Acts 2: What Place Does Sin Have after Christ's Death for Sin
Before we get into Chapter 2, let’s recapitulate the introduction in Chapter 1.
Luke clearly affirms that Jesus rose again from the dead in Chapter 1. He records times Jesus was visibly present and conversations Jesus initiated with the disciples (v. 2). Luke also mentions that Jesus was in their company, but does not enumerate the number. (v.4) After charging them, Jesus ascends into heaven, and two angels remind them to go to Jerusalem as Jesus had commanded. (vv. 4, 10-11) The point here is that there were a number of eye-witnesses to Jesus post-death, post-tomb, post-stone-rolled-away, and Luke gives witness to a living Jesus, recognized and acknowledged as such by his apostles. For example, in this first chapter, they did not question who he was, only what he was doing — as in, “are you now going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
I appreciate how Luke understates this remarkable set of facts. He is not shouting anyone down in Chapter 1. He writes matter-of-factly instead that for 40 days Jesus is talking to, spending time with, and walking before his disciples up to the point of his ascension. These mundane activities describe the activities of life, not death.
Luke assumes we understand the difference. He is no carnival barker; neither is he piquing anyone’s curiosity. Luke is affirming the truth that Jesus had life (intelligence, thought, hearing, comprehension, speech, intention, purpose, and authority) and a body (ears to hear, mouth to speak, eyes to see, feet to walk on). But something had happened according to Luke. Jesus could conform to the gravity of the earth, stand on the earth, and speak to his disciples; but he could also overrule the laws of gravity and ascend into the heavens where presumably there would be insufficient oxygen for mortal human beings to breathe. But something else had fundamentally changed. The two angels informed the gawking disciples Jesus would be returning in exactly the same manner he departed.
Let’s set aside for the moment the 120 documented in the upper room (v. 15) because we don’t know if they were in the company of disciples when Christ ascended. But we do know that Barsabbas and Matthias were present for the ascension (vv. 21-23). So if we add the eleven apostles (Judas Iscariot was dead) and these two others, at least 13 men witnessed a risen Jesus during a 40 day period and witnessed his physical ascension into the heavens after that period has ended. Luke dutifully gives us their individual names in the first chapter for any Bereans (17:11), skeptics, or scoffers among his readers.
With this introduction in Chapter 1 in mind, this life of Jesus—(i) being here (alive-dead-alive again), (ii) going away, and (iii) coming back; or, Jesus past, present, and future—raises a lot of questions not the least of which is: what about sin?
That may not seem to be an obvious question since he died for it all. But remember he has changed at the human level, as Luke records. We don’t rise from the dead, or ascend. Death could not hold him and he covered our sins with his blood. Is that it then for any consideration of sin? No. What is our relation to it if Jesus died for our sins, and rose up to new life?
Bearing in mind not everyone walks in His righteousness afforded by the blood of Jesus, but instead remains under His judgment—in other words, they are still bound by their individual sins, as we understand them—the question is: has anything happened to sin given these extraordinary events recorded by Luke? Has the definition of sin changed in any way now that we have Jesus? Yes, sin has fundamentally changed, and could be said to have matured in the following manner.
Under the Mosaic law, sins were everywhere expressed in our human condition. And as many individuals there have been, there appear to be a many ways to sin. We see that in the Old Testament narrative and in the Gospel narratives as well. The Mosaic law provided remedies, imputations of righteousness, through sacrifice. But most of that sacrificial activity was on the margins of sin.
Not once did the Mosaic law reach the heart of sin (that is what made the circumcision party of the newly born church so outrageous—it was simply an old patch for a garment that had no tear in it and needed no repair). God certainly dealt with the heart of sin through the captivities of Israel in Assyria and Judah in Babylon, but it wasn’t until Jesus’s sermon on the Mount that the heart of sin was touched in such a personal and unforgiving manner.
I am always stunned by people who laud that sermon as lovely, ethical, and evidence that Jesus was a good teacher. By that comment, they either haven’t read it or applied it to themselves. That sermon is a judgment of the human heart, and it shows man’s heart as miles and miles away from God’s righteous requirements. That sermon is crushing since we cannot obey its laws, in ourselves. In it, Jesus holds up a mirror of the laws and principles informing the Mosaic law so that we can see the true condition of our hearts in relation to God. Where do we turn after that hard look at ourselves?
That’s the point isn’t it? Where do we turn?
On the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit took His place here, Peter explained to the crowd what had just happened and he related this event to Old Testament prophecy and the life and death and life of Jesus Christ. What happened to the hearers when he was finished? Luke records they were cut to the heart, and cried out, “What do we do now?” (v. 37)
That is the same question the sermon on the Mount was intended to raise. But they couldn’t repent then; they could not see how God’s law worked. The cross turned the floodlights on. Peter’s proclamation of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ did not throw these hearers in Chapter 2 into confusion; it brought clarity about themselves, which they had previously been lacking.
With Christ crucified, sin could never again be treated lightly, casually, or with the blood of goats, or sheep, or cattle. Not only was it a more serious problem than anyone had ever conceived (witness Nicodemus in John 3); it would indeed result in wrath, God’s judgment, and death. With Christ alive again, sin shouldn’t be held onto, cultivated, or ignored any longer. That would offend His sacrifice as well as the Father’s acceptance of it (and us through it) as evidenced by the resurrection.
Therein lies the maturation and refinement of sin. With Jesus cursed for hanging on a tree (Galatians 3:13), you need not trouble yourself over a body of laws anymore; you need only to resolve for yourself the status of the missing body from the empty tomb. In that sense, sin has increased in magnitude while becoming irreducibly simple. The culmination of sin, the fulness of sin, the irrevocability of sin rests on a single question: whether Jesus is the Christ or not? Or more pointedly, whether Jesus rose again from the dead?
But we shouldn’t be deceived by the reduction of the various laws and regulations down to a single proposition as if we can breathe more easily. Miss the mark on this one and His wrath remains on your head—the same wrath that necessitated the gruesome death of David’s heir and Lord on a cross. The other sins you also commit simply make yourself and those around you miserable; you are already, in every sense of the word, a dead man walking when you reject Christ, if these initial 13 or so witnesses (and Luke) are testifying to the facts of a living Jesus walking around, talking, and ascending in his own, albeit transformed, human body.
The righteousness found in, and provided through, Christ Jesus is considerably more terrifying than buying an unblemished lamb and presenting it to a priest, if you are opposed to what he has offered you. For it is then your life you bind, your life you strike down, your life that spills out since you have opted out of his life given for your sake—but your life will never be enough to redeem your soul. Jesus’s death on the cross established that much; you are simply not enough to overcome the world in you, and most certainly not strong enough to overcome death when it comes.
As depressing as that prospect may be for the rebel, it is awfully good news to the one who sees himself for who he is—a man in need of savior, a man in need of deliverance from sin, and a man in need of hope, an eternal hope, when death comes.
