Acts 4:12Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

"The name of Jesus Christ is terrible to demons, to passions of the soul, and to infirmities. Let us adorn ourselves with it, and let us guard ourselves with it."

Here something lofty is also proclaimed. When there was no need to gain anything, but only to show boldness, the apostle does not spare them. For he was not afraid to strike them.

He did not simply say, "through another," but, "there is salvation in no one else." By this he shows that He is able to save us, and at the same time he wishes to frighten them.

But note how, when they must teach, they bring forward many prophecies. When they must speak with boldness, they present only their own judgment.

See the commentary on Acts 4:11. It is known to all, he says, that this name has been granted not to us alone, but to all. For the Jews also acknowledged the Resurrection, though superficially and childishly.

"For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim 2:5). For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

God has appointed faith in Him for all, by raising Him from the dead (Acts 17:31). Therefore, without this faith, that is, faith in the one Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, there is no salvation.

Nor is there salvation without faith in His Resurrection, which God appointed for all. It is impossible truly to believe in that Resurrection without His Incarnation and death.

Thus Christian truth does not doubt that, without faith in Christ's Incarnation, death, and Resurrection, the ancient saints, though they were holy, could not be cleansed from sin and justified by God's mercy.

If the salvation of the world is in no one else, but only in Christ alone, then the Old Testament fathers too were saved by the Incarnation and Passion of the same Redeemer. By these, as we believe and hope, we too are saved.

For although the mysteries differ according to the times in which they take place, one and the same faith brings all into agreement.

As we have learned through the apostles that the divine economy of Christ has been accomplished, so they were taught by the prophets that this same divine economy would be accomplished.

For man is redeemed from captivity by nothing other than the Blood of Him Who gave Himself as a ransom for all (1 Tim 2:6).

The very name Jesus, that is, Savior, draws our hearts to love Him, Orthodox Christian. "For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved," except the name of Jesus, as His Apostle Peter preaches (Acts 4:12).

Thus the community of believers, which also had members in other parts of Palestine, in Samaria and Galilee (Acts 9:31), increased daily in Jerusalem. Soon even the Jewish priests began to pass over into it (Acts 6:7).

The Sanhedrin no longer wished to leave the matter of Christianity without attention. Peter and John had healed the lame man at the temple. Afterward they preached to the people about Christ crucified and risen, by Whose power they had performed the healing.

Then the priests, together with the followers of the Sadducean sect, took them into custody. They intended to present them to the Sanhedrin in the morning. The next day they were indeed brought before the Sanhedrin, together with the man who had been healed.

In his answer, the Apostle Peter first says that the matter for which they, the apostles, have been summoned to judgment is a benefaction. It consists in the miraculous healing of a weak man.

Then he firmly and decisively testifies that the healing was accomplished in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, "Whom you crucified, Whom God raised from the dead."

Already in these words the apostle places his judges in the position of the accused. He directly ascribes to them the guilt of crucifying Jesus Christ.

He then does not soften this accusation, but strengthens it still further. He names Jesus Christ, in the words of the psalm (Ps 117:22), the cornerstone upon which all human salvation is built.

On this basis, the Shtundists condemn the Orthodox for venerating God's holy saints. They say that this is vain, since, according to the word of God, no one except Christ can save us.

But the holy Apostle Peter, to whom the words we have taken from Acts 4:12 belong, spoke thus to the astonished Israelites after he had healed the lame man: "Why do you look at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?" (Acts 3:12).

So also, in general, the saints, men glorified by God, grant us healings not by their own power, but by Christ's. They help our salvation not by their own name, but by Christ's.

Therefore they are venerated by us for the sake of the name of Christ, that is, as Christ's pleasing servants and friends.

Explaining the power of this name, the apostle uses a saying from the psalm. The Lord Himself once applied it to Himself and to the Jewish rulers (Ps 117:22; cf. Mt 21:42).

In the psalmic saying, the Messiah is called the cornerstone. The builders of the building despised it instead of laying it as the foundation. Therefore the building, of course, is not firm.

With extraordinary boldness the apostle tells the Sanhedrin to their face that the Jesus crucified by them is precisely this stone. The builders are they, the leaders of the people's religious and moral life.

They rejected this stone in arranging the people's theocratic life. Yet this stone, contrary to their will, became the head of the corner of the new building of the Kingdom of God on earth.

The apostle sets forth to the Jews the teaching that all are saved only through Jesus Christ as a warning. If they do not believe in Jesus Christ, they will not be saved.

He sets forth this teaching not as a dry doctrine, but as a living word to his own people. He includes himself among them, saying that since there is no other name in the whole world that can give full salvation, we too must use the name of Jesus Christ given to us.

We must not vainly imagine other names, since they do not exist and cannot exist. Only through Jesus Christ is deliverance from sin, curse, and death given, and salvation bestowed.

Let those who are zealous for St. Peter more than he desires from them listen to this first-enthroned apostle more than to their own reasoning or someone else's.

St. Peter wishes to found and establish you not on Peter, but on Christ. "To Him," he says, "coming as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house" (1 Pet 2:4-5).

St. Peter knows only one name without which one cannot be saved: the name of Christ. He does not know three names: Christ, Peter, and Peter's successor.

"For," he says, "there is no other name under heaven, given among men, by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).