Читать книгу The Acts of the Apostles - William Barclay - Страница 21

LORD AND CHRIST

Acts 2:22–36

‘Men of Israel, listen to these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved by God to you by deeds of power and wonders and signs, which God, among you, did through him, as you yourselves know – this man, delivered up by the fore-ordained knowledge and counsel of God, you took and crucified by the hand of wicked men. But God raised him up and loosed the pains of death because it was impossible that he should be held subject by it. For David says in regard to him: “Always I foresaw the Lord before me, because he is at my right hand so that I should not be shaken. Because of this my heart has rejoiced and my tongue has exulted, and, furthermore, my flesh shall dwell in hope, because thou wilt not leave my soul in the land of the dead nor wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life. Thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance.” Brethren, I can speak to you freely about the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried and his memorial is among us to this day. Thus he was a prophet; and because he knew that God had sworn an oath to him, that one of his descendants should sit upon his throne, he spoke with foresight about the resurrection of the Christ, that he would neither be left in the world of the dead nor would his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and all of us are his witnesses. So then, when he had been exalted to the right hand of God, he received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father and poured out this which you see and hear. For David did not ascend up into heaven, and yet he says: “The Lord said to my Lord, sit upon my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool for thy feet.” So then let all the house of Israel certainly know that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified Lord and Christ.’

HERE is a passage full of the essence of the thought of the early preachers.

(1) It insists that the cross was no accident. It belonged to the eternal plan of God (verse 23). Over and over again, Acts states this same thing (cf. 3:18, 4:28, 13:29). The thinking found in Acts safeguards us from two serious errors in our understanding of the death of Jesus. (a) The cross is not a kind of emergency measure flung out by God when everything else had failed. It is part of God’s very life. (b) We must never think that anything Jesus did changed the attitude of God to men and women. It was by God that Jesus was sent. We may put it in this way: the cross was a window in time allowing us to see the suffering love which is eternally in the heart of God.

(2) Acts insists that this in no way lessens the enormity of what those who crucified Jesus actually did. Every mention of the crucifixion in Acts is loaded with a feeling of shuddering horror (cf. Acts 2:23, 3:13, 4:10, 5:30). Apart from anything else, the crucifixion shows supremely how horrifyingly sin can behave.

(3) Acts is out to prove that the sufferings and death of Christ were the fulfilment of prophecy. The earliest preachers had to do that. To the Jews, the idea of a crucified Messiah was incredible. Their law said: ‘anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse’ (Deuteronomy 21:23). To orthodox Jews, the cross made it completely impossible that Jesus could be the Messiah. The early preachers answered: ‘If you would only read your Scriptures in the right way, you would see that all was foretold.’

(4) Acts stresses the resurrection as the final proof that Jesus was indeed God’s chosen one. Acts has been called the Gospel of the Resurrection. To the early Church, the resurrection was all-important. We must remember this: without the resurrection, there would have been no Christian Church at all. When the disciples preached the centrality of the resurrection, they were arguing from experience. After the cross, they were bewildered and broken; their dream had gone and their lives had been shattered. It was the resurrection which changed all that and turned them from cowards into heroes. It is one of the tragedies of the Church that so often the preaching of the resurrection is confined to Easter time. Every Sunday is the Lord’s Day, and every Lord’s Day should be kept as resurrection day. In the eastern Church on Easter Day, when two people meet, one says: ‘The Lord is risen’ and the other answers: ‘He is risen indeed!’ Christians should never forget that they live and walk with a risen Lord.