21 Days of Devotion
Read Acts 3:1-26
DEVOTIONAL THOUGHTS
In this passage, Peter preaches his second recorded sermon. The occasion for this sermon is the healing of a disabled man at the entrance to the Temple in Jerusalem. Every day of his life, this man had to be carried to the Temple and laid at one of its gates to beg for alms. His life was utterly dependent on the charity of others – he was literally begging for his life day in and day out. When Peter and John encounter him, they offer him something far more valuable than what he had been begging for – they offer him healing him the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Rather than giving him silver and gold for bread, they give him the bread of life (Jn. 6:35). In healing the man, Peter and John lift up Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life (Jn. 14:6). After this miraculous healing, Peter preaches that it is by faith in and only through the name of Jesus that the lame man had been made well, and that salvation and deliverance are to be found. In what ways are we like that disabled man? Where do we find true sustenance? Where do we find true life?
“In a building the foundation is first. Whoever, then, has Christ in his heart, so that no earthly or temporal things – not even those that are legitimate and allowed-are preferred to Him, has Christ as a foundation. But if these things are preferred, then even though a man seems to have faith in Christ, yet Christ is not the foundation to that man.”
– Augustine
The City of God
