Scripture Daily

Context No. 246 of 4322 · Acts

Context · Reflection

Acts 3:17-26: in context

17“Now, brothers, I know that you did this in ignorance, as did also your rulers. 18But the things which God announced by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he thus fulfilled. 19“Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, so that there may come times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, 20and that he may send Christ Jesus, who was ordained for you before, 21whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God spoke long ago by the mouth of his holy prophets. 22For Moses indeed said to the fathers, ‘The Lord God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him in all things whatever he says to you. 23It will be that every soul that will not listen to that prophet will be utterly destroyed from among the people.’ 24Yes, and all the prophets from Samuel and those who followed after, as many as have spoken, also told of these days. 25You are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘All the families of the earth will be blessed through your offspring.’ 26God, having raised up his servant Jesus, sent him to you first to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your wickedness.”

Peter has just healed a man lame from birth at the temple gate, and a stunned crowd has gathered. He uses the moment to preach, and this passage is where the sermon turns from what happened to what they should do about it. He has to name a terrible thing, that these people handed Jesus over to death, and he does it without either excusing it or crushing them.

You acted in ignorance, he says, you and your rulers both, and God used even that to fulfill what he had spoken through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer. That is not a pass. In the same breath he says repent and turn, so that your sins may be wiped out and times of refreshing may come. He reminds them who they are: children of the prophets, heirs of the promise to Abraham that through his offspring all the families of the earth would be blessed. Then he defines the blessing in a way that is easy to miss. God raised up his servant Jesus and sent him to you first, Peter says, to bless you by turning every one of you away from your wickedness.

The blessing is not comfort or reward. The blessing is being turned from evil, and it comes first to the very people who had just killed him. Repentance is offered to them not as a punishment but as the gift itself. Where have I been waiting on God for some other blessing, when the blessing on offer is being turned away from something in me?

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