Chapter 5 - THE MINISTRY OF PETER
When the Lord Jesus, in the days of His
earthly ministry, sent forth the Twelve Apostles
to go throughout the land of Israel heralding
His word, He evidently commanded them to
emphasize the same message that John the Baptist
preached and which He Himself proclaimed; for we
are told in Mark 6:12 that "they went out, and
preached that men should repent."
After His atoning death and glorious
resurrection, when He commissioned the eleven to
go out into all the world and make known His
Gospel among all nations, we find Him again
stressing the same solemn truth. We read in Luke
24:46 that He "said unto them, Thus it is
written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer,
and to rise from the dead the third day: and
that repentance and remission of sins should be
preached in his name among all nations,
beginning at Jerusalem." The rending of the veil
had ended the old dispensation; His triumph over
death introduced the new one; but the call for
men to repent was unrepealed. The Gospel of the
grace of God did not set this to one side, nor
ignore it in the slightest degree. Men must
still be called upon to change their attitude
toward God and the sin question if they would
receive forgiveness of sins.
True, forgiveness is by faith, but there can
be no faith without repentance, and no
repentance without faith. What God hath joined
together let no man put asunder.
We are quite prepared, therefore, when we con
the pages of the book of the Acts, to see the
large place given to repentance. Ordinarily we
speak of this book as The Acts of the Apostles.
But a closer examination of its twenty-eight
chapters shows us that it is occupied largely
with the ministry of two apostles, and those are
Peter, one of the Twelve, and Paul, the Apostle
to the Gentiles who came in afterwards to
complete the Word of God. Very few of the other
apostles are even mentioned by name. We may say,
then, that in Acts 1-12 we have The Acts of
Peter, and in chapters 13-28 The Acts of Paul. I
propose at this time to see what place
repentance has in the preaching of Peter.
In the great Pentecost chapter we find Peter
as the chief spokesman of the Twelve, Matthias
being now numbered with them, addressing the
multitudes of Jews and devout men, proselytes of
the gate, from every nation under heaven. With
marvelous clearness and spiritual power and
insight he links the significant happenings of
that day to Joel's prophecy of the outpouring of
the promised Holy Spirit in the last days. He
does not exactly say that Joel's prophecy was at
that time being literally fulfilled, but he
explains the power manifested as identical with
that predicted by the prophet. "This is that,"
he declares. That is, this power, this
outpouring, this divine manifestation, is the
same as that spoken of by Joel.
Then he undertakes to show that, after long
years of waiting on the part of Israel, Messiah
had appeared in exact accord with the prophecies
going beforehand. But the Jews had fulfilled
their own Scriptures in rejecting Jesus. "Him,
being delivered by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by
wicked hands have crucified and slain: whom God
hath raised up, having loosed the pains of
death: because it was not possible that he
should be holden of it" (Acts 2:23-24). It was
true, God had sent Him into the world to die for
sinners, but they were nevertheless terribly
guilty who stretched forth their hands against
Him and treated Him with such shame and
ignominy. They dishonored Him. God had glorified
Him and had commissioned them to bear witness
that He "hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have
crucified, both Lord and Christ" (v. 36).
This declaration brought sharp and pungent
conviction. They were "pricked in their heart."
As the awfulness of their crime burst upon them
they realized the terrible position in which
they stood. How could they extricate themselves
from this? In other words, how could they
dissociate themselves from the guilty majority
over whom the judgment of God hung like a
Damocles sword and might fall in fearful
vengeance at any moment? They "said unto Peter
and to the rest of the apostles, Men and
brethren, what shall we do?" Do not confound
this question with that of the Philippian
jailer, who asked, "What must I do to be saved?"
He was a godless Gentile, suddenly awakened to a
sense of his lost condition, and he was eagerly
seeking deliverance from that unhappy state.
But these Israelites were men of the
covenant. They had looked expectantly for
Messiah. Peter showed them that He had come, and
gone! The chosen nation of which they
formed a part had rejected Him. Because of that
God had set them aside as a people under
condemnation. In His righteous government He was
about to visit them with His wrath to the
uttermost, as Paul afterwards explained to the
Thessalonians. If these awakened men, who fully
believed Peter's testimony, were to escape that
doom, what was their responsibility? What could
they do to dissociate themselves from the crime
of the guilty nation? The answer came clear and
plain: "Repent and be baptized every one of you
in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of
sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy
Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your
children, and to all that are afar off, even as
many as the Lord our God shall call" (Acts
2:38-39). Surely all this is plain and perfectly
appropriate, as we might expect, for Peter was a
divinely directed messenger. The call to repent
was as though he had said, 'Change your
attitude! The nation has rejected Jesus. You
must receive Him. The nation has crucified Him.
You must crown Him. Attest your repentance by
baptism in His Name. By doing this you, so to
speak, identify yourself with the Messiah, as
your fathers were identified with Moses, owning
him as their leader when baptized in the cloud
and in the sea.'
John's baptism was with a view to the
remission of sins. So with this. It was not that
there was saving merit in baptism. The merit was
in the One they confessed. Governmentally,
however, they passed out from their place in the
nation that rejected Christ by thus identifying
themselves with Him. That this was clearly his
meaning comes out in the next verse, "With many
other words did he testify and exhort, saying,
Save yourselves from this untoward generation."
They could not save themselves from their sins.
Only the blood of Christ could do that. But they
could save themselves from the doom hanging over
the nation by taking sides, in repentance and
faith, with the One the nation refused to own as
the Anointed of the Lord. He had said ere He
went to the cross, "Your house is left unto you
desolate." Those who believed Peter's message
were to leave the desolate house and go forth
unto Him, bearing His reproach.
Nor was this responsibility and blessing only
for those who that day heard the message. It is
still the responsibility of every believing Jew
in all the world, and in a wider sense of the
Gentile too -- of "all that are afar off." In
Ephesians we learn that we who once were "afar
off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." The
repentant man, whether of Israel or the nations,
judges the world and turns from it to the Christ
that the world has spurned. In so doing he finds
eternal blessing, though he may suffer now for
his confession of the Lord Jesus as His Saviour.
In the third chapter of Acts we have another
wonderful scene. After the healing of the lame
man who sat at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple,
Peter preached to the wondering and excited
multitude who thronged Solomon's Porch, telling
again the same story of the coming of Messiah,
only to be "denied" and "killed," but whom God
had raised from the dead, the efficacy of whose
Name had given the once lame beggar soundness of
limbs in the presence of them all. The inspired
Apostle went on to declare that, though they had
ignorantly done this dreadful thing, there was a
city of refuge into which they might flee from
the avenger of blood. Dramatically he exclaimed,
"Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that
your sins may be blotted out, when [or, so that]
the times of refreshing shall come from the
presence of the Lord; and he shall send Jesus
Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom
the heavens must receive until the times of
restitution of all things, which God hath spoken
by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the
world began" (Acts 3:19-21).
Observe here, that Peter did not proclaim the
eventual salvation of all men, as the
Universalists and other teachers would have us
believe. There is no absolute universal
restoration predicted here. What he did proclaim
was the restoration of all things of which the
prophets had spoken. Beyond that limit he does
not go. This restoration is still future and
depends upon the repentance of Israel. When they
shall turn to the Lord, His saving health shall
be known among all nations.
But Peter called upon his hearers that day to
take the course the nation will take later on,
and that in view of the promised return of
Messiah, to repent and be converted. It is as
though he commanded, 'Change your attitude
toward this wondrous Prince of Life. Turn right
about face, and take the very opposite ground to
that of the representatives of the nation who in
answer to the question, "What then shall I do
with Jesus who is called Christ?" had vehemently
demanded His death, crying "Away with him!
Crucify him! Crucify him!"' By thus turning to,
instead of turning from Him, they would receive
forgiveness of sins and so be ready to welcome
Him upon His return in power and glory. This was
exactly the attitude taken by a dying Jew in
modern times, who was heard to exclaim, "Not
Barabbas, but this man!" He had reversed the
sentence of his people.
Throughout the entire ministry of Peter we
see the same dominant note. On every occasion
where he is found preaching the Word he exalts
the risen Christ and drives home to the people
their great wickedness in spurning the One sent
of Jehovah to turn them away from their
iniquities. Always in no uncertain tone he calls
for self-judgment, for the recognition and
acknowledgment of their sins, and for personal
faith in the Lord Jesus as the only means of
deliverance. "This," he cries, "is the stone
which was set at nought of you builders, which
is become the head of the corner. Neither is
there salvation in any other: for there is none
other name under heaven given among men, whereby
we must be saved" (Acts 4:11-12).
Surely no sane, thoughtful reader of the
record can escape the conclusion that
repentance, while in no sense meritorious, is
nevertheless a prerequisite to saving faith. An
unrepentant man can never, in the very nature of
things, lay hold of the Gospel message in
appropriating faith, thus receiving the Lord
Jesus as his own personal Saviour.
Why, then, should any preacher of the Gospel
be hesitant about calling men to repentance
today? If it be objected that the grace of God
was not yet fully revealed in Peter's ministry,
I would remind the objector that in his inspired
First Epistle he tells us distinctly why he
wrote it. In verse 12 of chapter 5 he says, "I
have written briefly, exhorting, and testifying
that this is the true grace of God wherein ye
stand." How does this differ from the testimony
of Paul in Romans 5:2, "We have access by faith
into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in
hope of the glory of God"?
If others object on the ground that Peter was
the Apostle of the circumcision and that there
is a distinction to be drawn between the message
to the Jew and that to the Gentile, I would
point to the fact that, in the house of
Cornelius with a Gentile audience before him,
his message is of exactly the same character as
when he is preaching to his Jewish brethren
after the flesh, excepting that there is no
occasion to call for immediate separation from a
nation exposed to judgment, and so the stress is
put upon the responsibility to believe the
Gospel. But he proclaims, as before, the story
of the anointed Jesus, of His death of shame, of
His resurrection by omnipotent power, and of the
fact that He is ordained of God to be judge of
living and dead. "To him give all the prophets
witness, that through his name whosoever
believeth in him shall receive remission of
sins" (Acts 10:43). Undoubtedly, he was
addressing a truly repentant group, as
Cornelius' attitude clearly attested. And in a
moment the Gospel finds lodgment in their
hearts, and they believe the Word and are
baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of
Christ and sealed with the Spirit of adoption as
the sons of God.
That this surmise is correct is evidenced
from what is said by the brethren in Judea, when
Peter later on explains why he went in to
uncircumcised Gentiles (11:3), in violation of
Jewish prejudices. When his brethren heard the
whole story "they held their peace, and
glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the
Gentiles granted repentance unto life" (v. 18).
This explains the readiness of Cornelius and his
friends to receive the Word in faith.
Only recently the statement was made by one
who should have known better: "Repentance is
Jewish. Jews could repent because they were in
covenant relation with God and had violated that
covenant. But Gentiles have never known such a
relationship. They are dead sinners. Therefore
they cannot repent until after they are born of
God." This is a choice bit of ignorant
exposition that would be laughable were it not
so dangerous. The Gentiles to whom Peter
preached were granted repentance unto life. They
did not receive life that they might repent, but
through the preached Word they were led to
change their attitude and to believe the Gospel.
Like other Gentiles, they "turned to God from
idols," and through faith in Christ were saved.
How this confirms what we have seen to be the
general teaching of Scripture, namely, that
repentance is not a meritorious act or a
wrought-up temperamental or emotional
experience, but a new attitude definitely taken
toward sin and God which results in a readiness
to receive with meekness the engrafted word
which is able to save the soul.
It is God who gives repentance unto life, but
we may say that repentance comes, like faith
itself, by hearing the Word of God. Therefore
man is responsible to heed that Word, to face it
honestly, and thus allow it to do its own work
in the heart and conscience. It is this that
brings one to an end of himself and prepares the
soul to trust alone in the finished work of
Christ and so be saved by free, unmerited grace.
To say that because a sinner, whether Jew or
Gentile, is dead toward God, therefore he cannot
repent, is to misunderstand the nature of that
death. It is a judicial, not an actual, death.
The unsaved man is identified with sinning Adam
by nature and practice, and so is viewed by God
as dead in trespasses and sins. He is
spiritually dead, because sin has separated him
from God. But actually he is a living,
responsible creature to whom God addresses
Himself as to a reasoning personality, "Come
now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord:
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as
white as snow; though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool" (Isa. 1:18). An
examination of the previous verses will show
that these words of grace follow a very definite
call to a change of attitude, to the bringing
forth of works meet for repentance.
It is not incongruous to call upon dead
sinners to repent. It is the preacher's bounden
duty so to do, and it is man's responsibility to
obey.
I recognize the fact that the age-long
questions concerning the divine sovereignty and
human responsibility are involved in this
discussion. But why need anyone attempt to
explain that which it is above the capacity of
the mind of man to grasp? God has said, "My
thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your
ways my ways ... As the heavens are higher than
the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts." Scripture
clearly teaches that God is Sovereign and "worketh
all things after the counsel of his own will."
It just as plainly shows us that man is a
responsible creature, who has the power of
choice and is called upon by the Lord to
exercise that power and to turn to Himself.
"Turn ye, O, turn ye ... for why will ye die?"
"Choose ye this day whom ye will serve."
"Whosoever will, let him take the water
of life freely." To those who refused His
testimony the Saviour sadly said, "Ye will not
come to me, that ye might have life."
The truth of God's electing grace does not
come into conflict with that of man's
responsibility. Mr. Moody used to say in his
downright, sensible, matter-of-fact manner, "The
elect are the whosoever wills; the nonelect are
the whosoever won'ts." What theologian could put
it more clearly?
"Sovereign grace o'er sin abounding!
Ransomed souls the tidings swell.
'Tis a deep that knows no sounding,
Who its breadth and length can tell?
On its glories
Let my soul forever dwell."
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