1 It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. 2 He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. 3 When he saw that this met with approval among the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Festival of Unleavened Bread. 4 After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.
5 So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.
Dig Deeper
I grew up watching “Rocky” movies and I always enjoyed them to be quite honest. A few years ago, a new Rocky Balboa movie was made depicting Rocky as an aging retired boxer who is lured out of retirement to fight the current champion. What entices Rocky out of retirement is a fictional computer match-up between Rocky in his prime and the current heavy weight champion. The computer simulates a fight and determines that Rocky would be the winner. The whole idea is quite popular in sporting circles actually. The question is constantly asked regarding who is the greatest team or champion of all time. If we could have a showdown between great teams of different generations who would win? Who is the greatest of all time?
The difficulty with doing such things is that it can be elusive to fairly put two champions or teams side-by-side and examine what would really happen if they ran square into one another. It’s so difficult to do that because there are so many factors that come into play that make it difficult to truly set two great times up against each other and see what would happen if they were to play.
What is so difficult with sports teams or legends, though, is quite doable when it comes to the great kings. This is exactly, in many ways, what Luke is doing throughout his gospel, and the very thing that he reminds us of here. We can look at the results of following King Jesus have in the lives of people and what it looks like when people submit their lives to his rule and reign. We can also look at what it looks like when people live under the reign of the kings of the world like Herod. And in fact, when we put them side-by-side, we see a stark contrast between these two kings.
The Herod referred to here is Herod Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod the Great who was King at the time of Jesus’ birth and nephew of Herod Antipas, the moody figure that ruled over parts of Israel during the time of Jesus’ ministry. After a sketchy and somewhat wild youth, Herod Agrippa settled into a kingship in Israel that was granted to him by the Roman Emperors Gaius and Claudius and one that was almost as large as the territory that his grandfather ruled over. Of course Herod’s rule was subject to the whims of Rome which meant that he must remain popular in Israel amongst the influential and powerful citizens there so that they would not complain to Rome and become a headache for the Emperor. Due to that situation, Herod spent a great deal of time and energy currying the favor of the rich and powerful, especially the Pharisees.
This meant that part of keeping his position of authority stable and strong was to keep the powerful folks around him happy and to show Rome that he would keep things stable and deal with threats to Roman rule swiftly and harshly if need be. He wanted to show the powerful in Israel that he would deal with this upcoming new Messiah movement with no sentimentality and a zeal for ridding the land of any threats to their traditional religious practices. At the same time, he wanted to show Rome that he would be a strong ruler against political threats. This is no doubt why he had James killed with a sword rather than stoning, which would have been the more typical fate.
James was the brother of John and the son of Zebedee, and was one of the three closest apostles to Jesus during his ministry along with John and Peter. He surely continued to carry a great deal of respect and influence among the early Christian community and putting him to death was a powerful statement for Herod. Putting him to death with the sword indicated a political execution. Death by stoning was more typical of a religious blasphemy committed and death on a cross was the death suffered by common rebels and criminals. Putting James to the sword then was Herod’s way of showing that he was not afraid to take out one of the leaders and major figures of this increasingly popular and powerful Christian movement. Evidently Herod found it personally helpful to send a strong message to Rome that the Christian movement was a political threat, one with which he would deal harshly while at the same time showing the Pharisees and chief priests that he would not tolerate this religious threat either. Every way you look at it, putting James to death held personal benefit for Herod Agrippa.
Luke makes it clear that Herod’s shrewd political move paid off. It brought him great favor and further cemented his power among the elite. In fact, it worked so well that Herod decided to take out an even bigger target and go after Peter who was probably the most well known and visible figure in the Christian community. Taking him out would be an even bigger coup for Herod and might permanently cripple the followers of Jesus as the Messiah, at least that was the effect that Herod thought it would have.
The fact that this took place during the Feast of Unleavened Bread was no minor detail and no small irony. This was the Feast during which the Jews celebrated the deliverance of their nation through the saving acts of their God. The Feast led into and became virtually synonymous with the Passover. And that’s where the irony comes in. During the very time when the Jews were celebrating God’s salvation from slavery, Herod was imprisoning Peter who had become one of the spokesmen of the Messiah. Herod’s plan was to keep Peter locked up until after the Passover when he could then bring him out and publicly execute him just as he had done with James the son of Zebedee.
The message of the Christians was that Jesus as the Messiah was the true king of Israel and the world and that his resurrection from the dead was clear confirmation of that. They were declaring that God had brought about through the Messiah the very thing that the Passover promised and pointed to. Israel’s true slavery was not in Egypt but in sin. They and the entire world were enslaved by sin with no hope of enacting their own freedom. But what humans could not do, the Messiah had done. He had taken the place of all humanity by going into death, the deserved fate of all mankind, but the fate that he alone did not deserve. Just when it seemed that the Messiah had suffered the fate of all humans and fallen to the undefeated foe of death, something monumental happened. In fact it was the most monumental incident in all of human history. Jesus the Messiah defeated death by resurrecting, never to die again. He had stormed into death and broke out of the other side. Death had been defeated and God had shown Jesus to be the true Messiah and the king of the world.
But this King was not trying to curry the favor of the people in order to prove himself a worthy ruler. He would not participate in the senseless death of innocent ambassadors of a gospel of peace and reconciliation. He would not exercise worldly power in order to bring about his reign. This King was exactly the opposite of worldly rulers like Herod. He was the King because he had defeated the true enemy of all people not because he got rid of those that people didn’t like. He ruled by being a servant not by lording his power over others. He called people to willing serve him which was a stark contrast to the games that Herod had to play to remain in power. The power of the Messiah brought life while the power of rulers like Herod brought death.
But Herod seemed to have all of the worldly power in this situation. James had already been killed, what could possibly stop Peter from suffering the same fate? Once again, the true King and his people work quite differently than the normal course of events. There was no violent uprising or revolt. No swords or battles. The people of the Messiah turned to the most valuable weapon they had in their arsenal. They turned to prayer.
Luke offers no explanation as to why James was allowed to die but why Peter would be spared the same fate, at least for now. Perhaps that is because there is no obvious explanation. The answer is that God is sovereign and things work in combination between human free will and God’s ultimate sovereignty. The church may not have had those answers but they did know that there was great power in prayer and it was to that that they would turn time and again. I wonder what might happen if God’s church today turned to prayer in difficult situations with the same passion, faith, and earnestness that the early Christians had.
Devotional Thought
To what do you turn when times get challenging or scary? Do you gather with other believers and turn to earnest prayer or do you leave yourself in the hands of much less powerful and effective things?
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