Acts 3:26

Acts 3:26. Unto you first God, etc. ‘First.' St. Peter here clearly recognises definitely that upon others as well as Israel, the glory of the Lord has risen (Isaiah 60). Perhaps at this moment, full of the Holy Spirit, the fact of the glorious breadth of redemption flashed on the speaker's mind with startling clearness; and then, when the moment of inspiration was over and gone, the old Jewish prejudices and jealousy mastered him again, for we see by the history of the ‘Acts,' as the Lord's purposes were gradually developed, how slowly and even reluctantly St. Peter gave up calling common or unclean what God had cleansed. The utter impossibility of the admission of the Gentile world into the Church, except through the medium of Judaism, was deeply rooted in the hearts of Peter and the apostles. They had all been brought up in the rigid school of Jewish Messianic hopes, which admitted, certainly, the great heathen world into Messiah's kingdom, but only on the stern condition of all becoming Jews and submitting to the requirements of the Mosaic law. ‘The Gentiles are not handed over to Israel in this age, but they will be in the days of Messiah' (Berish. Rab. f. 28, 2, quoted by Meyer; see also Olshausen on this place).

Having raised up his Son. Not from the dead, but, as in Acts 3:22, ‘having caused to appear.' ‘His Son,' τὸν παῖδα αὐτοῦ. ‘His Servant' (see note on Acts 3:13).

To bless you (εὐλογοῦντα) , blessing. Thus fulfilling the great promise made to Abraham, ‘In thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.' The act of blessing not done once and for all, but a continuing one on the part of the Lord Jesus from His throne in heaven.

In turning away every one of you from his iniquities. Or better rendered, ‘provided that each one turn from his iniquities,' ut convortatse unusquisque (Vulg.). Commentators are divided on the question whether τῷ ἀποστρέφειν possess (a) a transitive or (b) an intransitive meaning here. For (a) it is urged that this verb is not found used intransitively in the New Testament. The transitive sense is explained by Alford thus: ‘He came blessing you, in turning away every one from your iniquities,' thus conferring on you the best of blessings (so generally Calvin, Hammond, Wetstein, Bengel, Hackett, and apparently Gloag). For (b) a list of passages where the verb is used intransitively is given by Meyer e.g., Xen. Hist. iii. 4, 12; Horn. Od. iii. 597; LXX. Genesis 18:33. If this intransitive sense be adopted, the meaning of the passage would be, ‘Which blessing is to be gained by every one of you turning from your iniquities' (Theophilus, Œcumenius, Beza, Meyer, De Wette, and the Vulgate). The intransitive meaning (b) is decidedly to be preferred. Thus the blessing of the Lord Jesus is made to depend on the individual life, and the concluding words of St. Peter's second sermon bring out prominently the grand truth, that the promised blessing will come not to the man who merely professes an orthodox belief, but to the man who, receiving Jesus, lives the life which Jesus loves.