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Day 325: Boldness in Faith
Agape Bible Study Acts 4
Acts 4:1-4 ~ The Religious Authorities arrest Peter and John
An alliance of the chief priests and the Sadducees was formed to arrest Peter and John. The captain of the Temple guard was a Levite (lesser minister) and the officer in charge of the Temple security force. The captain of the Temple guard ranked next after the reigning high priest as far as authority over the Temple area was concerned. Jesus' enemies are also the enemies of Peter and the Apostles. This is the same group of men who arrested Jesus at Gethsemane and condemned Him to death; the sense of danger for Peter and John felt cannot be exaggerated (Lk 22:4, 52; Mt 26:65-66; Mk 14:63-64).
The Sadducees and the Pharisees were the two most influential religious groups. The faction of the Sadducees was composed of the chief priest and the aristocracy. They opposed the Pharisees who presented themselves as scrupulously pious and champions of the common people. Most of the chief priests were Sadducees but some were also Pharisees, including Flavius Josephus (Life, 2). Since it was the end of the day, there was not enough time to call the members of the high court of the Sanhedrin into session, therefore they put off the hearing until the next day and imprisoned Peter and John.
Acts 4:5-12 ~ Peter's 3rd kerygmatic discourse before the Sanhedrin
The official high priest is Joseph Caiaphas who served as high priest from 18-36 AD (Jn 11:49; 18:24) and presided over Jesus' trial (Mt 26:57; Jn 18:24). Annas was Caiaphas' father-in-law (Jn 18:13) and the former high priest (6-15 AD). High priests were supposed to serve for life, but the Romans put an end to that extended office and high priests only served for a term determined by the Romans. Annas managed to retain power through his sons and son-in-law who all followed him as the reigning high priests; in fact Luke even refers to Annas as the high priest (see the chart on the Ruler of Judea in the handouts of the first lesson). John/Jonathan was a son of Annas who succeeded Caiaphas as high priest in 37 AD (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 18.4.4 [95]). Alexander is unknown, but was a chief priest who was also probably a leader in the party of the Sadducees along with John. He may also have been another member of Annas' family.
This is the second time Luke has used Ps 118:2 LXX. The first time was at the end of Jesus' Parable of the Wicked Tenants in Luke 20:17 when the religious leaders recognized that Jesus was addressing the quote specifically to them (20:19). In Peter's reference he has added the words "by you" before "builders" to make his point.
Acts 4:13-22 ~ The Ruling of the Sanhedrin
The religious leadership probably didn't perceived Peter and John as being illiterate men so much as men who had no formal education like the educated elite, the class to which they belonged. Their comment shows their contempt for these "ordinary men." However, they couldn't help but be impressed by the force and eloquence of Peter's argument, and they recognized them as Jesus' companions.
Question: Why did the presence of the healed man present a problem for them? Also see verses 16 and 22.
Answer: There was no denying to the people that the man had been healed. They could not accuse Peter of fraud because everyone knew the man had been lame from birth and was more than forty years old.
And yet the members of the Sanhedrin have denied what they have seen (the healed man in front of them) and they deny what they have heard (the voice of a prophet) like the rebellious covenant people to whom the prophet Isaiah was sent whose obstinacy would persist despite the prophet's warning: Listen carefully, but you shall not understand! Look intently, but you shall know nothing! (Is 6:9).
Acts 4:23-31 ~ The Jerusalem Community Joins in Prayer
It is significant that the Christian community raised their voices to God with one accord. This is what believers do today in the liturgy of the Mass. We pray as though we were One because we recognize that we are One in Christ. In their prayer they turn to David, who is recognized as a Holy Spirit inspired prophet (Acts 2:30); they quote from the Messianic Psalms 2:1-2 LXX with no additions or alternations. St. Paul will quote from the same passage in Acts 13:33 and also in Hebrews 1:5 and 5:5: Why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples entertain folly? The kings of the earth took their stand and the princes gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.
The words "against his anointed" in Psalm 2 is understood to be a reference to Jesus. The Gentile Romans took a stand against God when they condemned Jesus to death. In attacking the Apostles, the emissaries of the Christ, the Sanhedrin is also taking a stand against God's anointed Messiah. The 3rd verse in Psalms 2, which isn't included in our text, is especially relevant to the current situation: Let us break their shackles and cast off their chains! It will be fulfilled in Acts 5:19.
Life in the Jerusalem Church
In this next section (Acts 4:32-5:11) we read about how powerfully Peter and the Apostles are demonstrating their leadership within the community of the restored Israel. The section is set off by the terms "community of believers" in 4:32 and "the whole Church" in 5:11.
Acts 4:32-37 ~ The Unity of the Community and the Generosity of Barnabas
This is the second of three summaries describing the character of the Jerusalem community (see Acts 2:42-47 and 5:12-16). In addition to centering their religious life on the teachings of the Apostles and the Eucharistic liturgy (2:42), they also developed a system for the distribution of goods in which the wealthier members of the community sold their possessions when the needs of the community's poor required it (2:44; 4:32-27)(1).
Question: The wealthier members of the community are living according to which of Jesus' teachings concerning the duty of those blessed with many material wealth to care for the poor?
Answer: They are living according to the teaching in Jesus' Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:20-26 in which Jesus' taught that the wealthy who fail to use their wealth to take care of the poor will face divine judgment.
Question: Who is Joseph Barnabas? See Acts 4:36; 9:27; 11:22-30; 12:12; 15:1-4, 36-39; and Col 4:10.
Answer: He was a Levite (a descendant of the lesser ministers) from the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean. He was a kinsman of John Mark (the inspired writer of the Gospel of Mark) and therefore a kinsman of John Mark's mother Mary of Jerusalem at whose house the disciples regularly met. He will be the first disciple to befriend Saul/Paul.
Agape Bible Study Romans 6 - 7
Romans 6:1-11: The Regeneration of Baptism
In Romans 6:1 St. Paul takes us back to the question he raised in Romans 3:5-8, "But if our injustice serves to bring God's saving justice into view, can we say that God is unjust when'to use human terms'he brings his retribution down on us? Out of the question! It would mean that God could not be the judge of the world. You might as well say that if my untruthfulness makes God demonstrate his truthfulness, to his greater glory then I should not be judged to be a sinner at all. In this case, the slanderous report some people are spreading would be true, that we teach that one should do evil that good may come of it." In other words Paul was asking in Romans 3:5-8 and again here in 6:1-2, "Should we sin more so that God's grace can come to us in greater abundance?" The rhetorical question suggests, "How can sin be a problem if it leads us to greater forgiveness?"
Question: How does Paul address this notion in Romans 6:11? Does the gift of grace give us freedom to sin?
Answer: Paul vehemently rejects this notion in 6:11. Grace does not mean freedom to sin! If one has died to sin through the Baptism of Jesus Christ, and if one is in union with the life of Christ then one is "dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus," and, therefore, reasons Paul, sin becomes foreign to the life of the re-born believer.
Question: How is it that Paul tells us God's abundant grace reaches us? What is the effect of this infusion of grace? See Romans 6:3-4.
Answer: Through the Sacrament of Baptism we receive God's grace which frees us from the control of and slavery to sin. The entomological meaning of the word "baptize" is "dip" or "immerse". Immersion was a common practice in the Old Covenant for ritual purification and for conversion [i.e John the Baptizer's immersion for repentance] but our immersion in the Baptism of Christ goes far beyond ritual symbolism.
Question: When one receives the Sacrament of Baptism what supernatural sequence of events takes place which images the life of Christ? See Colossians 2:9-14 and John 3:3-8; CCC# 628; 977-978
Answer:
- The believer dies to sin and therefore blameworthiness dies'we die to sin by renouncing sin and its power over us and being freed of its hold on our lives. We image Christ in this death to sin just as He died to free us from sin on the Cross.
- We are born "again" or "from above"; the Greek word onothan can mean either "again" or "from above" [see John chapter 3]. Our hearts are supernaturally "circumcised" and we are resurrection out of the waters of Baptism to a new life'no longer a child of Adam we become children in the family of God, imaging Christ's Resurrection from the tomb and fulfilling God's promise to make all things new through the New Covenant in Christ: Revelation 21:5-7, "Then the One sitting on the throne spoke. 'Look, I am making the whole of creation new. Write this, 'What I am saying is trustworthy and will come true.' Then he said to me, 'It has already happened. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give water from the well of life free to anybody who is thirsty' and I will be his God and he will be my son."
- Baptism imparts the life of Christ's grace and, therefore, original sin and all personal sins are forgiven through the cleansing waters of Baptism in the regeneration and infusion of divine life by the power of God the Holy Spirit.
[However, concupiscence, the tendency to sin remained, see CCC# 978]
St. Ambrose, in his instruction to the newly baptized on the Sacrament of Baptism, taught, "The Lord who wanted his benefactions to endure, the serpent's plans to be turned to naught, and the harm done to be put right, delivered a sentence on mankind: 'You are dust, and to dust you shall return' (Genesis 3:19), and made man subject to death." Then, as St. Ambrose continues, God in His mercy provided a remedy: "The remedy was given him: man would die and rise again.... You ask me how? Answering his own question St. Ambrose informed the newly Baptized, "Pay attention! So that in this world too the devil's snare would be broken, a rite was instituted whereby man would die, being alive, and rise again, being alive....Through immersion in water the sentence is blotted out: 'You are dust and to dust you shall return.'" St. Ambrose writing on the Sacrament of Baptism, De Sacramentis, II,6
Tthe Baptized believer as a new creation in Christ. Col 3:10: "You have stripped off your old behavior with your old self, and you have put on a new self which will progress towards true knowledge the more it is renewed in the image of its Creator." The human race was created in the image and likeness of God [Genesis 1:26-27]. But the family of Adam became lost in trying to see knowledge and wisdom apart from the will of God [Genesis 2:17] and became slaves of sin. This is the "old self" [Romans 6:6] that must die. It is the "new self" that is reborn through the waters of baptism into Christ who is the true image of God and who has come to restore fallen humanity to the splendor of that image that had been stained and distorted by sin.
- CCC# 1266: "The Most Holy Trinity gives the baptized sanctifying grace, the grace of justification: enabling them to believe in God, to hope in him, and to love him through the theological virtues [faith, hope, and love/charity]; giving them the power to live and act under the prompting of the Holy Spirit through the gifts of the Holy Spirit; allowing them to grow in goodness through the moral virtues. Thus the whole organism of the Christian's supernatural life has its roots in Baptism.
- CCC# 1992: "Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ who offered himself on the cross as a living victim, holy and pleasing to God, and whose blood has become the instrument of atonement for the sins of all men. Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy. Its purpose is the glory of God and of Christ, and the gift of eternal life...."
However, acts of justification and forgiveness may occur at many points in one's journey of faith. These continual acts of justification are necessary for Christian growth in holiness and sanctification. When, for example, a priest declares a sinner forgiven in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, this is an act of justification which brings the Christian back into a "rightness" in his relationship or "walk" with God the Father.
Romans 6:12-19: The Christian freed from sin to live a life of holiness:
St. John Chrysostom wrote in his commentary on Romans chapter 6 that grace both remits and protects against sin: "Paul says that unless we sink very low, sin will not get the better of us. For it is not just the law which exhorts us but also grace which has remitted our former sins and protects us against future ones.
Question: In Romans 6:15 Paul asks the rhetorical question "What is the implication to be living under God's grace? What is Paul's answer to his own question?
Answer: He repeats his theme that grace is greater than sin.
Romans 6:20-23: The Christian's promised reward
Question: How do the sinful deeds of our old life affect us now that we have renounced sin and taken on the mantle of holiness in Christ?
Answer: We should be ashamed of that past life and determined never to return to it.
Romans 7:1-6: Christian Freedom from the Law
Paul's opening point is that the Old Covenant Law was only temporal'with a binding influence on the living and not on the dead. He may be directing his argument directly to the Jewish members of his audience [his "brothers" ethnically] most of whom were born and raised under the jurisdiction of the Law of Moses. For the first time since his introduction in Romans 1:13, Paul addressed his audience as "brothers" [and sisters]. In addition to 1:13 and 7:1, he will used this title of kinship again in 7:4; 8:12; 10:1; 11:25; 12:1; 14:10, 13, 15; 21; 15:14, 30; 16:14, 17, 23'for a total of 15 times in the letter to the Romans. He also addresses fellow Christians as brothers and sisters in his other letters. The Greek word Paul uses is the plural of adelphos which in this context can mean both "brothers" and "sisters." The literal Greek means "from the womb", in other words, "full blood brother." Greek is a very sophisticated language and has a variety of words that reflect kinship links like half-brother, cousin, etc., the word adelphos (adelphoi) is the only Greek word used for "brother" in the New Testament. Therefore, the argument that Mary did not continue in her virginity after Jesus' birth and had other children because this Greek word that means "from the womb" is used for those mentioned as Jesus' "brothers" in the Gospels, has no merit. The use of the single word for "brother" reflect the Hebrew concept of kinship in which every member of your family is a "blood-brother"'including covenant family members as in the case of the Christian community. Every Christian is united in the blood of Christ into the family of God and is therefore "kin" in the most intimate sense. [A few other passages that use adelphos/adelphoi in the sense which clearly does not refer to "blood brothers" in the natural sense: Matthew 23:8; Acts 1:15-16; 2:37; 21:17, 20; 22:1]
Romans 7:7-13: The Function of the Law under the Old Covenant
Question: What sin does Paul mention specifically and what mental image or images would the topic of this particular sin evoke?
Answer: The prohibitions against coveting are the last of the list of sins in the 10 Commandments [see Exodus 20:17 and Deuteronomy 5:21; also see Paul's mention of this sin in Romans 13:9]. His audience would recall the Sinai Covenant which bound Israel to Yahweh and the list of the 10 Commandments that form the Decalogue.
But the subject of coveting may also be a reference to the first sin of Adam and Eve when the ate from the Tree of Knowledge in that they "coveted" God's knowledge, wisdom, and sovereignty and ate the forbidden fruit in order to obtain those powers for themselves. This would have been the sin from which all other personal sin originates.
Romans 7:14-25: The Struggle Against Sin
In this passage Paul continues speaking in the person of fallen humanity who labors under the dominion of sin. Sin does not exist in the law but in human beings whose sinful inclinations cannot be overcome by the law. But in chapter 8 Paul will turn and contrast the lives of fallen humans by speaking in the person of the justified Christian who is conscious of his inward struggle but who does not struggle alone because he is empowered by the gift of God the Holy Spirit who equips and strengthens the Christian in his struggle to do good and not evil.
Question: What is Paul's lament for humanity in Romans 7:20?
Answer: That one can feel overpowered by sin to the point that the desire to do evil can seem to overpower the desire to do good. The law cannot give the sinner the power to do good. The law can only encourage sin to be exposed.
Question: Is he releasing man from the responsibility and accountability for sinful actions because man is powerless to resist evil?
Martin Luther's doctrine of salvation is based on these passages from Romans chapter 7:14-23 concerning how flesh and spirit wrestle. As a Catholic priest Luther was tormented by his inability to overcome his fallen nature. His failure, he concluded, was from an inability to overcome his fallen condition because man is depraved and simply cannot avoid sin. The doctrine he formulated came to be known as the doctrine of "total depravity." Luther reasoned that human nature is so steeped in sin that sin is unavoidable and man's only hope for salvation is through confessing his faith and believing in Jesus as Lord and Savior. He became convinced that even our good works are nothing but "filthy rags" and therefore cannot count towards our salvation. He also became convinced that faith alone, the "cloak of righteousness," covers the sins that corrupt the soul of man and to support this doctrine he changed the Bible text to reflect this belief in Romans 3:38, "salvation by faith alone", adding the word "alone" in contradiction to James 2:24.
The problem with Luther's position is that it denies free will. The English Catholic statesman, St. Sir Thomas Moore, who was a contemporary of Luther, in response to Luther's teachings argued that as a result of this doctrine of total depravity "the evil in the world is ascribed to God and not to His creatures." Scholar Gerard Wegemer writes that Thomas More observed: "At the same time, the 'one special thing' they use to spice everything else is a doctrine of liberty that teaches that 'having faith, they need nothing else.'" Wegemer continues that Moore concluded Luther's denial of free will "plainly sets forth all the world to wretched living." Moore argued that if there is no "free will" and our actions are not within our own control there is no incentive to struggle against the temptation to sin. In addition, if our actions make no difference in the outcome of our salvation then why should we even care? St. Thomas More considered Luther's denial of the doctrine of "free will" to be "the very worst and most mischievous heresy that was ever thought upon, and also the most mad." [Thomas More: A Portrait of Courage, Gerard Wegemer, Scepter, pages 123-25].
Martin Luther's denial of man's free will remains a stumbling block for many Protestant Christians today. This misinterpretation of Romans chapter 7 is especially harmful to the state of Protestant Christian salvation when united with the false doctrine "once saved always saved." God calls us to use our free will to choose between what is good and holy and what is harmful and evil. It is the call of "perfection" that Christ called every Christians to live in the Sermon on the Mount when He said in Matthew 5:48 "Be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect." We strive for moral perfection in order to be united more perfectly to our heavenly Father by imaging in our lives the purity of the Jesus Christ living in us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: "The way of perfection passes by way of the cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle. Spiritual progress entails the ascesis [self-denial] and mortification that gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes." [CCC# 2015].
We were all born with the tendency to sin. It is an open wound on the spirit of humanity which came about as a result of original sin. We were forgiven original sin and all personal sin in our baptism and rebirth into the family of God but the stain of sin remains in the form of our concupiscence, our tendency to sin. Paul taught that we make up for this deficiency in the suffering of Christ [Colossians 1:24] where we offer our struggles, sufferings and good works to Jesus where they are multiplied and united with His and help toward our salvation and the building up of the Body of Christ, the Church: "It makes me happy to be suffering for you now, and in my own body to make up all the hardships that still have to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church.." Jesus willingly suffered in order to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, and anyone who is called through baptism to continue His work must share in this suffering. Paul is not saying that he has added to the redemptive value of the cross or that Jesus' suffering was incomplete. He is instead uniting himself to Christ's Passion through the trials he faces in his apostolate. This is part of God's plan for the development and growth of the Church as the Body of Christ. Luther's "dunghill" of humanity is for the Catholic fertile soil to allow the works of Christ to work through us in our joys and in our sufferings. Our cooperation with God's grace is what allows the miracle of grace to produce "good fruit" –God's works working in our lives and yielding a harvest of blessings. We are transformed and Christ dwelling within us overcomes our fallen natures and our tendency to sin. We cannot overcome sin and do works of righteousness on our own. We need God's grace through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Grace perfects nature and our nature is strengthened by the practice of virtue, "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come." 2 Corinthians 5:17. We are not covered, we are transformed and we must live as though our transformation has the power to generate goodness as God's will lives in us.
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