem* (5). *Annas... was
there*, Luke tells us. He also calls him *the high priest* because,
although the Romans had deposed him in AD 15, he retained among the Jews
his prestige, influence and title (cf. Lk. 3:2). *Caiaphas* was there
too, Annas' son-in-law. Both men had figured prominently
in the trial and condemnation of Jesus (cf. Jn.18:12ff). Luke
also mentions *John* and *Alexander* (of whom nothing is known for
certain) and *the other men of the high priest's family* (6). As they
sat in their customary semi-circle, and *Peter and John* were *brought
before them* (7a), Memories of the trial of Jesus must have flooded the
apostles' minds. Was history to repeat itself? They could hardly expect
justice from *that* court, which had listened to false witnesses and
unjustly condemned their Lord. Were they to suffer the same Fate? Would
they too be handed over to the Romans and crucified? They must have
asked themselves such questions.
a)
Peter's defence (4:8-12)
The court began the interrogation with a straight question to
Peter and John: `*By what power or what name did you do this* [ie, heal
the cripple]?' One is reminded of the Jewish leaders, who had asked
Jesus by what authority he had cleansed the temple (Lk.20:1-2). In reply
the apostles bore witness to Jesus Christ. Whether they were preaching
to the crowd in the temple or answering accusations in the court, their
preoccupation was not their own defence but the honour and glory of
their Lord. In that moment of need, and in fulfilment of Jesus' promise
that `words and wisdom' would be given them whenever they were brought
to trial (Lk.21:12ff), Peter was freshly *filled with the Holy Spirit
and said: `Rulers and elders of the people! (8) If we are being called
to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple* (for what
could be objectionable about that?) *and are asked how he was healed
(9), then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name
of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from
the dead, that this man stands before you healed (10). He is "the
stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone"*' (11).
This is the third time that Peter has used the graphic formula `you
killed him, but God raised him' (2:23-24; 3:15), for Jesus is the stone
of Psalm 118 which the builders rejected but God has promoted to be the
capstone (11), a text which Jesus himself had quoted Lk.20:17).
Moreover, `*salvation is found in no-one else, for there is no other
name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved*' (12). We
notice the ease with which Peter moves from healing to salvation, and
from the particular to the general. He sees one man's physical cure as a
picture of the salvation which is offered to all in Christ. His two
negatives (*no-one else* and *no other name*) proclaim the positive
uniqueness of the name of Jesus. His death and resurrection, his
exaltation and authority constitute him the one and only Saviour, since
nobody else possesses his qualifications.
b)
The court's decision (4:13-22)
The court was astonished by *the courage of Peter and John*,
particularly because they were *unschooled* (*agrammatoi*, meaning not
that they were illiterate, but that they had received no proper training
in Rabbinic theology) and *ordinary men* (*idiotai*, meaning `laymen' or
`non-professionals'). But then *they took note that these men had been
with Jesus*, who also lacked both a formal theological education
(Jn.7:15) and professional status as a Rabbi (13). Nevertheless, they
could also see before their eyes the incontrovertible evidence of the
healed cripple. Although it was well know in the city that he had never
walked in his life, there he was *standing* with the apostles. *So there
was nothing they could say* (14). They could not deny it and they would
not acknowledge it. Embarrassed, they ordered them out of court, so that
they could confer in private (15).
Liberal critics have
enjoyed themselves in asking how Luke could have known what went on in
the Sanhedrin's confidential discussion. `The author reports the closed
deliberations', comments Haenchen sarcastically, `as if he were
present'. But Paul may have been there. More likely, Gamaliel was, and
he could have told Paul later what happened. At all events, the Council
was in a real quandary. On the one hand, *an outstanding miracle* had
been performed, as *everybody living in Jerusalem* knew well; so they
could *not deny it* (16). On the other hand they must *stop this thing
from spreading any further among the people* (17a). (We note in passing
that they made no attempt to discredit the apostles' witness to the
resurrection, although they knew that it was the centre of their
message, verse 2.) So what could they do? All they could think of was to
warn them, as a legal admonition before witnesses, *to speak no longer
to anyone in this name* (17b) - the powerful name by which the cripple
had been healed, which Peter had preached, and which they were reluctant
even to renounce.
So *they called* the
apostles *in again* and solemnly forbade them *to speak or teach at all
in the name of Jesus* (18). To this prohibition Peter and John made a
spirited reply that the court must judge whether the accused would be
right in God's sight to obey them or God (19), for they added `*we
cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard*' (20). The court
threatened them further, and then *let them go*. It did not seem
possible *to punish them because all the people were praising God for
what had happened* (21), especially because the cripple which had been
miraculously cured *was over forty years old* (22).
4 The church prays (4:23-31)
What was the apostles reaction to the Council's ban and threats?
*On their release*, Luke tells us, they went straight *to their own
people*, their relatives and friends in Christ, *reported* everything
the Council had said to them (23), and then immediately turned together
*in prayer to God* (24a). Here is the Christian *koinonia* in action. We
have seen the apostles in the Council; now we see them in the church.
Having been bold in witness, they were equally bold in prayer. Their
first word was *Despotes, Sovereign Lord*, a term used of a slave owner
and of a ruler of unchallengeable power. The Sanhedrin might utter
warnings, threats and prohibitions, and try to silence the church, but
their authority was subject to a higher authority still, and the edicts
of men cannot overturn the decrees of God.
Next we observe that,
before the people came to any petition, they filled their minds with
thoughts of the divine sovereignty. First, he is the God of creation,
who *made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them*
(24). Secondly, he is the God of revelation, who *spoke by the Holy
Spirit through the mouth of...David*, and in Psalm 2 (already in the
first century BC recognized as Messianic) had foretold the world's
opposition to his Christ, with nations raging, peoples plotting, kings
standing and rulers assembling against the Lord's Anointed (25-26),
Thirdly, he is the God of history, who had caused even his enemies
(Herod and Pilate, Gentiles and Jews, united in a conspiracy against
Jesus, verse 27) to do what his *power and will had decided beforehand
should happen* (28). This, then, was the early church's understanding of
God, the God of creation, revelation and history, whose characteristic
actions are summarised by the three verbs `you made' (24), `you spoke'
(25) and `you decided' (28).
Only now with their
vision of God clarified, and themselves humbled before him, were they
ready at last to pray. Luke tells us their three main requests. The
first was that God would *consider their threats* (29a). It was not a
prayer that their threats would fall under divine judgement, nor even
that they would remain unfulfilled, so that the church would be
preserved in peace and in safety, but only that God would *consider*
them, would bear them in his mind. The second petition was that God
would enable them his *servants* (literally `slaves')
to speak his Word *with great boldness* (29b), undeterred by the
Councils prohibition and unafraid of their threats. The third prayer was
that God would *stretch out his hand to heal*, and to perform
*miraculous signs and wonders* in and *through the name of...Jesus*
(30). As Alexander pointed out, `their demand is not now for miracles of
vengeance or destruction, such as fire from heaven Lk.9:54), but for
miracles of mercy'. Moreover, the word and the signs would go together,
the signs and wonders confirming the word proclaimed with boldness.
In answer to their
united and earnest prayers, (i) *the place...was shaken*' and as
Chrysostom commented, `that made them the more unshaken'; (ii)*they were
all* again *filled with the Holy Spirit*; and (iii), in response to
their specific request (29), they *spoke the word of God boldly* (31).
Nothing is said in this context of an answer to their other specific
prayer, namely for miracles of healing (30), but it would probably be
legitimate to see 5:12 as the answer: `The apostles performed many
miraculous signs and wonders among the people.'
Acts
3:1-4:31. Conclusion: signs
and wonders
Perhaps the three most notable features of Luke's narrative in Acts 3
and 4 are (i) the spectacular healing miracle and prayer for more, (ii)
the Christ-centred preaching of Peter, and (iii) the outbreak of
persecution. Because Peter's testimony to Christ has already been
considered in some detail during the exposition, and because we will
revert in the next chapter to the subject of persecution, we will
concentrate now on the other topic of miracles.
The current controversy over signs and wonders should not lead us into a
naive polarization between those who are for them and those who are
against. Instead, the place to begin is the wide area of agreement which
exists among us. All biblical Christians believe that, although
the creator's faithfulness is revealed in the uniformity and
regularities of the universe, which are the indispensable bases of the
scientific enterprise, he has also sometimes deviated from the norms of
nature into abnormal phenomena we call `miracles'. But to think of them
as `deviations of nature' is not to dismiss them (as did the eighteenth
century deists), as `violations of nature' which cannot happen, and
therefore did not and do not happen. No, our biblical doctrine of
the creation, that God has made everything out of an original nothing,
precludes this kind of scepticism. As Campbell Morgan put it, `granted
the truth of the first verse of the Bible, and there is no difficulty
with the miracles'. Moreover, since we believe that the miracles
recorded in the Bible, and not least in Acts, did happen, there is no *a
priori* ground for asserting that they cannot recur today. We have no
liberty to dictate to God what he is permitted to do and not to
do. And if we have hesitations about some claims to `signs and
wonders' today, we must make sure that we have not confined both God and
ourselves in the prison of Western, rationalistic unbelief.
The popular exponent of `signs and wonders' teaching today is John
Wimber of the Vineyard Fellowship in California. He and Kevin Springer
have summarised his position in *Power evangelism* (1985) and *Power
healing* (1986). Although it is impossible to do justice to it in a few
sentences, its leading ideas are (i) that Jesus inaugurated the kingdom
of God, demonstrated its arrival by signs and wonders, and means us
similarly both to proclaim and to dramatize its advance; (ii) that signs
and wonders were `everyday occurrences in New Testament times' and `a
part of daily life', so they should characterize `the normal Christian
life' for us too; and (iii) that church growth in the Acts was largely
due to the prevalence of miracles. `Signs and wonders occurred fourteen
times in the book of Acts in conjunction with preaching, resulting in
church growth. Further, on twenty occasions church growth was a
direct result of signs and wonders performed by the disciples.
John Wimber argues his case with sincerity and force. But some
unanswered questions remain. Let me ask three, especially in relation to
our study of the Acts. First, is it certain that signs and wonders are
the main secret of church growth? John Wimber supplies a table of
fourteen instances in the Acts in which he claims, signs and wonders
accompanied the preaching and `produced evangelistic growth in the
church'. One or two cases are indisputable, as when the Samaritan crowds
`heard Philip and saw miraculous signs he did' and so `paid close
attention to what he said' (8:6,12). In a number of other cases,
however, the connection between miracles and church growth is made by
John Wimber not by Luke. For example, to take the only two cases he
gives from the chapters we have so far considered, there is no evidence
from the text that the Pentecostal phenomena of wind, fire and languages
(2:1-4) were the direct cause of the three thousand converts of verse
41, nor that the healing of the congenital cripple (3:1ff.) was the
direct cause of the increase to five thousand (4:4), as John Wimber's
Table claims. Luke seems rather to attribute the growth to the power of
Peter's preaching. In this sense all true evangelism is `power
evangelism', for conversion and new birth, and so church growth, can
take place only by the power of God through his Word and Spirit. (eg. 1
Cor. 2:1-5; 1 Thess. 1:5)
Secondly, is it certain that signs and wonders are meant by God to be
`everyday occurrences' and `the normal Christian life'? I think
not. Not only are miracles by definition `abnorms' rather than norms,
but the Acts does not provide evidence that they were widespread. Luke's
emphasis is that they were performed mostly by the Apostles (2:43;
5:12), and especially by the apostles Peter and Paul on whom he focuses
our attention. True, Stephen and Philip also did signs and wonders, and
perhaps others did. But it can be argued that Stephen and Philip
were special people, not so much because the apostles had laid hands on
them (6:5-6) as because each was given a unique role in laying the
foundation of the church's world-wide mission (see 7:1ff. and 8:5ff.).
Certainly the thrust of the Bible is that miracles clustered round the
principal organs of revelation at fresh epochs of revelation,
particularly Moses the lawgiver, the new prophetic witness spearheaded
by Elijah and Elisha, the Messianic ministry of Jesus, and the apostles,
so that Paul referred to his miracles as `the things that mark an
apostle' (2 Cor, 12:12). There may well be situations in which
miracles are appropriate today, for example, on the frontiers of mission
and in an atmosphere of persuasive unbelief which calls for a power
encounter between Christ and Antichrist. But Scripture itself suggested
that these will be special cases, rather than `a part of daily
life'. Thirdly, is it certain that today's claimed signs and
wonders are parallel to those recorded in the New Testament? Some are,
or seem to be. But in his public ministry by turning water into wine,
stilling a storm, multiplying loaves and fishes, and walking on
water, Jesus gave a preview of nature's final, total subservience to him
- a subservience which belongs not to the `already' but to the
`not yet' of the kingdom. We should not, therefore, expect to do
these things ourselves today. Nor should we expect to be
miraculously rescued from prison by the angel of the Lord or to see
church members struck dead like Ananias and Sapphira. Even the healing
miracles of the Gospels and the Acts had features which are seldom
manifest even in the signs and wonders movement today.
Let me come back to the Acts to illustrate this, and take the healing of
the cripple as my example. It is the first and longest miraculous cure
described in the book. It had five noteworthy characteristics, which
together indicate what the New Testament means by a miracle of healing.
(i) The healing was of a grave, organic condition, and could not be
regarded as a psychosomatic cure. Luke is at pains to tell us that the
man had been a cripple from birth (3:2), was now more than forty years
old (4:22), and was so handicapped that he had to be carried everywhere
(3:2). Humanly speaking, his case was hopeless. Doctors could do nothing
for him. (ii) The healing took place by a direct word of command in the
name of Christ, without the use of any medical means. Not even prayer,
the laying on of hands or anointing with oil were used. True, Peter gave
the man a helping hand (3:7), but this was not part of the cure. (iii)
The healing was instantaneous, not gradual, for `instantly the man's
feet and ankles became strong', so that he jumped up and began to
walk (3:7-8). (iv) The healing was complete and permanent,
not partial or temporary. This is stated twice. The man has been
given `this complete healing'. Peter said to the crowds (3:16), and
later stood before the Council `completely healed' (4:10, 1978 edition
of NIV). (v) The healing was publicly acknowledged to be
indisputable. There was no doubt or question about it. The
crippled beggar was well known in the city (3:10, 16). Now he was
healed. It was not only the disciples of Jesus who were convinced, but
also the enemies of the gospel. The as-yet-unbelieving crowd were
`filled with wonder and amazement' (3:10), while the Council called it
`an outstanding miracle' which they could not deny (4:14,16).
If, then, we take Scripture as our guide, we will avoid opposite
extremes. We will neither describe miracles as `never happening', nor as
`everyday occurrences', neither as `impossible' nor as `normal'.
Instead, we will be entirely open to the God who works both through
nature and through miracle. And when a healing miracle is claimed, we
will expect it to resemble those in the Gospels and the Acts and so to
be instantaneous and complete cure of an organic condition, without the
use of medical or surgical means, inviting investigation and persuading
even unbelievers. For so it was with the congenital cripple. Peter took
his miraculous healing as the text of both his sermon to the crowd and
his speech to the Council. Word and sign together bore testimony to the
uniquely powerful name of Jesus. The healing of the cripple's body was a
vivid dramatization of the apostolic message of salvation.
Next: 4:32-6:7. 4). Satanic
counter-attack.
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