Acts 4:1-12

Peter and John Before the Sanhedrin
1 The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. 2 They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. 3 They seized Peter and John and, because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. 4 But many who heard the message believed; so the number of men who believed grew to about five thousand.
5 The next day the rulers, the elders and the teachers of the law met in Jerusalem. 6 Annas the high priest was there, and so were Caiaphas, John, Alexander and others of the high priest’s family. 7 They had Peter and John brought before them and began to question them: “By what power or what name did you do this?”
8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: “Rulers and elders of the people! 9 If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed, 10 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. 11 Jesus is
“‘the stone you builders rejected,
which has become the cornerstone.’[a]
12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”



Dig Deeper
As I had the opportunity to see more of the world than the United States and learned more and more about politics not just in the States but around the world, I have learned that there is a certain commonality between politicians everywhere. They seem far more adept at protecting their own jobs and with poking holes in the ideas of others than they do in actually coming up with any solutions to the difficult and complex problems that most countries face. The reality is that they often seem rather uninterested in actually coming up with any long-term solutions themselves that actually work. It is far easier to make a lot of promises and then simply try to keep down the other side and constantly put down the ideas of the other side (which are usually little more than the same hollow promises they are making themselves) than to come up with actual solutions. In fact, most politicians are far more adept at proving that another idea is not the answer to a problem than they are in coming up with a solution themselves. Give a room of politicians long enough and they will make sure that all potential solutions are shot down so that the only really winner is their own careers and the status quo. They don’t have the answer but they’re sure that no one else does either. They’re far more concerned with keeping their own power than they are in finding the truth or in solving issues.

As we look at the world that the first century church faced it becomes quickly apparent that in many ways it was not as dissimilar from our own as we might at first guess. They faced a world that was without answers but were for absolute certain that the answer the early church offered couldn’t be it. They had proven quite nicely that they were without answers to the problems of the world but when the first Christians came to boldly declare that they had found the solution, those in power, those without any real solution of their own, quickly rejected it and tried to squelch it. They didn’t have answers but they were sure this wasn’t it.

The real problem of the early church, from the perspective of the Jewish leadership (and eventually the Roman Empire) was that it was dangerous. They weren’t just teaching that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead. In fact, if that was all they were teaching, Christianity would still have been different from any other religion but it wouldn’t have been significantly more dangerous or bothersome than any other religion. It could have taken its place neatly beside other religions in the marketplace of ideas. What made early Christianity dangerous was the idea that Jesus was the firstfruits of resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20). God hadn’t just broke into the present age and raised Jesus from the dead in one amazing act. Jesus’ resurrection was the first taste of what was to come. It was God breaking into the present age and showing the world what his coming future age would look like. That would be the time of the resurrection where God would set things straight and restore the heavens and earth to wholeness without death and evil. The reality of that future age meant that the present age had to change.

So the resurrection was more than an incredible historical event. It was a promise. It was a promise that those in Christ would have their own share in the world to come as well. But the promise of resurrection bent back in on itself because it wasn’t just a future promise either. It was not just a chance to share in Jesus’ resurrection life one day. It was a chance to die our own existence of living for self (a way of life that is the cause of all of the world’s greed, selfishness, hate, violence, evil etc.) and to live the life of Christ. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5:15: “he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”

Christians have been called to a series of earth-changing realities. First, we have been called to share in Christ’s death by dying to self. Second, we have been called to share in Christ’s burial by being baptized into Christ. Third, we have been called to share in his resurrection by being raised to a new existence as part of the body and family of Christ rather than an individual existence. Finally, we have been called to share in his resurrection life by beginning to work out the reality of the future resurrection age in new and fresh ways right now. Christians are to be the people that are living the life of the age to come in the here-and-now. Christianity is not something that we do when convenient or Sunday mornings that makes us feel better about the prospects of dying one day and maybe causes us to be a little nicer now and then to our fellow man. It means to make a radical change in life. It means to live by a completely different reality and be entirely unafraid of how the world may flail away and violently oppose this new life.

That is exactly the problem right there. Resurrection people are dangerous because when we begin to anticipate the time of God’s rule, a time when there is no injustice, no abuse of power, no violence, no hate, no evil, and of course no death. But when people begin to really actively work against such evil, that becomes a direct threat to those in power. As the Christians boldly declared that Jesus Christ was the true king of the world and that he held the true power to which they would live in allegiance, then at the same time they were declaring that those currently in power were just the pretenders. They weren’t the solution. They were part of the problem. This is a stern challenge to modern Christians who often don’t challenge the status quo at all. I wonder if we held as tightly to belief in resurrection and the call to be the people of God’s future age right here in the present with all that that meant to those who would abuse power and perpetrate injustices big and small, if we would find ourselves as dangerous to the powers-that-be as the first church was. My hunch is that we would. My questions is why we don’t become that.

This element of danger is why the powers of the time were so concerned about the actions of the early church. The Sadducees had much power at the time and they didn’t believe in any such notion as resurrection. Resurrection was a dangerous idea that would upset the delicate power balance that Rome allowed them to have. A movement of wild-eyed resurrection believers was the last thing that they needed. They didn’t understand exactly the direction that this Christian movement was headed but they knew enough to know that resurrection people are infinitely dangerous because if while brining about the anticipation of God’s future age of justice and holiness, they were to face death, they cared little because they knew they would be resurrected one day. You simply cannot control resurrection people. People by the thousands were listening to this message and converting to this group that claimed to be God’s new people. Something had to be done.

The real question that the Jewish leadership wanted to know was by what authority or in what name was this all being done. It wasn’t a real question, it was an implication. They were trying to smear the movement by implying that the incredible miracles that people were beginning to hear about were done under the authority of Satan not God. This same tactic had been tried against Jesus (Lk. 11;15-20). Jesus had refuted them by pointing out that the power of God was clearly at work in his ministry. Satan would not be fighting against evil but perpetrating it. It was God who fought evil, so if his work demonstrated the work of God then it could not be Satan. In the same way, this man had been healed and in this act of mercy of brining healing and wholeness to him, only the work of God himself could be seen. The authority from which this miracle came was none other than Jesus Christ.

Although Peter and John were on trial before the Jewish Sanhedrin and seemingly on the defensive, they turned to offense in verse 10. The Jewish leaders thought that they had done away with Jesus but here was incontrovertible proof that he was still active and alive. They had not performed this miracle on their own. It had come about as a result of the power and authority of the resurrected Jesus Christ. The power of God’s future age had come through Jesus Christ and had surged through Peter and John and into this man. If the idea of resurrection made them nervous and fearful about losing their grip on power then they had better be afraid, very afraid.

In the face of this opposition from those in power, Peter turned to one of the favorite Psalms of the biblical church. The odd-shaped stone that had been put to the side and rejected by the builders was now the only stone that could serve as the cornerstone. The old Temple was was being replaced by God’s true Temple, Jesus Christ. He was the cornerstone of God’s new building that was rising up to restore the world as God intended for it to be. But Israel had been warned. Those who continued to reject Christ would find themselves rejecting the very plan of God that they claimed to desire. Jesus was the stone, not just of Psalm 118, but the great stone of Daniel 2 that was not cut out by human hands (v. 34) but that filled the whole earth as a huge mountain (v. 35) that would crush all of the other kingdoms of human origin (v. 45) and endure forever (v. 45). This was a revolution of death. But this revolution was not coming through the death of those that stood in opposition to the Christians but rather through the death of the Christians themselves. It was the only way that God’s kingdom would come. Jesus had died and called those who would follow him to come die with him and share in his life.

Those who rejected Christ found themselves in the position of rejecting God’s solution without any answer of their own. They didn’t know what the answer to two plus two was, but they knew it wasn’t four. The great answer that is found in verse 12 is every bit as distasteful in our century as it was in the first century. It stands in bold opposition to other religions, philosophies, and even those that claim Christianity but say that to claim Jesus is the only way is arrogant and ignorant. There is no other road to salvation. There is no other name that has the power to usher in God’s great reconciliation project for the world. The Bible is clear on that and so should we be.



Devotional Thought
Do you and your spiritual community actively work out becoming a community that lives by the values and reality of the age to come in active opposition to the power and injustice of the present age? If not, what might that look like as you begin to do so?