Acts 5:30Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

"Whom you killed," he says, "the God of our fathers raised up." See how they again refer everything to the Father, so that the Son might not be considered alien to the Father.

Having received a new sign confirming God’s favor, for the place where they prayed was shaken, they preached the gospel with still greater boldness.

This became the cause of the apostles’ second imprisonment, this time in the public prison, as disturbers of public peace. The chief actors were again the Sadducees.

In mockery of their vain designs, an angel, though they denied the very existence of angels, opened the prison doors for the apostles. They are again in the temple and teaching.

From there they are taken and presented to the Sanhedrin. They are questioned as violators of the authorities’ command.

They are not asked how they left the prison. They are asked why they preach about Him whose name is hateful to them.

Yet those who crucified the Lord remain cruelly consistent even now. When the session opened, it became clear that the apostles had been freed from prison by the right hand of God. The prison doors had been carefully locked, and the guard was awake.

Nevertheless, the Sanhedrin ordered them brought to trial as criminals. The captain of the guard, carrying out this command, did not use violence against the innocent. He brought them out of the temple without force, because the people defended the apostles, their benefactors.

The high priest begins the interrogation, which the sacred historian gives only in its main outlines. “Did we not strictly command you not to teach in this name?”

Peter did not increase the anxiety of the Jewish leaders. He made no hint of coming vengeance. He only said that the apostles and the Holy Spirit acting in them were witnesses of the resurrection and glorification of Him Whom they had killed.

“The God of our fathers,” and so forth: see the note on Acts 3:13 and following.

“You killed”: the Greek word means “you killed with your own hands.” This is a strong expression meant to indicate their guilt and to counter the high priest’s expression that they, the apostles, wished to bring this Man’s blood upon the members of the Sanhedrin (v. 28).

“Hanging Him on a tree”: again this is an intensified expression, instead of “on the cross.” It is borrowed from the law of Moses, where the concept of hanging on a tree is joined to the concept of a curse (cf. Gal 3:13).

By this, again, the guilt of those who hung the Messiah on the tree is indicated.

In answering the accusation that the apostles were bringing the guilt of Christ’s shed blood upon the members of the Sanhedrin, Peter preaches the teaching about Jesus Christ as risen and made the Author of salvation, not of perdition, through repentance and forgiveness of sins.

From this two conclusions must be drawn. Whoever repents will be forgiven, and therefore the guilt of innocent blood will not fall upon him. But whoever remains unrepentant must justly bear the punishment determined by the voice of the people.

As for the apostles’ speaking of this, they cannot but speak, since they are witnesses of it and have the Holy Spirit. He also speaks in them, as He spoke through the prophets.

What Peter and John had first said to the authorities, all the apostles later said to them: one must obey God rather than men.

“The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you killed by hanging Him on a tree. God exalted Him at His right hand as Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.

We are His witnesses in these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.” What sincerity, fullness, definiteness, and clarity of confession!

God so ordered it that the Crucified One should be our Savior through the remission of sins in repentance. The witnesses are the apostles, the eyewitnesses, and the Holy Spirit, who manifestly acted in them and in all believers.