Miraculous Powers
MIRACULOUS POWERS
ACTS 5:12-21a
Some people respected the believers but were frightened of joining them; others reduced the whole thing to magic. Most important, many believed.
Verses 12-16. God accredited the apostles as his true servants by accompanying gifts of power and healing miracles. Paul later claimed the same credentials (Romans 15:19; 2 Corinthians 12:12). Some suggest that these miraculous powers served a limited function (ie to accredit the apostolic gospel) and were then withdrawn, as B.B. Warfield taught. For others, they are an available accompaniment of the gospel preaching in every age.
5:13 is a puzzle, as it stands; and it is not easy to connect the popularity of the young movement with the statement that “none of the rest dared join them.” The last verb may carry the sense, “meddle, interfere”; and some scholars wish, with a slight alteration, to read “Levites” for “the rest”: “but no one of the Levites dared to interfere with them” by preventing them from holding their meetings in the temple courts. But the text may mean simply that, in spite of the believers’ popularity with the people, those who were attracted to them hesitated to join them because of the judgment-power on insincere motives and hidden sins (exemplified in the case of Ananias and Sapphira). But it must be conceded that verse 14 hardly reads as a natural sequel to this thought.
5:15. Peter’s healing shadow is not a piece of superstition or magic. Luke doesn’t actually say that the apostle’s shadow healed, but that the people associated with it the presence of a man of God and, therefore, God’s presence. Cf. 19:12.
5:17-21 report another outburst of opposition from official Jewry. The Sadducees (as at 4:1-2) are again the active fomenters of trouble. Why was it that this Jewish party was stirred to hostility?
Notes 5:12: see 3:11 for this part of the temple: a spot hallowed by Jesus’ earlier ministry (John 10:23). 5:14: cf. 2:47. 5:15: “pallets,” like the one used in the story of Mark 2:4ff. 5:17: the phrase sums up the composition (along with the Pharisees, in 5:34) of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish legislature. 5:19: angelic deliverance of this sort will be more fully described in 12:7ff. Paul, too, was released from prison in remarkable circumstances (16:25ff.). 5:20: “life” and “salvation” both translate the same Aramaic word.
To think over Do we remember in prayer enough those imprisoned contemporary Christian leaders for whom there is no supernatural release?