Christ Is Risen! 🌞
People’s reaction to the healing of the crooked, Peter’s sermon.
Continuation of yesterday’s reading, which you can see at the link:
21042023.html
I will pay attention to only a few points.
Acts III, 12 – by their power or piety (godliness)
– that is,
people perceived the healing as a manifestation of the extraordinaryness
of the apostles themselves – their special power or way of piety, which
leads to the acquisition of the power to work miracles. Peter denies
that there is any real way for human to obtain such a power or ability
to work miracles from God through some special practice. With this, he
draws a clear line between true miracles from God and all other events
that occur by God’s permission. Christian saints never made it their
goal to acquire miraculous gifts or power through piety. See also a good
essay about it at the link:
https://oleksandr-zhabenko.github.io/en/PowerOfHuman.html
Acts III, 13 – servant Jesus
– in the Greek original – rather
child Jesus
and less often – servant Jesus
. Peter emphasizes the
humility of the Son of God.
Acts III, 15 – Lord of life
is a literal word that is difficult to
translate (composed of two that mean Beginning and Chief
, Bearer of
real power
, and One Who leads after Himself
, i.e. Leader
in modern
language), and life
is roughly the Beginning and the Head, the Bearer
of real power, the Leader Who leads after Himself (to) life.
About faith, see the work written above, also often faith
also
means object of faith
, what a person believes in
, that is, here -
Jesus Himself. Jesus healed the crooked man through Peter in the Holy
Spirit.
John the Baptist testifies about Jesus, also the actions of Jesus shortly after the Baptism.
John III, 29 – my
— in the original ‘εμη’ – ‘eme’.
It is mentioned here that Jesus and the apostles baptized people (similar to John, but it was not a sacrament), but it was a means of preaching and preparation for it, as well as recognition by Christ of the activity of John the Baptist.
John also says that the acceptance of Jesus, Who is from above from God (here he does not reveal the entire Mystery of the Trinity, since he is a servant), thus a person affirms that God, who acts and addresses through Jesus, is True.
And therefore, it is necessary to accept Jesus as God’s.
Also, here we see the manifestation of John’s humility in the testimony about himself and his activities, which were carried out.
Glory be to Thee, our God, glory be to Thee!