Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
Arrested for preaching the resurrection
Acts 4:1-12
1 As they spoke to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came to them, · WEB
The first official opposition comes from the party with most to lose doctrinally, and Peter's answer under interrogation narrows salvation to a single name.
The arresting party is named precisely, and the naming is the explanation. The priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came, being upset because they taught the people and proclaimed in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. The Sadducees denied the resurrection Acts 23:8, and the high-priestly families were Sadducean. The apostles were not detained for disturbing the peace. They were detained for teaching a doctrine that the men holding office had staked their position on denying.
The arrest is also, in the book's characteristic irony, ineffective before it happens. It is evening, so the two are held overnight — and in the same breath the writer records that many who heard believed, and the number of the men reached about five thousand. The sermon was stopped and the result was not.
The morning assembly is described in a way that establishes exactly whom Peter is facing. Rulers, elders and scribes; Annas, Caiaphas, and as many as were of the high-priestly family. This is the body that condemned Jesus a few weeks earlier, in the same room, with the same men presiding. Peter, who was last in these precincts warming himself at a fire and denying that he knew the accused, is now standing in the middle of them.
The question put to them is the right question and is asked with the wrong motive: By what power, or in what name, have you done this? Authority is what a court is entitled to ask about. But the healing itself is not in dispute, and the phrasing concedes it — they ask by what power this was done.
Peter's answer, filled with the Spirit, begins by pointing out the oddity of the proceeding. They are being examined concerning a good deed done to a crippled man. Then he answers the question exactly as asked, and adds a clause nobody requested: it was by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. The court is given the credentials it asked for and its own verdict quoted back to it in the same sentence.
He reaches for a psalm the builders would know. The stone the builders rejected has become the head of the corner — and he says by you, the builders, which turns a proverb into an indictment. These men were the custodians of Israel's worship, professionals in assessing what belonged in the structure, and the text they had been given for centuries describes their trade and predicts their mistake.
The closing sentence is the widest claim so far and the narrowest at once. There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that is given among men, by which we must be saved. It is exclusive, and it is stated to a tribunal with the power to punish him for it. It is also, read in context, an offer: the name being withheld from no one is the name they are being told to stop using.
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