Acts 3 Study Notes

3:16 Peter and John had a chance to claim credit for the miraculous healing of the man, but instead insisted that it was faith in Jesus’s name that made this man strong. The apostles were merely God’s chosen instruments for conveying the miracle.

3:17 Ignorance here is not an excuse but is culpable, making repentance necessary.

3:18 The prophecy that the Messiah would suffer is an apparent reference to the Suffering Servant of Is 52:13-53:12. The suffering of the servant for sins (Is 53:10) had been fulfilled through Jesus.

3:19 On the basis of what he had said about who Jesus was, how he was treated by the Jewish people, and how God had vindicated him by raising him from the dead, Peter called on his audience to repent and turn back to God so that their sins may be wiped out.

3:20-21 Early Christians looked with expectation to the second coming of Jesus and the restoration of all things that accompanies the establishment of his earthly kingdom. God had foretold the time of “restoration” through the prophets, starting as far back as Moses (v. 22; see also Rm 8:18-25).

3:22-24 Peter appealed to Dt 18:15-19, where Moses foretold Israel that God will raise up for you a prophet like me. Over time this came to be recognized as a Messianic prophecy. Anyone who rejects the Messiah will be completely cut off from God’s people. Peter also appealed to all the prophets throughout Israel’s history, for all of them had foretold these days. Jesus himself taught the apostles to recognize this about the OT (Lk 24:27).

3:25-26 The Jews listening to Peter were sons of the prophets and inheritors of the covenant God made with Abraham. Thus they had a personal stake in the words of the prophets and the Pentateuch, but so do all the peoples of earth. After all, God’s covenant with Abraham promised that all the earth would be blessed through Abraham’s seed, a reference ultimately to Jesus Christ, God’s servant.