Acts 3:26

Act_3:26

Unto you first God, having raised up His Son Jesus, sent Him to bless you.

Sent to bless you

I. God sent Jesus to bless us. We should have thought that after the Jews had slain the prophets, God would have had no more to do with them; or that if He sent His own Son, it would be to take vengeance upon them. But when the Jews murdered Jesus, what would you expect God to do? A human father could scarcely forgive such murderers; it needs a God to do that. What did He do? This: He raised up Jesus, and not to punish evil-doers, but to bless. Many look upon religion as a sad thing; but it is the most joyous inspiration of life. Jesus is not a taskmaster; He gives rest to the weary and help to the heavy-laden. He charms the dullest life, sweetens the bitterest cup, salves the deepest wound, heals the most stricken heart, gives joy to the sorrowful, peace to the troubled, hope to the despairing, pardon of sin to the penitent, salvation from the power of sin to the believer, and eternal felicity to all who trust Him.

II. God sent Jesus to bless us in turning away every one of us from our iniquities. Without sin life would be very joyous; but when we yield to anything which we know to be wicked, gladness at once departs. A man may gratify his wicked propensity, and by so doing satisfy, for the time being, his physical appetite, but the hunger of his soul for peace is not satisfied. The greedy boy, who hides behind the door, away from his brothers, to eat the whole of his big apple alone, is fully satisfying his appetite, yet he is unhappy, and comes from his feast vexed, sullen, and spiritless. Had he divided the apple amongst his brothers, what a joyous lad he would have been! Greediness, or any other sin, brings sorrow to the soul.

1. The greatest blessing, therefore, that God can give us is to turn us away from our sins. We may turn away from sin in our outward life, and, at the same time, love and indulge it in our hearts; but Jesus would turn us from sin altogether; and in order to do so, He begins first with the heart. Make the fountain pure, and the stream shall be pure. The philosophy of the unbeliever tries to guide the human ship by outside pressure; but Jesus puts a rudder to it, and gives it a magnet of love to show its pathway in the trackless deep. He is not satisfied with half-measures. We must be turned away from our sins. There has been, unfortunately for the world, a church-organisation which has allowed its priests to sell indulgences for sin. But Jesus knows sin to be so hurtful, that He could not, at any price, give a licence to permit it. He came to take sin away. A man says, If I do not cheat, I shall have to go to the workhouse. Jesus teaches us to reply, Under such circumstances you would be happier if you walked along an honest path to the workhouse, than on the road of cheating to a palace. As you would hastily pass a house in which you know the small-pox to be, so would Jesus have us turn away from sin. May the Lord, likewise, turn away every one of us from our sins!

2. The text goes on to say, that God sent Jesus to bless us, in turning away every one of us from our iniquities. Then the worst man in the world is capable of being saved. Here is a man who has been guilty of many crimes, and is now standing at the bar to receive sentence. The judge may say within himself, No good can be done with this man; he has been twice in penal servitude, and we must now get rid of him altogether. Penal servitude for life! But God dooms no man to life-servitude to sin. Jesus comes to open the prison doors in the soul of every one of us; and the man who is the chief sinner of this age may be saved. Your life may be like a tangled string, which you have tried to unravel, but failing to do so, you have thrown it among the ashes. That tangled string wearied your patience, and you gave it up; but though your life just now is like the tangled string, Jesus is not weary of blessing you, and in this world He will never give you up. As every tangled string can be undone, so every sinful life can be converted. God sent Jesus to bless such as you; and His skilful fingers, His loving heart, and His patient Spirit will work in you until you are like Himself.

III. Jesus turns us from our iniquities by--

1. The powerful inducement of pleasing God. To call upon a man to turn from iniquity because it will be a good thing for himself is to appeal to his lowest motive, and is not the most successful way in winning souls. To bribe a man by promising something good if he will serve the Lord, or to intimidate him by the threat of the torment of hell, is a popular way of winning men, but it is the least successful. The most powerful force in the heart of a child is the love which constrains him to obedience, because if he did wrong he knew it would grieve his mother. Jesus draws us effectually from sin by reminding us of the loving heart of God; our sin grieves Him, and it should pain us to grieve His loving heart.

2. Revealing the goodness of God. His goodness in first loving us should draw us to Himself. After Jesus had risen from the dead, He said, Go and preach the gospel to every creature, beginning at Jerusalem. He was not angry because the Jews rejected and crucified Him; and there was nothing in His heart but love to them. (W. Birch.)

The servant of the Lord and his blessing

Notice--

I. The boldness and loftiness of the claim which is here made for Jesus Christ.

1. Long ago Peter had said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And as long as Jesus Christ had been with them none of them had wavered in that belief; but the Cross shattered all that for a time. We trusted that it had been He that should have redeemed Israel. There had been plenty of pretenders to the Messiahship (Act_5:36), and death had disposed of all their claims. And so it would have been with Christ, unless He had risen from the dead. But the faith and hope in His Messiahship which had died with Him on the Cress, rose with Him to newness of life--as we see from such words as these.

2. Now the characteristic of these early addresses contained in chap. 2.-4., is the clear decisiveness with which they put forward Christ as the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy. The Cross and the Resurrect el poured a flood of light on the Old Testament. Almost every word here has reference to some great utterance of the past, which now for the first time Peter is beginning to understand.

(1) God, having raised up His Son Jesus. The reference is not to the resurrection, but to the prediction in Act_2:22. Now that prediction, no doubt, refers to the prophetic order, and the word, a prophet, is a collective, meaning a class. But the order does not come up to the ideal of the prophecy. For the appendix to the Book of Deuteronomy is plainly referring to the prophecy, when it sadly says, And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses. The prophetic order, then, was a prophecy by reason of the very incompleteness of the noble men who composed it; not only by their words, but by their office and by their limitations, they pointed onwards to Him who not only, like the great law-giver, beheld God face to face, but from the beginning dwelt in the bosom of the Father and therefore declares Him perfectly to men. The manifold methods and fragmentary portions of the revelations to the prophetic order are surpassed by the one final and complete utterance in the Son, as noonday outshines the twilight dawn.

(2) His Son Jesus means, literally, a boy or a child, and like our own English equivalent, is sometimes used with the meaning of a servant. For instance, we talk about a boy, or a maid, or a man, meaning thereby to express the fact of service in a graceful and gentle way; to cover over the harsher features of authority. So the centurion in Matthews Gospel, when he asks Christ to heal his little page, calls him his boy, which our Bible properly translates as servant. The reasons for adopting servant here rather than son are these: that the New Testament has a distinct expression for the Son of God, which is not the word employed here: and that the Septuagint has the same expression which is employed here as the translation of Isaiahs, the Servant of the Lord.

(a) Now it is interesting to notice that this expression as applied to Jesus Christ only occurs at this period. Altogether it occurs four times in these two chapters, and never again. Does not that look like the frequent repetition of a new thought which had just come to a man and was taking up his whole mind for the time? The Cross and the resurrection had opened his eyes to see that the dim majestic figure that looked out on him from the prophecy had had a historical existence in the dear Master whom he had lived beside; and we can almost perceive the gladness and surprise swelling his heart as he thinks--Ah! then He is My servant whom I upheld. Of whom speaketh the prophet this? Wonder of wonders, it is of Jesus of Nazareth, and we are His witnesses. If you turn to the second half of Isaiahs prophecies, you will find that they might almost be called the biography of the Servant of the Lord. And whilst I admit that the collective Israel is often intended by the title the Servant of the Lord, there remain other parts of the prophecy which have distinctly a person for their subject, and which cannot apply to any but Him that died and lived again. For instance, is there anything which can correspond to the words, when His soul shall make an offering for sin He shall see His seed? Who is it whose death is the birth of His children, whom after His death He will see? Who is it whose death is His own voluntary act? Who is it whose death is a sacrifice for others sin? Who is it whose days are protracted after death, and who carries out more prosperously the pleasure of the Lord after He has died?

(b) But that name on Peters lips is not only a reference to prophecy, but it is a very beautiful revelation of the impression of absolute perfection which Christs character made. Here was a man who knew Christ through and through; and the impression made upon him was this: All the time that I saw Him there was never a trace of anything but perfect submission to the Divine will. Jesus asserted the same thing for Himself. I do always the things that please Him: Which of you convinceth Me of sin? Strange claims from one who is meek and lowly of heart! Stranger still, the world, not usually tolerant of pretensions to sanctity, has allowed and endorsed the claim.

(c) So the claim rises up into yet loftier regions; for clearly enough, a perfect and stainless man is either an impossible monster or something more. And they that fully believe that Gods will was absolutely and exclusively done by Jesus Christ, in all consistency must go a step further and say, He that perfectly did the Fathers will was more than one of us, stained and sinful men.

II. The dawning vision of a kingdom of world-wide blessings.

1. Peter and all his brethren had had their full share of Jewish prejudices. But I suppose that when they found the tongues of fire sitting on their heads they began to apprehend that they had been intrusted with a world-wide gospel. The words before us mark very clearly the growing of that consciousness, while yet the Jewish prerogative of precedence is firmly held. Unto you first--that was the law of the apostolic working. But they were beginning to learn that if there were a first, there must also be a second; and that the very words of promise to the father of the nation which he had just quoted pointed to all the nations of the earth being blessed in the seed of Abraham. If Israel was first to receive the blessing, it was only that through Israel it might flow over into the whole Gentile world. That is the true spirit of Judaism, which is so often spoken of as narrow and exclusive. There is nothing clearer in the Old Testament than that the candle is lighted in Israel in order that it might shed light on all the chambers of the world. That was the genius of Judaism, and that is Peters faith here.

2. Then, again, what grand confidence is here! What a splendid audacity of faith it is for the apostle with his handful of friends to stand up in the face of his nation to say: This Man, whom you hung on a tree, is going to be the blessing of the whole world. Why, it is like the old Roman story of putting up to auction in the Forum the very piece of land that the enemys camp was pitched upon, whilst their tents were visible over the wall. And how did all that come? Was all that heroism and enthusiasm born out of the grave of a dead man? The resurrection was the foundation of it, and explains it, as nothing else can do.

III. The purely spiritual conception of what Christs blessing is. What has become of all the Jewish notions of the blessings of Messiahs kingdom? That had not been the kind of kingdom of which they had dreamed when they had sought to be first in it. But now the Cross had taught Peter that Him hath God raised up a Prince and a Saviour to give--strange gift for a prince to have in his hand--to give repentance unto Israel, and remission of sins.

1. The heart, then, of Christs work for rice world is deliverance from sin. That is what man needs most. There are plenty of other remedies offered for the worlds ills--culture, art, new social arrangements, progress of science and the like, but the disease goes deeper than these things can cure. You may as well try to put out Vesuvius with a teaspoonful of cold water as to cure the sickness of humanity with anything that does not grapple with the fundamental mischief, and that is a wicked heart. There is only one Man that ever pretended He could deal with that, and it took Him all His power to deal with it; but He did it! And there is only one way by which He could deal with it, and that was by dying for it, and He did it! So He has conquered. Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? When you can lead a crocodile out of the Nile with a bit of silk thread round his neck, you will be able to overcome the plague of the world, and that of your own heart, with anything short of the great sacrifice made by Jesus Christ.

2. The secret of most of the mistaken and partial views of Christian truth lies here, that people have not got into their hearts and consciences a sense of their own sinfulness. And so you get a tepid, self-sufficient and superficial Christianity; and you get ceremonials, and high and dry morality, masquerading under the guise of religion: and you gel Unitarian and semi-Unitarian tendencies in churches. But if once there came a wholesome, living consciousness of sin all such mutilated Christianity would crumble.

3. So I beseech you to put yourself in the right place to understand the gospel by the recognition of that fact. But do not stop there. It is a matter of life and death for you to put yourselves in the right place to receive Christs richest blessing. You can only do that by feeling your own personal sin, and so coming to Him to do for you what you cannot do for yourselves, and no one but He can do for you.

4. And notice how strongly the text puts the individuality of this process. Every one--or rather each one. The inadequate notions of Christianity that I have been speaking about are all characterised by this amongst other things: that they regard it as a social system diffusing social blessings and operating on communities by elevating the general tone and quickening the public conscience and so on. Christianity does do that. But it begins with dealing with men one by one. Christ is like a great King, who passing through the streets of His capital scatters His largesse over the multitude, but He reserves His richest gifts for the men that enter His presence chamber. Even those of us who have no close personal union with Him receive of His gifts. But for their deepest needs and their highest blessings they must go to Christ by their own personal faith--the flight of the solitary soul to the only Christ. (A. Maclaren, D. D)

Christ and His blessing

I. The parties concerned. Why was the first offer of Christ made to the Jews?

1. Because they were the only Church of God for that time. And God hath so much respect for the Church, that they shall have the refusal and the morning-market of the gospel.

2. They were the children of the covenant (verse 25). God follows a covenant people with more offers of grace than others.

3. Christ came of them after the flesh, and was of their seed (Rom_9:5), to teach us to seek the salvation of our kindred first.

4. That He might magnify His grace and faithfulness, not only in the matter of the gospel, but even in the first offer of it (Rom_15:8; 1Th_2:14-15).

5. This was necessary too for the confirmation of the gospel. Christ did not steal into the world privately, but He would have His law set up where, if there were any falsehood in it, it might easily be disproved; and because the main of the Jewish doctrine was adopted into the Christian, and was confirmed by the prophecies of the Old Testament, they were the only competent judges to whose cognisance these things should be first offered.

6. That the ruin of that nation might be a fit document and proof of Gods severity against the contemners of the new gospel (Act_13:45-47).

7. That the first ministers might be a pattern of obedience, to preach where God would have them, to preach in the very face and teeth of opposition.

II. The benefit offered: wherein is set forth the great love of God unto the people to whom the gospel comes.

1. In designing such a glorious person as Jesus Christ: having raised up His Son Jesus.

2. In that He gave notice, and did especially direct and send Him to them: hath sent His Son.

3. Why He came among them in His Word: it was to bless them.

III. The blessing interpreted. They expected a pompous Messiah, that should make them an opulent and potent nation. But Christ came to convert souls unto God.

IV. What it is to be turned from sin. Take these considerations:

1. Man fallen, lay under the power and guilt of sin (Eph_2:1-3). So man was both unholy and guilty.

2. Christ came to free us from both these.

(1) The guilt (Eph_1:7);

(2) and the power (Tit_3:5).

3. To be turned from sin implies our whole conversion. Though one part only be mentioned, the term from which, yet the term to which is implied (chap. 26:18).

4. That remission of sins is included in our conversion to God (verse 19, chap. 5:31).

V. It is a blessed thing to be made partakers of this benefit. Blessedness imports two things--

1. An immunity from, or a removal of, the great evil, and that is sin.

(1) The great cause of offence between God and us is taken out of the way (Isa_59:2).

(2) We are freed from the great blemish of our natures (Rom_3:23).

(3) We are freed from the great burden of sin.

(4) Being turned from our sins, we are freed from the great bane of our persons and all our happiness (Psa_32:1-2; Rom_8:1).

2. The enjoyment of positive good. It is a blessed thing to be turned from our sins because--

(1) This is the matter of our serenity, comfort, and peace here (Isa_32:17).

(2) It is the pledge of our eternal felicity hereafter; for heaven is the perfection of holiness, or the full fruition of God in glory (Heb_12:14; Eph_1:13-14). (T. Manton.)

Christ and His blessing

I. God raised up His Son Jesus to be a prophet (verse 22, Deu_18:15).

1. To teach the will of God (Isa_61:1).

2. To expound it to us (Joh_14:2; Joh_15:15).

(1) By His prophets (1Pe_3:19; Neh_9:30).

(2) Himself (Heb_1:1-2; Heb_2:2-3).

(3) His apostles (2Co_5:19-20).

(4) His ministers (Eph_4:11-12).

II. God sent Him.

1. By promise in the Old Testament (1Pe_1:10-11; 1Pe_3:19; Gen_3:15).

2. In person in the New (Gal_4:4-5).

(1) First to the Jews (Act_2:39; Joh_4:22).

(a) He was first promised to them.

(b) Born of them.

(c) Manifested Himself first among them (Mat_4:12; Mat_4:17).

(2) To the Gentiles also (Act_2:39; Act_11:18; Act_15:7-9; Gal_3:14; Gen_22:17-18).

III. He was sent to bless us (Gen_22:17-18).

1. To purchase a blessing for us (Gal_3:13-14).

2. To apply it to us.

IV. His great blessing is conversion from sin (Psa_1:1; Psa_32:1; Psa_23:2). lsit not a blessed thing to know--

1. Our sins pardoned (Mat_9:2).

2. God reconciled (Rom_5:1).

3. That we have an interest in Christ (1Jn_3:24).

4. To have a pacified conscience (2Co_1:12).

5. To delight ourselves in the best things (Psa_1:2).

6. To be related to God (Gal_4:6).

7. To have all things blessed to us (Rom_8:28).

8. To have an infallible evidence of our title to heaven (Rom_8:1; Mat_25:46).

V. Christ has purchased this blessing for us (Mat_1:21; 1Pe_1:18; Tit_2:14; 1Jn_3:8).

1. What?

(1) Pardon; therefore conversion (Eze_18:30; Act_2:38).

(2) Peace with God; therefore conversion.

(3) Redemption from misery; therefore conversion (Luk_13:3).

(4) Heaven; therefore conversion (Joh_3:16; Heb_13:14).

2. How? Note--

(1) All men are sinners.

(2) Christ undertook to cleanse us from our sins.

(3) This could not be but by purchasing the same grace we lost by sin.

(4) No way to obtain grace but by the Spirit of God.(Eze_36:27; Num_14:24).

(5) God would not send His Spirit until mans sins were satisfied for, and so God reconciled.

(6) Christ by His death satisfies for sin (1Jn_2:2).

(7) And so purchased the donation of the Spirit (Joh_16:7).

(8) The Spirit sent into our hearts, turns us from sin (2Th_2:13). (Bp. Beveridge.)

The blessed mission

I. Gods gracious act, Raised up Jesus.

II. Gods merciful purpose, To bless you.

III. Gods blessed way, By turning every one of you, etc.

IV. Gods great encouragement, To you first (H. Allon, D. D.)

The gospel blessing

I. The work is not described only as Christs, but rather as Gods work in Christ. We are too ready to make a difference; to think of God as all justice, and of Christ as all love. In past days men had used a loose and unscriptural language about Christs calming Gods wrath. The language of Scripture is always this: God so loved the world, etc. What things soever the Son doeth, these also doeth the Father likewise. There is but one will, one work. Never run away from God, but ever seek Him and see Him in the Son.

II. Christ has a mission to us. There is no thought more delightful than that of the mission of Christ as He now is in heaven; of His having an errand, and apostleship still towards us (Heb_3:1). We are all called to from heaven: that is the meaning of partakers of a heavenly calling. We are all like Saul of Tarsus when Jesus Christ spoke to him suddenly from heaven. Christ is calling to us. In His Word, by His minister, in conscience, by His Spirit also. And then, as we recognise this truth, we are told also to fix our thoughts upon Him as the apostle of our profession (or confession). God has sent, is sending, Him to us, with a message, addressed to each one of us separately, every one of you, not a vague, general, promiscuous mission, but a direct and single one to each. You are not lost in a crowd. If this be so, how shall we escape if we neglect so great, because so minute and so personal, a salvation?

III. A mission of what sort? Is it that of One who comes from the dead to appal and to terrify? the apparition of a reprover and a prophet of evil? Hear the text: to bless you; to speak well of you; to declare good to you; and in the very act of doing so, to communicate the good of which He tells. Is not this the very notion of a Gospel? It is not a threatening, a reproof, it is not even a condition of acceptance, or a rule of duty: it does not say, like the Law, Do this, and thou shalt live: its essential character is that of an announcement; tidings of something already done; the good news of some change which God has made in our state and in our prospects. And what is that? Surely that God forgives us, whatsoever we are. God sent Him not to curse, but to bless; not to judge the world, but to save.

IV. How is this mission of blessing made effectual?

1. Is it a flattering of human vanity, a lulling of human indolence, the intelligence that God has forgiven, and that therefore man may lie asleep in his sins that, where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, and that therefore we may continue in sin if only to swell the triumphs of Divine grace? None of these things. Sent Him to bless you, in turning away each one of you from his iniquities.

2. Does this description of Christs work seem to militate against the former? Does any one say, Then, after all, the gospel is a law: it is only the old story once again, You must be holy, and then God will save? Oh the ignorance and the hardness of these hearts of ours! Is there no difference between working for forgiveness and working from forgiveness, between being holy because we are loved, and being holy that we may be loved, between the being commanded to turn ourselves from our sins, and the being blessed by finding ourselves turned from them by another? Your hearts tell you that there is all the difference! Which of us knows not something of the force of gratitude? Which of us has not felt that it is one thing to please a person as a duty, and another to please a person out of love? Which of us has not known the strange effect of a word or an act of affection, from one whom we are conscious that we have injured? how it sometimes rolls away the whole barrier between us, makes us ashamed of our ill-temper, and heaps coals of fire upon our head? Even thus is it with the man whom God has forgiven. How did David begin to inquire, What reward can I give unto the Lord for all His benefits that He hath done unto me? and answer himself, saying, I will receive the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord: yea, I will love much, having been much forgiven!

3. But there may be some here present who cannot understand the connection of the words. They may be saying, I know that my sins are wrong; and I can understand being required to part with them: but how can it be a blessing to give up this pleasant thing which sin is to me? But does your sin make you happy? Have you found the pleasure of sinning as great as its anticipation? Have you found the morning after sinning a bright and pleasant awakening? Have you never known what it was to curse the fetter which bound you, and to long (even without hoping) to be free? Have you not sometimes looked back upon a past and now unattractive sin with bitter remorse, with astonishment at your own infatuation? Then that experience has shown you what it would be to look back upon a life of sin, from a world where it will be too late ever to repent. A thing which has all these marks of misery upon it cannot be happiness. If there is any power or any person, in earth or in heaven, who can set us free from this influence, the coming of that power or that person may indeed be said to be a blessing. Cost us what it may, it will be a blessing if it succeeds. And when that victory is wrought wholly through the power of love; through an assurance of free forgiveness; through the agency of an inward influence as sweet as it is constraining; how much more may it be so regarded! God grant that each one of us may know it for ourselves! (Dean Vaughan.)

The blessing of Christ in the heart

Lady Somerset at Chicago said that in a fishermans but in the extreme north-east of Scotland, she saw a picture of our Saviour, and as she stood looking at it the fisherman told her its story: I was way down with the drink, he said, when one night I went into a public, and there hung this picture. I was sober then, and I said to the bar-tender, Sell me that picture, this is no place for the Saviour. I gave him all the money I had for it, and took it home. Then, as I looked at it, the words of my mother came back to me, I dropped on my knees, and cried, O Lord Jesus, will you pick me up again, and take me out of all my sin? No such a prayer is ever unanswered. To-day that fisherman is the grandest man in that little Scotch village. I asked if he had no struggle to give up liquor; such a look of exultation came over his face as he answered, Oh, madam, when such a Saviour comes into the heart He takes the love of drink right out of it. This Saviour is ready to take every sin out of your heart if only you will let Him.

Christs errand of mercy

After the long, sharp winter, a bright, beautiful day comes like a benediction. As I looked up toward the welcome sun, this thought came into my mind: Yonder sun is ninety-six millions of miles away. These rays of light have travelled all that stupendous distance, and yet I have only to drop the curtain of my eyelid and I am left in total darkness. There might as well be no sun as to have his rays shut out at the last instant from this little doorway of my eye. Even so has the Lord Jesus Christ come from His infinite, far-away throne, on His errand of mercy, to a sinners soul. That sinner has but to close up his hearts door and keep it bolted, and for him there might as well have been no redemption and no Redeemer. Eternal life is refused, eternal death is chosen at that very spot, the door of the human heart. (T. L. Cuyler.)

The generous mission of Christ

When Madame Sontag began her musical career she was hissed off the stage at Vienna by the friends of her rival, Amelia Steininger, who had already begun to decline through her dissipation. Years passed on, and one day Madame Sontag, in her glory, was riding through the streets of Berlin, when she saw a child leading a blind woman, and she said, Come here, my little child, come here. Who is that you are leading by the hand? And the little child replied, Thats my mother; thats Amelia Steininger. She used to be a great singer, but she lost her voice, and she cried so much that she lost her eyesight. Give my love to her, said Madame Sontag, and tell her an old acquaintance will call on her this afternoon. The next week in Berlin a vast assemblage gathered at a benefit for that poor blind woman, and it was said that Madame Sontag sang that night as she had never sung before. And she took a skilled oculist, who in vain tried to give eyesight to the poor blind woman. Until the day of Amelia Steiningers death, Madame Sontag took care of her, and her daughter after her. That was what the queen of song did for her enemy. But, oh, hear a more thrilling story still. Blind, immortal, poor and lost, thou who, when the world and Christ were rivals for thy heart, didst hiss thy Lord away--Christ comes now to give thee sight, to give thee a home, to give thee heaven. With more than a Sontags generosity He comes now to meet your need. With more than Sontags music He comes to plead for thy deliverance. (T. De Witt Talmage.)

Gods plan for making us happy

We are told, in a simple allegory, that when man was made in the image of God, one of the bright angels about the throne was appointed to wait upon him, and to be his constant companion. After this beautiful image had been marred by sin, Happiness could no longer recognise the Heavenly Fathers likeness upon earth, and pined to go back to her happy home on high. Fallen and wretched man now wandered about searching for a friend to make good his loss. He looked on the fair face of Nature, and saw her gay and cheerful; but Nature assured him that she could offer no alleviation for his misery. Love appeared so bright and joyous, that man, in his disappointment, turned next to her; but she timidly shrank back at his approach, while her tender eyes overflowed with tears of sympathy. He now sought friendship, and she sighed and answered, Caprice, anxiety, and the fear of change are ever before me. Disappointed at these repeated failures, man followed after Vice, who boasted loudly, and promised great things; but even while she talked with him the borrowed roses dropped from her withered brow, and disclosed the wrinkles of sorrow and the deep furrows ploughed by pain. Retreating in haste from the haunts of the vile enchantress, he now sought for Virtue, hoping that the secret of happiness might be learned from her; but she assured him that Penitence was her proper name, and that she was powerless to bestow the boon he craved. Brought down at last to the verge of despair, man applied to grim Death, who relaxed his forbidding aspect, while he answered with a smile: Happiness can no longer be found upon the earth. I am really the friend of man, and the guide to the blessedness which his heart yearns after. Hearken to the voice of Him who died on the Cross of Calvary, and I will, at last, lead man through the shades of the dark valley to the delectable mountains, where Happiness makes her perpetual abode. The allegory which I have thus tried to repeat, is a mere expansion of the text. God does not secure happiness to His people--

I. By making all of them rich. Instead of saying, Blessed are ye rich, He says, Blessed are the poor. The only really happy rich man is the one who acts as Gods steward, paying his lawful tithes to the Church, and dealing kindly with the suffering poor. Dr. Guthrie says: Money will buy plenty, but not peace; money will furnish your table with luxuries, but not you with an appetite to enjoy them; money will surround your bed with physicians, but not restore health to your sickly frame: it will encompass you with a crowd of flatterers, but never promise you one true friend; it will bribe into silence the tongues of accusing men, but not an accusing conscience; it will pay some debts, but not one, the least, of your debts to the law of God; it will relieve many fears, but not those of guilt, the terrors that crown the hour of death.

II. By bestowing on us the empty honours of the world. It is true, multitudes imagine that happiness is to be found in them; but experience always proves how grievously they were mistaken. The devil seems to have persuaded himself that even the Son of God could be tempted by such a bribe. A mandarin puffed up with a sense of his high position was fond of appearing in the public streets, sparkling with jewels. He was annoyed, one day, by an uncouth personage, who followed him about, bowing often to the ground, and thanking him for his jewels. What does the man mean? cried the mandarin; I never gave you any of my jewels. No, returned the other; but you have let me look at them, and that is all the use you can make of them yourself. The only difference between us is, that you have the trouble of watching them.

III. By affording them a large share of worldly pleasure. Most of the things which are called worldly pleasures not only fail to make people happy, but leave positive misery behind them. And then, the terrible phantom, which, in moments of solitude and silence, must disturb the minds of the most frivolous--the end; when God shall bring all these things into judgment. When the Chevalier Gerard De Kampis, a rich and proud man, had finished his magnificent castle, he gave a great entertainment to all his wealthy neighbours. At the close of the sumptuous banquet, the guests made speech after speech, lauding their host to the skies, and declaring him to be the happiest of men. As the chevalier loved flattery, this fragrant incense was most acceptable; and nothing disturbed his equanimity, until one of the guests who had, thus far, kept silence, gravely remarked: Sir Knight, in order that your felicity should be complete, you require but one thing, but this is a very important item. And what thing is that? demanded the astonished nobleman. One of your doors must be walled up, replied his guest. At this strange rejoinder several of the guests laughed aloud, and while Gerard himself began to think the man was mad, he preserved self-control enough to ask: Which door do you mean? I mean that through which you will one day be carried to your grave. The words struck both guests and host, and the proud man saw the vanity of all earthly things, and began from that moment to lay up treasure in heaven.

IV. But by sending His Son Jesus, to turn away every one of them from his iniquities. There can be no salvation for us, unless we are delivered from our sins. God only makes men happy by making them holy (Mat_1:21). Lycurgus would allow none of his laws to be written, insisting that the principles of government must be interwoven with the lives and manners of the people, as the only sure way of promoting their happiness. He who would abide by the commandments of God must be able to say with David, Thy word have I hid within my heart. He who will be received into the presence of God and enjoy the blessedness of heaven, is the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness (Eph_4:24). We are made heirs of glory only by putting on Christ; but we are made meet for the inheritance of the saints through a studied and careful conformity to the Divine precept: Be ye holy, for I am holy. Say of no sin, however trivial it may appear, Is it not a little one? but following after holiness, let evil under every possible disguise be your abhorrence. (J. W. Norton, D. D.)

The gospel turns men from sin

If a physician were called to see a patient who had a cancer on his breast, the only thing to be done would be to cut it out from the roots. The physician might give palliatives, so that the patient would have less pain--or he might make his patient believe it was no cancer--or forget that he had a cancer near his vitals; but if the physician were to do this instead of removing the evil, he would be a wicked man and the enemy of his patient. The mans case was such that the only favour which could be conferred upon him would be to cut out the cancer. Now all agree that sin is the great evil of the soul of man. Nothing can make man more spiritually happy here, or fit him for happiness hereafter, but the removal of sin from his nature. Sin is the plague-spot on the soul which destroys its peace, and threatens its destruction unless removed. It is therefore certain that if the love of God were manifested towards man, it would be in turning man from sin which produces misery, to holiness which produces happiness. (J. B. Walker.)

Turning away every one of you from his iniquities.--

The blessedness of conversion

I. That the indulgence of sin is the grand source of human misery. We increase by our own transgressions the maladies to which we are naturally exposed: our understandings become more confused; our affections more depraved; our passions, appetites and tempers more unrestrained and virulent; our disappointments more bitter and acute; and all this progressive advancement in evil and misery is the consequence of increasing indulgence in sin.

II. That christ especially blesses His people in turning away every one of them from their iniquities.

1. In that as a prophet He enlightens their understanding to perceive the evil, the misery, and the ruinous consequences of sin, both as it regards the present and the future state.

2. This turning from iniquities is progressive; at first the gross and outward acts of sin are cut off, unlawful and expedient pleasures, and indulgences follow, many things of a doubtful and indifferent nature are then relinquished. The tongue, the temper, the thoughts, are gradually brought more and more under regulation and restraint; holy principles are cultivated; the spirit of fervent charity takes possession of the soul; and pity, meekness, forbearance, compassion, patience, holy resignation, lively hope, and heavenly joy increase and abound. (T. Webster, B. D.)

The return of the affections to God

The history of man on this side of the grave is like the history of the natural world: the seasons change; if the winter chills, the summer warms; if darkness wraps in its shade, light cheers with its brilliancy. Thus joy and sorrow, hope and fear, satisfaction and perplexity are mingled together. Under these circumstances it is very material to know whether there be any mode of defending ourselves against such an increase of sorrow, and of insuring to ourselves such an increase of comfort. Here in the text is a chart to the wanderer, a light to the benighted, a shelter to the forlorn, a certainty to the dubious! The misery of man lies chiefly in the circumstances of his moral condition; he is wretched under the effects of his iniquities. His remedy must be found in the return of his affections to God; God sent Christ to bless you by turning you away from your iniquities. The sorrows of man mainly issue from the depravity of his affections. He is guilty before God. Certainly his passions, earthly and selfish, spurn every barrier when occasions exasperate their movements. To restrain them under such excitements is as impracticable, as, by the weight of the dews of heaven, to chain down the fiery matter which a volcano is about to cast forth. But to come to individual experience. From whence does the largest portion of mans sufferings arise? Is it not from the disordered state of his affections? Is there not a disease of the heart, which is widely prevalent, and which no skill can heal? To reproduce happiness in a sinful being requires, therefore, a remedy applicable to the inward disease in his mind; a remedy which not only respects a new and favourable relation on the part of God, but also a new and holy state of the affections on the part of man. In other words, the happiness of a sinner will depend first upon, the conviction that God has pardoned him, and secondly, upon the consciousness that he loves the Being who has thus tenderly dealt with him. Now the remedy which Christianity brings forward to the view of him who believes it, is exactly of this kind. Jesus Christ came to bless you by turning away every one of you from his iniquities. He holds out to us pardon and peace, and He gives us the disposition to love the nature and the heart from which that pardon flows! In this complex operation the means of human happiness are unfolded. The pardon of sin is complete and free, unclogged with any condition or qualification. There is no more condemnation, but perfect reconciliation and peace. Now the belief in this truth, under the agency of the Spirit, conveys healing to the heart. Sin becomes loathsome when its consequences are thus made visible in the personal sufferings of Jesus Christ, and obedience to the will and mind of God then becomes identical with peace and happiness. Thus Christ blesses by turning away from iniquity, by procuring at once the pardon of sin, and by healing the disease of sin; by restoring peace in the relations between God and man, and by making Gods character the glowing object of attractive imitation. (G. T. Noel, M. A.)

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The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Acts

THE SERVANT OF THE LORD

Act 3:26.

So ended Peter’s bold address to the wondering crowd gathered in the Temple courts around him, with his companion John and the lame man whom they had healed. A glance at his words will show how extraordinarily outspoken and courageous they are. He charges home on his hearers the guilt of Christ’s death, unfalteringly proclaims His Messiahship, bears witness to His Resurrection and Ascension, asserts that He is the End and Fulfilment of ancient revelation, and offers to all the great blessings that Christ brings. And this fiery, tender oration came from the same lips which, a few weeks before, had been blanched with fear before a flippant maidservant, and had quivered as they swore, ‘I know not the man!’

One or two simple observations may be made by way of introduction. ‘Unto you first’-’first’ implies second; and so the Apostle has shaken himself clear of the Jews’ narrow belief that Messias belonged to them only, and is already beginning to contemplate the possibility of a transference of the kingdom of God to the outlying Gentiles. ‘God having raised up His Son’-that expression has no reference, as it might at first seem, to the fact of the Resurrection; but is employed in the same sense as, and indeed looks back to, previous words. For he had just quoted Moses’ declaration, ‘A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you from your brethren.’ So it is Christ’s equipment and appointment for His office, and not His Resurrection, which is spoken about here. ‘His Son Jesus’-the Revised Version more accurately translates ‘His Servant Jesus.’ I shall have a word or two to say about that translation presently, but in the meantime I simply note the fact.

With this slight explanation let us now turn to two or three of the aspects of the words before us.

I. First, I note the extraordinary transformation which they indicate in the speaker.

I have already referred to his cowardice a very short time before. That transformation from a coward to a hero he shared in common with his brethren. On one page we read, ‘They all forsook Him and fled.’ We turn over half a dozen leaves and we read: ‘They departed from the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.’ What did that?

Then there is another transformation no less swift, sudden, and inexplicable, except on one hypothesis. All through Christ’s life the disciples had been singularly slow to apprehend the highest aspects of His teachings, and they had clung with a strange obstinacy to their narrow Pharisaic and Jewish notions of the Messiah as coming to establish a temporal dominion, in which Israel was to ride upon the necks of the subject nations. And now, all at once, this Apostle, and his fellows with him, have stepped from these puerile and narrow ideas out into this large place, that he and they recognise that the Jew had no exclusive possession of Messiah’s blessings, and that these blessings consisted in no external kingdom, but lay mainly and primarily in His ‘turning every one of you from your iniquities.’ At one time the Apostles stood upon a gross, low, carnal level, and in a few weeks they were, at all events, feeling their way to, and to a large extent had possession of, the most spiritual and lofty aspects of Christ’s mission. What did that?

Something had come in between which wrought more, in a short space, than all the three years of Christ’s teaching and companionship had done for them. What was it? Why did they not continue in the mood which two of them are reported to have been in, after the Crucifixion, when they said-’It is all up! we trusted that this had been He,’ but the force of circumstances has shivered the confidence into fragments, and there is no such hope left for us any longer. What brought them out of that Slough of Despond?

I would put it to any fair-minded man whether the psychological facts of this sudden maturing of these childish minds, and their sudden change from slinking cowards into heroes who did not blanch before the torture and the scaffold, are accountable, if you strike out the Resurrection, the Ascension, and Pentecost? It seems to me that, for the sake of avoiding a miracle, the disbelievers in the Resurrection accept an impossibility, and tie themselves to an intellectual absurdity. And I for one would rather believe in a miracle than believe in an uncaused change, in which the Apostles take exactly the opposite course from that which they necessarily must have taken, if there had not been the facts that the New Testament asserts that there were, Christ’s rising again from the dead, and Ascension.

Why did not the Church share the fate of John’s disciples, who scattered like sheep without a shepherd when Herod chopped off their master’s head? Why did not the Church share the fate of that abortive rising, of which we know that when Theudas, its leader, was slain, ‘all, as many as believed on him, came to nought.’ Why did these men act in exactly the opposite way? I take it that, as you cannot account for Christ except on the hypothesis that He is the Son of the Highest, you cannot account for the continuance of the Christian Church for a week after the Crucifixion, except on the hypothesis that the men who composed it were witnesses of His Resurrection, and saw Him floating upwards and received into the Shechinah cloud and lost to their sight. Peter’s change, witnessed by the words of my text-these bold and clear-sighted words-seems to me to be a perfect monstrosity, and incapable of explication, unless he saw the risen Lord, beheld the ascended Christ, was touched with the fiery Spirit descending on Pentecost, and so ‘out of weakness was made strong,’ and from a babe sprang to the stature of a man in Christ.

II. Look at these words as setting forth a remarkable view of Christ.

I have already referred to the fact that the word rendered ‘son’ ought rather to be rendered ‘servant.’ It literally means ‘child’ or ‘boy,’ and appears to have been used familiarly, just in the same fashion as we use the same expression ‘boy,’ or its equivalent ‘maid,’ as a more gentle designation for a servant. Thus the kindly centurion, when he would bespeak our Lord’s care for his menial, calls him his ‘boy’; and our Bible there translates rightly ‘servant.’

Again, the designation is that which is continually employed in the Greek translation of the Old Testament as the equivalent for the well-known prophetic phrase ‘the Servant of Jehovah,’ which, as you will remember, is characteristic of the second portion of the prophecies of Isaiah. And consequently we find that, in a quotation of Isaiah’s prophecy in the Gospel of Matthew, the very phrase of our text is there employed: ‘Behold My Servant whom I uphold!’

Now, it seems as if this designation of our Lord as God’s Servant was very familiar to Peter’s thoughts at this stage of the development of Christian doctrine. For we find the name employed twice in this discourse-in the thirteenth verse, ‘the God of our Fathers hath glorified His Servant Jesus,’ and again in my text. We also find it twice in the next chapter, where Peter, offering up a prayer amongst his brethren, speaks of ‘Thy Holy Child Jesus,’ and prays ‘that signs and wonders may be done through the name’ of that ‘Holy Child.’ So, then, I think we may fairly take it that, at the time in question, this thought of Jesus as the ‘Servant of the Lord’ had come with especial force to the primitive Church. And the fact that the designation never occurs again in the New Testament seems to show that they passed on from it into a deeper perception than even it attests of who and what this Jesus was in relation to God.

But, at all events, we have in our text the Apostle looking back to that dim, mysterious Figure which rises up with shadowy lineaments out of the great prophecy of ‘Isaiah,’ and thrilling with awe and wonder, as he sees, bit by bit, in the Face painted on the prophetic canvas, the likeness of the Face into which he had looked for three blessed years, that now began to tell him more than they had done whilst their moments were passing.

‘The Servant of the Lord’-that means, first of all, that Christ, in all which He does, meekly and obediently executes the Father’s will. As He Himself said, ‘I come not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.’ But it carries us further than that, to a point about which I would like to say one word now; and that is, the clear recognition that the very centre of Jewish prophecy is the revelation of the personality of the Christ. Now, it seems to me that present tendencies, discussions about the nature and limits of inspiration, investigations which, in many directions, are to be welcomed and are fruitful as to the manner of origin of the books of the Old Testament, and as to their collection into a Canon and a whole-that all this new light has a counterbalancing disadvantage, in that it tends somewhat to obscure in men’s minds the great central truth about the revelation of God in Israel-viz. that it was all progressive, and that its goal and end was Jesus Christ. ‘The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,’ and however much we may have to learn-and I have no doubt that we have a great deal to learn, about the composition, the structure, the authorship, the date of these ancient books-I take leave to say that the unlearned reader, who recognises that they all converge on Jesus Christ, has hold of the clue of the labyrinth, and has come nearer to the marrow of the books than the most learned investigators, who see all manner of things besides in them, and do not see that ‘they that went before cried, saying, Hosanna! Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord!’

And so I venture to commend to you, brethren-not as a barrier against any reverent investigation, not as stopping any careful study-this as the central truth concerning the ancient revelation, that it had, for its chief business, to proclaim the coming of the Servant of Jehovah, Jesus the Christ.

III. And now, lastly, look at these words as setting forth the true centre of Christ’s work.

‘He has sent Him to bless you in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.’ I have already spoken about the gross, narrow, carnal apprehensions of Messiah’s work which cleaved to the disciples during all our Lord’s life here, and which disturbed even the sanctity of the upper chamber at that last meal, with squabbles about precedence which had an eye to places in the court of the Messiah when He assumed His throne. But here Peter has shaken himself clear of all these, and has grasped the thought that, whatever derivative and secondary blessings of an external and visible sort may, and must, come in Messiah’s train, the blessing which He brings is of a purely spiritual and inward character, and consists in turning away single souls from their love and practice of evil. That is Christ’s true work.

The Apostle does not enlarge as to how it is done. We know how it is done. Jesus turns away men from sin because, by the magnetism of His love, and the attractive raying out of influence from His Cross, He turns them to Himself. He turns us from our iniquities by the expulsive power of a new affection, which, coming into our hearts like a great river into some foul Augean stable, sweeps out on its waters all the filth that no broom can ever clear out in detail. He turns men from their iniquities by His gift of a new life, kindred with that from which it is derived.

There is an old superstition that lightning turned whatever it struck towards the point from which the flash came, so that a tree with its thousand leaves had each of them pointed to that quarter in the heavens where the blaze had been.

And so Christ, when He flings out the beneficent flash that slays only our evil, and vitalises ourselves, turns us to Him, and away from our transgressions. ‘Turn us, O Christ, and we shall be turned.’

Ah, brethren! that is the blessing that we need most, for ‘iniquities’ are universal; and so long as man is bound to his sin it will embitter all sweetnesses, and neutralise every blessing. It is not culture, valuable as that is in many ways, that will avail to stanch man’s deepest wounds. It is not a new social order that will still the discontent and the misery of humanity. You may adopt collective economic and social arrangements, and divide property out as it pleases you. But as long as man continues selfish he will continue sinful, and as long as he continues sinful any social order will be pregnant with sorrow, ‘and when it is finished it will bring forth death.’ You have to go deeper down than all that, down as deep as this Apostle goes in this sermon of his, and recognise that Christ’s prime blessing is the turning of men from their iniquities, and that only after that has been done will other good come.

How shallow, by the side of that conception, do modern notions of Jesus as the great social Reformer look! These are true, but they want their basis, and their basis lies only here, that He is the Redeemer of individuals from their sins. There were people in Christ’s lifetime who were all untouched by His teachings, but when they found that He gave bread miraculously they said, ‘This is of a truth the Prophet! That’s the prophet for my money; the Man that can make bread, and secure material well-being.’ Have not certain modern views of Christ’s work and mission a good deal in common with these vulgar old Jews-views which regard Him mainly as contributing to the material good, the social and economical well-being of the world?

Now, I believe that He does that. And I believe that Christ’s principles are going to revolutionise society as it exists at present. But I am sure that we are on a false scent if we attempt to preach consequences without proclaiming their antecedents, and that such preaching will end, as all such attempts have ended, in confusion and disappointment.

They used to talk about Jesus Christ, in the first French Revolution, as ‘the Good Sansculotte.’ Perfectly true! But as the basis of that, and of all representations of Him, that will have power on the diseases of the community, we have to preach Him as the Saviour of the individual from his sin.

And so, brethren, has He saved you? Do you begin your notions of Jesus Christ where His work begins? Do you feel that what you want most is neither culture nor any superficial and external changes, but something that will deal with the deep, indwelling, rooted, obstinate self-regard which is the centre of all sin? And have you gone alone to Him as a sinful man? As the Apostle here suggests, Jesus Christ does not save communities. The doctor has his patients into the consulting-room one by one. There is no applying of Christ’s benefits to men in batches, by platoons and regiments, as Clovis baptized his Franks; but you have to go, every one of you, through the turnstile singly, and alone to confess, and alone to be absolved, and alone to be turned, from your iniquity.

If I might venture to alter the position of words in my text, I would lay them, so modified, on the hearts of all my friends whom my words may reach now, and say, ‘Unto you-unto thee, God, having raised up His Son Jesus, sent Him to bless you, first in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.’

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Act 3:26. πρῶτον, first) A previous intimation as to the call of the Gentiles.—ἀναστήσας, having raised up) of the seed of Abraham.—παῖδα) Act 3:13 [His servant, not His Son, as Engl. Vers.]—εὐλογοῦντα, blessing) This is deduced from Act 3:25.—ἐν τῷ ἀποστρέφειν) Active: in turning away. Christ is He who turns away both us from wickedness, and ungodliness from us: Rom 11:26, “There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” It is a thing not to be done by human strength.—πονηριῶν) wickednesses, iniquities, whereby the blessing is impeded. Πονηρία denotes both wickedness and misery.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Act_3:26. Progress of the discourse: This bestowalin accordance with Gods covenant-arrangementsof salvation on all nations of the earth through the Messiah has commenced with you, to you first has God sent, etc.

πρῶτον] sooner than to all other nations. Praevium indicium de vocatione gentium, Bengel. Rom_1:16; Rom_11:11. On this intimation of the universality of the Messianic salvation Olshausen observes, that the apostle, who at a later period rose with such difficulty to this idea (ch. 10), was doubtless, in the first moments of his ministry, full of the Spirit, raised above himself, and in this elevation had glimpses to which he was still, as regards his general development, a stranger. But this is incorrect: Peter shared the views of his people, that the non-Jewish nations would be made partakers in the blessings of the Messiah by acceptance of the Jewish theocracy. He thus still expected at this time the blessing of the Gentiles through the Messiah to take place in the way of their passing through Mosaism. Caput et summa rei in adventu Messiae in eo continetur, quod omnes omnino populi adorent Jovam illumque colant unanimiter, Mikrae Kodesch, f. 108. 1. Gentes non traditae snnt Israeli in hoc saeculo, at tradentur in diebus Messiae, Berish. rab. f. 28. 2. See already Isa_2:2 f., Isa_60:3 ff.

ἀναστήσας] causing His servant to appear (the aorist participle synchronous with ἀπέστ.). This view of ἀναστ. is required by Act_3:22. Incorrectly, therefore, Luther, Beza, Heumann, and Barkey: after He has raised Him from the dead.

εὐλοῦντα ὑμᾶς] blessing you. The correlate of ἐνευλογ., Act_3:25. This efficacy of the Sent One procuring salvation through His redeeming work is continuous.

ἐν τῷ ἀποστρέφειν] in the turning away, i.e. when ye turn from your iniquities (see on Rom_1:29), consequently denoting that by which the εὐλογεῖν must be accompanied on the part of the recipients (comp. Act_4:30)the moral relation which must necessarily be thereby brought about. We may add, that here the intransitive meaning of ἀποστρέφειν,[153] and not the transitive, which Piscator, Calvin, Hammond, Wetstein, Bengel, Morus, Heinrichs adopt (when He turns away), is required by the summons contained in Act_3:19.

The issue to which Act_3:25-26 were meant to induce the hearersnamely, that they should now believingly apprehend and appropriate the Messianic salvation announced beforehand to them by God and assured by covenant, and indeed actually in the mission of the Messiah offered to them first before all otherswas already expressed sufficiently in Act_3:19, and is now again at the close in Act_3:26, and that with a sufficiently successful result (Act_4:4); and therefore the hypothesis that the discourse was interrupted while still unfinished by the arrival of the priests, etc. (Act_4:1), is unnecessary.

[153] So only here in the N. T.; but see Xen. Hist. iii. 4. 12; Gen_18:33, al.; Sir_8:5; Sir_17:21; Bar_2:33; Sauppe, ad Xen. de re eq. 12. 13; Krüger, § lii. 2. 5.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Act 3:26 . ὑμῖν πρῶτον ὑμῖν : again emphatic. In the words of St. Peter we may again note his agreement with St. Paul, Act 13:46 , Rom 1:16 (Act 10:11 ), although no doubt St. Peter shared the views of his nation in so far that Gentiles could only participate in the blessings of the Messianic kingdom through acceptance of Judaism. ἀναστήσας , cf. Act 3:22 , τὸν παῖδα , “his servant,” R.V., see above on Act 3:13 . ἀπέστειλεν also shows that ἀνασ . here refers not to the Resurrection but to the Incarnation. εὐλογοῦντα : as in the act of blessing, present participle; the present participle expressing that the Christ is still continuing His work of blessing on repentance, but see also Burton, N. T. Moods and Tenses , p. 171. ἐν τῷ : this use of ἐν governing the dative with the infinitive is most commonly temporal, but it is used to express other relations, such as manner, means, as here ( cf. Act 4:30 , where the attempt to give a temporal sense is very far-fetched, Hackett, in loco ); see Burton, u. s. , p. 162, and Blass, Grammatik des N. G. , p. 232. This formula of ἐν with the dative of the article and the infinitive is very common in St. Luke, both in his Gospel and in the Acts, and is characteristic of him as compared with the number of times the same formula is used by other writers in the N.T., Friedrich, Das Lucasevangelium , p. 37, and also Zeller, of the Apostles , ii., p. 196, ., also in the LXX the same construction is found, cf. Gen 19:16 ; Gen 34:15 , etc. ἀποστρέφειν : probably intransitive (Blass, Grimm, and so often in LXX, although the English A. and R.V. may be understood in either sense). Vulgate renders “ut convertat se unusquisque,” but the use of the verb elsewhere in Luk 23:14 ( cf. also Rom 11:26 , Isa 59:20 ) makes for the transitive sense (so Weiss, in loco ). The argument from Act 3:19 (as Alford points out) does not decide the matter either way (see also Holtzmann). πονηριῶν , cf. Luk 11:39 , and adjective πονηρός frequent both in the Gospel and in the Acts; in LXX both words are very common. The word may denote miseries as well as iniquities, as Bengel notes, but the latter sense is demanded by the context. πρῶτον according to Jüngst does not mark the fact that the Jews were to be converted first and the Gentiles afterwards, but as belonging to the whole clause, and as referring to the first and past sending of Jesus in contrast to the second (Act 3:20 ) and future sending in glory. But to support this view Jüngst has no hesitation in regarding 25 b as an interpolation, and so nothing is left but a reference to the διαθήκη of God with the fathers, i.e. , circumcision, which is quite in place before a Jewish audience.

St. Peter’s Discourses . More recent German criticism has departed far from the standpoint of the early Tübrigen school, who could only see in these discourses the free composition of a later age, whilst Dr. McGiffert, in spite of his denial of the Lucan authorship of Acts, inclines to the belief that the discourses in question represent an early type of Christian teaching, derived from primitive documents, and that they breathe the spirit of St. Peter and of primitive Jewish Christianity. Feine sees in the contents of the addresses a proof that we have in them a truthful record of the primitive Apostolic teaching. Just the very points which were of central interest in this early period of the Church’s life are those emphasised here, e.g. , the proof that Jesus of Nazareth, the Crucified One, is the Messiah, a proof attested by His Resurrection, the appeal to Israel, the chosen people, to repent for the remission of sins in His name. Nor is there anything against the speeches in the fact of their similarity; in their first and early preaching, as Feine urges, the Apostles’ thoughts would naturally move in the same circle, they would recur again and again to the same facts, and their addresses could scarcely be otherwise than similar. Moreover we have an appeal to the facts of the life of Jesus as to things well known in the immediate past: “Jesus of Nazareth” had been working in the midst of them, and Peter’s hearers were witnesses with him of His signs and wonders, “as ye yourselves know,” Act 2:23 ; we become conscious in such words and in their context of all the moral indignation and the deep pain of the Apostles at the crucifixion of their Master, just as in Act 3:13 we seem to listen to another personal reminiscence of the Passion history (see Beyschlag, Neutest. Theol. , i., pp. 304, 305; Scharfe, Die Petrinische Strömung , 2 c., pp. 184, 185).

The fact that no reference is made to, or at all events that no stress is laid upon, the doctrinal significance of the death of Christ, as by St. Paul, is again an intimation that we are dealing with the earliest days of Apostolic teaching the death of the Cross was in itself the fact of all others which was the insuperable offence to the Jew, and it could not help him to proclaim that Christ died for his sins if he had no belief in Jesus as the Christ. The first and necessary step was to prove to the Jew that the suffering of the Messiah was in accordance with the counsels of God and with the voices of the prophets (Lechler, Das Apostolische Zeitalter , pp. 230, 231). But the historical fact accepted, its inner and spiritual significance would be imparted, and there was nothing strange in the fact that disciples who had themselves found it so difficult to overcome their repugnance to the mention of their Master’s sufferings, should first direct their main efforts to remove the like prejudice from the minds of their countrymen. But we cannot adduce from this method that the Apostles had never heard such words as those of Christ (Mat 20:28 , Mar 10:45 , cf. 1Pe 1:18 ) ( cf. the striking passage in Beyschlag, u. s. , pp. 306, 307), or that they were entirely ignorant of the atoning significance of His Death. St. Paul, 1Co 15:1-3 , speaks of the tradition which he had received, a tradition in which he was at one with the Twelve, Act 3:11 , viz. , that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures (Feine, Die vorkanonische Ueberlieferung des Lukas ; see p. 230).

When we pass to the consideration of St. Peter’s Christology, we again see how he starts from the actual experience of his hearers before him: “Jesus of Nazareth, a man,” etc. plainly and fearlessly St. Peter emphasises the manhood of his Lord the title which is never found in any of the Epistles leads us back to the Passion and the Cross, to the early records of the Saviour’s life on earth, Act 24:9 ; Act 22:8 . And yet the Crucified Nazarene was by a startling paradox the Prince or Author of Life (see note on ἀρχηγός ); by a divine law which the Jews could not discern He could not save Himself and yet another paradox there was no other Name given amongst men whereby they must be saved.

St. Paul could write of Him, Who took upon Him the form of a servant, Who humbled Himself, and became obedient to the death of the Cross, Phi 2:6 ; and St. Peter, in one familiar word, which so far as we know St. Paul never used, brings before his hearers the same sublime picture of obedience, humility, death and glory; Jesus is the ideal, the glorified “Servant” of God (see note on Act 3:13 ). But almost in the same breath St. Peter speaks of the Servant as the Holy and Righteous One, Act 3:14 ; holy, in that He was consecrated to the service of Jehovah ( ἅγιος , Act 4:27 ; Act 4:30 , see note, and Act 2:27 ); righteous, in that He was also the impersonation of righteousness, a righteousness which the Law had proclaimed, and which Prophets and Kings had desired to see, but had not seen (Isa 53:11 ). But whilst we note these titles, steeped each and all of them in O.T. imagery, whilst we may see in them the germs of the later and the deeper theology of St. Paul and St. John (see Dr. Lock, “Christology of the Earlier Chapters of the Acts,” Expositor , iv. (fourth series), p. 178 ff.), they carry us far beyond the conception of a mere humanitarian Christ. It is not only that Jesus of Nazareth is set before us as “the very soul and end of Jewish Prophecy,” as Himself the Prophet to whom the true Israel would hearken, but that He is associated by St. Peter even in his earliest utterances, as none other is associated, with Jehovah in His Majesty in the work of salvation, Act 2:34 ; the salvation which was for all who called upon Jehovah’s Name, Act 2:21 , was also for all in the Name, in the power of Jesus Christ, Act 4:12 (see notes, l. c , and cf. the force of the expression ἐπικαλεῖσθαι τὸ ὄνομα in 1Co 1:2 , Schmid, Biblische Theologie , p. 407); the Spirit which Joel had foretold would be poured forth by Jehovah had been poured forth by Jesus raised to the right hand of God, Act 2:18 ; Act 2:33 (see further notes in chap. Act 10:36 ; Act 10:42-43 ).

One other matter must be briefly noticed the correspondence in thought and word between the St. Peter of the early chapters of the Acts and the St. Peter of the First Epistle which bears his name. A few points may be selected. St. Peter had spoken of Christ as the Prince of Life; quite in harmony with this is the thought expressed in 1Pe 1:3 , of Christians as “begotten again” by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. St. Peter had spoken of Christ as the Holy and Righteous One, so in the First Epistle he sets forth this aspect of Christ’s peculiar dignity, His sinlessness. As in Acts, so also in 1 Pet. the thought of the sufferings of Christ is prominent, but also that of the glory which should follow, chap. 1, Act 3:11 . As in Acts, so also in 1 Pet. these sufferings are described as undeserved, but also as foreordained by God and in accordance with the voices of the Prophets, 1Pe 1:11 ; 1Pe 2:22-25 . As in Acts, so in 1 Pet. it is the special task of the Apostles to be witnesses of the sufferings and also of the resurrection of Christ, chap. Act 5:1 . As in Acts, so in 1 Pet. we have the clearest testimony to the δόξα of Christ, 1Pe 1:21 ; 1Pe 4:11 . As in Acts stress is laid not only upon the facts of the life of Christ, but also upon His teaching, Act 10:34 ff., so also in 1 Pet., while allusions are made to the scenes of our Lord’s Passion with all the force of an eye-witness, we have stress laid upon the word of Christ, the Gospel or teaching, Act 1:12 ; Act 1:23 ; Act 1:25 , Act 2:2 ; Act 2:8 , Act 3:19 , Act 4:6 . As in Acts, so in 1 Pet. we have a reference to the agency of Christ in the realm of the dead, 1Pe 3:19 ; 1Pe 4:6 . As in Acts, Act 10:42 , so in 1 Pet. Christ is Himself the judge of quick and dead, Act 4:6 , or in His unity with the Father shares with Him that divine prerogative, cf. Act 1:17 . As in Acts, so in 1 Pet. the communication of the Holy Spirit is specially attributed to the exalted Christ, cf. Act 2:33 , 1Pe 1:11-12 . As in Acts, so in 1 Pet. Christ is the living corner-stone on which God’s spiritual house is built, Act 4:12 and 1Pe 2:4-10 . As in Acts, so in 1 Pet. not only the details but the whole scope of salvation is regarded in the light and as a fulfilment of O.T. prophecy, cf. Act 3:18-25 , 1Pe 2:22-23 ; 1Pe 1:10-12 . But this correspondence extends to words, amongst which we may note πρόγνωσις , Act 2:23 , 1Pe 1:2 , a word found nowhere else in the N.T., and used in each passage in the same sense; ἀπροσωπολήμπτως , 1Pe 1:17 , and only here in N.T., but cf. Act 10:34 , οὐκ ἐστιν προσωπολήμπτης . ξύλον twice used by St. Peter in Act 5:30 ; Act 10:39 (once by St. Paul), and again in 1Pe 2:24 ; ἀθέμιτος only in the Cornelius history, Act 10:28 , by St. Peter, and in 1Pe 4:3 ; μάρτυς with the genitive of that to which testimony is rendered, most frequently in N.T. used by St. Peter, cf. Act 1:22 ; Act 6:13 ; Act 10:39 , and 1Pe 5:1 ; and further, in Act 4:11 = 1Pe 2:7 , Act 10:42 = 1Pe 4:5 , the verbal correspondence is very close.

See on the whole subject Nösgen, Apostelgeschichte , p. 48; Lechler, Das Apost. Zeitalter , p. 428 ff.; Scharfe, Die Petrinische Strömung , 2 c. , p. 122 ff.; Lumby, Expositor , iv. (first series), pp. 118, 123; and also Schmid, Biblische Theologie , p. 389 ff. On the striking connection between the Didache 1 , and the language of St. Peter’s sermons, and the phraseology of the early chapters of Acts, see Gore, Church and the Ministry , p. 416.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Given to the world, or raised from the dead, and advanced to his kingdom.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

God, having raised up--not from the dead, but having provided, prepared, and given.

his Son Jesus--"His Servant Jesus" (see on Act 3:13).

sent him to bless you--literally, "sent Him blessing you," as if laden with blessing.

in turning away every one of you from his iniquities--that is, "Hitherto we have all been looking too much for a Messiah who should shed outward blessings upon the nation generally, and through it upon the world. But we have learned other things, and now announce to you that the great blessing with which Messiah has come laden is the turning away of every one of you from his iniquities." With what divine skill does the apostle, founding on resistless facts, here drive home to the conscience of his auditors their guilt in crucifying the Lord of Glory; then soothe their awakened minds by assurances of forgiveness on turning to the Lord, and a glorious future as soon as this shall come to pass, to terminate with the Personal Return of Christ from the heavens whither He has ascended; ending all with warnings, from their own Scriptures, to submit to Him if they would not perish, and calls to receive from Him the blessings of salvation.

Next: Acts Chapter 4

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 26. Unto you first, God, having raised up] As you are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant, the first offers of salvation belong to you, and God thus makes them to you. The great mission of Jesus Christ is directed first to you, that you may be saved from your sins. God designs to bless you, but it is by turning each of you away from his iniquities. The salvation promised in the covenant is a salvation from SIN, not from the Romans; and no man can have his sin blotted out who does not turn away from it.

1. We may learn from this that neither political nor ecclesiastical privileges can benefit the soul, merely considered in themselves: a man may have Abraham for his father, according to the flesh; and have Satan for his father, according to the spirit. A man may be a member of the visible Church of Christ, without any title to the Church triumphant. In short, if a man be not turned away from his iniquities, even the death of Christ profits him nothing. His name shall be called JESUS, for he shall SAVE his people FROM their SINS.

2. If Christ be the substance and sum of all that the prophets have written, is it not the duty and interest of every Christian, in reading the Scriptures, to search for the testimony they bear to this Christ, and the salvation procured by his death?

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

26. He hath raised up his Son. He gathereth out of the words of Moses that Christ is now revealed. But the words do seem to import no such thing; yet doth he reason fitly thus, because the blessing could no otherwise be, unless the beginning thereof did flow from the Messias. For we must always remember this, that all mankind is accursed, and, therefore, there is a singular remedy promised us, which is performed by Christ alone. Wherefore, he is the only fountain and beginning of the blessing. And if so be that Christ came to this end, that he may bless the Jews first, and, secondly, us, he hath undoubtedly done that which was his duty to do; and we shall feel the force and effect of this duty in ourselves, unless our unbelief do hinder us.

This was a part of the priest’s office under the law, to bless the people; and, lest this should be only a vain ceremony, there was a promise added; as it is, (Numbers 6:27.) And that which was shadowed in the old priesthood was truly performed in Christ, (Hebrews 7:1, 6.) Concerning which matter we have spoken more at large in the seventh chapter to the Hebrews. I like not Erasmus’s translation; for he saith, when he had raised him up, as if he spoke of a thing which was done long ago. But Peter meaneth rather, that Christ was raised up, when he was declared to be the author of the blessing; which thing, since it was done of late and suddenly, it ought to move their minds the more. For the Scripture useth to speak thus, as in the last place, of Moses, whereunto Peter alludeth. To raise up a prophet, is to furnish him with necessary gifts to fulfill his function, and, as it were, to prefer him to the degree of prophetical honor. And Christ was raised up then, when he fulfilled the function enjoined him by his Father, but the same thing is done daily when he is offered by the gospel, that he may excel amongst us. We have said that in the adverb of order, first, is noted the right of the first-be-gotten, because it was expedient that Christ should begin with the Jews, that he might afterward pass over unto the Gentiles.

Whilst that he turneth. He doth again commend the doctrine of repentance, to the end we may learn to conclude under the blessing of Christ newness of life, as when Esaias promiseth that a “Redeemer should come to Zion,” he addeth a restraint; “Those which in Jacob shall be turned from their iniquities.” For Christ doth not do away the sins of the faithful, to the end they may grant liberty to themselves to sin under this color; but he maketh them therewith all new men. Although we must diligently distinguish these two benefits which are linked together, that this ground-work may continue, that we are reconciled to God by free pardon, I know that other men turn it otherwise; but this is the true meaning of Luke; for he speaketh thus word for word, “In turning every one from his wickedness.”

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(26) Unto you first. . . .—Here again we note, even in the very turn of the phrase as well as of the thought, an agreement with St. Paul’s formula of the purpose of God being manifested “to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile” (Act_13:46; Rom_1:16; Rom_2:9-10). St. Peter does not as yet know the conditions under which the gospel will be preached to the heathen; but his words imply a distinct perception that there was a call to preach to them.

His Son Jesus.—Better, as before, Servant. (See Note on Act_3:13.)

Sent him to bless you.—The Greek structure gives the present participle where the English has the infinitive, sent Him as in the act of blessing. The verb which strictly and commonly expresses a spoken benediction is here used in a secondary sense, as conveying the reality of blessedness. And the blessing is found, not in mere exemption from punishment, not even in pardon and reconciliation, but in a change of heart, in “turning each man from his wickednesses.” The plural of the abstract noun implies, as in Mar_7:22, all the many concrete forms in which man’s wickedness could show itself.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

26. Unto you first] That the Jews might first receive the blessing themselves, and then spread it abroad.

God, having raised up] Not spoken here of the resurrection of Jesus, but recalling the promise of Moses (Act_3:22) that a prophet should be raised up and sent unto the people.

his Son Jesus] his Servant (as Act_3:13). The best authorities omit Jesus.

sent him to bless you] by the times of refreshing alluded to Act_3:19. The way and means to which blessing is to be by the repentance and turning again to which the Apostle has been exhorting them.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Unto you first, God having raised his Son Jesus,.... Which may be understood, either of the incarnation of Christ, and his exhibition in the flesh; which is sometimes expressed by raising him up, and is no other than the mission, or manifestation of him in human nature, as in Luk 1:69. Or of the resurrection of him from the dead, and the exaltation of him at the right hand of God:

sent him to bless you; in person, according to the former sense; for he was indeed sent only to the people of Israel, and to them he preached; many of whom were blessed with converting grace under his ministry; but according to the latter sense, and which seems most agreeable, he was sent in the ministry of the word, and came by his Spirit, first to the Jews, among whom the Gospel was first preached for a while, and was blessed to the conversion of many thousands among them, both in Judea, and in the nations of the world, where they were dispersed:

in turning away everyone of you from his iniquities; in this the blessing lay, and is rightly in our version ascribed to Christ, and to the power of his grace, in the ministration of the Gospel and not to themselves, as in many other versions; as the Syriac version, "if ye convert yourselves, and turn from your evils"; making it both their own act, and the condition of their being blessed; and the Arabic version likewise, "so that everyone of you departs from his wickedness"; but that work is Christ's, and this is the blessing of grace he himself bestows, and is a fruit of redemption by his blood, Tit 2:14.

Next: Acts Chapter 4

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

26 Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.

Ver. 26. To bless you] Eph 1:3.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Unto you first - To you who are Jews. This was the direction, that the gospel should be first preached to the Jews, beginning at Jerusalem, Luk 24:47. Jesus himself also confined his ministry entirely to the Jews.

Having raised up - This expression does not refer to his having raised him from the dead, but is used in the same sense as in Act 3:22, where God promised that he would raise up a prophet, and send him to teach the people. Peter means that God had appointed his Son Jesus, or had commissioned him to go and preach to the people to turn them away from their sins.

To bless you - To make you happy; to fulfill the promise made to Abraham.

In turning away - That is, by his preaching, example, death, etc. The highest blessing that can be conferred upon people is to be turned from sin. Sin is the source of all woes, and if people are turned from that, they will be happy. Christ blesses no one in sin, or while loving sin, but by turning them from sin. This was the object which he had in view in coming, Isa 59:20; Mat 1:21. The design of Peter in these remarks was to show them that the Messiah had come, and that now they might look for happiness, pardon, and mercy through him. As the Jews might, so may all; and as Jesus, while living, sought to turn away people from their sins, so he does still, and still designs to bless all nations by the gospel which he had himself preached, and to establish which he died. All may therefore come and be blessed; and all may rejoice in the prospect that these blessings will yet be bestowed on all the kindreds of the earth. May the happy day soon come!

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Unto you first; the Jews and inhabitants of Jerusalem, who are the lost sheep of the house of Israel. St. Peter did not yet know, that the Gentiles should be called, until he was taught it by the vision, Act 10:1-48; and though our Saviour had told the apostles that they should be his witnesses unto the uttermost part of the earth, Act 1:8, they understood it only of those of their own nation, scattered or dispersed abroad, 1Pe 1:1.

Raised up his son, Jesus; which word does not only refer to the resurrection of Christ, but to his being constituted and appointed to be a Prince and a Saviour; thus it is said, a great prophet is risen up amongst us, Luk 7:16; and, God hath, raised up a horn of salvation, Luk 1:69. Howsoever, it is by virtue of Christ’s being raised from the dead, and carried into his kingdom, that we are blessed. In turning away everyone of you from his iniquities; this is the greatest blessing indeed; hence our Saviour hath his name imposed by God on him, Mat 1:21, and was called Jesus, because he saves his people from their sins; and without this being saved from our sins, nothing can be a blessing to us, Isa 3:11; and, There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked, Isa 57:21. Add to this, that if any be turned from their iniquities, it is through the blessing of God in Christ.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

26. Unto you first—See note on Mat_10:5. To the Jews, as the ancient theocracy, the Gospel was to be first presented that they might be the main body of the theocracy still. Christ was their birthright until they had fully rejected him. But when they fully, like Judas, betrayed and rejected him, like Judas they were cast away and another came into the birthright. The churchdom, the covenant, all the promises, went to the heirs by faith, who now became the true Israel.

First—Implying that Jesus would be sent to the Gentiles next. Peter fully understood from the teachings of Jesus that the Gentiles should be called; the real error of the apostles was the supposition that the Gentiles were to be circumcised and become Jews. (See note on Act_10:1.)

Turning… every one of you—It was a weak cavil of the Jewish advocate Orobio that Jesus could not be Messiah because he did not, as according to this passage, turn every one of them from sin. The same sophism is persistently used by modern Universalism. It ignores the fact that even according to the Old Testament (for instance, Eze_33:11) the purposes of God’s mercy, being conditional upon man’s consent, are often not fulfilled. Christ was sent to turn them under proviso, often expressed and always implied, that they consent to be turned. They cannot turn unless he turn them; he cannot turn them unless they turn.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Servant for Son Jesus, A.V. and T.R.; your for his, A.V. Unto you first. In virtue of the covenant, the first offer of salvation was made to the Jews. (see Act_1:8 Act_13:26, Act_13:46; Luk_24:47; Rom_2:10, etc.; comp. Mat_15:24) His Servant (as in ver. 13). As regards the phrase, "having raised up," however natural it is at first sight to understand it of the raising from the dead, the tenses make it impossible to do so. Nor could it be said that God sent Jesus to bless them after his resurrection. We must, therefore, understand ajnasthsav as to be equivalent to ejxageirav, and to mean "having appointed," set up, raised up (as the English word is used, (Luk_1:69; Rom_9:17) In this sense God raised up his Servant by the incarnation, birth, anointing, and mission to be the Savior. To bless you; to fulfill to you the blessing promised to Abraham"s seed. In turning away, etc., deliverance from sin being the chief blessing which Christ bestows upon his people. (so Act_5:31, repentance is spoken of as Christ"s great gift to Israel) So closed the second great apostolic sermon.

The mission of Jesus Christ.

you first," etc. (Revised Version., "Servant," see margin). The Bible its own interpreter. All acknowledge the greatness, wonderfulness, perfection of the gospel portrait. Misconstruction of the facts by the Jew, by the unbelieving philosopher, by the mere moralist, by the rationalist. The last verse of the apostle"s sermon a summing up Scripture and facts of history. So always revelation and history explain one another. The truly evangelical view of Christ the only one that appeals to the universal human heart.

I THE INFINITE FOUNDATION ON WHICH THE GOSPEL RESTS. God raised up his Son (Servant); God sent him.

1. The twofold aspect of the Divine character thus presented to us. Love desiring to bless; righteousness requiring the putting away of iniquities. All is from the Father.

2. The person and the work of Christ revealed in their intimate union. Raised up," comprehending the whole conception of the mediatorial exaltation of Jesus Christ. Difference between his history and that of any mere human agent raised up for action, the necessity for all that we find in the Scripture record. God knows it, though we may not see it.

3. The Scripture is not given to be worked up by men"s devices into mere food for human pride; it is a practical Book, the foundation laid, to be built upon. Christ was sent to bless us, and we can find the blessing only as we seek it practically.

II THE UNIVERSAL MESSAGE TO THE WORLD.

1. The moral state of all men shows the necessity for such a proclamation. "Your iniquities. " The history of the gospel reminds us that the most religiously instructed were far from being the most godly. The superstitions and oppositions of the world multiply its iniquities, Man cannot turn himself to God.

2. The whole gospel must be preached, or its true success cannot be realized. The mutilated Christianity of our time is proving itself impotent. We must lead the hearts of men to a person; we must teach them dependence on a power; we must call them to newness of life, a life already made manifest through Christ, both in his history and in the history of his people. Then:

3. The blessing should be put first and foremost. Blessing which the world has been waiting for from the beginning, which it has been prepared for by the dispensations, which it received in germ in Abraham and his seed, but which is for all the families of the earth. Hence it was "to the Jew first," as the consecrated messenger; but as the patriarchs were taken to the larger sphere of Egypt that they might come forth from it prepared to be God"s messengers, so Christianity must be taken from its Judaistic standpoint, and put into the central position of the world"s life, that it may draw to itself Greece and Rome, the East and the West, the whole nature and existence of humanity. So now the progress of man is from the emancipation of the individual, through that of the nation, to the cosmopolitan blessedness of mankind as a race. The mission of Christ is to each and to all. R.

Christ"s mission to the Jews.

St. Peter had been speaking of our Lord"s resurrection, and it is natural to connect the expression of the text, "having raised up his Son Jesus," with that resurrection. The idea, however, seems to be more general God having provided, prepared, given, set forth. Matthew Henry gives the complete thought: "God, having raised up his Son Jesus, appointed and authorized him to be a Prince and a Savior; and, in confirmation of this, raised him from the dead, sent him to bless you, in making tender of his blessing to you. God raised up Jesus when he constituted him a Prophet. Some refer the raising of him up to his resurrection, which was the renewal of his commission." This is St. Peter"s direct appeal to the Jews, and declaration of the particular mission of Christ to the Jews. To them the gospel was first to be preached. Their former Divine revelation was a gracious preparation of them for the reception of the new revelation. But the new blessing would not come to them merely as a nation; it would come to each individual, and to the whole only through the individual, and depend upon the openness and acceptance of faith. Apostles were to "begin at Jerusalem." The points made prominent by this simple appeal are,

(1) God is the Savior

(2) he saves by his Son Jesus;

(3) the essence of that salvation is the turning of men away from their iniquities.

I GOD IS THE SAVIOR. The apostles always kept to the idea that Christ is the Medium of the salvation, and God the source. Sometimes the exigencies of theological systems have led to the practical neglect of this important distinction. God saves men. God"s love is the fountain of redemption. God"s wisdom fashions the redemptive plan. God"s Son executes the redemptive purpose. God is in all, and God must be glorified in all. No apostle puts this more plainly than St. Peter. Compare his very forcible language in 1Pe_1:21, "Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.

II GOD SAVES BY his SON JESUS CHRIST. Whom he sent to the earth, and whom he raised from the dead. This is God"s way of salvation. It is the only way. By both considerations we are urged to accept it.

III THE ESSENCE OF THAT SALVATION IS THE "TURNING OF MEN AWAY FROM THEIR INIQUITIES. The special iniquity dealt with here is the rejection and crucifixion of the Lord Jesus; but that is ever regarded as displaying and proving, in a very impressive manner, the fallen and ruined condition of men. It was such a display of malice, prejudice, and hard-hearted willfulness, as revealed the utter badness and corruption of humanity. Show that the root-cause of evil in man is stir-love, self-seeking, and self-will. In these things lie our iniquity. From them we can only be turned by the love of another, the seeking of the good of another, and the enthronement of the wilt of another. Therefore Jesus Christ is set forth, we are bidden to look at him, know him, set our love on him, and enthrone him. He can work a mighty saving work in every heart and every life that is turned towards him and opened to him. And penitence and faith can open our heart-doors. The way and the means to secure "Divine forgiveness," "blotting out of sins", and "times of refreshing, are that repentance and turning again" to which the apostle has been exhorting the people. This is urged first upon the Jews, but it is the condition of salvation for Jew and Gentile alike. R.T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

To bless you, by turning you from your iniquities - Which is the great Gospel blessing.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Here note, 1. That the offer of Jesus Christ, and eternal salvation by him, was first made to the people of the Jews, because they were the children of the covenant; that is, the only people in visible communion with God throughout the whole world.

Note, 2. The benefit offered; God’s Son is raised up; that is, either,

1. authorised, consecrated, and appointed to be a Saviour; or

2. Raised from the grave.

You crucified him with wicked hands; but behold the divine clemency!

He is first offered to you his crucifiers: God has sent his Son, in the preaching of the gospel, first to you; and tis not to take vengeance on you, but to bless you: He being the great High Priest, blesses you authoritatively and effectually; and the blessing he dispenses is not a temporal blessing as you expected, a pompous Messiah, a secular kingdom, but spiritual, in turning souls from sin to God: He offers to bless you by turning every one of you from your iniquities.

Oh! that we would all subserve Christ in that great work! He is the principal agent; let us be subordinate instruments, by practising holiness ourselves, and promoting holiness in others.

Learn, 2. That to be turned by Christ from our iniquities, is the greatest blessing we can receive from him; because ’tis a spiritual blessing, a fundamental blessing, a comprehensive blessing, and endearing blessing, an everlasting blessing.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

26. Peter’s afternoon sermon in Solomon’s porch, like his forenoon sermon on Mt. Zion, is climacteric in the enforcement of these two great cardinal gospel truths, i. e., entire sanctification and the coming King.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

See notes on verse 25

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

26. Unto you first. To Israel first in order, before the Gentiles, but Peter here recognizes the fact that the Gospel is also for other races. Sent him to bless you. Not in person, but by the preaching of Christ as the Savior from sin. The best of all blessings is “the turning of them from iniquity,” as that brings all others.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

26. Omit Ἰησοῦν with אBCDE and Vulg.

26. ὑμῖν πρῶτον. That the house of Israel might first receive the blessing, and be God’s instruments in spreading it abroad.

ἀναστήσας. The word is used here not of the resurrection of Jesus, but recalling the promise of Moses, cited in Act 5:22 that a prophet should be raised up (ἀναστήσει κύριος) and sent unto the people.

τὸν παῖδα αὐτοῦ, His servant. See note on Act 3:13.

εὐλογοῦντα, to bless you (literally, blessing you), i.e. by the appointed times of refreshing alluded to in Act 3:19. The way and means to this blessing is to be by the repentance and turning again to which the Apostle has been exhorting them. And to effect this they must turn away from their iniquities, but for doing this he assures them they will find present help in Christ.

Such a construction as this of a present participle after an aorist tense has sometimes been explained as though it were equal to a future. It is better to regard the action expressed by the participle as having begun from the point of time indicated by the verb. So here, the blessing was ready for the faithful as soon as ever Christ was sent. Cf. Winer-Moulton, p. 429.

ἐν τῷ ἀποστρέφειν, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities. This word is very common in the LXX. in this sense. See Eze 18:27, ἐν τῷ ἀποστρέψαι ἄνομον ἀπὸ τῆς ἀνομίας αὐτοῦ. Also Eze 3:19; Eze 33:14 and Jon 3:10, ἀπέστρεψαν ἀπὸ τῶν ὁδῶν αὐτῶν τῶν πονηρῶν.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

26.] πρῶτον, first; implying the offer to the Gentiles (but as yet, in Peter’s mind, only by embracing Judaism) afterwards: see ch. 13:46; Rom 1:16.

It is strange how Olshausen can suppose that the Spirit in Peter overleapt the bounds of his subsequent prejudice with regard to the admission of the Gentiles:—he never had any such prejudice, but only against their admission uncircumcised, and as Gentiles.

It is still stranger how a scholar like Dr. Burton can propose the ungrammatical and unmeaning rendering, “πρῶτον is perhaps used with reference to Christ’s first coming, as opposed to his second.” This would require τὸ πρῶτον,—and would certainly imply in the mind of the speaker an absolute exclusion of all but Jews till the second coming.

ἀναστήσας, not ‘from the dead:’ but as in ver. 22.

παῖδα, His Servant: see note, ver. 13.

ἀπέστειλεν, indefinite, of the sending in the flesh; sent, not ‘hath sent;’ it does not apply to the present time, but to God’s procedure in raising up His Servant Jesus, and His mission and ministry: and is distinct from the ἀποστείλῃ of ver. 20. This is also shewn by the pres. part. εὐλογοῦντα, ingeniously, but not quite accurately rendered in E. V. ‘to bless you.’ He came blessing you (his coming was an act of blessing—it consisted in the εὐλογεῖν: an anarthrous present participle in such a connexion carries necessarily a slightly ratiocinative sense), in (as the conditional element of the blessing) turning every one from your iniquities: thus conferring on you the best of blessings. εὐλογ., in allusion to ἐνευλογ., ver. 25. ἐν τῷ in this sense, see Luk 8:5. The application to the present time is made by inference:—‘as that was His object then, so now:’—but (see below) the discourse is unfinished.

The intransitive sense of ἀποστρέφειν,—‘which blessing is to be gained by (in) every one of you turning from your iniquities,’—given in the Vulg., ‘ut convertat se unusquisque,’ and maintained by Theophyl., Œ, Beza, Kuinoel, Meyer, &c., on the strength of ver. 19, is inadmissible,—as ἀποστρέφω is not found thus used in the N. T., and we have the precedent of ref. Luke and Rom 11:26 for the transitive sense. The argument from ver. 19 tells just as well for it: ‘Repent and be converted, … for this was the object of Jesus being raised up, to confer on you this very blessing, the turning away each of you from your iniquities.’

This discourse does not come to a final conclusion as in ch. 2:36, because it was interrupted by the apprehension of the Apostles.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

His Son Jesus. The best texts omit Jesus. Render servant for son, and see on ver. 13.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.