In this middle section of his speech, Peter lays it all out for his listeners, helping them to join the dots between the Messiah they were waiting for and Jesus of Nazareth. 

Peter establishes the key facts of Jesus’ life that relate to the prophetic messianic promises: his miracles were widely known and reported, he suffered and died and then God raised him from the dead (vs 22–24). The pilgrims could have asked around Jerusalem: ‘Where’s the body?’ and seen the resounding answer of an empty tomb! David had prophesied this hundreds of years earlier (v 27; compare Psalm 16:10). Peter points out the no-brainer: David couldn’t have been talking about himself because he was well and truly dead and buried (v 29). 

How and why had all this happened? Because God had willed it so (v 23). Before the beginning of time God had planned to rescue sinful people without agency or hope, to bring us into his family to be loved for ever, and bring glory to himself. This tweet by Tim Keller really struck me today: ‘Jesus is not primarily a teacher. He’s a rescuer’ (Tim Keller, @timkellernyc).

‘But we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.’¹

Most Muslims do not accept that Jesus died on the cross. They think that God would have protected such a holy man from this humiliating death. Similarly, most Jews of Jesus’ day would never have believed that a genuine Messiah could end up hanging on a cross. We have become so familiar with Jesus’ death that we forget how shocking the message of a crucified Saviour was. The Jews expected their Messiah to defeat their pagan enemies, not be killed by them! Jesus’ execution was a massive stumbling block to be overcome before they could accept Christ. This is why Peter’s message stressed that Jesus’ death was no mistake but part of ‘God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge’ (v 23). 

Yet, if all that Peter had to offer was the belief that the crucifixion was God’s plan, he would have persuaded very few. As Tom Wright points out, other would-be Messiahs had died in similar ways, both before and after Christ, yet no one continued to follow them afterwards. Instead, their deaths were taken as indications that they had not been the genuine Messiah after all.² Peter needed something remarkable to get the Jews over this stumbling block. Therefore, he did not leave his argument with the crucifixion but continued it by saying: ‘But God raised him from the dead’ (v 24).

Belief in the resurrection can be difficult for many in our secular age. Indeed, a BBC poll suggested that even some who class themselves Christians do not believe in it. However, as Paul said, ‘if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith’.³ The resurrection is not an optional belief and neither is it a foolish one, for there is nothing else that convincingly explains why so many people gave up everything to follow a crucified Messiah.

‘The resurrection is just a fairy tale.’ How would you answer this statement? What reasons would you give for believing in the resurrection?

¹ 1 Cor 1:23  ² http://ntwrightpage.com/2016/07/12/jesus-resurrection-and-christian-origins/  ³ 1 Cor 15:14