It was Peter and John’s courage that marked them out (v 13). It spurred them through seismic shifts in the church’s history, sustained them in powerful preaching and miraculous ministry and held them steady before amazed crowds and agitated religious rulers. Knowing that it didn’t derive from education or anything innately remarkable about these men, the Jewish elite tentatively linked it to time with Jesus (v 13). They couldn’t contradict such confidence, yet were reluctant to acknowledge its source, just as they couldn’t refute that the lame man now leaped – yet refused to approve the spreading news (vs 16,17). What can you not deny, but struggle to support?

So when the two fearless apostles were threatened, their confidence in and allegiance to God would not be curtailed by critics too ready to capitulate to man (v 21). The Bible says much to endorse obeying earthly authorities, so long as that doesn’t run counter to the revealed will of God. But the unwavering source of the apostles’ continuing courage can be ours too. Let it be listening to God (v 19) that underpins both our confidence and our decisions. 

Help us, Lord, to bridge the gap between the ancient world of the Bible and our modern times.

This passage provides us with a classic case study of the way in which people holding political or religious power may attempt to suppress truth when their authority and status is threatened. On the one hand, the rulers in Jerusalem were confronted with facts which they could not deny (v 14) but, on the other hand, they used their power to control and restrict the flow of information, attempting to shut down the spread of the news of the resurrected Christ in the public sphere (v 18).

This story could hardly be more relevant to the contemporary situation of Christianity in the modern world. Justo Gonzalez describes situations in Latin America where elite groups of wealthy people retain a monopoly of power and ‘are more interested in their own power and prestige than in the well-being of the lame man or of the people’.1 The revolutionary nature of the message of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ is revealed by the anxiety of the Jerusalem authorities to stop it ‘spreading any further among the people’ (v 17). They seek to confine the resurrection faith within private spaces, but the response of Peter and John is to insist that they have no alternative but to be truthful witnesses to what they had ‘seen and heard’ (v 20). This is not just an assertion of freedom of belief, but an affirmation that the resurrection is public truth which inaugurates a different world from the one the authorities seek to maintain. Lesslie Newbigin insisted that the resurrection empowers a countercultural community to live hopefully in a world without hope, praising the God who ‘breaks through fixed orders to create ever-new situations of surprise and joy’.² 

Reflect on verse 13 and ask for the beauty of Jesus to be seen in your life.

¹ Justo Gonzalez, Acts: The Gospel of the Spirit, Orbis Books, 2001, p63  ² Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, WCC, 1986, p150