The Witness to Christ
The Acts of the Apostles comprised God’s final offer of mercy to Israel as a nation at home and abroad, prior to pouring out the threatened judgement that took place in AD 70. The witness of the apostles therein answered the prayer of the Lord as he hung on the cross, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). It should have brought home to the Jews the full enormity of their guilt. Peter proclaimed to the Jews in the land: “Ye denied the holy one and the just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; and killed the prince of life whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witness” (Acts 3:14,15).
Paul taught the Jews of the dispersion: “They that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him. And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain but God raised him from the dead” (Acts 13:27-30). Thus both Peter and Paul agreed in preaching what the Lord had proclaimed in prayer from the cross, namely that the Jews had acted in ignorance (Acts 3:17; 13:27), and so called upon the nation to repent.
However, after their preaching, no longer could it be said that the Jews “knew not what they had done.” Accordingly their day of opportunity was closed, and the apostles turned to the Gentiles (Acts 13:46). The ‘bridge’ had been crossed, and the Epistles that follow Acts are written to communities of Gentile believers. Previously, Paul declared, “It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you; but seeing ye put it from you, lo, we turn to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46). But no longer did he do so. The practice of preaching ‘first’ to Jews and afterwards to Gentiles was discontinued once the terms of Christ’s prayer had been fulfilled in gospel proclamation. Therefore the Acts concludes with Paul “receiving all that came unto him,” whether Jew or Gentile. Henceforth “no man forbade him” as earlier members of the ecclesia had done to both Peter and Paul. Christ’s prayer had been answered. The Jews had received opportunity to repent and having rejected it, the door to salvation was opened wide to Gentiles. Today we do not follow the practice of the apostles, since the restriction no longer applies.
In the appeals in Acts, the witness of Stephen is fundamental. After a careful outline of Israel’s failure, any claim by the Jews of ignorance was clearly wrong. The Sanhedrin officially repudiated Stephen’s witness; his death by stoning was the national rejection of this clear witness. Though Stephen, like Christ (Acts 7:60), pleaded for the Jews to be forgiven the enormity of their crime, note that he did not urge this forgiveness on the grounds of ignorance (as Jesus had done, Luke 23:34). Stephen had clearly expounded unambiguously to the Jews the folly of their ways, and they knowingly rejected that message. There followed a mass exodus of ecclesial members into Samaria and other parts, where they proclaimed the gospel. The gospel spread throughout the Roman world to both Jews and Gentiles, even to the capital, Rome.
Bro Siamabi Stephen (Lusaka, Zambia)
