13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. 14 But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say. 15 So they ordered them to withdraw from the Sanhedrin and then conferred together. 16 “What are we going to do with these men?” they asked. “Everyone living in Jerusalem knows they have performed a notable sign, and we cannot deny it. 17 But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn them to speak no longer to anyone in this name.”
18 Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. 19 But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! 20 As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”
21 After further threats they let them go. They could not decide how to punish them, because all the people were praising God for what had happened. 22 For the man who was miraculously healed was over forty years old.
Dig Deeper
One of my favorite individuals in all of history is Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States of America. Lincoln is unique in many ways among American presidents, not the least of those ways being his education. When Lincoln was running for the office of President he was asked to provide a brief auto-biography so that more Americans could learn a little about him. In that brief summary of his life, Lincoln spent more time discussing his lack of education than anything else. It was an odd choice of things to highlight for someone who was trying to be elected to the top office in the land, but it was something of which Lincoln was not ashamed. He did not have the best education at the most prestigious private schools and universities like most of his other opponents.
The fact is that Lincoln had very little schooling at the primary education level, no formal education at the secondary level, and never went to a college or university. Because of that lack of education, most people assumed that he was not an intellectual heavyweight or someone to be reckoned with but they would quickly find out that they were wrong. Nearly everyone who spoke of Lincoln, in looking backing on his life, realized that he was always the brightest man in the room. He turned out to be one of the great intellects in the history of the world and school children still memorize his words and speeches. He was, in short, brilliant with a brilliance that did not come from the formal and regular means of training or education. To this day no one can truly explain Lincoln’s uncommon intelligence and abilities but once they were in his presence they knew that they were in the proximity of someone who was extraordinary.
The same could be said, only on a much grander scale, of Jesus Christ. Jesus apparently did not go through the best of the rabbinic training of his day nor did he sit under any great teachers of the law that taught him how to craft an argument and how to properly interpret Scripture. It has became popular in some circles today to talk of all of the rabbinic training that went on in the first century (although much of the information given about the way that Jewish people trained young boys actually began in the 2nd century and was not, in large part, available in Jesus’ time) and to claim that Jesus was a formally trained rabbi. That simply doesn’t match up with the facts as we find them in the Bible. It is true that, on occasion, people addressed Jesus as “rabbi,” but that was more of a term of respect than a formal position in the first century.
The reality is that Jesus was not a classically trained rabbi or scholar. Yet, whenever he spoke, people became immediately aware that they were in the presence of someone quite unique and special. Whenever they heard him speak, “The Jews there were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?” (Jn. 7:15) People recognized him as different “because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law” (Matt. 7:29). Jesus did not appeal to the authority or teaching of another as all rabbis and teachers of the law did. He spoke with his own authority and brought new vitality and life to the Scriptures as he explained them in ways that people had often never heard before. When Jesus explained the Scriptures they weren’t just rules or stories about the past, they were living breathing entities that were taking on new life, new meaning, and being embodied in new ways in his very ministry.
Jesus was gone but that was clearly not going to be the end of the trouble that he was going to cause for the Jewish leadership. His followers were going around performing the same kind of inexplicable miracles that Jesus had been known for. And worse yet, people were starting to flock to them by the thousands. This could be far more problematic for those in power than they could have ever anticipated when they pushed for Jesus’ death (see 1 Cor. 2:6-8). As the Jewish leaders brought John and Peter before them to answer for these troublesome happenings, they had, as we saw in the previous section, showed the same sort of incredible grasp of the Scriptures and the ability to interpret them in fresh and innovative ways as Jesus had. Yet they were just like Jesus in that they had not been through any formal rabbinic training or sat at the feet of any well-known scholar. They were unschooled and ordinary in that sense. These were not the kind of men from whom such boldness would be expected. They were not cowering in intimidation and fear as one might expect but they had a power and authority that was beyond understanding. Luke’s clear implication is that they were filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:8). But the Jewish leadership didn’t recognize or understand that. All they knew is that these men had been with Jesus. Wise rabbis could train wise students but these men were doing extraordinary things and the only possible explanation was that they had been with Jesus.
On a practical level this offers us an important reminder and a warning. The reminder is the importance of being with Jesus. There are many things that we can learn and study and work at to become better disciples and we should do all of those things, but the real difference maker is experiencing Jesus. It is being with him and knowing him that truly sets us apart. But that’s where the warning comes in. This doesn’t mean that learning and education, especially in a spiritual and biblical context, is undesirable. This passage should not be taken out of context to argue against someone receiving more training or the like. The wise balance is to seek learning (and that can mean many different things from deeper biblical study to seeking higher formal education) but also to spend time in the presence of Christ.
The Jewish leaders were left with little wiggle room. Simply ignoring all that was going on was not a viable option to them. That could potentially lead to thousands more flocking to this new movement that was, in their opinion, leading people away from God. It would also render them powerless as they watched their own power slip away further. But they could not deny that nothing had happened either. This miracle was as undeniable as were Jesus’ many miracles. Arguments could be had over the source of the power of the miracles but the miracles themselves could not be denied.
The fact that the leadership was in such a difficult position is another powerful piece of evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. The disciples were preaching that God’s new age and the resurrection of the dead had already begun in Christ Jesus and was available to all those who would enter into his life, guaranteeing them the full inheritance of resurrection when the age to come came in its fullness. Because this all rested on the truth of the resurrection, though, it would have been easy to simply pull the carpet out from under this movement by producing evidence that Jesus had not, in fact, raised from the dead. They couldn’t, however, and that left them with basically censuring Peter and John as their only option.
Accepting the preaching of the apostles was apparently not an option for the Jewish leadership so they discussed privately that their only option was to tell the apostles to keep quiet and no longer speak in the name of Christ. Luke was almost assuredly not present during that meeting so either he speculated what was discussed based on their subsequent declarations or another possibility (speculation as it might be) was that a young Saul (who would later become an apostle and change his name to Paul) was present at this meeting and would later recount the facts to Luke.
Although the public position of the Sanhedrin was to forbid them from speaking further about Jesus, it is unlikely that they seriously expected this to stop men who were making the sorts of claims that Peter and John were making. So, the response of the two men couldn’t have been that unexpected. Their response was, in fact, similar to the famous reply of Socrates when he was threatened and told to stop teaching philosophy. It was a matter of what was right in the eyes of men or of God. They had to put the fear of God ahead of man, something that God highly values and encourages (see Prov. 29:25; Ps. 111:10; Prov. 1:7; 9:10). The irony in the situation was that the Sanhedrin saw themselves as being the spokesmen of God, but Peter and John clearly put them in their place. What they had seen and heard could have no other explanation than to have come from God and that meant that if the Sanhedrin would continue to oppose them, then they were exposing themselves as speaking the words of mere men. This reminds us of the fact that the apostles were not simply clinging to beliefs and willing to die or suffer for them as so many religious adherents are. They were basing their beliefs on things that they were claiming to have seen and witnessed for themselves. There was no room to claim that they were merely mistaken or misled. They either really saw what they claimed or they were liars (the specific nature of their claims and the sheer number of disciples that claimed to have seen the risen Jesus also rules out any thought of them merely being fooled).
The Jewish leadership could make all of the threats that they wanted but the facts were incontrovertible. This man had been lame his entire life and he was over forty, the length of a full generation in the Jewish culture. In other words, his condition had seemed irreversible. Yet, here he was walking around and praising God. Verses 21 and 22 give a clear snapshot of the reception of the gospel. Some, including many in the leadership of Israel, chose to reject the gospel and would work to quiet it, but many others would see what God was doing and embrace it. It seems a little late, though, for the Sanhedrin to really think that they could stop the gospel. It would be like trying to fix a dam after all the water has already drained out. That’s what it is always like, though, when one tries to hold back the kingdom of God.
Devotional Thought
What would be your response if you found yourself in the shoes of Peter and John? How often does fear of men deter you from doing what you feel God has called you to do? What is your response when you feel fear of intimidation in the opportunity to announce the kingdom of God?
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