Commentary on Acts 2:14a, 36-41

Acts presents communities with varied opinions and understandings about the central claims of Peter’s message. The claims are: Jesus is Lord, Jesus is the Anointed One, and Jesus offered abolition of sins. Seeing some of the available ways that each of these could have been interpreted by the earliest audiences of Acts allows readers to develop varied strategies for interpreting this passage and the book more broadly. 

Intra-Judean (Jewish) conflict versus Christians against Jews

In these verses Peter reaches the climax of his Shavuot message, which results in an altar call of sorts. Acts sets this message within a festival celebrated by Judeans (Ioudaioi) in the Roman Empire. Peter addresses his message to Judeans so that the entire house of Israel (pas oikos Israēl) can affirm his witness. Acts insists that the Jerusalem Judean judiciary under Roman auspices is responsible for the execution of Jesus. In Peter’s broader speech here, his other speeches in Acts, and Stephen’s message (Acts 7), Acts squares the blame with certain Judeans who, like their ancestors, ignored the words of the prophets and missed God’s activity among them. 

It is important to note that Acts does not place the blame for the execution with all Jews perpetually. That is an anachronistic, anti-Jewish reading of the passage. Instead, Acts has Judeans (Ioudaioi) condemn fellow Judeans who believe some things differently (for example, how to use the Judean scriptures to interpret Jesus). Despite these differences, Acts portrays the different groups agreeing on many other issues, like the importance of Temple worship, the significance of Hebrew scriptures, and practicing festival observance. In this way, Acts portrays intra-Judean (or intra-Jewish) disagreement that later interpreters exaggerate to justify a rift between Judaism and Christianity.

The politics of the titles “Lord” and “Anointed One”

One can understand “Lord” (kyrios) here within two broad contours. The first is religio-political within the Roman Empire. The second is religio-political within Judean traditions proper. A lord (kyrios) was an owner of property, including people. This title extended beyond the household and was applied to the emperor, whom many understood as the “lord” or “owner” of the empire. To suggest that Jesus of Nazareth was lord is a direct challenge to the lordship of figures like Augustus, whom Luke-Acts names in Luke 2:1. 

One can connect this to later, in Acts 17:1–9,  when the members of the movement are accused ironically in Thessalonica of acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor by claiming that Jesus is another king. This scene is ironic because this charge functions primarily to criminalize Jesus’s movement, and although they do not explicitly claim that Jesus is another king, by proclaiming that Jesus is lord and messiah, they are actually, indirectly, indeed making that claim. This is especially important for Acts, because Jesus has been executed by the Jerusalem judiciary that is aligned with Roman imperial power. By aligning with the empire against Jesus, Acts presents the religio-political establishment of Jerusalem as choosing the wrong lord.

Within religio-political Judean traditions, both identifications of Jesus—as lord and anointed one—are connected to royal claims. Earlier, in Acts 2, Lord (kyrios) almost exclusively refers to Adonai from the Hebrew scriptures. Acts interprets the passages from Joel and the Psalter as evidence that Adonai wields ultimate authority over time and history. 

As Acts has Peter turn to the end of his message, he quotes David from Psalm 110, where “my Lord speaks to my Lord.” This coronation-style psalm appropriately gets applied to the anointed one who is also to be a regal figure. The authority of the Lord (Adonai) elides with the delegated authority of my lord (the anointed one). This elision is so powerful that when Jesus is resurrected and exalted, Adonai gives him the authority to do what only Adonai is portrayed as doing in the Hebrew scriptures; Adonai grants the Messiah the lordly authority to pour out the Holy Spirit.

From Judean religio-political traditions, one prominent feature of a messiah or anointed one was to be God’s chosen vessel to intervene in the political, material affairs of God’s people. It is why Cyrus, in Isaiah, is depicted as a christ or as one anointed or christed (echrisen; Septuagint Isaiah 45:1). For Acts, Peter’s claim that Jesus of Nazareth was the Anointed One (Christ or Messiah) can only be understood as a political claim, especially within Judean traditions.

Jesus the Anointed One for abolition, freedom, and forgiveness

Jesus as the Anointed One is important for Acts, and in Acts 2:38, christos gets used as Jesus’s official title, and the combined name Jesus the Anointed One (Iēsous Christos) is the medium through which his followers can transact the business of washing (baptizō) away sins (Hal Taussig’s New New Testament translates baptizō this way). Since Jesus’s identity as the Anointed One is significant for Luke-Acts, it is of the utmost importance to see what Luke-Acts understands Jesus as anointed to do. We can find the answer to this in Luke 4:18–19, when Luke presents Jesus delivering his first message in Nazareth, drawn from a reading of Isaiah 61. He reads:

The Spirit of Adonai (kyriou) is upon me,
it has christed/anointed (echrisen) me
      to announce good news to impoverished people.
It has sent me
      to proclaim abolition (aphesin) to incarcerated people
      and the opening up [of the eyes] of blind people
      to send in freedom (aphesei) those who have been broken through oppression
      to proclaim the year of Adonai’s acceptance. (my translation)

For Luke-Acts, this is what Jesus is anointed, or christed, to do. This should be central for understanding Jesus in Luke-Acts, for understanding the Spirit that anoints him, and for understanding the Spirit that he pours out onto his followers. 

One feature of the above translation that I draw attention to is the flexibility of the term aphesis. I have drawn attention to the presence of that word in Luke 4:18–19, because it also appears in our lectionary passage for the week. In the same way that I have translated it differently in the passage, the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition translates it differently in Acts 2:38 as connected to “forgiveness,” and the King James Version renders it “remission.” The verb form of this term appears in the prayer that Jesus teaches in Luke 11, where he tells them to ask the heavenly Father to “forgive (aphes) our sins (hamartias) as we forgive (aphiomen) those indebted to us.” 

Bringing Luke 4:18–19 and 11:2–4 into dialogue with Acts 2:38 allows us to see some of the political dimensions that could be discerned from the end of Peter’s message. We can hear Peter in Acts proclaiming that Jesus is the Anointed One to proclaim abolition and freedom. Acts depicts him as a lord unlike the emperor, because his goal is not to extract, dominate, and confine. Instead, Jesus pours out the Spirit for freedom and abolition. Peter’s instructions, then, for those who accept his message are that they should turn (metanoēsate) from the colonial, imperial order of Rome and allow the Spirit to lead them into liberation.