Acts 5:17-26

The Apostles Persecuted
17 Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. 18 They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail. 19 But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. 20 “Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said, “and tell the people all about this new life.”
21 At daybreak they entered the temple courts, as they had been told, and began to teach the people.

When the high priest and his associates arrived, they called together the Sanhedrin—the full assembly of the elders of Israel—and sent to the jail for the apostles. 22 But on arriving at the jail, the officers did not find them there. So they went back and reported, 23 “We found the jail securely locked, with the guards standing at the doors; but when we opened them, we found no one inside.” 24 On hearing this report, the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests were at a loss, wondering what this might lead to.

25 Then someone came and said, “Look! The men you put in jail are standing in the temple courts teaching the people.” 26 At that, the captain went with his officers and brought the apostles. They did not use force, because they feared that the people would stone them.



Dig Deeper
Over the years I have found a great deal of relaxation, health, and enjoyment in running. I prefer to run outside but as the weather turns cold, snowy, and rather unfriendly during the winter, it becomes easier to go to the indoor running track at our nearby YMCA and run there. During those winter times I have noticed what seems to be an annual pattern. Through the month of December, the place is almost deserted. I can often go run on the track alone or with just one or two other people walking or running. The rest of the YMCA is much the same. But as soon as January rolls around, the place becomes packed. The track is full, the spinning classes are bursting at the seams, and the weight room is strong with people as well. It took me a while to figure out what would cause such a big difference in attendance between December and January but I have it pegged now. It is all of the people making New Year’s resolutions. Hundreds of people resolve at the new year that they are going to get into shape and they show up at the YMCA and other workout establishments bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to go. But, sadly, it usually doesn’t last very long. As early as February the crowding starts to ease up and by March or April things are back to normal. I think the reason that so many people resolve to get into shape and don’t stick with it is because they make working out an activity that has to be done at certain intervals. Someone who has that mindset will never stick with it. Being fit is a way of life. It must become your life or you will never stick with it over the course of months and more importantly, years.

In many ways that’s the big difference between religion (any religion whether it be a non-Christian religion or a religious version of Christianity) and true Christianity. Religion is all about doing. It is about doing the right things at the right times in the right ways. But it’s not about truly transforming one’s life. True Christianity is a life not a series of actions. Religion is about conforming but true Christianity is about transforming.

In many ways the dichotomy between religion and a new way of life is the cause of the tension that we see in this passage between the Jewish leadership and the followers of Jesus. They were clinging to their old way, the religion of the law that God always said would be a temporary measure until the coming of his new and eternal covenant with his Messiah family. But the Jewish leadership seemed far more interested in keeping up their positions of power within the traditional structure of the Temple system. Probably without even fully realizing it, they had begun to exalt their own status over truly doing God’s will but had confused one with the other so that in defending their own positions, they had convinced themselves that they were doing God’s will.

This is why Luke tells us that they had the apostles arrested as a result of their “jealousy.” The word “zelos,” used in verse 17 has been alternately translated as jealous, zealous, indignant, and contentious. Probably the most helpful translation would be “zealous,” but only if we understand what Jews of the first century meant by “zeal.” It was not just to be intense about something. To have zeal meant that one was ready and willing to defend God’s cause by any means necessary. The more willing one was to go to extreme measures, the more “zelos” they were said to have. The apostle Paul defined his own “zelos” as a Pharisee by his willingness to persecute the church (Phi. 3:6). The high priest and his Sadduccean friends were fierce in their rejection of any resurrection talk and they were willing to act with great “zelos” in order to put down the early church as quickly as they possibly could.

The apostles knew from the last time that they had been dragged before the Sanhedrin that they were running a risk by continuing to preach publicly about what they had seen and heard. But they had seen the risen Christ and simply would not be swayed by human opinion or human threats no matter how serious they might be. When you have met the true king, the court jesters aren’t gong to intimidate you no matter how much they yell and scream. The point is that there were going to be consequences for their actions and they knew that. They did not care. After being released the last time, they prayed not for relief but boldness in carrying out their mission. God had answered that prayer and would continue to answer it.

It might appear, at first glance, that God, in sending an angel to release them, had finally given them some relief but that is really not the case at all. As the angel came to them, he came with specific orders. They were not to escape and be spirited off into hiding so that they could escape the persecution of the Jewish leadership. They were being released for a very specific purpose. They were to go and tell people of the new life that was available within the body of Christ. They were to proclaim “this new life” not just another set of religious mantras, beliefs, and rules. The angel wasn’t helping them escape the lion but was guiding them right back into the lion’s teeth.

Preaching and explaining to people in words the truth of the life of Christ has always and will continue to be an important aspect of Christianity. But it is not something that can be completely defined by words. It is precisely not what all other religions are at a core level which is a set of beliefs, guidelines, principles, or ultimately rules. It is unique among religions in that it is a life. The great declaration of the gospel is that something entirely new has broken into the unrelenting darkness of the present age. It is not simply a system of making the best of the mess in which we find ourselves or doing the best we can to bring a little order to the chaos until such time as God comes back and fixes it all. That’s the view of many religions and of most versions of Christianity that are much closer to a pale shadow of the real thing than they are full and vibrant manifestations of the true life that God wants for his people.

The true gospel declaration is that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the life of God’s new creation, the time of the light, has opened up a wormhole into the present darkness. Those who are willing to recognize their own place and culpability in the darkness can denounce that life, lay it down, and enter into the new identity of the Messiah’s family and receive the life of that family. It is a family that is enabled by the power of the Spirit to live by the values of that future age of light rather than the present age of darkness. Christians are called to love in the face of hate, bless in the face of cursing, and so on, because we are people who live in the strange reality of belonging to the new creation while still residing in the old creation. The job the angel gave the apostles is the same job that we still have today. To go and share about the victory of Christ over death and the breaking in of the new age in the life of the Messiah’s people. Of course, it is worth pointing out that declaring such a thing falls rather flat if there are not constant and vibrant attempts on the part of the Messiah’s family to actually live the fullness of that life to the best of our ability by allowing the Spirit to guide us in our pursuit of that new life.

Clearly a miracle had transpired as the angel led them out of a jail that was subsequently found to be locked. No matter how hard the world might try, the world simply cannot lock in the kingdom of God when the Spirit is at work. Upon their release, they understood that their mission had not changed in the slightest. They were still to go out and boldly testify to the resurrection of Jesus and the life that this had opened up to those who wished to no longer live for themselves but for the one who died for them (see 2 Cor. 5:14-17). That’s the job of the people of the age of light, though, and it will never change in this present age. We are never called to be concerned about the threats and intimidations of the darkness but to follow the Spirit where he leads and testify to the life of the light. This is precisely what Peter and the other apostles did without apology.

On hearing that the apostles were right back doing what they had been warned not to do, the Sadducees had to have been quite flabbergasted. They clearly understood that although they had the power, they did not have public opinion on their side. They could not just go out publicly and forcefully seize these men. Luke gives us the impression that the apostles were really the ones with the power at this point. Had they resisted and made a scene the crowd would have been on their side and they undoubtedly would have triumphed. But that’s the strange vocation of the light. The life that they were preaching about also needed to be lived. So they would not play by the rules of power and might of the darkness. They would go with the guards willingly and would continue to be the light. That’s the challenging call for the Messiah’s people down through the ages; we are called to be more concerned with being the people of the life and the light than we are with exercising our rights or freedom. When the church realizes and embraces this once again, it will shine as brightly as it ever has.


Devotional Thought
How have you been called by the Spirit to witness to “this new life” in your own world and life right now? Have you embraced that vocation or shrunk back from it in some ways? What can you do today to go proclaim “this new life” to those around you?