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Acts 2:33–36
“Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (v. 36).
Continuing the gospel presentation of the person and work of Jesus, Peter brings his Pentecost sermon to a climax in today’s passage. The resurrection of Christ was a high point in His purchase of our salvation, and we cannot be saved without it (1 Cor. 15:12–19). Yet our Lord’s resurrection did not mark the end of His redemptive work. This work advanced further in His exaltation to heaven and His session—being seated—at the Father’s right hand.
We see this in Acts 2:33, where Peter says that Jesus was exalted to heaven and, having received the promised Holy Spirit from the Father, has now poured out that same Spirit on the church. Centuries before, God had promised in Isaiah 32:15 to pour out His Spirit in a fresh way upon His people, and Jesus reiterated that pledge when He told the Apostles that they would receive power from on high (Acts 1:8). Before He died, our Lord said that the Father would send the Holy Spirit in His name (John 14:26), so that day of Pentecost represented the fulfillment of what God had said He would do. Moreover, in sending the Holy Spirit on the new covenant church, God was not doing something entirely new, for old covenant believers had also had a measure of the Spirit. What makes the new covenant experience of the Spirit different is that now the Spirit is given without measure (John 3:34). John Calvin comments that Jesus’ outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost was “not because the Spirit began then first to be given, [since] the holy fathers [had Him] since the beginning of the world; but because God did defer this more plentiful abundance of grace, until such time as he had placed Christ in his princely seat.”
Quoting Psalm 110, Peter next says that the exaltation of Jesus to heaven was followed by His session at God’s right hand (Acts 2:34–35). This statement reveals much about Jesus’ identity, for the Jews knew that no mere man could sit permanently at God’s right hand and share in His divine authority. Jesus could do this because while He is truly a man, He is also truly God, as our Savior demonstrated in His own exposition of Psalm 110 (see Luke 20:41–44). Consequently, when Peter says in Acts 2:36 that God has made Jesus both “Lord and Christ,” He does not mean that God took someone who was not Lord and Christ before His exaltation and then adopted Him into the Godhead. The sense, rather, is that in the resurrection, ascension, and session of Jesus, God has shown Him to be the Creator and the Messiah, the Lord and Savior of the world.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
As we will see in Acts 2:37–38, the crowd at Pentecost recognized that God’s establishment before their eyes of the full divine authority of Christ required a response. No one can be indifferent to Jesus, for He has been shown by God to be very God of very God and therefore worthy of our allegiance. Let us submit to His lordship today and call others to do the same.
For further study
- Psalm 80
- Mark 16:19
- Romans 1:1–4
- Hebrews 12:1–2
The bible in a year
- Genesis 41
- Matthew 14:1–21