A Study of Acts: Peter Asks the Brethren to Repent
A Study of Acts: Peter Asks the Brethren to Repent
Acts 3:17-26 - Ignorance is no excuse for sin and can lead to injustice; repent and return to God.
““And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also. But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.
Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren; to Him you shall give heed to everything He says to you. And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.’ And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days. It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ For you first, God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.””
Acts 3:17-26 NASB1995
Peter probably flashed back to his dreadful night of denial and decided to tone down the rhetoric in the next part of this short sermon. He appeals to the listeners as “brethren”. He tells them that he knows they acted in ignorance, as did the rulers who condemned Jesus.
Let’s do a word study! Ignorance comes from the Greek noun ἄγνοια or ágnoia, with the following Biblical usages; Strong’s G52 is used four times in the New Testament:
lack of knowledge, ignorance
esp. of divine things
of moral blindness
Ignorance is not innocence! It is moral blindness. Here is what Enduring Word says about this ignorance:
Yet now, brethren: Though Peter spoke boldly to them about their sin, he didn’t hate them. He didn’t say, “Yet now, you filthy disgusting wretches.” He still connected to them as brethren. Notice that twice Peter had accused them of denying Jesus (3:13, 14) – something Peter had himself done.
I know that you did it in ignorance: Peter recognized they called for the execution of Jesus in ignorance of God’s eternal plan. This did not make them innocent, but it did carefully define the nature of their guilt. If we sin in ignorance, it is still sin; but it is different from sin done with full knowledge.
He has thus fulfilled: Despite all the evil they did to Jesus, it did not change or derail God’s plan. God can take the most horrible evil and use it for good. Joseph could say to his brothers, “you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good.” (Genesis 50:20) The same principle was at work in the crucifixion of Jesus and is at work in our lives (Romans 8:28).
Is ignorance an adequate excuse for sin? Gotquestions.org tells us this in an answer to that question:
We must learn to take sin as seriously as God does. One reason for all the sacrifices and continual purification rituals in the Old Testament was to show the people how far they were from God’s holiness. The purpose of negative consequences is to teach us to see sin the way God does and hate it as He does (Psalm 31:6; Proverbs 29:27). When we commit a sin in ignorance, God brings consequences to help us learn. Once we know better, He expects us to do better. We do the same with our children. Simply because a four-year-old had not been specifically told not to squish the bananas in the store does not mean Mom is fine with it. There will be consequences, even if he can claim ignorance of that specific rule, and he will be told clearly that squishing bananas will not be tolerated again. Of course, his consequences the first time may not be as severe as they are likely to be if Mom catches him squishing more bananas after being instructed not to.
Most claims of ignorance fall flat, however. Romans 1:20 says that there is no excuse for not believing in God’s existence: the invisible qualities of God are “clearly seen” in creation. Micah 6:8 also counters our claims of ignorance: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” If ignorance does not excuse sin, then feigned ignorance is even worse [my emphasis].
A little side story here: Steve and I have been studying WWII rather intensely in recent years and have tried to understand the conditions that led to the “Final Solution” and the complete inhumanity of the Third Reich. On April 29, 1945, American troops liberated the Dachau Concentration Camp and various Allied regiments and divisions found and liberated many other smaller satellite camps in that area of Germany around that same time. They also helped the thousands of prisoners who were on forced death marches to other locations as the war was drawing to a close. Dachau was one of the oldest work camps, founded in 1933; estimates of the number of prisoners who died there are difficult to find, although this Resource estimates at least 30,000. Dachau was the model for the later death camps and the elite SS (Schutzstaffel) trained troops there. We visited Dachau in 1998 on a trip and were appalled by what happened there. I can’t imagine what it would be like to visit Auschwitz-Birkinau, a true death camp.
My point in bringing this up is to focus on ignorance as an excuse for mass murder. Many of the people who lived near these camps (over a thousand camps were built in Germany, Austria, Poland and in other satellite countries taken over by the Third Reich) proclaimed real ignorance of the conditions or feigned ignorance by shrugging and saying things were exaggerated or even a lie. Some even said there was nothing they could do (how did they sleep?). Moral blindness was rampant. Citizens living in the small town of Dachau near the camp were forced by the US Army to deal with the clean-up of thousands of bodies that were found in the camp and on rail cars. God has told us what is good - to act justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. Ignorance of God and His will leads to pride, injustice and tyranny. It led to the crucifixion, even though that was part of God’s plan.
Back to Peter’s sermon. He tells his audience that they should repent of their ignorance and sins and return (be converted) to God. He also called for repentance in his Pentecostal sermon. A time of refreshing will then come from the presence of the Lord. Repentance means to turn around from the path of sin. Being sorry for sinning is certainly not the same thing as repentance. Peter even discusses the possibility that Jesus will return soon if enough come to belief. I like this commentary from Enduring Word:
Repent therefore: As he did in his first sermon (Acts 2:38), Peter called upon the crowd to repent. He told them to turn around in their thinking and actions.
Peter spoke boldly to them about their sin, but he didn’t just want to make them feel bad. That wasn’t the goal. The goal was to encourage them to repent and believe.
Repentance does not describe being sorry, but describes the act of turning around. And as he used it in chapter two, here also Peter made repent a word of hope. He told them that they had done wrong; but that they could turn it around and become right with God.
And be converted: Peter knew the necessity of conversion, of God’s work of bringing new life to us. Being a Christian is not “turning over a new leaf,” it is being a new creation in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:17).
[James Montgomery] Boice says that be converted is better translated, “turn to God” – or, even better, “flee to God.” Boice connects this with the imagery of the cities of refuge in the Old Testament, and thinks Peter told them to flee to Jesus as their place of refuge.
That your sins may be blotted out: This was the first benefit of repentance Peter presented to them. The one who repents and is converted is forgiven their sins, and the record itself is erased.
Blotted out: This has the idea of wiping ink off of a document. Ink in the ancient world had no acid content and didn’t “bite” into the paper. It could almost always be wiped off with a damp cloth. Peter said that God would wipe away our record of sin just like that.
So that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord: This was the second benefit of repenting and turning to God. In speaking of “times of refreshing,”Peter referred to the time when Jesus will return and rule the earth in righteousness. Peter went so far as to say, “that He may send Jesus Christ,” thus implying that if the Jewish people as a whole repented, God the Father would send Jesus to return in glory.
Peter made it clear that Jesus will remain in heaven until the times of restoration of all things, and since the repentance of Israel is one of the all things, there is some sense in which the return of Jesus in glory will not happen until Israel repents.
Peter essentially offered Israel the opportunity to hasten the return of Jesus by embracing Him on a national level, something that must happen before Jesus will return (as in Matthew 23:37-39 and Romans 11:25-27).
One may raise the hypothetical question, if the Jews of that day had received the gospel as a whole, would then Jesus had returned way back then? Hypothetically, this may have been the case, but there is no point in speculating about something that didn’t happen!
In a lesser (though glorious) sense, God sends times of refreshing to His people today. We should pray for and believe God for seasons of revival and refreshing.
In the final part of this passage, Peter warns about how dire it is for them to reject Jesus and also reminds his audience that they are the first for whom God has raised up His servant to bless them and turn them from their evil ways. Many listening would, sadly, persist in their ignorance that Jesus was not the promised Messiah (rejecting Him twice) but others would come to Christ on that day. The new covenant would expand as we continue through Acts to bring Gentiles into the fold. One more short commentary from Enduring Word is appropriate:
The lame man at the Beautiful Gate wanted something; but God wanted to give him something much greater. The same was generally true of the Jewish people Peter preached to. They expected the Messiah in a certain way, but God wanted to give them something much greater. They looked for a political and military Messiah, and not so much one to turn every one of you from your iniquities. It shows how important it is for us to expect the right things from God.
What do you expect from God? A question worth praying over every day!
My next devotional examines Acts 4:-14 - Peter and John are arrested by the Sanhedrin and the Temple Guard after this public exhortation.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - Please guide me to repentance and return to You; I look for a refreshing of my soul and an exposure of my ignorance. Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
The Blue Letter Bible was accessed on 8/15/2024 to review the lexicon for ignorance.
Got questions.org was accessed on 8/15/2024 to answer the question, “Is ignorance an adequate excuse for sin?”
Commentary in Enduring Word by David Guzik is used with written permission.