1. First opposition (3:1-4:31)

While the disciples continued to participate in the liturgy of the temple (3:1), they manifested a power of wholeness, which the temple and its cultus could not (vv.2-10). They not only proclaimed the Resurrection; they were empowered by God to raise up to new life and wholeness those prevented by their brokenness from full participation in the life of God’s people. The lame man was prohibited by the religious laws from entering the temple proper where the men of Israel offered sacrifices in God’s presence. At the same time, the temple’s community and worship never reached out to this man with healing. His healing through Peter and John not only manifested the power of wholeness in this new experience of God, but also illuminated in bold relief the impotence of the old covenant community and its cultus.

Peter’s address, following the healing, clearly links the healing with the resurrection of Jesus (3:11-16). The healing is a witness to the Resurrection, an attestation by God to the validity of what the Christian community claims. At the same time, Peter emphasizes that it is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who has acted in this way. He links the event with the God of the old covenant and then calls the old covenant community to realize that God has acted to fulfill the promises given through the prophets (vv.17-26). The proclamation of God’s fulfillment of the old covenant, clearly manifested in the healed man standing before them, provides the basis upon which Peter calls the old covenant community to participate in the new covenant, even implying that failure to respond removes one from the old covenant community (v.23). For Peter, it is clear that the new covenant community is the fulfillment of the old.

The keepers of the religious status quo, overly sensitive to their responsibility for the religious welfare of the community, convinced of the impossibility of God acting in a way incompatible with their perspective and intolerant of anything that threatens their authority and power, move to exert their control and remove the threat (4:1-3). Even in the face of such overt opposition by the religious authorities, however, there is a great response to the witness of this new experience with God (v.4). People whose hearts are hungry for God are wiser than those whose lives are devoted to religion!

The trial of Peter and John (4:5-22) is a classic example of the adage “Don't confuse us with facts, our minds are made up.” Peter again takes the opportunity to set forth the healing as a witness to the Resurrection, this time in the presence of those who were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter not only implicates the religious leaders in the death of Jesus, but affirms that their actions have been overturned by God; the healed man before them is the unimpeachable evidence. God has used their rejection of Jesus as the foundation for a salvation that supersedes the salvation of their structures and systems of religion. God always has a disconcerting way of breaking out of the structures in which we think we have regularized and codified our relationship with God.

How vigorously we try to avoid the breakout. The religious authorities first attempt to rationalize away God’s absence from their system by considering the credentials of the ones who claim God’s presence and power. They cannot be taken seriously; after all, they are not trained in the subtleties of religious knowledge. In addition, they are associates of that heretical, so-called rabbi from Nazareth who was crucified. Surely this discredits their claims.

Though such rationalization may soothe troubled consciences, the evidence of God’s breakout is the healed man, who cannot be denied. The only recourse is to attempt to prevent any further publicizing of the fact.

Peter and John, while recognizing the authority of the religious leaders to take whatever action they think appropriate, make it clear that they must live out the reality of their new relationship with God. The religious leaders are trying to deal with the problem as though it were a theological issue alone and not the matter of a whole new order of being. The mind disconnected from the heart often can be coerced to change its position, but when knowledge conjoins with vital piety it cannot be stifled easily.

In the face of coercion and threat, it is significant to note the solidarity of the Christian community (4:23-31). Often a community leaves its leaders “hanging out to dry” when they become the focus of opposition. The unity of the Christian community in their experience of new life in Christ, however, bonds them together in a powerful, mutually supportive consecration of themselves to God. Their response to the threat is to cleave to God in absolute trust and unwavering obedience.

Such submission and consecration never fails to result in the outpouring of God’s presence, power, and purpose into and through the lives of the consecrated. Not only are they filled with God’s presence, but they show it in the face of threat.