Let Bygones Be Bygones

There were still many who had not accepted Jesus' Lordship. Luke commented on their perplexity with the healing of the lame man.
v. 10. They were amazed.
v. 12. They stared and wondered.
They did not, as yet, have a way to think about what they were observing and how they should respond to it.

Luke says the people ran to see what was happening. v. 11. They were full of curiosity. But at the moment it was only curiosity and astonishment..
It was also curiosity that was focused on Peter and John rather than on the true Cause of these events. v. 12.

Peter was speaking to Jews who had been steeped in Scripture. They knew what it said, yet they had either rejected or ignored it.
So when Jesus walked into their lives they did not recognize him. Like when Bev and I bumped into Toni from our dentist's office. Twice! I knew I had seen her before, but I didn't know where. I didn't know her.
Their inability/unwillingness to see the truth made them vulnerable to an awful sin--rejecting the Son of God. v. 13. And delivering him to be crucified.
Peter attributed their rejection of Jesus to ignorance but he did not remove their culpability for it.

Peter is speaking to the unconverted Jews in Jerusalem.
At this moment they can only assume that the event of the crucifixion was a one dimensional moment. That it occurred and concluded.
In his speech Peter connects the dots for them. The guy you thought was dead is responsible for this healing today.
If that is true, it casts their lives in new and brighter light. "We are at cross purposes with a God who can raise the dead and heal."

These people might have been casually walking through the Temple environs. Perhaps on their way to offer a sacrifice or give a gift or perhaps just as a short cut through the Temple.
But what they experienced there challenged their world view. A man they knew as lame from birth was now "walking, leaping, and praising God." v. 8.
So now they had to reevaluate what they formerly believed. Maybe the man we crucified really was who he claimed to be.

The biggest reassessment that the Jewish listeners had to make was in where they would place their future loyalties and commitments.
What became apparent to them in this moment was that God had been working in one direction in history, and they had been working in another. Contrary loyalties.
God fulfilled what he had fortold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer. v. 18.

The first listeners, on Pentecost, asked the obvious question, "What shall we do?" v. 37.
How do you undo such terrible and grievious wrong as the crucifixion of the Messiah?
Paul reflected this question in Romans 7:24 when he asked, Who will rescue me from the body of death?

The Romans had a particularly awful way to condemn some people. They bound them face to face with a dead body.
As the body decayed, the live person absorbed the stench and effluvia, until he finally died.
That is the effect of unrestrained sin and failure in our lives.

Interestingly, Peter does not give them a long complicated list of things to do. There is no Karma to satisfy, no law to measure up to.
He tells them to change their minds (repent) and turn to God. Simple. Logical.
The refreshing and saving comes from God, not from us.

There is an aspect of sorrow, regret, or dissatisfaction with it. The one possessing this repentant spirit is, in effect, saying I no longer want to live this way.
It does not mean they live this new way perfectly. However, there is a new mind. A new way of looking at life and choices.
Patrick Morley writes, We sometimes have an integrity problem in believing the misconception that “that we can add Christ to our lives, but not subtract sin. It is a change in belief without a change in behavior.”