Proclamations of the Gospel in Acts
(avg. read time: 53–107 mins.)
(I have gone back and forth on the decision of whether or not to break up this long post. It is not the longest post I have made on this Substack, but there was a time, back when I was just distributing such writings by email to individuals who asked, that I had broken it up into four parts. If my readers express interest, I will do that again for this, so that I will have this complete, undivided post plus the four divisions I used once upon a time. But that will only be if I hear from you that that is something you are interested in.)
Previously, I have reviewed the three-stage gospel narrative in Acts, mainly in the gospel proclamations. Elsewhere, I have looked at elements of gospel proclamations that appear across the book, but not on a text-by-text basis. Here, I would like to review those proclamations in more detail, as the central gospel narrative is referenced in various extents and with various other features attached in the context. This project comes from something I wrote several years ago, before I found my observations of the Bible and the popular proclamations of the Church confirmed in different ways by people like Scot McKnight, N. T. Wright, and Matthew Bates, among others. Even among more biblically literate churches and teachers in the West, I have found that the popular proclamations of the gospel are often focused on the cross to the exclusion of other parts of the gospel narrative like the resurrection and the exaltation, not to mention the larger story that makes sense of it all. What I heard again and again essentially boils down to this: Humans were made in the image of God to have a relationship with God, but because of sin we cannot have that relationship and we deserve only eternal punishment for our trespasses. To fix the problem, God sent Jesus to live a perfect life and to die on the cross in our place, receiving God’s wrath so we do not have to, and thereby purchasing our salvation, paying the debt through a perfect life. Whoever has faith in Jesus accepts this sacrifice and is thus saved, leading to a life of obedience in gratitude for the salvation of God (at this point, there may be some reference to the doctrine of imputed righteousness as well, that is, some notion that Jesus’s righteousness has been credited to us). There are several variations of the gospel proclamation, of course; this is simply the one I hear the most often. The problems with this proclamation stem less from its positive assertions –though one can of course find something to challenge in various articulations of it—than from the fact that it is truncated compared to the earliest proclamations.
The best place to look for comparison is the Book of Acts, which contains numerous examples summarizing the earliest gospel proclamations. Acts does not reveal every bit of content of those proclamations, but it does provide good summary accounts. Indeed, we have good reason to believe all of these speeches are summaries. Take for example the Pentecost sermon by Peter in Acts 2. How likely is it that a speech which took a mere three minutes or so was able to so quickly convict around 3,000 people to join this group? Indeed, this is further indicated by comments like Acts 2:40—wherein we are told that Peter also said “many other words” and it is unlikely that this simply meant that he said all of these many words after this call to action—and 4:3, where it is said that the authorities took action against Peter and John when it was “already evening,” even though the whole chain of events began at the ninth hour of the day (3:00pm; 3:1). In light of this information, it is more likely that we have only received functional bullet-point summaries of those speeches. But as summaries, they highlight the important points of the proclamations and are thus highly valuable resources for considering what the earliest Christians considered to be most important for their proclamation. Without further ado, let us observe what the earliest Christians understood to be the components of their defining message.
Acts 1
The first relevant text to review is Acts 1:22. This verse seems to connect back to 1:3, in which Jesus continues speaking about the kingdom of God. I say that because there is a sense that the disciples want to continue Jesus’s teaching and it would be surpassingly strange for Luke to claim that Jesus spoke about the kingdom of God and then have the disciples go on and forget about it. As many have observed, the layout of Acts is the tracing of the fulfillment of Jesus’s command to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth (1:8). Jesus’s own understanding of what it would mean for them to be witnesses is informed by his teaching concerning the kingdom of God. That is, they are to be witnesses to the coming of the kingdom of God (i.e., that God is King) and how this has happened in the gospel story. When Peter gives his expression of what it means for them to be witnesses, he says it is concerning Jesus’s resurrection. In other words, Peter and the other disciples understood resurrection and the kingdom of God to go hand in hand. What that link is comes to fuller expression in the rest of Acts and the NT. We will leave it alone for now, but just understand that the link is there.
That it is present also seems further evidenced by Peter’s qualification for the apostle who will replace Judas among the Twelve, which is a parallel of 1:21: that they should be someone who has been with them from John’s baptism to Jesus’s ascension. Why is this qualification necessary given that the purpose of it is to be a witness with rest of the apostles of Jesus’s resurrection? Would not being a witness of the resurrection appearances be sufficient? Rather, it seems that Peter has packed in more meaning to “his resurrection” than only Jesus’s resurrection. If the replacement must have been with the rest of the apostles since John’s baptism of Jesus, that would make them more qualified to speak on the full range of Jesus’s life and teaching, focused on the kingdom of God and everlasting life, and how Jesus’s resurrection to everlasting life brought his message to fruition. What is important to note about this passage and what it tells us about the earliest gospel proclamations is: 1) the earliest Christians understood their role to be, first and foremost, witnesses of Jesus’s resurrection; 2) this role as witnesses of his resurrection somehow connects to being witnesses of the kingdom of God (cf. 1:3, 7–8); 3) there is thus a connection between Jesus’s resurrection and the kingdom of God which establishes the deepest level of continuity between Jesus and the earliest Christians.
Acts 2
The next text is much more detailed as an elaboration on that central task, and I have argued elsewhere that it is the paradigmatic gospel proclamation in Acts. In Acts 2:14–39, one finds the Pentecostal sermon from Peter, fresh off the powerful manifestation of the Holy Spirit in speaking in tongues. The Jewish crowd from across Eretz Israel and the Diaspora stood amazed and perplexed at this event, for each one could hear the disciples speaking in their own languages even though they were all ragamuffin Galileans. Some dismissed them saying they were drunk (after all, what better could you expect from Galileans?). When Peter answers the crowd, he quickly dismisses the notion that they are drunk and follows up with a citation of Joel 2:28–32 to explain what is really going on.
This citation packs a massive story into its brief lines, just as the Book of Joel as a whole does. It is unclear where exactly Joel belongs in the timeline of the OT prophets. But the story told in terms of desolation of the land by locusts, the call to repentance and the coming of the day of YHWH in judgment would resonate in many eras of Israel’s history. Approximately the first half of the short book follows the pattern of the announcement of judgment by locusts and the call to repentance. Then there is the turning point at which YHWH promises blessings for his people because of his own faithfulness to them. One could certainly imagine Second Temple Jews reading the promises of 2:18–27 as promises of return from exile, and of renewal of the promised land as renewal of the covenant (on the promised land and its theological significance, see here and here).
These promises lead into an even greater set of promises which emerges thereafter narrated in 2:28–32. Not only will YHWH’s Spirit be present among the traditionally designated prophets; the Spirit will be on all people. All people will be able to proclaim the prophetic messages of YHWH, all will dream the dreams of YHWH, and all will see visions of YHWH. Because of the outpouring of the Spirit, all people could have the experience of prophethood in these respects. This is a heavily amplified promise of covenantal renewal, since the prophets were YHWH’s spokespeople in proclaiming what it means to follow YHWH’s covenant. They are often associated with judgment because the OT narrates them calling for faithfulness to the covenant in times of unfaithfulness. The promises here proclaim that all people, because of the presence of the Spirit, will live out that proclamation of covenantal faithfulness. Of course, because creation as a whole is under corruption, there will be extreme portents of cosmic change with this renewal. The vision of the OT is that the fate of creation as a whole ties to the fate of humanity in general and Israel in particular. The day of YHWH’s judgment must come to deal once and for all with everything which denies that YHWH is God, the sovereign Creator. But that day is not only a day of judgment, but of deliverance, of liberation and transformation for those people who are willing to call on the name of YHWH, acknowledge him as God, and accept the full implications of his name. This deliverance, as well as the judgment, will begin at Jerusalem, the theological epicenter of the OT (and thus the NT). As Joel 3 goes on to expand, the fundamental point about the day of YHWH is that it will be day of a dual reality of judgment in condemnation and vindication. There will be condemnation for the enemies of YHWH’s people, and thus his enemies, and vindication for the people of YHWH following him in the face of opposition. The resonances such texts would have with Second Temple Jews, especially by the time of Jesus and Peter, are clear. (For other connections between the Spirit and the coming of God’s kingdom, see Isa 11; 42:1–9; 44:1–5; 48:12–22; 59; 61; Ezek 36:16–38; 37:1–14; 39:25–29. Also see here and here.)
What does such a resonant text have to do with what Peter is saying here? He is, of course, claiming that the phenomenon is the result of this outpouring of the Spirit, and thus with it all of the other promises are coming to pass. If the Spirit is coming upon those people who were not already prophets, then so too is the restoration by YHWH, the return from exile, the day of judgment, and the day of salvation. The new age of God’s climactic action in which this was all expected to take place had come. The story had finally come to its eucatastrophe. It simply did not look quite like anyone expected. Precisely because it was so out of line with expectation, this crowd would need some further explanation; otherwise, what Peter just said would be all the more confirmation that maybe he and his fellows were drunk.
Peter then turns to his testimony about Jesus, a man he claimed YHWH accredited to his fellow Jews by demonstrations of power, portents, and signs (or signposts, being events which point to who Jesus is). These events were demonstrations of power in that they were extraordinary works of YHWH’s creative power. They were wonders in that they indicated the presence or anticipation of something momentous or calamitous (e.g., the promise of the prophetic and perhaps messianic claimant Theudas to part the Jordan River would have been a portent to the inauguration of messianic action [Josephus, Ant., 20.97–98]). They were signs in that they pointed to YHWH’s creative intent and the transformation of the fallen creation to conform to that intent (another sense of this word is that they were signs of the coming together of heaven and earth under the reign of God). Peter describing Jesus’s ministry as such and appealing to the audience’s knowledge of Jesus’s miraculous works begins to lead the audience to the answer for their quandary. It is possible that he may also make an implicit reference to the connection Jesus made between himself and the activity of the Holy Spirit in his own ministry, which the audience was probably aware of through personal experience or rumor (Matt 10:7–8; Matt 12:28–32 // Mark 3:20–30 // Luke 11:14–20; Luke 4:16–21; John 3:5–8; 4:23–24; 6:63). His audience was probably a mixture of people who had witnessed events of Jesus’s ministry, including his miraculous action, and others who only heard about them. Some of his works, his teachings, and his identity as an alleged kingdom-messenger and messianic claimant would have led to people passing around stories about him. But of course, what was probably the most well known story about him was the one which seemed to undermine everything else: his crucifixion. If Peter was going to gain any ground with this crowd, he would need to deal with the crucifixion. What could it mean? How could he square it with the claim that what was happening was Joel’s outpouring of the Holy Spirit and that this outpouring had occurred through and because of Jesus?
Peter acknowledges the crucifixion, adding the twist that it was according to God’s purpose and foreknowledge. His audience would have no problem granting this point, but for different reasons than Peter. The turning point comes at v. 24 in which the connection between Jesus’s miraculous ministry and the claim that this event of speaking in tongues was the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Restoration, return, judgment, salvation, and other events/states of affairs were all features of the hope of Israel. By this time, the Jews had developed several images to tell this story of their hope, some of which functioned as synecdoches. One such synecdoche, probably especially appealing to the Pharisees and their sympathizers, was resurrection. Resurrection was an anticipated eschatological reality in which the dead would rise by the power of YHWH. It signified a complete reversal of death and its associates (such as exile, sickness, and so on) such that they would never be a problem for those resurrected to everlasting life ever again. Its occurrence was part and parcel of the new age of the consummation of YHWH’s kingship as the God of life. It was only associated with that end of the age of exile and thus was expected as a phenomenon of general resurrection. The earliest Christians clearly saw the need to mutate this belief to split the resurrection in two, one person in the midst of history to inaugurate the new age and the rest at the time of the full realization of the new age. Remaining with this mutated belief were the associations other Jews made with the resurrection, though these associations were also mutated according to Christian beliefs about Jesus. The Jewish audience would have heard the echoes of these associations with the claim that God raised Jesus from the dead, thus conquering death and overturning the powers which brought this death upon him. Peter makes two statements in addition to this claim which will remain somewhat cryptic until he unpacks them later in his proclamation: that 1) God freed Jesus from the agony of death because 2) it was impossible for death to keep hold of him.
Before he can clarify what he means by these statements, he turns once more to the OT to demonstrate where Jesus comes in the story of YHWH and Israel. He quotes vv. 8–11 of Ps 16. I have explored this text elsewhere in published work and on this Substack, and I will not be repeating all that I have said here. But as I have illustrated in both contexts, this hope for resurrection is a synecdoche of other foundations for hope, and for God’s larger complex of salvific action by which he brings the covenantal-historical context to a grand resolution. Jesus’s resurrection is not simply a one-off event. It is the turning point of everything else.
As the text that follows indicates, Peter is also drawing on the resources of David’s place in Jewish theology, especially through the figure of the Messiah. Messianic expectations grew significantly during the Intertestamental period and developed especially from the passages promising a king from the line of David through whom YHWH would rule in the coming age (e.g., 2 Sam 7; Isa 11; Ezek 37). To draw together what Peter is saying and what Second Temple Jews understood when reading this passage, in the ancient world there was a belief that the king was an incorporative persona. That is, the king incorporated the identity of the people he ruled into himself as their representative. The kingly Messiah would serve a similar role of incorporating the identity of Israel into himself such that what YHWH did to the Messiah he would do to Israel. The identification of the Messiah with David reflected the belief that David’s reign was the precursor to YHWH’s ideal kingdom, the anti-type to David’s type. Hence, the reasons why Second Temple Jews applied this text to their situation was their honoring of David as representing the height of Israel’s glory and as the type to the anti-type of their hope for restoration as well as their notion of the king incorporating their identity. A further reason may well have been that David represented the height of Israel’s military power and their expectation of a new David represented an expectation of military conquest of their pagan rulers.
As Peter argues, the text was something to be fulfilled. What does “fulfillment” mean for a passage such as this one? It is not quite the same as the Joel passage in this regard. Even when it was popular to read psalms prophetically, they understood this much. Note how Peter must give more explanation to the significance of this passage for his view of Jesus, and conversely why Jesus makes him read this passage in a new way. The indication seems to be that the inclination of the audience would be to understand this passage as David referring to himself and perhaps Israel as a whole with the understanding of royal incorporative identity. But Peter supports his case by his appeal to the tendency to associate David with the Messiah and thus that one could use at least some of David’s self-referential psalms to comprehend the Messiah as David speaks prospologically, that is in the persona of the Messiah. After all, those people who expected the coming of the Messiah expected him to be the climax of the story of Israel. The same convictions which gave rise to typological understandings of history would lead them to believe in the amplification of events and persons in the climactic action of YHWH—e.g., the new exodus imagery associated with YHWH’s restoration of Israel—and thus to prophetic understandings of psalms. This psalm, as many others, was an encapsulation of an aspect of Israel’s story and one could fulfill it by embodying that story. The life of Jesus as a whole does precisely that and amplifies the story by literally embodying YHWH’s faithfulness beyond the grave and his inexorable life-giving power.
The resurrection itself does not show Jesus to be the Messiah—unless we are to believe that the Jews thought everyone who resurrected at the general resurrection was the Messiah—but the resurrection’s place in the context of Jesus’s ministry and how he understood his vocation does demonstrate his Messiahship. After all, in such a context, resurrection would indicate YHWH’s support of his messianic conception. Furthermore, this claim that Jesus is Messiah—an incorporative and eschatological identity of the executor of God’s will—clarifies even more what Peter said earlier about God freeing Jesus from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. This incorporative identity implies a release not only for the Messiah but for those incorporated into him, signifying not only release from death, but, as the Jewish audience would hear, from the closely associated reality of exile. As an eschatological identity meant to demonstrate YHWH’s supreme faithfulness, it is not possible for death to keep a hold on YHWH’s Messiah, the one through whom he would execute his will and bring his kingdom, which would in turn be the ultimate incarnation and goal of YHWH’s faithfulness. This person, the one through whom return from exile, restoration, and kingdom-establishment came to pass, is Jesus, as confirmed by his resurrection, despite the death inflicted on him by opposing powers. What do Peter and his fellow disciples of Jesus establish this claim upon, especially considering it is so audacious? It is based upon their own witness of Jesus’s empty tomb and physical appearances.
Upon this basis, they also build the narrative of his exaltation. Peter does not mention it here in this summary, but their witness of the ascension would show that God had indeed exalted Jesus. His kingdom-directed ministry, exemplified in this speech by his miracles, indicated that God was inaugurating the kingdom through him. This ministry led to his death and resurrection. These events were the means of the birth of new creation in the conquest of death. As some of the earliest recorded Christian theology would develop, the ascension showed that God exalted Jesus to his appropriate place, at his right hand, designated with equal authority over heaven and earth to be the executor of the coming of the kingdom/new creation (1 Cor 15:20–28; see here and here). This proclamation would set the precedent for the shape of the kingdom of God theology for the earliest Christians. While phrases related to “the kingdom of God” appear with less frequency after the Gospels, the notion appears implicitly every time the early Christians proclaim Jesus as Lord (i.e., King). Jesus is King and his kingdom is God’s kingdom. If he is King, people must get with the program, meaning a response is called for. One of the primary functions of the epistles is to unpack the meaning of Jesus’s Lordship in these situations. Therefore, they are about life under the Lordship of Jesus, otherwise known as the kingdom/reign of God.
Between Jesus’s ministry of miracles, death, resurrection, and ascension to God’s right hand, Peter establishes a cohesive link between Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit they witness on Pentecost. Why is this outpouring of the Spirit in the form of speaking in tongues? Because these believers must be heralds, proclaiming the message of how Jesus is Lord, a message which, because it is a claim of divine authority, is binding on the entire world (though it seems that Peter did not understand at this point that this universality would require carrying the message to the gentiles).
To augment this point, he once again alludes to Israel’s story of hope in Ps 110—a text which would become among the most cited and alluded in the NT—to show once more the story which Jesus is fulfilling. This passage is about the establishment of the kingdom of Israel by the power of God, in which the king and Israel as a whole can live securely even in the midst of enemies, because the Creator is with them. Furthermore, it alludes to a notion which would become a part of messianic expectations, though it would sometimes be divided into two different strands. That is, the lord in question whom YHWH upholds, the conquering king, will also be a priest, namely one in the order of Melchizedek. That is, this order does not depend upon lineage, unlike the Levitical priesthood (which indeed must be so if a king is to be a priest as well). The passage closes with the Divine Warrior theme, meant to conjure images of YHWH’s undying faithful love and its expression in judgment of enemies and salvation of the faithful through preservation of the chosen people in the promised land. In the context of Christian proclamation, these images would become amplified in light of the emphasis on new creation as the new promised land, the new inheritance of Abraham’s descendants (e.g., Rom 4:13–25; 8:18–25).
Through this elaborate tapestry of a proclamation, Peter has now reached his simple conclusion. What they saw and heard that day was all a confirmation that the story of Israel had reached its climax and had done so through God’s action in Jesus, the one they had crucified. And yet, God saw fit to raise him from the dead and confirm him as both Lord and Messiah, the King and the Savior, the incorporative representative in whom one finds the ultimate victory of the Creator God (and thus the victory of those whose identity is in him).
The cut to the heart the audience experiences has two sides to it. One, they are cut to the heart out of the realization that they have erred egregiously and even blasphemously in supporting the death of Jesus. Two, they are cut to the heart because their hoped-for eucatastrophe, though it looked like nothing anyone had expected, had come, the new age of God’s kingdom had begun. Thus, they have double motivation to ask, “what do we do now?”
Peter issues two directives to coincide with the two motivations: to repent and be baptized. Repentance is the reversal of their lives, their giving up of their previous agendas to adopt a new one by which to order their lives. Baptism is the means by which they declare themselves to be members of the community which will be part of the constituency of the kingdom. Baptism is their way of acknowledging their identification with Jesus and their participation in his identity—through the symbolic death, burial, and subsequent rising to walk in the newness of life—and thus their alignment with his royal identity and agenda. This purpose is confirmed by the fact that they are baptized in Jesus’s name, thus claiming that they represent his authority and character in this action. In so joining the community, they receive forgiveness of sins—a concomitant of the return from exile—meaning that they are granted new life to live in the kingdom under King Jesus (compare Isa 33:13–24; Jer 31:31–40; 33; Mic 7:14–20). Above all else, they too will receive the power of the Holy Spirit they see on display, so that they too will become empowered and enlightened to testify to the world concerning the kingdom of God and the King who is at the center of it.
Thus, at long-winded last, what can we learn about the shape of early Christian proclamation from this inaugural speech? 1) Their proclamation involved a conviction that they were witnesses to and participants in the climactic action of God. 2) God was climaxing the story of Israel, and thus the world, through Jesus, as demonstrated by his ministry, resurrection, ascension and what happened afterwards with the spawning of their own movement via the Holy Spirit. 3) In line with 2), they would demonstrate this claim by means of reviewing the story itself and showing how Jesus fulfilled the story (i.e., the OT was crucial to their self-understanding). 4) The life of Jesus, like his death and resurrection, bore the marks of God’s eschatological action, especially because Jesus himself was and is the Messiah. 5) So too does the Christian message and action bear those same marks in continuity with Jesus. 6) Jesus’s death was part of the purpose of God. 7) The primary reason for believing all of the above, the foundation for the Christian ministry, is God’s resurrection of Jesus, vindicating his ministry and identity, and defeating death through him. 8) Part and parcel of the message of the earliest Christians was their own testimony of the resurrection and, by implication, all that came before it (hence the traditions which produced the Gospels). 9) Because they recognized Jesus as Messiah, they understood the identity of Israel to be summed up in him. 10) Thus, they saw the return from exile, the restoration of God’s people, and the coming of God’s kingdom at work in the person and work of Jesus. 11) God provided further confirmation of Jesus’s status by exalting Jesus through the ascension, confirming his status as Lord. 12) Indeed, the primary way in which Christians proclaimed the announcement of the kingdom of God was through claiming that Jesus is Lord/King and thus the world needs to get with the program. 13) The way to begin getting with the program is repentance and baptism, abandoning one’s own way of life and taking up the way of life which acknowledges the kingship of Jesus. 14) With this entry comes the forgiveness of sins and the endowment of the Holy Spirit (as one would expect being incorporated into the identity of this same Jesus the Christians proclaimed to the world as Lord and Christ).
Acts 3
The next relevant text comes in 3:11–4:2 with Peter’s speech at Solomon’s Porch after healing a crippled beggar. This deed provided a means to communicate this announcement. Indeed, it was not only a means to Peter’s exposition, but a mode of that message, as Jesus’s own miracles were a mode of demonstrating the coming of the kingdom. In this speech, Peter manifests this same understanding. While miracles could be understood as foretastes of God’s kingdom, that was not the only way to explain them. Aside from more pernicious explanations—such as attributing miracles to evil powers, such as in Matt 12 and parallels—there was also the explanation that miracles, being expressions of divine grace, were favors granted to particularly pious individuals, namely in response to prayer (such as with Honi the Circle-Drawer who, while not a miracle worker per se, is famous for a story of having a prayer for rain answered in extraordinary fashion). Of course, Peter dismisses any such explanation and provides another context by which to understand this miraculous healing of the crippled beggar.
In this instance, Peter inverts the order of his speech. While at Pentecost Jesus’s exaltation came last in the speech, he opens with it here. The reason is probably because he had performed the healing in the name of Jesus and the crowd might be wondering how such an invocation could be effective. After all, this same Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, becoming seemingly another failed revolutionary/prophet figure crushed under the boot of Rome. Hence, they would have thought that the explanation for the healing would be in the character of Peter and John rather than in the authority of the name of Jesus. Peter begins his case to the contrary with the statement that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had glorified Jesus. Though his enemies intended the opposite end by handing him over for crucifixion, considering a murderer to be more worthy of honor than him who was the holy and righteous one (i.e., the Messiah), God reversed their verdict with the resurrection. He not only vindicated Jesus as Messiah, but as the author of life over whom death has no hold. Peter then claims himself and John to be witnesses to the truth of these assertions. Once again, the witness of the apostles to the resurrection and to what had come before it was at the foundation of their message. They served as witnesses not only by their observance of the events in question, but by their ministry producing fruit in keeping with those claims. The latter point is especially demonstrable from the context in which this speech takes place and from indications in the speech itself. These indications come in two layers.
The first, more subtle layer stems from the point expounded above about the Messiah. The Jewish action toward the Messiah evinced their rejection of their own identity, of the way of being Israel. They considered the life of the murderer to be more honorable than the life demonstrated by the Messiah who embodied their divinely intended identity (such a statement would have undertones consonant with Jesus’s teaching against Israel’s revolutionary tendencies and general way of relating to one another [e.g. Matt 5:9, 21–26, 38–48; 21:12–13 // Mark 11:15–17 // Luke 19:45–46, Matt 21:33–46 // Mark 12:1–12 // Luke 20:9–19; Matt 23:37–39; Luke 12:54–59; 13:1–9, 34–35; 14:25–35; 19:41–44]). But Jesus’s resurrection was proof of YHWH’s support of his way of being Israel, that he truly was the Messiah who incorporated the identity of Israel into himself. It was also proof of YHWH’s faithfulness to Israel that he would rescue the Messiah from death and thereby redeem Israel from exile. It would be the supreme action of YHWH’s faithfulness despite Israel’s severe lack of it. In the story presented here, this theme plays out on a small scale as a work done in the name of Jesus redeems a Jew from a kind of exile. This man was crippled from birth, likely subject to the same suspicion as the man blind from birth in John 9. He would be inhibited from full participation in the Jewish community and cult, and some Jews, such as those similar to the Qumranians, would regard such a person as outside of true Israel. Healing him in the name of Jesus means that it was through Jesus that this man could be restored to his proper social standing within Israel. That is after all what Jesus’s healings did during his ministry, providing both physical and social (and thus religious) restoration to the afflicted. If it could happen for this man, it could happen for all people who identified themselves with Jesus. Part of the duty of disciples of Jesus is to extend this same restoration to others through their work in the name—that is, character and authority—of Jesus.
The second, more explicit layer comes out in v. 16. The power to perform this miracle came from the name of Jesus and the faith—both belief and loyalty—which is in and through Jesus (i.e., Jesus is both the giver and receiver of this faith). His name has such power because he is the author of life and an action done in his name should be a source of vitality in whatever form is necessary. In other words, his authority over life comes to expression through actions done in loyalty in his name, which is what defines the ministry of the earliest Christians.
Peter acknowledges that his fellow Jews and their leaders acted in ignorance in putting Jesus to death. Of course, he can understand this ignorance because he and his fellow apostles once shared it. But as Jesus would teach them after his resurrection, it was necessary that Jesus as Messiah would suffer, for it was the message of the Scriptures. There is no particular text cited here and he probably did not have particular pieces in mind, but at this point he probably did something similar to what Jesus did in Luke 24:25–27, 44–48. It is not so much a particular text or set of texts that produces this belief—although a messianic reading of Isa 52:13–53:12 would make it one of the stronger candidates—but the sweep of the scriptural narrative as a whole. The Messiah, as an eschatological identity, was expected to climax the story of Israel, though most known conceptions centered on the Messiah climaxing the more glorious portions of its story. The Christians, on the other hand, also affirmed that the Messiah would climax the suffering of Israel, taking it upon himself, and bringing redemption through that suffering. As one with an incorporative identity, the Messiah was expected to encapsulate and lead the triumph of Israel. However, the Christians added that there was more to this incorporative vocation, which Israel had recognized for itself but not the Messiah (for what follows, see e.g., Isa 52:13–53:12; 2 Macc 7:32–33, 37–38). If the Messiah truly incorporates Israel’s identity, he also incorporates her suffering on behalf of the world. The Messiah’s shameful death crystallizes Israel’s shame in exile, but the resurrection in turn crystallizes Israel’s hoped for vindication in the return from exile and restoration of all things.
Since they had out of ignorance rejected YHWH’s intended way of being Israel through the Messiah, Peter calls for repentance so that their sins may be forgiven, and so that Jesus may bring times of refreshing upon them. This statement also resonates with a people steeped in the Prophets, who would hear echoes of the return from exile and the rejuvenation of creation (note the earlier cited texts from Joel for example). Such an event can only come about by identifying oneself as part of the Messiah’s people. It is also interesting to note that this speech contains an expression of inaugurated eschatology. Peter shows a clear awareness that the time of full restoration had not yet come and that Jesus is abiding in heaven until such a time does come. When it does, Jesus will be at the center of the fulfillment of the story told through the prophets, just as he was during his ministry. To clarify even further what he is saying, he appeals to the new Moses motif of Deut 18.
In this passage, YHWH promised to give the Israelites a prophet like Moses. Since the Israelites pleaded to be spared the voice of YHWH and the fire of his presence, and YHWH agreed, they would receive a prophet who represented that presence in a form which Israel could more comfortably accept. He will be like the very voice of YHWH, telling them exactly what he has heard and placing them under the obligation to listen to everything he says, lest they should be cut off from the covenant community. In other words, the covenant community is constituted around this one like (but even greater than) Moses. Peter, of course, considered this one like Moses to be Jesus and it was around him, rather than ancestry or keeping of the law of Moses, that the people of God were constituted. He was and is the one whose presence was the presence of God among his people for he spoke only what God told him to speak. In Peter’s argument, Israel cannot consistently claim to be the people of the covenant and reject Jesus.
Peter closes his speech with an insistence on their opportunity. This time was the time all of the prophets had anticipated. They were the heirs of the prophets and ultimately of Abraham, to whom God gave the promise which defined Israelite identity: through Abraham’s descendants, God would bless all the world. Peter probably understood that this promise came to its apex of fulfillment through Jesus, the paradigmatic offspring of Abraham—a point which Paul will develop much more fully in Romans and Galatians—hence why God sent Jesus to the Jews first. The point was that he would turn them from their wicked ways, their false ways of being Israel, to his true way of being Israel and thus to fulfill God’s intention for this people. In turn, they would participate in the fulfillment of the promises God made to Abraham by joining the ministry spreading the work of Jesus throughout the world, as they had witnessed Peter doing here.
The speech ends at v. 26, but I decided to continue the analysis to 4:2 because of its synopsis of this whole speech and how revealing it is. The most basic point that the priests, the captain of the temple guard, and the Sadducees take away from Peter’s speech is that it is about the resurrection of the dead in Jesus. They certainly understood the eschatological import of what Peter said, but why was this point the focus? Was it central to the actual speech? Was it simply because the Sadducees objected to the resurrection? I think it is a combination of these things and it illustrates how outsiders saw the resurrection as central, just as earlier chapters demonstrated that the Christians themselves had that view. Of course, we will return to this texts and others in the near future to explore the link of the resurrection with Jesus’s resurrection in Acts.
This speech has many similarities to the Pentecost speech, but it also introduces other dimensions of the earliest gospel proclamations. 1) Healing had a significant role in how they contextualized their message, connected it to Jesus, and acted in the name of Jesus. 2) God’s exaltation of Jesus was crucial for their message, especially in this case since it provided a reason for why a work done in Jesus’s name was effective. 3) Jesus’s crucifixion showed how far gone Israel was, how Jesus was truly the Messiah in climaxing the story of Israel, and how faithful God has been to his covenant with Israel. 4) A new element introduced in this instance is that Jesus himself is the author of life and that this identity is the reason why one can do true miracles in his name. 5) What demonstrates all of the above and ties them together is Jesus’s resurrection (thus even opponents recognized the centrality of the resurrection, though they seemed to have understood it more in terms of the general resurrection). 6) Also important was the witness of the earliest Christians, not only as eyewitnesses to Jesus, but also as participants in the kingdom inauguration of Jesus. 7) Jesus’s name—his authority and character, much as a contract signature represents the values and authority of a person—provides empowerment and healing necessary for the inbreaking of the kingdom. 8) Jesus represents the fulfillment of the story of Israel told through the prophets, though it has not yet come to its foretold end. 9) Since this time of fulfillment has come, it is time for repentance. 10) The coming of the Jesus the Messiah signifies the beginning of worldwide redemption and the salvation of creation itself. 11) Jesus is like but greater than Moses. 12) Thus, Jesus is the one who is the center of the constitution of the identity of the covenant community, and thus his resurrection is connected with the general resurrection.
Acts 4
The fourth text—4:8–12—comes in response to the above as Peter and John come before the rulers, elders and teachers of the law so that they could examine what had just happened. This court asks the name by which they were able to heal the beggar, most likely suspecting that Peter and John had invoked some demonic powers to perform magic, rather than the name of YHWH. Thus, to explain themselves, Peter and John—though Peter is, as usual, the most vocal one here—must provide a brief proclamation of the gospel in why the name of Jesus provided healing. Once again, Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection are the central elements of the summary. It also provides a direct challenge to the leaders who handed Jesus over to the Romans for crucifixion, thus attempting to undermine whatever honor he had in his name. Yet, the resurrection was God’s undermining of the evaluation of the leaders, vindicating Jesus from the shame they inflicted upon him and in turn exalting his name into such a position that invoking it can bring effective healing. Thus, this healing was a challenge to the authority of the leaders, and an unanswerable one as far as the earliest Christians were concerned given that it had the ultimate divine support via resurrection. Peter encapsulates his view of what happened in Jesus with the same brief quote that Jesus used to explain Jewish rejection of him in Matt 21:42 // Mark 12:10 // Luke 20:17. That quote comes from Ps 118. As I have explored the use of that text here and here, I will not be repeating what I have said here. Suffice it to say that the text shares narrative dynamics with the major gospel events of Jesus’s crucifixion, resurrection, and exaltation, and the foundations of hope for resurrection are continuous with the foundations of hope in this text.
Second Temple Jews reciting this psalm would have found themselves constantly shifting back and forth between rejoicing in YHWH’s demonstrated goodness in the past—as they would celebrate every Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles and other feasts—and pleading for YHWH’s deliverance in the future, that the vindication of vv. 10–23 would be theirs (and it would hardly be a stretch for them to think of the proclamation in v. 26 as messianic, which the crowds swarming Jesus upon his entrance into Jerusalem seem to have thought [Matt 21:8–9 // Mark 11:8–10 // Luke 19:37–38 // John 12:12–13; also see Matt 23:39 // Luke 13:35]). Indeed, the hope for the rejected stone—likely heard at this time as an echo of exile—to become the cornerstone succinctly captures the hope of Israel to return from exile and, in so doing, become the cornerstone of the new creation (Isa 11; 50–55; 65–66; Ezek 36–48; Zech 8; 14). Claiming that Jesus took this part in the consummation of the story of Ps 118 would also arouse these connotations. While indeed his whole life plays out this story, the most concise illustration of this claim comes in the manner of his death and resurrection. Not only did Jesus take on the role of the rejected stone (i.e., Israel) in his crucifixion, but it was Israel who rejected him. The resurrection stands as an affirmation that he became the cornerstone of the people of God, reinforcing Peter’s claim in the speech at Solomon’s Porch, that Jesus was the center of the constitution of the true Israel. While the messianic claim here is not explicit, it is the necessary key for Peter to play this music about Jesus.
Peter closes with a profound statement that not only does work in Jesus’s name provide healing, but his name is the only name by which salvation can come. The meaning of this point is more general than is usually thought. After all, the word for salvation, σωτηρία, does not have the exclusive denotation, even strictly within the NT, of an everlasting state of fellowship with God after he removes your sins from the record. It is a general term for any salvific action, whether healing, liberation, protection from an enemy, saving someone’s life from mortal danger, or the various other images used for it in the NT. Given the context of healing, it is all the more likely that this is a more general statement of salvific action (though implicitly including the more specific meaning cited earlier), that only Jesus’s name can provide it. This statement comports with the conviction that it is through Jesus, and only through Jesus, that God has inaugurated the kingdom and all the salvific action which comes with it. Thus, his name carries the very authority of God. This was an expansion on the already established Jewish belief that YHWH alone is God and only he could bring about eschatological salvation.
This presentation by Peter is quite short and thus leaves implicit what he unpacks elsewhere, but there are still some important points present here. 1) Healing comes through the name of Jesus. 2) Both crucifixion and resurrection are essential to declaring the revealed identity of Jesus (particularly in terms of the rejected stone which becomes the cornerstone). 3) Jesus’s suffering of shame and vindication by resurrection shows how he incorporates the entirety of Israel’s identity into himself, both the shame of exile and the glory of restoration. 4) Only Jesus’s name has the authority to dispense God’s salvific action (due to his life demonstrating that he was God’s means of establishing the kingdom).
Before we move on, there is one more text from this chapter that is relevant for our purposes. It is the most succinct summary of the gospel proclamations thus far in 4:33. The statement here is quite simple; it summarizes the apostolic proclamation as testifying to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. As in the first cited text, the evangelists see their call as fundamentally about their witness to Jesus’s resurrection and to how the resurrection (and subsequent events) attests about him as Lord.
Acts 5
Also consonant with the opening of Acts is 5:20. This time, the summary is from an angel telling the apostles to go to the temple courts and tell the people the full message of this new life. This summary is consonant with Jesus’s commission of the apostles to be witnesses of his kingdom, the new age, being signified by the reception of “life,” which has begun because of Jesus’s enthronement as King through his life, death, resurrection, and exaltation. This summary and the previous one show how resurrection and kingdom go hand in hand. It was the resurrection, the eschatological event of vindication and bestowal of immortality, which connected Jesus’s kingdom proclamation, his death, and his exaltation as King over the Creator’s kingdom. The resurrection was an eschatological reality which would be a feature of the kingdom of the Creator. When Jesus resurrected, he brought this eschatological reality into the present and also brought the kingdom (or rather, made clear that he had been doing so all along, climaxing in this supreme affirmation of God’s kingdom agenda). The kingdom as a present reality is not experienced fully, but the dynamic power of God through the Holy Spirit and the transformative way of life are present now, having broken into the corrupted world through Jesus, revealing anew God’s creative intention. As the Gospel of John and various works of Paul clarify, it is the work of the Spirit—the same Spirit who was at work in Jesus, the same Spirit expected as an identifying mark of the kingdom—that provides the preview of the kingdom now. It is the community in whom the Spirit dwells which will constitute the people of the kingdom when Jesus consummates it. Furthermore, the work of the Spirit is in accordance with the image of Jesus, who is the perfect image of God, meaning that the Spirit forms Christians according to the template of Jesus. This formation is another key element of the connection between resurrection and kingdom: kingdom life will be in accordance with the life of Jesus, which includes the resurrection. Of course, this exposition can take us far afield from these brief texts; I simply wish to make explicit what the texts leave implicit, as they are only unpacked elsewhere (including other books).
Near the conclusion of the chain of events that began in ch. 3, we find another relevant text in 5:29–32, a response to the high priest’s chastisement of the apostles. The Sanhedrin had already put the apostles in jail, until they were given an angelic release. When they found them back in the temple courts proclaiming the same message, they once again brought the apostles before the council and reminded them of their strict orders to stop preaching in Jesus’s name and making them guilty for his death (interestingly, this point is the one they take as the essential summary of what the apostles were teaching). The apostles respond that they must obey God rather than them. Their basis for believing it is God’s will for them to preach as they have done is the resurrection of Jesus by the God of Israel, in opposition to the leaders of Israel putting him to death. The description of this death by “hanging him on a tree” alludes to Deut 21:22–23, by which Jews would have understood death by crucifixion. Anyone left hanging on a tree was considered under YHWH’s curse. That is indeed what the Jews intended upon Jesus for his perceived blasphemous claims, but the resurrection showed that they were guilty of putting to death the one who had YHWH’s support for his claims. Furthermore, the resurrection demonstrated that Jesus was the eschatological savior (i.e., the Messiah). After all, he had brought forward the eschatological expectation of resurrection. Because of this event and the later ascension, the apostles believed God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior, the Messiah who both incorporated Israel’s identity into himself and brought about their salvation. Because he is in this position, he can give repentance and forgiveness of sins, which of course connote the reign of God over Israel as he intended (see above for this same theme in Acts 2). There again is the connection between resurrection and kingdom through Jesus the Messiah. But there are other links as well. One is their own witness of Jesus’s resurrection and exaltation, not only in terms of eyewitness testimony, but also in terms of their existence as a community living and teaching in the name of Jesus. The other is the witness of the Holy Spirit, who testifies to the resurrection and the subsequent outpouring of God’s eschatological action by his very presence, the same point Peter made in the Pentecostal message. It is the presence of the Spirit that identifies the eschatological community. Indeed, eschatology was foundational to the earliest Christian identity and proclamation.
This response to the Sanhedrin and the high priest does not reveal any new elements, but rather provides further support for what has already come to light. 1) Jesus’s resurrection, the work of YHWH, vindicates Jesus from the verdict placed upon him at his death. 2) Jesus’s resurrection led to his divine exaltation, confirming that he was and is the Messiah, the Prince and Savior of Israel. 3) Through his resurrection and exaltation comes the grant of repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel when they recognize how YHWH is their King through Jesus. 4) The existence and testimony of the eschatological community known as the Church and the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in that community testifies to the truth of Jesus’s resurrection.
In 5:42 we find another one-verse summary of the essence of the gospel. This time, the emphasis falls upon Jesus being the Christ, the one through whom God acted and continues to act to restore Israel. Though it is not mentioned, it is probably also the case that this announcement inherently involved explanation concerning his death and testimony to the resurrection, leading into talk about his exaltation to the right hand of God. After all, at this time the community was still largely confined to Jerusalem. The inhabitants of this city would know that this Jesus they were proclaiming was crucified. Without testimony to the resurrection, they would not accept this message that a man suffering the most ignominious death of that time would be the one most worthy of honor in all the world.
Acts 8
In this chapter, we have two relevant texts. The first is another one-verse summary in 8:12. As the Samaritan mission opens, Philip preaches what Luke describes as, “the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ.” We have already seen these elements several times in the above texts, and we do not need to reiterate all that we have noted to this point. However, it may be worthwhile to consider briefly what significance these elements may have in relation to the Samaritans. The first element would be important because it would signify the time for restoration and the incoming of the gentiles into the covenant community (Isa 2:2–5; 11:9–10; 42:1–7; 49:6–7; Mic 4:1–5; Zech 8:20–23; 14:9, 16–19; Tob 13:11; 14:4–7; Matt 8:11–12; 21:33–46 // Mark 12:1–12 // Luke 21:9–19; Matt 22:1–14; Luke 4:25–27; 11:29–32; 13:28–29; John 4:21–24; 10:16). Jews, gentiles, and the “intermediate” Samaritans would all be part of the same holy community. It is important to emphasize such a theme to a new group, especially one who had previously undergone years of prejudice and hatred from the Jews who were the first members of the community proclaiming the coming of the kingdom of God. The message would not only extend an invitation to these outcasts; it would also be a means of reconciliation between the outcasts and those who traditionally asserted they were rightly outcasts.
The second element has significance in light of the context of what the Samaritans were experiencing through Simon the Sorcerer. He had been performing magic in their midst. This magic would involve the invoking of certain names of extranormal/spiritual forces, often in accordance with certain formulae, to accomplish the magician’s task. His deeds, whatever they were, had amazed them and apparently gave them confidence not only in the power of these names, but in Simon’s power over these names. Yet when Philip came and preached the name of Jesus the Christ, he also did miracles (“signs” and “demonstrations of power”) which astonished Simon. Clearly, this name was superior to all other names, the King over this kingdom Philip was preaching.
In the other text, 8:26–35, there is not much quoting of the actual evangelism. This is the episode of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. As Philip goes south on the road to Gaza, he comes across the eunuch coming back from worship in Jerusalem, where he probably had to sit on the outside of the assembly (Deut 23:1). He was reading aloud the Book of Isaiah, one of the most popular books of Scripture at this time. The Spirit leads Philip to go to the eunuch and talk to him. The eunuch was able to read, but he could not understand it. Perhaps it was simply because he was a layman God-fearer/proselyte (though even laymen at this time clearly had fairly developed understandings of Scripture). Perhaps it was exacerbated by his being on the outside of the assembly. Most likely he probably had a deficiency in access to Jews trained in interpretation of the Scripture in his particular station, setting, and situation. In any case, the eunuch reiterates that he was reading Isa 53:7–8. Indeed, the only clues we have to the content of this proclamation are the quote of this text, the eunuch’s question about who the prophet is referring to, and how Philip used this passage as a springboard to tell the eunuch the good news about Jesus.
There are deep resonances with this quote, reaching not only through the entire chapter of Isaiah and indeed the entire fourth Servant Song (which includes the last three verses of ch. 52), but through the entire arc of Isa 40–55. However, we will not be exploring the ramifications of these extensive echoes in this study (we will also not be looking at the previous Servant Songs). We will only be considering what resources Philip could draw from this passage and its immediate context. However, there are three things we can immediately say about this use of Scripture based on the text and the story of Acts leading up to this point. 1) The corpus of texts that came to be known as the OT was essential to the message of the earliest Christians as it provided the narrative context for their movement and part of the template for their identity (a template which would, of course, become reshaped by Jesus). 2) Philip presented the suffering servant as Jesus, given that he is on the other side of Jesus’s earthly life. 3) We have here an implicit affirmation of Jesus’s Messiahship, as the incorporative representative of Israel. The other information derives from these three points, and we can only draw them out by working through the passage in Isaiah.
Beginning with Isa 51:17, one sees an address to an Israel which has already drunk the cup of YHWH’s wrath and suffered exile. Now YHWH tells them that they have drunk enough, he will take the cup out of their hands and pass it to their oppressors. He will provide them with deliverance from their new slavery and establish his dominion (a statement about God’s kingdom which uses parallel phrases such as “peace” [as in shalom, wholeness and harmony], “good news” and “salvation”). YHWH’s kingship will be more firmly established on earth with the return from exile (note especially 52:11–12) and the restoration of Israel, which can only happen when YHWH returns to Zion. In so doing, he will show his saving power for all the world to see.
It is in this context that the fourth Servant Song emerges, providing the means by which YHWH will accomplish what he has just described. The key figure in this plan of salvation is the servant. Who is the servant? I have only briefly addressed what is a complex debate elsewhere concerning this text, but it seems most likely that he is an ideal representative of Israel. What could be said of Israel in suffering could be said of him. But he also represents how Israel should be faithful to YHWH and thus find their salvation in him. Still, there does not seem to have been a widespread notion, prior to the emergence of the Christian movement, that this suffering and dying figure could also be identified with the Messiah. As a notable contrast in terms of a messianic understanding of this passage, consider the Targum of Isaiah, which shows an understanding of the suffering in this passage in three ways: 1) the suffering of the sanctuary; 2) the suffering the Messiah would inflict upon Israel’s enemies; 3) the tribulation Israel would have to pass through to arrive at the horizon of salvation.
The servant represents the hope of Israel to be exalted to their rightful place in the world, since they stand at the center of YHWH’s salvific work. Yet he also represents their current state in exile with his appearance disfigured and his body marred beyond recognition. Many Second Temple Jews could easily identify with this image. Their beliefs about their own identity and role in YHWH’s creation did not seem to comport with their current state. Even for those who were back in the promised land, gentiles ruled over them, the temple was a shadow of its former glory, there was rampant injustice in their society, more and more Jews seemed to be losing their sense of unique identity and engaging in gentile practices, the tribes remained scattered, and there often seemed to be no discernible sign of YHWH’s return to Zion. They hardly seemed like the kingdom of priests YHWH anointed them to be, and the exile stood as the paramount proof of their sins. Yet, YHWH promises that this servant, and by extension Israel, will become the marvel of the world when he exalts them. The one who no longer looks like a son of man will become the Son of Man (to use the imagery of Dan 7 and Jesus’s preferred form of self-reference).
Chapter 53 opens with a summation of the story of the servant and of Israel, a nation which often seemed to be nothing special. There was nothing attractive about him/them, indeed he/they were despised, familiar with suffering, rather than the prosperity often expected of one in good standing with a god. Beginning in v. 4, we see the turning point in how this servant would be the means of YHWH’s salvation. It is here that we begin to see how some Second Temple Jews developed a belief that their own suffering would be part of the means of bringing about YHWH’s salvation not only for themselves but for the entire world (since from the beginning YHWH’s election of Israel was part of the larger purposes for creation [e.g., Gen 12:1–3]). The servant, as the representative and substitute for Israel, takes on the sickness and sorrow of Israel. This role is representative of Israel because Israel itself took this role for the world in its suffering. In the same way as Israel thought of the servant, the world considered Israel stricken and scorned by the God they served. Verse 5 is even stronger in its imagery, as the servant is pierced and crushed for the transgressions and iniquities of others, and thus he brings peace through punishment and healing through wounds. This vocation of bearing the sins of others and suffering for them followed from Israel’s need to explain its suffering (especially its continuing state of exile) combined with fundamental convictions about their divinely appointed role and YHWH’s unerring faithfulness to his promises. Thus, they formed a synthesis in which their current suffering was a crucial part of YHWH’s execution of his plan to bless the entire world through Israel and redeem the fallen creation. Of course, the existence of the servant figure also demonstrates Israel’s keen awareness that they are part of the problem as well. Just as they believe themselves to be suffering redemptively for the sins of the world, the servant suffers redemptively for the sins of Israel. Redemptive suffering is thus seen as necessary in this present evil age for the coming of the kingdom. YHWH is conquering the apparent obstacle to the fulfillment of his promises and is using it as a vehicle to bring those promises to fruition.
Of course, it is not only suffering in general that is referenced here; it is suffering unto death, which Jews would have recognized in association with the companion reality of exile. Even when some were back in the land, it was not truly theirs as they had pagan overlords. Thus, they were still in exile, still within the dominion of death. Rather than a position of esteem, it seemed they were assigned the same grave as all others. The sin of Israel herself would also ensure that the same would be so for the servant, even though he had done no violence and practiced no deception.
But that is not all there is to the picture. YHWH will yet provide some vindication to the servant, the one whom he made a guilt offering for Israel, and Israel in turn for the world. I have examined this vindication elsewhere as a resurrection reference. It is not as explicit as Isa 26:19 or Dan 12:2–3 as a reference to resurrection, but I have argued that there are good reasons to read the text as involving resurrection of the servant, as this would be his vindication after his death. This vindication provides the reason for why the wisdom of the servant in bearing the iniquities of the people justifies many (i.e., declares them “in the right” and members of the covenant community). Returning to the opening note of the song, YHWH not only vindicates the servant, but glorifies him for his work, dividing the spoils of YHWH’s victory (i.e., his kingdom) with the many. That this redemptive suffering and vindication is the means by which God brings the kingdom is shown both by the preceding context and the succeeding context in chs. 54 and 55, through which the tune of rejoicing in YHWH’s salvation carries on.
What follows concerning what Philip might have made of this passage in his proclamation is of course speculative, even if informed, and should be understood as such. The only strong conclusions I can make are ones I have already written. Given that Philip identified Jesus with the servant, and that the servant represents Israel (to the point that he embodies Israel’s story), Philip would be making an inherent royal and messianic claim about Jesus, a claim which he would probably have to explain extensively to the eunuch (considering that the eunuch might not have heard much about Jesus before and that the starting point of Philip’s evangelism was around the deepest pit in the narrative). He could rather easily link the opening of the song to Jesus’s exaltation. The next several sentences would be easily linkable to the opposition Jesus faced in his ministry culminating in his crucifixion. He could also connect it to the story of Israel and how Jesus’s crucifixion represented the climax of the suffering of Israel. With his embodiment and incorporation of Israel’s suffering for the sins of the world, Jesus would bring about redemption for many and embody the vindication of the servant in his resurrection. Indeed, Isa 53 became important in Christian theology for conceptualizing Jesus’s death, providing a crucial background for a redemptive understanding thereof. (Unfortunately, there has been less emphasis upon how this redemptive death was a means for the inauguration of the kingdom of God.)
The part of Isaiah directly quoted in the text is, of course, relatable to the darkest hours of Jesus’s life leading up to and including his crucifixion. The closing of the song on the notes of vindication, exaltation, and triumph connect with Jesus’s resurrection, exaltation, and inauguration of the kingdom. If this speculation is correct with the connections Philip drew out of this song, one would find here all of the basic elements of earlier renditions of the gospel (besides the fulfillment of Scripture, this would include crucifixion, resurrection, exaltation, and perhaps the kingdom).
Acts 9
The first case we get of Saul’s/Paul’s proclamation of the gospel appears in 9:20–22. This summary has two elements mentioned. One is that Saul preaches in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. This has multiple layers of significance in light of the OT. First, “Son of God” carried with it a royal connotation that functions messianically in this context (cf. 2 Sam 7:14; Pss 2:7; 89:26–27), meaning that claiming to be the Son of God implied that one was the expected king of Israel (hence the mocking “King of the Jews” sign on Jesus’s cross). Second, in light of the identification of Israel as God’s son (Exod 4:22; Jer 3:19; 31:9, 20; Hos 11:1; Wis 9:7; 18:13; 4 Ezra 5:28; Jub. 1:25–28), the implication is that “Son of God” identified Jesus as Israel’s chief representative fulfilling Israel’s role as the chosen people of God. Third, in line with what we see particularly in Second Temple literature, the description “Son of God” implies righteousness and faithfulness to God (Wis 2:13, 16–18; 5:5; Sir 4:10; Pss. Sol. 13:9; 18:4). Fourth, in line with the element of righteousness, the Son of God title implied a hope of divine vindication and exaltation (Wis 5:1–7). Finally, as is the implication of all the foregoing elements, “Son of God” evinces an understanding of God’s involvement in the Son’s redemptive work, as the Son is the executor of the Father’s will. After all, the Jews understood YHWH as Father because of YHWH’s great acts of deliverance, so it makes sense that the Son of God is one who is the executor of the Father’s delivering action (cf. Exod 4:22; Deut 32:6; Isa 63:16; 64:8; Jer 3:4, 19; 31:9, 20; Hos 11:1; Mal 1:6; 2:10; Tob 13:4; Sir 23:1, 4; 51:10; Wis 2:16; 5:5; 11:10; 14:3). The second element in verse 22 seems to reinforce the above with its understanding of Paul’s work of proving that Jesus is the Christ to be parallel to his preaching of Jesus as the Son of God. While the two appellations are not identical, they overlap significantly, especially in their representative incorporative, and salvific connotations.
Acts 9
The first case we get of Saul’s/Paul’s proclamation of the gospel appears in 9:20–22. This summary has two elements mentioned. One is that Saul preaches in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. This has multiple layers of significance in light of the OT. First, “Son of God” carried with it a royal connotation that functions messianically in this context (cf. 2 Sam 7:14; Pss 2:7; 89:26–27), meaning that claiming to be the Son of God implied that one was the expected king of Israel (hence the mocking “King of the Jews” sign on Jesus’s cross). Second, in light of the identification of Israel as God’s son (Exod 4:22; Jer 3:19; 31:9, 20; Hos 11:1; Wis 9:7; 18:13; 4 Ezra 5:28; Jub. 1:25–28), the implication is that “Son of God” identified Jesus as Israel’s chief representative fulfilling Israel’s role as the chosen people of God. Third, in line with what we see particularly in Second Temple literature, the description “Son of God” implies righteousness and faithfulness to God (Wis 2:13, 16–18; 5:5; Sir 4:10; Pss. Sol. 13:9; 18:4). Fourth, in line with the element of righteousness, the Son of God title implied a hope of divine vindication and exaltation (Wis 5:1–7). Finally, as is the implication of all the foregoing elements, “Son of God” evinces an understanding of God’s involvement in the Son’s redemptive work, as the Son is the executor of the Father’s will. After all, the Jews understood YHWH as Father because of YHWH’s great acts of deliverance, so it makes sense that the Son of God is one who is the executor of the Father’s delivering action (cf. Exod 4:22; Deut 32:6; Isa 63:16; 64:8; Jer 3:4, 19; 31:9, 20; Hos 11:1; Mal 1:6; 2:10; Tob 13:4; Sir 23:1, 4; 51:10; Wis 2:16; 5:5; 11:10; 14:3). The second element in verse 22 seems to reinforce the above with its understanding of Paul’s work of proving that Jesus is the Christ to be parallel to his preaching of Jesus as the Son of God. While the two appellations are not identical, they overlap significantly, especially in their representative, incorporative, and salvific connotations. For he was representative of both God and human.
Acts 10
Although Saul/Paul would have the specialized vocation of proclaiming to the gentiles (even as he would continue to proclaim among the Jews), the turning point in opening up the gentile mission came with Peter’s gospel proclamation. The story relating this proclamation in 10:34–43 is our next relevant text. Peter had received a vision of a sheet coming down to earth containing all kinds of animals, which God gave him to eat. He refused, claiming that he had never eaten anything unclean. But the voice told him to call nothing unclean which God has made clean. Peter only understood this vision when he met Cornelius, a God-fearing centurion who had also received a vision commanding him to send for Peter. The convergence of the prayers of Cornelius, the visions, and the direction by the Spirit of all parties convinced Peter that the time had come to call the gentiles to join in the paean chorus of the kingdom.
He also realizes that the reasons for believing such are in the message he has been proclaiming all along. Hence, he starts his preaching to Cornelius and his family with the conclusion, which is the message of peace through Jesus the Christ, the Lord/King of all. The first point has many dimensions to it, particularly since it comes out of the Jewish background of shalom. It implies communal wholeness and harmony, that every person and everything is in its proper, divinely intended place. It involves reconciliation, unification, deliverance from oppression, and deliverance from being an outcast into a community of wholeness, among other things. Peace is among the most frequently expressed identifying marks of the kingdom of God, so this proclamation of peace through Jesus the Messiah is part and parcel of the proclamation that Jesus is Lord. If Jesus is Lord of all, his peace reaches to all. In the context of this situation, that takeaway is that gentiles could experience this fruit of the kingdom. Jews and gentiles could be reconciled and unified, finding their new identity not by becoming like one or the other, but by becoming a new community constituted around the King Jesus. Instead of one or the other administering oppression and casting each other out of divergent communities, they could be equally incorporated into a wholesome community, in which both Jews and gentiles find their place as children of God, the body of Christ, and temples (and their community as the temple) of the Holy Spirit (here is precisely the point made in texts such as Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians). They could all be citizens of God’s kingdom, which must be so if one is to take the claim seriously that Jesus is Lord of all and is the Lord of peace.
Since Peter began with his conclusion, he now works through the story which led to this climax. He goes through the story of the life of Jesus. We only get a summary of what he said here, though I imagine he went into more detail. In any case, we see here an indication that the life of Jesus had more importance in the earliest gospel proclamations than it does today, in which it seems that we have been conditioned to skip from Jesus’s birth to his death and resurrection. We tend to forget that the story in the middle is what gives meaning and substance to the death and resurrection. This story was the story of the inauguration of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. The kingdom, the apocalyptic and eschatological reality of the realization of God’s kingship over the world, was central to Jesus’s life and ministry. Peter’s reference to Jesus being anointed with the Holy Spirit, the very presence and power of God, to release those who were under the power of the devil, shows as much. As noted earlier, the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit is a mark of the kingdom and so too is the defeat of the opposing kingdom of evil.
Peter then provides another element we have frequently observed in the earliest proclamations: the importance of the apostolic witness. This time, the witness concerns Jesus’s life. Though we already saw clearly in 1:22 and elsewhere that the witness of Jesus’s life was crucial, it is interesting that Peter brings it up here. Why does he place the testimony of witness here before the death and resurrection? It seems that he is providing corroboration of what Cornelius and his family have already heard about Jesus. Of course, they had probably already heard about Jesus’s death, which Peter once again refers to as “hanging on a tree.” This form of death manifests a curse on the individual, but God’s action of resurrecting him vindicated him and thus dispelled the curse he bore as a result of bearing sin in his death. (In Gal 3, Paul would take this same track to the conclusion that Jesus’s death and resurrection opened up the gates of the covenant community to the gentiles without the need of circumcision.) After he rose from the dead, he appeared to witnesses God had chosen, people who ate and drank with him after his resurrection (a clear pointer to the physicality of resurrection). The purpose for which God chose these witnesses to see and fellowship with Jesus was to proclaim to the world that Jesus is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. Clearly, these events had immense eschatological import. This point receives further exposition from Peter’s claim that the prophets had testified about him in expectation of the restoration he would bring (hence the reference to forgiveness of sins through his name). This double reference to Jesus as the fulfillment of prophetic expectations and as the one who has the authority to bring about the return from exile and restoration of Israel—and with it the restoration of creation as a whole—is further reinforcement of the claim that the dawn of the kingdom of God has come through Jesus.
We see the following facets in the above message. 1) God’s grace reaches out universally. 2) The kingdom of God comes through Jesus the Christ (which Peter connects here with peace, the Holy Spirit, and the power of God conquering the kingdom of evil) 3) Jesus is the Lord/King of all. 4) The story of Jesus’s life is the foundation upon which the death and resurrection build. 5) The apostolic witness is not only the corroboration of the claims of the gospel, but part of the gospel itself. 6) Jesus died a cursed death to remove the curse of sin from others. 7) God raised Jesus from the dead in vindication and to open up the time of eschatological renewal in the present age. 8) Jesus appeared to God’s chosen witnesses after his resurrection. 9) These witnesses were chosen for the purpose of testifying that God had raised Jesus from the dead and subsequently exalted him to the status of supreme and final judge of all the world. 10) One finds in Jesus the fulfillment of prophetic expectations. 11) Forgiveness of sins, of that which dehumanizes and thus causes brokenness in relation to God and other people, comes through Jesus. 12) Thus, through forgiveness of sins, we see in Jesus the embodiment and inauguration of the return from exile, the restoration of Israel, and with it the opening to the gentiles and the restoration of all creation.
Acts 11
Our only relevant text from this chapter is another one-verse summary in 11:20. It simply says that disciples from Cyprus and Cyrene began the mission in Antioch proclaiming the good news of the Lord Jesus. All we know about the content of this announcement is that it was about the Lord Jesus, but that much is enough to tell us it was about the kingship of Jesus. But if this passage is about the kingship of Jesus, it is also a programmatic statement. Jesus is King, and thus we have to live properly under his kingship in order to acknowledge our allegiance to him. This claim that Jesus is Lord was the most frequent way we see the earliest Christians announcing the kingdom of God by declaring and describing its King (cf. 13:12).
Acts 13
Our next passage, about which there is much to say, is 13:16–41, the first extensive summary of Paul’s evangelism in Acts, which also represents a turning point in the focus of the book from Peter to Paul. Paul and Barnabas are on their first missionary journey. After the opening trip to Cyprus, they depart to Pisidian Antioch. As would become customary, they made their way to the synagogue to open their evangelistic venture in the city. Following the reading from the Law and the Prophets, the synagogue rulers ask Paul and Barnabas to speak. If Barnabas spoke, we do not know about it (though it would seem he did). But Paul is the one who dominates the subsequent speech.
His opening reminds us how important the story of Israel was to the earliest Christians’ conceptions of themselves. He provides a brief summary of the history of Israel. The direction he takes with this story concerns the election of Israel, the election of David specifically, and how David’s line would bring God’s purposes for Israel to their climax. With this initial focus of Jesus as a Davidic descendant, Paul is working from the notion that the Messiah would be of David’s line—based on 2 Sam 7:11–16 and on the various promises of a Davidic ruler in the time of God’s kingdom—thus making a messianic claim. This is why he calls him the Savior, an alternate reference to the Messiah. He claims that this Jesus is the fulfillment of the promises God made to David and to Israel through David. This claim is quite broad and incorporates several promises we have noted elsewhere, producing deep echoes which we will not examine here, lest it take us too far off track. To corroborate this initial claim, he cites the testimony of John the Baptist that Jesus is the one they had been waiting for, a man so honorable and exalted in power and purpose that even a prophet like John the Baptist was unworthy to untie his sandals.
Unfortunately, the people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus for who he is, yet they still acted, unwittingly, to bring to fruition the words Paul’s audience and others like them had heard in synagogue every Sabbath. As in many of the other proclamations, Paul taught that Jesus’s condemnation to the shameful death of the cross was necessary for the fulfillment of the Scriptures. We have traced this theme before and will not do so again here, since there is no specific Scripture reference. He further underlines their unwitting participation in the fulfillment of story of Israel and their lack of recognition of who Jesus was and is by pointing out that they could find no cause for putting him to death, but they asked Pilate to execute him anyway. After his apparently shameful and cursed death, they buried him in a tomb. But he would not stay for long as God raised him from the dead. After his resurrection, he appeared to those who had been witnesses of his ministry. Once again, we see the foundation upon the apostolic witness, though Paul is deferential in this case, not referring to his own witness of the risen Jesus sometime later. The nutshell into which he packs the good news is that God had fulfilled the promises he made to the ancestors of Israel by raising Jesus from the dead. He expands on this point by citing three Scriptures: Ps 2:7; Isa 55:3; and Ps 16:10. Since we have already looked at the last elsewhere, we will not analyze its place here. But we will turn to the other two, the former of which hints at Jesus’s exaltation and, in context, that it was the result of his resurrection.
Psalm 2 is the first of the royal psalms, used when new kings ascended to the throne. It shows a keen awareness of the evil of the world and the problems the king will face from the nations. Though the king of Israel should be YHWH’s chief steward through which he exercises his authority, the kings of the world seek to extricate themselves from the rule of Israel and thus from the rule of YHWH. But as far as YHWH is concerned, their plots to do so are comical. Even so, because his sovereignty is being challenged, he cannot let this challenge go unanswered and turns his wrath against them for their attempts to thwart his sovereign intent. He has installed his chosen king on Zion; they cannot oust him. He then turns to the king and confirms this decision with a declaration that closes the psalm. He names the king as his son, with all the status that appellation brings. Given the association of Israel as the child of YHWH, the declaration of the king as son indicates that the king incorporates the identity of Israel into himself. On the other side of the equation, one sees elsewhere that the fatherhood of YHWH relates to his delivering action. Thus, the king was to exemplify YHWH’s delivering action in his rule and YHWH was promising to exemplify his delivering action through exercising his power and authority in the king as the king lived in accordance with his will. In this context, the action takes the form of overcoming enemies, expanding authority, exaltation above the nations, and empowerment to carry all of these actions out and be YHWH’s steward. The psalm ends on a call to the nations to be wise and serve YHWH lest they face the outpouring of his wrath through his son, the king. On the other hand, those who uphold his authority and live under his reign will be blessed, for it will be as living under the reign of YHWH himself.
Of course, this psalm holds up the ideal for the king which was rarely realized due to the unfaithfulness of most of the kings of Israel and Judah. It thus became a vision of how the ideal king, the royal Messiah, would be when in power. Paul connects this vision to the resurrection, stating that it showed Jesus to be in the exalted position of Messiah, the ultimate Son of God. His resurrection represents the ultimate defeat of evil thus far and signifies that God has appointed him as the one who will bring about the complete defeat of evil and all who participate in him (“take refuge in him”) will be part of this victory. The resurrection was God’s way of proclaiming that Jesus is the crux of judgment. Those people who repent, declare their allegiance (i.e., by faith), and honor and serve him are part of God’s kingdom and will be blessed as a result. Those people who oppose him, choosing other kings in his place will face God’s wrath, the natural result of rejecting the king and paying homage instead to whoever (or whatever) does not deserve such homage. After all, it would be the ultimate sedition and cannot be tolerated in God’s kingdom. In Paul’s use of this passage, we see multiple eschatological themes converging in Jesus: the coming of God’s kingdom, Messiah (and messianic kingship), resurrection, restoration of Israel, conquest of evil, judgment, and salvation. For Paul’s purposes it is all drawn together by the resurrection.
What of his use of Isa 55? As we see from the context, sketched in part in the analysis of Acts 8, the flow of this section of Isaiah is concerning the coming of the kingdom of God. After the last Servant Song, when we see the means by whom God’s kingdom comes, ch. 54 picks up with the tone of a loving husband forgiving the unfaithful wife, accepting her once more as a member of the covenantal relationship. He calls to her to return from her shame, saying that she will suffer it no more. She who was a hopeless outcast, a widow with no children, will prosper beyond imagination. Clearly such a text would reverberate in the context of the exile. It was a call to return from exile, to come and receive restoration. The afflicted Zion will rise anew under the creative power of God, becoming the crown of creation, the marvel of the nations. More importantly, he will bring peace (shalom) and security so that the tyranny and terror of others will not even be a memory. It is he who has power over life and death, and he vouchsafes their vindication.
Chapter 55 is thus an extension of an invitation to enter into this reality. If they listen to YHWH, they will delight in the richest of fare. The hungry and thirsty will not only experience satisfaction but prosperity. Whoever answers the call of YHWH will receive the everlasting fulfillment of his promises to David. It will be through such a people that YHWH will call nations from the ends of the earth, for YHWH will make this people a witness, leader, and commander of them all. But again, for these promises to come to fruition, one must seek YHWH and his way of being Israel (and ultimately being human). For his wisdom and ways transcend the wisdom and ways of humans. They are higher in terms of transcending comprehension and in authority/sovereignty. The latter means that the wisdom and ways of YHWH, because they are of YHWH bear the authority of YHWH to accomplish his purposes. What he says is done. There is power in his word which no other person bears in their word. In the ancient world especially, there was a widespread understanding of the power and efficacy of words. Clearly, no other word could have as much power as a divine word. That notion is clearly behind vv. 10 and following. There are several resonances created by these statements, only two of which we will focus on here. One resonance is with YHWH’s creative power as, according to Gen 1, he created the heavens and the earth by means of his word. The other resonance is with YHWH’s unerring faithfulness, meaning that his word is unbreakable, and he will accomplish his covenantal purposes over and against whatever obstacles may stand in the way. The latter resonance clearly stands behind this passage and the context as a whole in that one of the events it narrates in anticipation is covenantal renewal. The former is there as well, but it only comes to the surface occasionally, such as at the end of this particular section. We see the renewal of the covenant with Israel brings the renewal of creation as a whole, drawing out the celebration of creation that this time has finally come. That this event is the renewal of creation becomes even clearer in v. 13b, with the declaration that these signs of renewal will be and everlasting sign for YHWH’s renown.
At first, it may seem Paul is only using the portion he quotes as a segue to his quote of Ps 16:10. On a second look, we see much more is going on here. Jesus’s resurrection represents the fruition of the story told in Isaiah because it is the fulfillment of YHWH’s covenantal promises, especially the ones given to David (sounding once more the notes of the Messiah). The resurrection demonstrates the depth of YHWH’s faithful love, extending to concrete redemption from death. It also illustrates YHWH’s creative power in serving as the inaugural event of the new creation. It is the tapestry woven together by threads of covenant renewal and creation renewal. The resurrection is thus the accomplishment of YHWH’s will effected by his word (both his creative power and fulfillment of covenantal promises; there is also a further resonance from Christian theology in that Jesus himself is the Word of God). It just looks like what no one had expected. As v. 34 clarifies, this one rose to the resurrection of everlasting life (in Paul’s terms, never to return to decay) well before everyone else.
On these bases, Paul is able to claim that the forgiveness of sins comes through Jesus. He then adds an idea he would expand upon extensively in Galatians and Romans that Jesus provides a justification that the law could not. While the full depths of this claim are inseparable from an analysis of those books—as well as Hebrews—and thus cannot receive adequate examination here, it is important to note two implications of this claim. First, it is an announcement of a new, superior covenant (cf. Jer 31:31–40; Ezek 36:24–28). Second, it thus provides a new center to the constitution of the identity of God’s covenantal community. Instead of the justified ones being defined by keeping the law of Moses—though Moses attested to and pointed to Christ—they will be the ones who followed Jesus and participated in his identity by their faith in him. Paul closes his speech with a warning referencing Hab 1:5, telling them to take care that what he said will not happen to them.
Habakkuk 1:5 stands at the beginning of YHWH’s first section of dialogue. Habakkuk had begun complaining that it seemed YHWH had done nothing despite Habakkuk, standing in for Israel, pleading to YHWH for help, crying out due to injustice and violence. This apparent lack of restraint of evil allows the wicked to flourish in an environment of injustice. YHWH responds with an opening of, “just watch.” He states that he will do something utterly remarkable. Specifically, he is raising up the mighty and ruthless Babylonians as his instrument of judgment. They will be his hammer of wrath against the injustice Habakkuk sees.
YHWH of course knows the savagery of the Babylonians; he had acknowledged as much in the first answer. Babylon is swollen with pride and his desires are crooked, in opposition to those people who must remain faithful and thus find themselves receiving YHWH’s declaration of righteousness. But as the cliché phrase goes, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.” As Babylon heaps up treasures and honor for himself, he is only setting himself up for a greater crash. He will eventually face backlash and will receive what he has given to the nations. What YHWH has said will be done because he has true power and authority, unlike the idols.
Habakkuk closes with a prayer in awe of YHWH, asking for him to renew his deeds of deliverance for which he is known. He goes into extended descriptions of these deeds using the Divine Warrior image known throughout the OT. From his perspective, this action is not present at the moment. Yet even in the midst of despair when it seems that nothing is going right, because he knows YHWH and what he has already done, he will rejoice in him and be joyful in the one he knows as Savior.
Naturally, Habakkuk represented the continuing atmosphere of injustice amongst the covenant people and continuing exile. In the days of Paul, the Romans had replaced the Babylonians, and the Jews could now look back at a time when it seemed the Roman conquest was a judgment of the failings of the late Hasmonean period. But it created only further problems with Roman oppression and still-standing obstacles to the return from exile. They would have read the promises of the backlash against the Babylonians to apply to the Romans. In the context of his speech, Paul seems to apply the text not to the Romans, but to anyone who opposes Jesus. Such people stand with those people who unjustly crucified him and against the fulfillment of YHWH’s promises of return from exile, restoration of Israel, and renewed creation, hence Paul’s warning.
Many old friends reappear for this presentation of the gospel. 1) The story of Israel was essential to the self-conception of the earliest Christians and was the story in which they placed the gospel as the climax. 2) As such, it was important to understand that Jesus is the ultimate Messiah, the one in whom Israel’s story is summarized and climaxed. 3) In line with this point, Jesus was the fulfillment of the promises made through the prophets. 4) Jesus’s death was a fulfillment of the prophets. 5) Jesus’s resurrection was at the center of this message, giving substance to all other claims. 6) The apostolic witness to the resurrection, as well as to Jesus’s life leading up to it, were necessary to the Christian identity and message. 7) Jesus’s resurrection was the fulfillment of the promises YHWH made to Israel including return from exile, restoration, and renewed creation (it is in this discussion that we see the implicit reference to his exaltation and Lordship in this context). 8) It thus formed the basis of the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins through Jesus. 9) Jesus, as shown in his resurrection, is the foundation of the new covenant. 10) Jesus is the new center of the constitution of the identity of YHWH’s covenant community. 11) Thus, people will receive judgment based on how they live by Jesus and how they respond to Jesus.
Acts 14
In chapter 14, specifically in 14:14–17, we see a presentation of the gospel unlike any recorded in Acts up to this point. It takes place in Lystra, the audience is quite different (especially in that they do not have the background knowledge of the Scriptures or Jesus on which the evangelists could build in the previous proclamations) and the situation is quite different. Paul had just provided healing to a crippled man lame from birth. The Lystrans respond to this miracle by claiming that Paul and Barnabas are Hermes and Zeus respectively and seeking to sacrifice to them. This response traces back to an ancient legend preserved in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 8.626–721. According to this story, Zeus and Hermes once visited this region disguised as ordinary men and were turned away from many homes before finally being accepted by an elderly couple. The gods turned this house into a temple and leveled all of the others which had rejected them. When one considers the fact that Zeus was the most revered god in this region, one gets a stronger grasp on the motivation behind this response. It seems the response was a mix of reverence, awe, and fear hoping to satiate these two men with the honor it seemed they deserved and thus hoping to avert their anger.
As soon as Paul and Barnabas understand what is going on, they make a typical Jewish response to blasphemy, tearing their clothes. They promptly seek to turn back the divine honor given to them and at the same time present the real cause of this man’s healing (as Peter did in Acts 3). They have to use other reference points to communicate their message since this audience did not have the Scriptures background or the knowledge of Jesus. Thus, Paul and Barnabas begin their proclamation with telling them that they must turn from the Greco-Roman cults to the living Creator God. He had let them go in the past until the appointed time should come that the kingdom announcement should reach them. From this theme, Paul and Barnabas could have presented reasons for thinking such time had come, but the summary proceeds in a different direction. Even though God had allowed them to go their own way until the consummation of his plan, he did not leave himself without testimony to the nations in the meantime. This God has provided them with his kindness expressed through rain from heaven and crops in their seasons, enabling them to continue living. They have plenty of food and joy in their hearts because of God and his blessings. This same God, the one with power over all of creation, was the one whose power and authority healed the lame man. They had known something of him all along without recognizing him. But now the time had come to recognize this God for who he is. Unfortunately, the speech cuts off here before we can see where else Paul and Barnabas take this narrative. What we do have though illustrates the importance of what theologians have called “general revelation.”
Though this speech does not have much in common with the previous speeches, particularly because its setting does not have much in common with previous settings, it is important for showing us the different shapes of these proclamations so as to be meaningful in context. 1) The call of the gospel requires abandoning idolatry and worshiping the Creator God, who we see in Jesus (implicit in this claim is that this Jesus and no other divinity, is Lord/King). 2) Without the backgrounds of the Scriptures and Jesus, Paul and Barnabas had to start with general revelation. 3) What we learn from general revelation is that God has left a universal witness to the nations showing his power over creation, to sustain them in his grace until the proclamation of the kingdom came. While these emphases are new to this study, they are forms and implications of affirmations in past proclamations.
Acts 16
Another brief proclamation that appears in an unusual setting is 16:29–32. Paul and Silas had been put in prison at Philippi essentially by mob force. In prison they prayed and sang hymns until an earthquake wrecks the prison. The prison guard, facing the prospect of all his charges escaping, considers suicide rather than suffering this shame of failing in his duty (and possible execution anyway). But Paul reassures him that he, Silas, and all other prisoners were still in their cells. The guard then rushes to Paul and Silas and asks them what he must do to be saved. Clearly, the guard had heard, whether by personal witness or rumor, the words of the demon-possessed girl that Paul and Silas were proclaiming the way to be saved (v. 17), though perhaps she had done so in a mocking tone. In addition to these words, he had observed their conduct in prison, particularly their joy and confidence in the Lord rising above their circumstances. Then he had observed their steadfastness in staying in their cell, even though they had the opportunity to go free (there is also perhaps an implication of their authority given that they had managed to keep the other prisoners in their cells). All of these virtues of Paul and Silas had delivered him from facing shame and death (when he does become a disciple of Jesus, the chief characteristic Luke notes about him is that he was filled with joy, the same joy he observed in Paul and Silas). Now he was looking for permanent deliverance (though at this point he likely did not understand the extent of what he was asking or what the disciples were proclaiming).
They tell him this deliverance comes through faith in the Lord Jesus, a message which they go on to explain beyond the narrative quote. What we can see from this brief statement is that Jesus being Lord is crucial to the message and that faith is the mark of allegiance to this Lord. We can see that this statement is a kingdom statement, proclaiming the king and what it means to live under his kingship, though again the details would have come in Paul and Silas’s exposition. They would have to go into detail about the content of the faith and what it means for Jesus to be Lord (so once again, the basic elements we have seen again and again are here, but not in the foreground of the narration). (It is also interesting to note here that delivering joy has some significance. Joy which brings deliverance was at work in Paul and Silas. Through their witness and proclamation of the gospel of Lord Jesus, this delivering joy comes to birth also in the jailer.)
Acts 17
Paul and Silas are then released from the prison in Philippi and with the move to Thessalonica comes another relevant text, 17:1–3 and 6–7. Paul again enacts his custom in starting his preaching at the synagogue, where he could rely upon the foundation of the Scriptures. A further benefit of beginning here would be that the Jews would be more familiar with the surrounding gentiles and know how to communicate with them. Paul could thus rely on leaving behind a strong body of missionary farmers, people who would know how to reap, tend, and continue sowing this ground.
For three Sabbaths, he reasoned with them from the Scriptures. He explained and demonstrated from them that there was a necessity for the Christ to suffer, die, and rise from the dead. He then says that the Jesus he has been proclaiming is the Christ. Since we have gone over each of these points before, especially in reference to particular Scriptures, which are lacking here, it is sufficient to leave these issues in summary form at this point.
But vv. 6 and 7 add a little more intrigue from an outsider perspective. Some Jews who opposed Paul and Silas had become angry and stirred up the town into a mob rage. While Paul and Silas avoided the turmoil, the Jews came and dragged Jason and some other Christians before the city officials. Without a hint of irony, they claim that Paul and Silas were men who had caused trouble all over the world and had brought their troublemaking antics to Thessalonica, courtesy of Jason’s aiding and abetting. They accuse Paul and Silas of violating the decrees of Caesar and committing sedition in proclaiming that there is another king called Jesus. Of course, this perspective is from outside the Christian movement and involves some skewing of the Christian understanding of their own message. Their charge disturbed officials, but it was not enough to stick, as no punishment is exacted against the Christians. Still, anytime Jesus was proclaimed as Lord, this construal could arise, especially insofar as Jesus’s claim to divine Lordship was exclusive, and thus Caesar’s rule was relativized and any potential claims impinging on the divine realm were undermined. The mistake came in construing their message as some sort of incitement of violent revolt, of which the Romans knew all too much already at this point in the history of the empire. As with the Jews, the Christians generally did not suffer official persecution simply for proclaiming that Jesus is Lord, though there were times later in their history when they did. As long as they did not incite violence, the claims of Lordship went over the heads of earthly officials, but the prospect of the eschatological reckoning remained like the sword of Damocles.
What can we gather from this episode? 1) The Scriptures were foundational to the Christian identity and message. 2) Jesus is the fulfillment of the Scriptures. 3) Jesus is the Christ/Messiah. 4) Jesus, as Messiah, had to die and resurrect, once again showing the importance of both his death and resurrection in the earliest proclamations. 5) Outsiders recognize that one of the distinctive features of the Christian proclamation is the message that Jesus is Lord.
Later in this same chapter, we find another terse summary in 17:10–11. The only information we can draw from the description is an emphasis on the fulfillment of the Scriptures, specifically that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Scriptures, hence why the Bereans search the Scriptures to substantiate or undermine what Paul says. It is one more demonstration to the importance of the OT in early Christian proclamations.
It is not until 17:16–31 that we return to a more detailed passage. Here we find Paul by himself in Athens waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him. While he waits, he is profoundly disturbed by the idolatry of the city. He resorts to his customary strategy of going to the Jews and God-fearers in the synagogue to reason with them. In tandem with this strategy, he takes to the streets and reasons in the marketplace with the people, which is where the philosophers tended to gather (especially the Stoics). Thus, Paul inevitably sets himself upon a collision course with prevailing pagan philosophies, an audience which, much like his audience in Lystra, does not have the background of a Jewish worldview. What they hear him proclaiming sounds like foreign gods, which Luke explains is an interpretation of the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Apparently, Paul must have mentioned them together so often that they associated the resurrection with a deity since it was clear to them that he was also preaching Jesus as deity. Indeed, interpreters since at least the time of John Chrysostom have understood the pagan interpretation to be that they thought he was proclaiming a pair—perhaps a husband-wife pair—of gods by the names of Jesus and Anastasis/Anastasia, akin to how the pair Osiris and Isis were often put together. The philosophers, curious about these strange ideas, bring him to the Areopagus where the council of Athens convened. They give him a chance to present his “strange ideas.”
Paul opens with an observation of the piety of the Athenians, having seen many objects of worship during his stay. One in particular caught his eye: an altar dedicated to an unknown God. This practice of dedicating altars to unknown gods was a precaution by people thinking that gods without proper veneration would strike the city for this apparent insult. The Greeks had recognized many gods, but they faced the prospect that there were gods they had either forgotten or had not yet known. Paul uses this avenue of the Athenians’ self-claimed ignorance as a way to proclaim his message described earlier as concerning Jesus and the resurrection.
With this non-Jewish audience, Paul must start with more basic notions of the identity and action of this God he is announcing to them. This God is the sovereign Creator, the Lord and maker of heaven and earth (i.e., everything). He does not reside in temples. He does not need service from human hands since he is himself the source of life and all the provisions of humanity. He transcends the boundaries typically set upon gods—X is a god/goddess of the Egyptians, Y is a god/goddess of the Phrygians—as he instead places all nations in their appointed times and places. He arranged these states of affairs in order for people to seek him, reach out for him, and find him, though no one must go far to find him (over against the Epicurean theology). His dominion extends everywhere because it is all his creation. In him, all people live, move, and have their being. Furthermore, Paul quotes from Aratus, the Stoic poet, in saying that all people are the offspring of God (there is some dispute of whether his statement before this one was a quote).
If one grants that humans are God’s offspring—though no doubt Greeks and Jews had different concepts of what such a claim meant, especially because they had different notions of divinity—then the idolatry of the pagans is senseless, for God could not be gold or silver or stone. His claim in this regard would be further suggestive that idolatry is dehumanizing, denying the identity of God and humans simultaneously. In Judaism and Christianity, it was and is recognized that humans, as image-bearers of God, can only properly serve the purposes for which they exist by acknowledging that God is God. To worship anything else leads to dehumanization because humans define their identity by what they worship and thus deny their true identity by denying the true identity of God and his worthiness of worship.
The next step in his argument against their idolatry is that God allowed this idolatry to flourish in the past by overlooking it as ignorance, just as parents will for a time accommodate the ignorance of their children. But now the time has come for them to face their ignorance and repent for what they have done in that ignorance. In other words, repentance is shaped by the knowledge motivating it. In this case, Paul shows the shape of this repentance in two ways, one preceding this announcement of the call to repentance and one following it. The preceding is Paul’s demonstration, only briefly summarized here, that the Greeks have not been faithful to the revelation God has provided them, apparently without realizing it. The succeeding is the demonstration of the true God, the God who has the authority to put all of creation through judgment and set all things right, as the God revealed in Jesus. The launching of God’s eschatological action has already come through an eschatological action, the raising of Jesus from the dead. The resurrection was also the marking out of Jesus, as the first one resurrected, to be the judge of the world, punishing those who have not repented, declaring righteous those who have done so, and putting all matters to rights. Everything Paul has claimed about God and his call of repentance is ensured by Jesus’s resurrection (a claim which represents further confrontation in the Christian proclamation considering that neither the Epicureans or Stoics he was speaking to accepted resurrection or even found it desirable based on what we know about them). Paul likely elaborated more on the logical connections between all of the arguments he made, and he was even asked to do so further by some in attendance, but that elaboration is not available to us.
We see some more familiar elements here than the message in Lystra mixed with points similar to the ones Paul made in Lystra. 1) Jesus and the resurrection are clearly at the center of Paul’s proclamation. 2) The God Paul is proclaiming is the only sovereign Creator and giver of life (some of the bases of kingdom theology). 3) From the beginning, God has reached out to all people and has arranged the world so that humans would reach out to him as well. 4) Paul uses the gentile context in citing the altar to the unknown god and the quote from Aratus. 5) The gospel, as the climax of the Jewish story, necessarily involves confrontation of idolatry where it is present. 6) God has called all people to repentance in light of the day of judgment and the coming of his kingdom (which is the great setting to rights because it involves removal of evil and transformation of that which is good). 7) The assurance of all of these points comes from Jesus’s resurrection, the event which also marked out Jesus as the just judge of the world.
Acts 20
This chapter features one text relevant for our purposes: 20:21. Paul is making his farewell speech to the Ephesian elders on his way to Jerusalem. It is a speech overflowing with a sense of foreboding that a clash is coming in Jerusalem, a sense which continues to percolate until Paul arrives in Jerusalem. In this speech, he gives a summary of the gospel he has preached. This verse provides three characteristics of the gospel: 1) its universal outreach; 2) its universal call to repentance; 3) its call to a pledge of loyalty/faith to the Lord Jesus. He says he has declared this message to both Jews and Greeks, which is an indicator of the character as well as the content of the gospel. It is for everyone because its content is an outreach to everyone on the part of God. He summarizes that outreach by appeal to two calls. The first is the call to repentance, the call to renounce one’s old life agenda lived in idolatry of some form and to take up the agenda of Jesus, which is in fact the agenda of God. The second is the call to pledge one’s loyalty to the Lord/King Jesus by faith, the means by which they become constituted as citizens of the kingdom over which Jesus reigns.
Paul’s Trials
The first relevant text from Paul’s various trial proceedings is actually a three-for-one special, as we are dealing with parallel texts in 23:6 // 24:20–21 // 25:18–19. Here, Paul provides the reason why he goes through these trials and must provide defenses before a mob crowd in Jerusalem (with a commander of Roman troops presiding), the Sanhedrin, the governor Felix in Caesarea, the next governor Festus two years later, and Herod Agrippa II before he gets his chance to go to Rome. As far as Paul is concerned, he has done nothing criminal, whether against Jewish law or Roman law, and each trial upholds his claim. To him, the only reason he was in the situation was because of his message, a message he summarizes as being about the resurrection. The ch. 24 text is a repeat of this claim and the ch. 25 text is a paraphrase by Festus in a letter to Herod Agrippa II concerning Paul. Apart from these statements, it does not seem Paul actually presents the gospel per se in his trials until he comes before Agrippa. This much more extensive summary is the next relevant text in 26:2–23.
The presentation of the gospel itself begins in v. 6 after Paul’s description of his former life as a Jew. He rephrases the above summary to say that it is because of his hope in what God has promised the ancestors of Israel that he is on trial. The encapsulation of this hope, which has already been outlined extensively above, comes in God raising the dead. As noted before, this image of resurrection was a synecdoche of the hope of Israel—and, by extension, the world—and the gospel proclamation that God had begun the resurrection with Jesus was the heralding of the fulfillment of Israel’s hope as a whole. He then provides Agrippa with his story of how he came to believe that Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s promises (a story he had provided previously in the defense before the mob in ch. 22). In this recollection of his Damascus Road encounter with Jesus, Paul quotes Jesus in more detail than before. This time, we get from Jesus an essential summary of what Paul’s ministry was to be. He was to be a servant and a witness of what he had seen and what he will see. Jesus was sending him to open the eyes of the Jews and the gentiles, just as Jesus and his followers opened his eyes. He would turn them from darkness to light. He would turn them from the power of Satan to God, in essence a change of citizenship from the oppressive kingdom of Satan to the delivering kingdom of God. That this claim is true becomes clearer with Jesus’s other purpose statements of Paul’s ministry as giving his hearers the means to receive forgiveness of sins and a place among the sanctified people of God (i.e., the covenant people), attained by faith (i.e., a pledge of loyalty to the King Jesus).
Paul presents such a summary as a way of describing his commission and upholding his faithful love in carrying it out. Everywhere he has gone, he has preached the necessity of repentance in turning to God and proving this repentance by deeds. There is a deep theology that Paul is hinting at through this summary which ties together repentance, faith, works, justification, sanctification, glorification, anthropology, the various contours of pneumatology, the work of Christ, and many other areas. That is, Paul’s speech here is crystallizing well his larger theology that we see in his letters. We have already analyzed repentance several times and can see how it makes perfect sense to say it must be proved by deeds. If repentance is the adoption of a new agenda and a “turning around” of one’s life, how else can one demonstrate that such repentance has in fact occurred apart from deeds? This call to repentance, also as noted before, connects with the coming of the kingdom and the hope of Israel. Paul makes the connection clear in substituting his earlier reason for why he is on trial and why some Jews have been attacking him with this proclamation of the necessity of repentance.
Despite his persecution by the Jews who insist he has been egregiously unfaithful to the law and Scriptures of Israel, Paul responds that his proclamation has been thoroughly scriptural. He has in fact proclaimed what Moses and the prophets always said would happen, which he interprets christocentrically as meaning that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead. As a result of being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light to his own people and to the gentiles. This last point is where Paul places himself and the earliest Christians, they are the means by which he makes this proclamation of light through their witness of his resurrection.
Thus, what do we learn about the content of the gospel from this speech before Herod Agrippa II? 1) It revolves around the fulfillment of the hope provided by God’s promises, principally referenced here by raising the dead. 2) The gospel involves deliverance from darkness to light. 3) It involves deliverance from the power/kingdom of Satan to the power/kingdom of God. 4) It brings the offer of the forgiveness of sins. 5) Similarly, it provides a place among the sanctified people who have pledged loyalty to King Jesus by faith. 6) Repentance is necessary for entrance into the kingdom (i.e., attaining the hope of Israel) and this repentance must be proven by deeds. 7) There was divine necessity, attested by the Scriptures, that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead. 8) As a result of the Christ’s resurrection, he would proclaim light to both the Jews and gentiles (imagery which evokes many texts simultaneously, notably Isa 49).
Acts 28
Our last relevant text comes from the end of our last chapter in 28:17–31. Here Paul is addressing the leaders of the Jews in Rome. He summarizes the events which have transpired to lead him here and frames his reason for being bound as once again because of the hope of Israel. The ground on which the gospel builds is the story of Israel, and the foundation of Jesus extends from that ground. While it is possible to articulate the gospel apart from recourse to the story of Israel, it is not fully comprehensible without that story. Even though some gentiles came into the movement without knowing the background of the Scriptures, they would eventually be educated on that story, probably by the Jewish disciples that evangelists such as Paul convinced. The Scriptures that came to be known as the OT have, after all, always been the Bible of the Church (to which the NT was not officially added until later).
The Jews essentially regard his initial statement as unproblematic, as they have not received any letters concerning him or heard any bad reports about him. However, they are aware that his movement is highly controversial, and they are willing to hear his views. Then Paul really gets a chance to present the bulk of his material (Luke describes his proclamation as lasting from morning until evening). We have seen time and time again that even when the phrase for “kingdom of God” is not present, the kingdom has been a crucial component of the gospel proclamation in one form or another (often coming in the form of the declaration that Jesus is Lord). Indeed, it forms a basic inclusio of the work. It appears as the basic foundation of Jesus’s teaching in 1:3 and as one of the basic components of Paul’s teaching in the closing verse 28:31. Despite the difference in vocabulary between the teachings of the earliest Church and Jesus, there is substantial continuity, especially at this point of the kingdom of God. The companion claim to the declaration of the kingdom of God is the description of the King. As has been noted before, the claim that Jesus is Lord is as much a programmatic statement as a descriptive one. The kingdom is shaped by its king just as politics become shaped by the political powers.
Paul also tries to convince the Jews about Jesus from the Law and the Prophets. In other words, as in many other cases, he is trying to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Scriptures. Most likely, he is making a case that Jesus is the Messiah and has brought the story of Israel to its climax, reconstituting its identity around himself. Some Jews were convinced, others were not. Paul understood this rejection by some to be a reflection of this passage from Isa 6. It is a similar statement to Stephen’s speech against the Jews who rejected Jesus, a claim that they fit the same pattern of behavior and foolishness as their forefathers who rejected the prophets and thus YHWH’s word through them. This citation reveals how Paul considered his own vocation to be similar to Isaiah’s and how his commission came in a way similar to Isaiah (though Paul’s vision was not a heavenly one, but of Jesus himself appearing to him from heaven to commission him personally). He understood his message to be a mix of judgment and salvation, of calls to repentance and pronouncements of hope, just as Isaiah’s ministry. What follows the citation of the text is how long YHWH has commissioned Isaiah to speak: until the land of Israel lies in ruins and the people are in exile. However, there will remain a holy seed (what is otherwise known as the remnant of faithful Israel) left as a stump in the land. While Paul could naturally see the Jews who joined the Christian community to be this stump, he could also see that same call as a reason to go now to the gentiles with the message of salvation, as he had already done.
In this last proclamation of the gospel in Acts, we see several elements in common with the previous one and with many others. 1) The gospel concerns the hope of Israel and thus bears continuity with the story of Israel in its identity. 2) The declaration and explanation of the kingdom of God is essential to the gospel. 3) The proclamation of the kingdom of God often came in the form of declaring that Jesus is Lord and Christ (the kingdom is after all shaped by its king). 4) Jesus represents the fulfillment of the Scriptures (especially in his vocation as Messiah). 5) Though the gospel was first for the Jews, it has a universal outreach to the gentiles as well.
As noted at the outset, I have summarized elsewhere the gospel elements and where they have appeared. I will not be repeating all of that here. What is clear, though, is that there is no definite rubric for how to proclaim the gospel and I will not presume to provide one. It is more that there are crucial elements that can be presented in various orders and with various forms of elaboration. We have witnessed the creativity of the evangelists in Acts in combining these ingredients in various ways to proclaim fundamentally similar messages. Hopefully examining these proclamations will reshape how we understand the gospel and proclaim it to others so that our worldviews and understandings of our Christian identity are more sufficiently biblical.