Acts 5:31

Acts 5:31. Him hath God exalted with his right hand. ‘To His right hand,' not ‘with' (see the note on chap. Acts 2:23, where a similar change has been adopted). That same Jesus whom you slew and hanged on the cross of shame and agony, hath the God of your fathers exalted to His right hand, to be a Prince, thus describing His kingly dignity a Prince to whom all Israel owes obedience; and not only to be the royal chief of all, for he adds, and a Saviour too, by whom you must be saved from your sins. The apostle now proceeds to describe the purpose of the exaltation of the crucified, which he says is to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. With His exaltation, the working of Jesus from His throne in heaven began the working which, by means of the Holy Spirit, gradually drew men to Him. By the preaching of the gospel He brought men to a change of heart (repentance), and then through faith in Him, which came with their change of heart, He made them sharers in His forgiveness of sins. We must remember that till Jesus was exalted, the Holy Ghost was not sent to men, and till the Holy Ghost was sent, the real work of Christ could not be said to have really begun in the homes of this world. Israel is here alone mentioned by Peter, for at this time the idea of a universal salvation was grasped by none of the leading teachers of the doctrine of Jesus: at first none of these men could conceive the God of their fathers offering a broad scheme of salvation, which was to embrace not merely all the coasts of Israel, but the known and unknown isles of the Gentiles. One of the objects of this book of the ‘Acts' is to show how the apostles of an exclusive nation developed into the Christian missionaries whose message was to a world.