Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
We must obey God rather than men
Acts 5:27-32
27 When they had brought them, they set them before the council. The high priest questioned them, · WEB
Charged with disobedience, the apostles state the principle that governs every later conflict in the book — and then commit the offense again in the answer itself.
The high priest's charge has two halves and the second is the revealing one. Didn't we strictly command you not to teach in this name? — a fair summary of chapter four. Then: you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and intend to bring this man's blood on us.
Notice what he cannot bring himself to say. He does not use the name he is prosecuting them for using; it is this name, and this man. And the complaint about blood is an unwitting quotation. At the trial the crowd had said let his blood be on us Matthew 27:25, and the council now objects to the very thing it once invited. The charge is not that the apostles are lying. It is that they will not stop saying something the court finds intolerable to hear attributed to itself.
The answer is seven words in English and it has governed Christian conduct under hostile authority ever since. We must obey God rather than men. It is not anarchism and it is not a general licence. The court is a legitimate authority and the apostles have appeared before it when summoned, twice, and will do so again. What is refused is one specific command, on the ground that it requires disobedience to a higher one. Where the two do not conflict, no principle is invoked at all.
Then, having stated the principle, they immediately demonstrate it. Told not to teach in this name, they preach a compressed sermon on the spot, and every element of the earlier preaching is in it. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you killed, hanging him on a tree. The phrase about the tree is not decoration; it is the law's own language for a man under God's curse Deuteronomy 21:22–23, and using it before this court says that the death they arranged was the accursed death, and that God reversed the verdict.
The exaltation is stated with two titles. God exalted him to be a Prince and a Savior, and the purpose clause is the extraordinary part: to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins. Repentance is here something given rather than merely demanded. The men who crucified him are being told that the one they killed is now in a position to grant them the very change of mind they would need in order to be forgiven — and that this is what he was exalted for.
The closing sentence names two witnesses, which is the number the law requires Deuteronomy 19:15. We are his witnesses of these things; and so also is the Holy Spirit. The apostles supply the human testimony that their office was defined by; the Spirit supplies the corroboration, and the corroboration is visible to the court in the healings it has already conceded it cannot deny. The final clause is the one that will cost them a flogging: the Spirit is given to those who obey him — said to a body that has just been told, in its own chamber, that it is not obeying.
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