Acts 4:15Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Do you see how they are perplexed, and how again they do everything from fear of men? As with Christ, they could neither refute nor conceal the events.

On the contrary, through their opposition faith increased all the more. So it is now as well. "What shall we do with these men?"

What madness, if they thought they could frighten those who had already tasted struggles. This was especially so if, being unable to do anything at first, they hoped to do something after such eloquence.

The more they wished to hinder, the more successfully events advanced. Formerly they did everything for human glory. Now another concern was added: that they not be considered murderers.

Later they said this very thing: "You intend to bring this Man's blood upon us" (Acts 5:28).

Why do the priests not bring them to Pilate, but judge them themselves? Because they were ashamed and blushed over the former matter, and feared that the Apostles would accuse them.

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.

The courage and decisive, firm confidence with which the apostles offered their testimony concerning Christ already made such an impression on the judges that they marveled. At first they did not know what to say.

Their amazement increased when they noticed that the accused were unlearned and simple men. Among such men the teachers of the people were not accustomed to meet opposition.

Looking attentively at the accused, and considering in their minds what this might mean, they finally remembered that these very persons belonged, among others, to the close circle of Christ's disciples.

Probably this surmise clarified the whole matter before them in its true form. Of course, their malice toward the name of Jesus now boiled up again, and with still greater force.

"Having commanded them to go outside": placed in difficulty by Peter's explanation and by the presence of the healed man, the members of the Sanhedrin sent them out of the assembly. They wished to confer privately among themselves about further measures against the new wonderworkers and preachers of the new teaching.

The presence of the healed man in the Sanhedrin was probably by order of the authorities. They hoped somehow to force him also to deny Christ, as they had tried to do with the man born blind (see Jn 9).

But the healed man kept constantly near the apostles. This made the judges voiceless. Then they found only one thing possible: to remove the apostles for a time from the Sanhedrin's meeting hall.

They did this in order to think and consider what to do next. The Sanhedrin, an assembly for counsel, was the highest popular ecclesiastical and political tribunal among the Jews of that time.

Although nothing is known of its divine institution, it is more just to suppose that it was established under the influence of the Greek order introduced everywhere after Alexander the Great.

Yet the power and authority of the Sanhedrin were very great. Therefore it is not surprising that, just as the apostles obediently came to the Sanhedrin's trial, so they also unquestioningly obeyed its order to leave the Sanhedrin.