Wow! The guy who was too timid to admit to a lowly servant girl that he was an acquaintance of Jesus (Luke 22:57) could now stand before the rulers of the people and tell them about him (v 10). Actually, Peter did more than tell them about Jesus. He spoke with clarity and boldness about the source of the power that healed the lame man (v 7). He told them that they had been the ones responsible for crucifying Jesus but God had raised him from the dead (v 10), and that salvation comes through Jesus alone (vs 11,12). A ‘cornerstone’ was the first stone that was laid in a foundation, hence it is the most important and the one that all other stones take their position and alignment from. In other words, everything depends on the cornerstone. Exclusive truth claims can upset many people today, but Peter gives us a great example of fearlessness and clarity.

The clue to what transformed Peter from knee-knocking to ruler-shaking is in verse 8: ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’. Nothing apart from God’s power could have effected such change, particularly in such a short space of time. God promises his Spirit to all those who seek him (Acts 2:17). He has more for you, too, if you will seek him.

‘He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.’¹

Until this point, things seem to have been going swimmingly for the early church. Now, however, the disciples face opposition for the first time, sparked by the healing of the paralysed man described in the previous chapter.

We might have expected this miracle to convince people of the disciples’ message. However, many of the Jewish leaders were offended by this act of kindness and the preaching that followed it. Why was this? Many were Sadducees, a group that did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, so they refused to accept that Christ had been raised. The Sadducees were a well-to-do group of Jews. They were keen to hold on to their power and so would have feared any kind of message that might stir up the people, cause disorder and incur the wrath of their Roman overlords. In addition, Caiaphas was the same high priest who had interrogated Jesus and sent him to Pilate, so Peter was directly criticising a dangerous and powerful enemy, a very bold thing to do.

When reading Acts, we can sometimes feel disheartened, for the early church appears so much more dynamic than our churches today: verse 4, for instance, says about five thousand people came to Christ. However, this passage also shows that even though the message about Jesus was presented in the most powerful of ways through a miracle and the preaching of Peter, an apostle who had known Jesus, not everyone was convinced. Many were even hostile. The Sadducees were stuck in their ways, happy with the status quo and unwilling to admit they were wrong. They remind us that people’s response to the gospel is not simply down to how good a job we do at presenting it: those who hear it have free will to accept it or not.

Have you had experiences of people not responding well to the gospel message? Why do you think they reacted negatively? What lessons can you draw from those experiences?

¹ Isa 53:3, TNIV