Act 2:24-27 | KingComments | STEP | Peter speaks to them as “men of Israel”, and not only as “men of Jerusalem”, or “men of Judea”, for he is going to speak of the general hope for the whole people. He is now going to tell why this baptism with the Holy Spirit took place. It was a direct act of the Lord Jesus Who is now exalted at the right hand of God. Fifty days after the events during the Passover, events of which memories will surely have faded, Peter suddenly confronts the people again with the Man of Nazareth. He recalls how the Lord Jesus did works of power [“miracles” is literally: “works of power”] and wonders and signs in their midst. These were all proof that in Him God was present among them. God did it through Him. They knew that. Peter speaks to them as completely responsible people, as people who know that Christ did everything in God’s power. They have had to recognize God in Him. Peter then tells them that they killed Him. They did not do that themselves, because they forced the Gentiles in the person of Pilate by manipulation to execute the death penalty on Him, but it does not make them any less guilty. On the contrary, they are even more guilty than Pilate ( ), although he too is completely guilty of the death of the Lord Jesus. Yet the death of Christ is not a surprise, not a matter that got out of hand. It is the perfect fulfillment of God’s counsel. God has perfect foreknowledge of what would happen to His Son, how His people would surrender Him. In this verse we see that God knows how to use man’s iniquity for His glorification and the fulfillment of His counsel, which, incidentally, does not change man’s responsibility. What man thought to be evil, God has turned to good ( ). Peter doesn’t say a word about the lie of the stolen body. He completely ignores it and preaches the truth of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus by God. In doing so, he testifies to the pleasure of God in the work of His Son and the full acknowledgment of it. Because of the perfection of that work, it was impossible for Him to be held by the agony of death. He tasted death for a short moment ( ), but death could not hold Him in its power. Death had no hold on Him. He entered death voluntarily and overcame it. God dissolved the bonds of death, in which He had been for a short time. It would have been, speaking reverently, unjust of God if He had not done so and left His Son in death.

‏ Acts 2:24-27

The Acts of God and of Man

Peter speaks to them as “men of Israel”, and not only as “men of Jerusalem”, or “men of Judea”, for he is going to speak of the general hope for the whole people. He is now going to tell why this baptism with the Holy Spirit took place. It was a direct act of the Lord Jesus Who is now exalted at the right hand of God.

Fifty days after the events during the Passover, events of which memories will surely have faded, Peter suddenly confronts the people again with the Man of Nazareth. He recalls how the Lord Jesus did works of power [“miracles” is literally: “works of power”] and wonders and signs in their midst. These were all proof that in Him God was present among them. God did it through Him. They knew that. Peter speaks to them as completely responsible people, as people who know that Christ did everything in God’s power. They have had to recognize God in Him.

Peter then tells them that they killed Him. They did not do that themselves, because they forced the Gentiles in the person of Pilate by manipulation to execute the death penalty on Him, but it does not make them any less guilty. On the contrary, they are even more guilty than Pilate (Jn 19:11b), although he too is completely guilty of the death of the Lord Jesus.

Yet the death of Christ is not a surprise, not a matter that got out of hand. It is the perfect fulfillment of God’s counsel. God has perfect foreknowledge of what would happen to His Son, how His people would surrender Him. In this verse we see that God knows how to use man’s iniquity for His glorification and the fulfillment of His counsel, which, incidentally, does not change man’s responsibility. What man thought to be evil, God has turned to good (Gen 50:20).

Peter doesn’t say a word about the lie of the stolen body. He completely ignores it and preaches the truth of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus by God. In doing so, he testifies to the pleasure of God in the work of His Son and the full acknowledgment of it. Because of the perfection of that work, it was impossible for Him to be held by the agony of death. He tasted death for a short moment (Heb 2:7a ; 9a), but death could not hold Him in its power. Death had no hold on Him. He entered death voluntarily and overcame it. God dissolved the bonds of death, in which He had been for a short time. It would have been, speaking reverently, unjust of God if He had not done so and left His Son in death.

The Resurrection Foretold by David

Again, Peter cites Scripture as proof of what happened. The earlier Scripture served to explain the coming of the Holy Spirit. This time the Scripture – from Psalm 16 – serves as an explanation of the resurrection of Christ (Psa 16:8-11). David wrote this psalm ten centuries earlier. He writes in the ‘I’ form. Yet he could not write about himself. He died, was buried and still has not risen. David is a prophet here and he writes about Someone else.

No one but the Lord Jesus has gone His way without for a moment turning His eye away from God, His Father. He always saw God, His Father in His presence. He also always knew Him beside Himself (Jn 8:29). He felt completely supported by Him, so that He did not shake. His fellowship with His God gave Him joy in His heart, which He expressed with His mouth, even in the time when He experienced rejection (Mt 11:25).

Through His fellowship with His God, He had hope regarding the rest for His flesh, which is His body. He knew that He would die the death for the sinner, but He faced that death in the presence of His Father and His Father at His right hand, while looking at the joy that would come afterward (Heb 12:2). He knew that God would not “abandon” His soul to Hades. That means God would not give up His soul to the realm of death. God would not let his soul go there. Hades is the place where the souls of people who died in unbelief go (Lk 16:23), but Christ was the “Holy One” of God Who had lived in complete consecration to God’s glory.

The pains of death, which every unbeliever suffers in Hades and ultimately eternally in hell, He suffered for every believer in His soul in the three hours of darkness on the cross under God’s judgment. After He died, He was placed in the tomb, but His body would not be affected by the decay of death. Also in His death He was ‘the Holy One’ of God. Because of this He knew that He would not undergo decay. After a short stay in the tomb – “for a little while” (Heb 2:9) – He was raised up.

After hearing the Lord Jesus speak in the quote about His death and the safekeeping in it by God, we then hear how He speaks about life and joy. This is life and joy after having passed through death. After the resurrection ways of life are opened and made known.

That makes the resurrection of Christ different from the other resurrections in the Bible because those resurrected believers all died again. The life in the resurrection is a life full of joy, it is life with a view to the presence of God. In the spiritual sense this applies today to every believer who sees the Lord before him (Acts 2:25). Such a person always goes on the way of life, even if it may lead through death.

After the quote, Peter asks his listeners again for attention by addressing them as “brethren”. He says that he may confidently say, that is to say, that he is free to speak with boldness to them about David, whom he calls “patriarch”, in the sense of ancestor of the royal family. He knows the great interest of his audience in this, in their eyes, unsurpassed king. But however great David may be, he is both dead and buried. David’s tomb was still among them with his bones in it, which meant that he did see decay.

This makes it clear that the preceding quote cannot refer to David. The psalm is therefore not about David, but about the Messiah. David was not only king, but he was also a prophet. He spoke about future things, because God had assured him in the most powerful way possible, of a successor to his throne. That heir would be “[one] OF HIS DESCENDANTS”, that is, a direct descendant of him. That Descendant is the Christ, the Messiah.

David has believed the promise of God concerning an heir to the throne. That made him see ahead. If God has promised that there will be an Offspring on his throne, then death cannot nullify that promise of God. Therefore, it could not be otherwise than that the Christ, having died, would also rise. He would not only rise from the dead, but He would rise without taking anything of death with Him in His resurrection. Everything that belongs to death would not affect Him.

He was not left by God to the power of the realm of death, which would mean that the realm of death would have power over Him. He entered the realm of death voluntarily in order to overcome death. He has gone into death as a Victor, a victory evidenced by His resurrection into an immortal life. His flesh, therefore, has not seen decay, for everything related to death, He negated by His death, so that it could not exercise its power over Him.

Peter does not let his listeners guess about the meaning of what he said about David and Christ. The Son of David and the Christ of God is “this Jesus”. Again we hear the emphatic “this” Jesus (Acts 1:11). This Jesus, Who was raised up by God, is the same Who died.

Peter also vigorously establishes His resurrection by saying that they are all witnesses to that fact. There was no doubt about that. After His resurrection, the Lord Jesus appeared again and again, among other people, to them, the disciples, and spoke with them for forty days (Acts 1:3).