Take Courage

Take courage from being with Jesus

Acts 4:1-22

Authentic Christianity is bound to lead to opposition and trials of one sort or another. Here, the disciples have been put in jail and literally on trial. Effectively, they were charged with the crime of being Christians (though they didn’t go by that name at the time). There has not been a single period in church history when Christians have not been tried for this offence somewhere in the world.

It was not disputed that the man had been healed. In the Gospels it is Jesus who does the miracles; in Acts ordinary people do miracles in his name. When asked, ‘By what power or what name did you do this?’ (v.7), filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter replied, ‘It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead’ (v.10). Today, you can pray in this same powerful way.

Peter had the audacity to tell his judges that they were guilty of crucifying the Saviour of the world. They had rejected and crucified Jesus. Peter had been frightened to admit to a servant girl that he even knew Jesus. Now, he is a changed person. He publicly proclaims Jesus and the resurrection, in the court where Jesus was tried and 500 yards from where he was crucified.

The key was that Peter had encountered the risen Jesus and was ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’ (v.8). He now knew what Jesus had come to do and, through the Holy Spirit, Jesus was with him and helping him.

Peter continues, ‘salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved’ (v.12).

It is not surprising that ‘They couldn’t take their eyes off them – Peter and John standing there so confident, so sure of themselves! Their fascination deepened when they realized these two were laymen with no training in Scripture or formal education. They recognized them as companions of Jesus’ (v.13, MSG).

Peter and John may not have had much formal education, but they had been to ‘school with Jesus’. They were his disciples. They had been to the ‘College of God’s Word’. And now they were studying at the ‘University of the Holy Spirit’. Many of the people used greatly by God have had little formal education.

Peter and John were threatened and told not to speak about Jesus. But they replied, ‘We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard’ (v.20).

As they faced their judges, they were hugely helped by the fact that everyone could see what an amazing miracle had taken place. The forty-year-old healed man was standing there as living testimony to the power of Jesus (v.14–21).