Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke, but also gave us The Book of Acts, was a great documentarian who captured for us important details in his accounts of the life of Jesus and the histories of his Apostles. These details permeate his works and give credibility to the spiritual narrative he left us. More importantly, they give us threads by which we can augment, support, or even build elements of a larger theology. One of those places is in his telling of Peter’s third speech after the Holy Spirit event at Pentecost.
Luke was wise enough to capture Peter’s unassuming tribute to the forgiving heart of Jesus in that third speech. In Acts 3:17-21 Peter tells the Jewish crowd at Solomon’s Portico that he knows that they acted in ignorance when they murdered Jesus, who he called the Author of Life (Acts 3:14-15). Peter was echoing Jesus from his crucifixion when he asked God to forgive his killers because they didn’t know what they were doing (Luke 23:34). In their blindness, the people at the crucifixion did not recognize him as the Messiah, but saw him as a rebellious interloper. Because of this mindset, they continued to act in ways justified by a wrong understanding of their worldliness contaminated religious heritage. It is a terrible state of sinfulness when we are doing evil, but think we are doing good (John 16:2). Peter directly confronted them on the states of their hearts, and told them to repent so that their sins can be blotted out. In modern vernacular, the word “repent” means to feel sorry for something you’ve done. True repentance probably does, indeed, require that feeling at some level, but at its core, that is not what the word means. Repent actually means to change one’s mind. Peter is telling the crowd to change their mind about who Jesus is. Then, once they’ve changed their minds, Peter argues that they should turn back to God. This changing of the mind is a powerful central dynamic in the Christian life. It doesn’t just apply to Jewish leaders in antiquity recognizing that they had asked the authorities to turn over a murderer in exchange for the Messiah, and in so doing, murdered the Author of Life. In fact, this is much like what we do every time we sin. We exchange the Author of Life, for the fleeting pleasure of a sinful beast that is set on murdering us! So, repentance is absolutely necessary to avoid any sin. You must decide to view sin not as a pleasurable element that adds quality to your life, but as a dark and filthy, evil creature that wants to murder and devour you (Genesis 4:7). When you change your mind about sin, you must also change your mind about God. Instead of seeing God as a divine killjoy, you change your mind and see him as the loving and good Author of Life. When your mind is changed in this way, you will be transformed from an enemy of God into a child of God, and you will naturally turn away from sin and toward God who will then author in you an eternal quality of life (Romans 12:2)!
Every day, make an effort to recognize who Jesus is. Then bring your mind into alignment with his, so that you may have times of refreshing, and so that you may be moved closer to that eternal quality of life that is lived in his presence (Acts 3:19-21). Otherwise, you will live in the presence of a beast who wishes to eat you.
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