Acts 2:14a, 22-32 (NRSV)
14 But Peter ,
standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them,
22 “You that are Israelites, listen to what I
have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of
power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves
know— 23 this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan
and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those
outside the law. 24 But God raised him up, having freed him from
death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. 25 For
David says concerning him,
‘I saw the Lord always before me,
for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken;
26 therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue
rejoiced;
moreover my flesh will live in hope.
27 For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,
or let your Holy One experience corruption.
28 You have made known to me the ways of life;
you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’
29 “Fellow Israelites, I may say to you
confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his
tomb is with us to this day. 30 Since he was a prophet, he knew that
God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on
his throne. 31 Foreseeing this, David
spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying,
‘He was not abandoned to Hades,
nor did his flesh experience corruption.’
32 This Jesus
God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.
Acts
2:14-36 has the theme of the message of Peter. We learn here that early
Christians lived quiet lives of faith in Jerusalem. We also learn that Joel
2:32 and Psalm 110 were early biblical texts that helped the early community
understand who Jesus was. The Christology is very elementary, and we detect
little trace of Pauline ideas that must have been current in the environment in
which Luke wrote. For example, any reference to faith as a necessary condition
of sharing in the blessings of the messianic age is noticeably absent. Only
once in these early speeches does Peter mention it: in 3:16, where it states
that this faith is the reason for the healing of the lame man—a close
resemblance to the view of faith characteristic of the Synoptic Gospels. We may
describe the speech as an early Christian defense of the gospel. The first aim
of the Christian preacher was to show to his fellow citizens that Jesus was the
promised Messiah. The Crucifixion seemed to have given the lie to Jesus' claims
to be the revealer of God, and until the early church could dispel this
impression all preaching of the Christian message was futile. Hence, the
defense of the gospel rather than its exposition is the need of the hour, and
the stress is not so much on the content of the gospel as on the evidence of
its truth. To judge by these early sermons the first preachers contented
themselves with the demonstration of the messiahship, and did not ask what the
messiahship involved for Jesus himself. There is no reason to suppose that at
first their idea of messiahship differed greatly from that of their fellow
Jews. It was only when the original messianic expectations had somewhat waned
that Christians began to fill in or add to the picture with its original Jewish
content, probably by drawing on their recollection of Jesus' own words, the
full meaning of which they had at the time missed. Only when it dawned upon
them that Jesus' work was something more than the founding of a national
messianic kingdom did they begin to speculate upon the person of Jesus himself.
This explains the complete absence here of any developed Christology. The
supreme argument for the messiahship was the Resurrection. It removed the
impression left by a disgraceful death, proved that Jesus was no impostor, and
vindicated all his claims. This explains the effort, so well illustrated in
this speech, to show that scripture foretold such a resurrection, even though
it was not part of common messianic expectation. To a Jewish audience no other
argument would be necessary. If the
early church could show to a Jewish audience that scripture prophesied an
event, they would have sufficient reason for believing in its truth and its
divine significance.
Peter stands with the eleven and
addressed the crowd as people of Judea and those who live in Jerusalem. Peter
is speaking as a leader of the church in Jerusalem. He wants them to know and
listen to him. They are not drunk, for the time is 9 AM. Rather, what they are
seeing is a fulfillment of the prophet Joel. In the last days, God will pour
out the divine Spirit upon all flesh. Sons and daughters will prophesy, young
people will see visions, and the elderly will see dreams. The divine Spirit
will pour out on slaves as well, and they will prophesy. God will show portents
in the heaven and signs on the earth, blood, fire, and smoky mist. God shall
turn the sun to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great
and glorious day of the Lord. At that time, everyone who calls on the name of
the Lord, God will save. The Holy Spirit's arrival, the power and authority
this Spirit has poured out onto the disciples, is likened to the well-known
apocalyptic text from Joel 2:28, 32. It is a time of a new, never before seen
event. It is time to mark the birthday of a new creation by God, a creation that
itself invokes the beginning of the end times. Linguistic abilities are the
foundation of the miracle of the Holy Spirit's arrival. Rather, the birth of
God's power and authority on earth through the new creation of the church
becomes the foundation.
Beginning in verse 22, Peter
explains directly that the responsibility for Jesus' rejection, condemnation
and crucifixion rests upon their shoulders.
If any group needed to be saved, it was surely this community. Peter
both proclaims Jesus as the Messiah and calls those who condemn him to
repentance--while offering them the outstretched hand of God's forgiveness and
salvation. As the rest of Peter's first speech makes clear, of all people, the
Jerusalem Jews should be stunned and ecstatic at this show of divine mercy. As
Peter continues, they are Israelites, showing Jesus was rejected by his own, a
notion in I Peter 2:4, 7. th| w`rismenh| boulh| kai prognwsh| tou qeou, is in the instrumental
case. Note both purpose (boulh) and foreknowledge (prognwsij) of God and "determined" (w`rismenh, perfect passive participle, state of completion). God had willed the death
of Jesus (John 3:16) and the death of Judas (Ac 1:16), but that fact did not
absolve Judas from his responsibility and guilt (Lu 22:22). He acted as a free
moral agent.[1] Jesus of Nazareth,
a man God attested to them with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did
through him, this man they handed over for crucifixion by those outside the
law, that is, the Romans. All of this was the plan and foreknowledge (prognwsij occurring only here and I Peter 1:2) of God. Yet,
God raised him up, freeing him from death, for death could not hold him, even
with all its power. He then refers to Psalm 16, which he identifies as from
David. Peter will claim that the Psalm foretells the resurrection of the
Messiah. He says he saw the Lord always before him. The Lord is at his right
hand so that nothing can shake him. His heart is glad and he rejoices. His
flesh will live in hope. The Lord will not abandon his soul to Hades or the
Holy One experience corruption. The Lord has made known to him the ways of life
and will make him full of gladness with the presence of the Lord. Peter then
says that he can say confidently to his fellow Israelites that David died, was
buried, and his tomb (probably on the southeastern hill) is present to this
day. He was a prophet. He knew God had sworn with an oath to him that he would
put one of his descendants on his throne. Foreseeing this, David is actually
speaking of the resurrection of the Messiah, especially in saying that he was
not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption. He concludes
that this Jesus God raised up. Of that, all of us as followers of Jesus are
witnesses. We can see here that the cross is still an obstacle to faith, to be
overcome by stressing the resurrection.
The conception of a suffering Messiah was completely strange to
contemporary Judaism, and there is little sign that the disciples saw at first
in Jesus' death, as did Jesus himself, any positive contribution to the
advancement of the kingdom of God. It may have taken some time before early
Christians, even before Paul, started to see the truth of what Paul says in I
Corinthians 15:3, where he says that he “received” the teaching that
"Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures."
Pannenberg[2]
points to the significance of the resurrection of Jesus, one of which is that
if God raised Jesus, this for a Jew can only mean that God has confirmed the
pre-Easter activity of Jesus. He also finds reasons for maintaining the unity
of Jesus with God. One reason decisive for confidence in the facticity of the
resurrection of Jesus as the Christian message proclaims it are the primitive
Christian testimonies to the appearances of the risen Lord to the disciples,
along with the discovery of the empty tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem. His point is
that we as modern people cannot accept such testimony blindly based on
authority. Rather, we might do so only after whether the testimony holds it up by
testing other reported facts. In this context, he considers that the oldest New
Testament witness to the resurrection and ascension of Jesus form a single
event, which he sees as the point here in verses 30-32. For him, this suggests
that the account of the appearance of the risen Lord “from heaven” to Paul in
Galatians 1:6 is an indication of what is behind the Gospel stories of the
appearances as well.
Peter argues also (verses 32-35)
that the Messiah must be exalted to the right hand of God, and Jesus' ascension
becomes yet further proof of his claims. In
verse 34, since the psalm quoted (110:1) cannot refer to David,
who did not ascend to the heavens, it must refer to the Messiah; and Jesus in
virtue of his ascension is proved to be that Messiah and to have the right to
the supreme divine title Lord. For
a similar confession by Paul see I Cor. 12:3; Rom. 10:9; Phil. 2:11; and for
Jesus' own treatment of the same verse from Ps. 110 see Mark 12:35 and
parallels. Such an exaltation is evidenced by the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit, which in turn is a final proof, after Joel, that the messianic age has
arrived; for the gift of the Spirit is the work of the glorified Jesus and
shows him to be Lord and Christ (verse 36). Pannenberg stresses here that it
matters that the Crucified is the one God raised from the dead. His point is
that the resurrection is not an isolated event, but has a direct relation to
the earthly course of the life of Jesus.[3]
The first mission of the newly
formed church is proclamation. They
proclaimed in a language that everyone could understand. We cannot be content with the traditional
language of the church, but rather we must be willing to use the language of
the day. The Holy Spirit makes the
church a possibility. The church is not to hide behind a special lexicon of its
own language, but is to use the common dialects of the day. To the undeclared
or unbelieving, the church must clearly articulate the message, not obtuse or
archaizing babblings that scoffers can dismiss as the drunken ramblings
("new wine") of the strange.
God's saving action through Christ on behalf of the world is a
proclamation that Christians must spread, to all people, in all languages, even
to the ends of the earth. Pentecost is
what makes the church, if not an accomplished reality, at least an ongoing
possibility, a viable new enterprise in the spiritual shopping center. The Holy
Spirit is what pushes the church out from behind those closed Upper Room doors
and into the marketplace, the public square and corporate boardroom. It is a
time of a new, never before seen event. It is time to mark the birthday of a
new creation by God, a creation that itself invokes the beginning of the end
times. The miracle of the Holy Spirit's arrival is not based on linguistic abilities.
It is marked by the birth of God's power and authority on earth through the new
creation of the church.
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