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Acts 3:14–16
“You killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses” (v. 15).
Beginning with God’s work to glorify Jesus, Peter proclaimed the person and work of the Savior to the Jews surrounding him and John at Solomon’s Portico in the Jerusalem temple (Acts 3:11–13). He wanted to make clear that the power to heal the lame beggar came not from the Apostles but from Jesus (vv. 1–10). This Jesus, Peter continues in today’s passage, was sinned against and unjustly killed, which revealed the depravity of the Jews who had supported His death and pointed to their need of repentance.
Peter narrates the basic facts of the death of Jesus, attributing it to the Jews because their leaders, supported by large crowds of Jews, masterminded His killing. Acts 3:13–15 briefly summarizes the events that Luke 22–23 describes in more detail. Many first-century Jews delivered Jesus to Pontius Pilate, denied the truth about Him, and asked for Barabbas to be released instead of Him (Acts 3:13–14). Then they killed Jesus—not that they drove the nails through our Savior’s wrists and ankles themselves, but they manipulated the cowardly Pilate to have Jesus crucified (v. 15). Jesus did not stay dead, of course, and Peter refers to His resurrection as well in Acts 3:15.
Verse 15 also records Peter’s statement that Jesus is “the Author of life,” and this is a critical title that points both to the reality of our Lord’s divine personhood and the manner in which God the Son suffered. The word translated “Author” has the sense of “originator.” In other words, all created life comes from Jesus, and this can be the case only if He is truly God, possessing the very power of life in Himself. Jesus possesses something that belongs only to God—the attribute of self-existence, of having life from one’s own self, not from another. John Chrysostom, the noted early church preacher, writes, “The author of life must be the one who has life from himself.” In John 5:26, Jesus tells us directly that He has life in Himself. Therefore, He is God.
Acts 3:15 says that Jesus, the “Author of life,” was killed. What are we to make of this given that deity, possessing the very power of life, cannot be killed? Here we remember that Jesus is one divine person who has a divine nature and a human nature. Because of this, Dr. R.C. Sproul writes in Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, “what is said of the divine nature or of the human nature may be affirmed of the person.” Acts 3:15 attributes the suffering that is true of Christ’s human nature to Christ because it is His human nature. In other words, Jesus died according to His human nature, not His divine nature.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
To maintain a proper understanding of who Christ is, we must remember that persons act, and they act according to their natures. The person of the Son of God walked the earth according to His human nature. He suffered death according to His human nature. He upholds the universe according to His divine nature (Heb. 1:3).
For further study
- Micah 5:2
- John 1:14
- Acts 20:28
- Philippians 2:5–11
The bible in a year
- Exodus 39–Leviticus 1
- Matthew 23:23–39