This Man's Blood (part 1 of 2)

Look, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this Man’s blood upon us! – Acts 5:28b  (NET)

As the book of Acts tells it, the statement above was ostensibly provoked by the fact that “many miraculous signs and wonders came about among the people through the hands of the apostles” (5:12).  In the very city in which Jesus was crucified, in which there would have been hundreds, if not thousands of witnesses to the fact of His crucifixion, “More and more believers in the Lord were added to their number, crowds of both men and women” (5:14).  This is remarkable indeed!  The man that had been crucified, which was always the sure sign of failure when it came to messianic hopes, continued to have those that came to believe in Him as the Messiah.  Accordingly then, there must have been some type of tremendous and monumental evidence at hand to account for the fact that Jews in great numbers were coming to believe this thing, especially in light of the fact that, as Israel’s history repeatedly showed, the mark of a failed and illegitimate messiah was death at the hands of the enemies of the people of the Creator God. 

Consequently, this seems to clearly point in the direction of the fact that there had been a Resurrection from the dead; and thus, though it was well known that Jesus had been condemned by both the Jewish authorities (for the blasphemy that accompanied His messianic claims) as well as the Roman authorities (for confessing Himself as a King and therefore as a rival to Caesar and potential threat to the pax Romana), and had been executed as a result of the sentence of condemnation passed by both parties, the Resurrection served as His vindication.  Among other things, the Resurrection demonstrated that the God of Israel, by raising Him from the dead, had reversed the judicial decrees that had come down against Him. 

The reasonable conclusion to be made, therefore, was that since Jesus had openly confessed these things concerning His Messiah-ship and His King-ship, it was not a matter of Him being cleared from the guilt of the charges that had been leveled against Him.  Quite the opposite, in fact, as the Resurrection seems to have proven that what He had said about Himself was true.  According to Acts, it was the preaching of the Resurrection (following the ignoble crucifixion) that brought about the belief in Jesus, as the disciples of Christ “were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the Word of God courageously” (4:31b).  The preaching of the Gospel---declaring that Jesus was the crucified and resurrected Messiah of Israel and Lord of the world---by the Holy Spirit, was and is the showing forth of the very power of God that manifests itself in faith’s confession of allegiance to Jesus and belief in His claims and way of bringing about the kingdom of God.

The apostles were jailed for making these claims.  Previously, they had been warned “not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus” (4:18b).  Interestingly, we find that “the high priest rose up, and all those with him (that is, the religious party of the Sadducees), and they were filled with jealousy.  They laid hands on the apostles and put them in a public jail” (5:17-18).  There is a depth of detail that asked to be noticed here, in that the apostles were obviously preaching the Resurrection of the dead, and it was the Sadducees “who say there is no resurrection” (Matthew 22:23b), that had them jailed. 

In stark contrast to their being placed in jail for preaching Jesus and His Resurrection (for without a Resurrection, His teaching did not matter, as He would have been just another failed messianic pretender in a long line of failed messianic hopefuls), “during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the prison, led them out, and said, ‘Go and stand in the temple courts and proclaim to the people all the words of this life’.” (5:19-20)  They were specifically instructed to preach the words of this life, meaning, in all contextual probability, the fact that Jesus was alive, though the way of life presented by Jesus could certainly be indicated here as well.  They were not instructed to go and tell people about living a “Christian life,” but to preach the Gospel (Jesus is Lord), which is rooted and given its substance in the Resurrection of Jesus.