“Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know— this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.” (Acts 2:22 - 23).
Note that the fact that God has a “predetermined plan” does not absolve Peter’s listeners from guilt and sin, nor does the fact that the Romans were the executioners - the Romans, while having their own guilt and accountability, were but the tools that Peter’s audience used to execute Jesus Christ.
Peter drives their guilt home again in verse 36:
“Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.”
In Peter’s second sermon we read (Acts 3:17 - 19a):
“And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also. But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away…”
Ignorance does not mean that we do not repent, it does not absolve us of guilt or sin. When God brings to light our ignorance it is an expression of His mercy as He opens a door for repentance and forgiveness. Then note the stern warning Peter uses (Acts 3:22 - 23):
Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren; to Him you shall give heed to everything He says to you. And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.’
Then, as Peter appeals to the covenantal heritage of his listeners (Acts 3:25) “It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers…” he is interrupted by the temple authorities (Acts 4:1ff) and thrown in jail - so we don’t know where Peter was going in his message. However, we do see an appeal to Biblical witness; “all the prophets” from Samuel onward have spoken of Jesus, (in verse 22 Peter had already incorporated Moses in the witness). We also see the mercy of pointing out “you acted in ignorance”. Then there is the clear call to repentance and the clear warning that those who do not repent will be judged, “utterly destroyed”.
Peter would have done his audiences no good had he refrained from calling them to repentance, pointing out their guilt, and in warning them of coming judgment and of the “crooked generation” (Acts 2:40) from which they needed to escape.
As with Peter, so with us; to not call people to repentance, to refrain from pointing out the guilt of our generation, to not inform people of the judgment of God - is irresponsible, it is an abdication of Gospel ministry, it is akin to a physician telling a cancer patient that he only has a headache, or a meteorologist telling a population that the strange skies are a passing anomaly when he knows that a Class 5 hurricane is about to come ashore.
As Paul points out (1 Thess. 1:10), Jesus “rescues us from the wrath to come.”
By ministers not faithfully proclaiming God’s Word our generation has lost an ear to hear Biblical accountability, Biblical guilt, Biblical confession, and Biblical repentance. Or perhaps I should write, our generation has lost the opportunity to “have an ear to hear”; for certainly Jeremiah’s generation rejected God’s Word, saying “Peace, peace, where there is no peace.” Jesus’ generation rejected Him. Many of the Apostles’ generation rejected them. But then there were those who “had ears to hear” the Apostles, Jesus, and Jeremiah - shall we not give those few the opportunity to come into the Ark of Jesus Christ?
As Ezekiel Chapter 33 points out, those who fail to warn others will be accountable to God for their failure to speak God’s Word.
There are entire congregations in our land who have lost an “ear to hear” the Word of God - they cannot abide a call to repentance, they cannot stand to confront sin, they have been convinced that they have nothing to confess...and so what do we have? Do we even have a church? Do we have an assembly of Biblical Christians? Or do we have hundreds and thousands of cancer patients gathered who all think they have indigestion or a headache that will shortly disappear?
One of the travesties of a failure to preach repentance is that to know the depth of the love of God we must know the abyss of our sin and death, and to purport to preach the love of God without communicating an awareness of the sin and death from which we need deliverance is to substitute our shallow idea of love for the unfathomable love of God - the Love Story of the Ages.
If we love people we will tell them the Truth. If we love Jesus Christ we will speak His Truth.
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