Acts 1:12-26
Bock, Darrell L.. Acts (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) (pp. 138-142,164). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
II. The Early Church in Jerusalem (1:12–6:7)
The first major section of Acts covers activity in Jerusalem. The first scene is about replacing Judas. The leadership is reconfigured as the Twelve. These leaders represent the base of the faithful remnant nation (1:12–26). They also serve as key witnesses, since the criterion is direct experience with Jesus’s ministry and resurrection. Then comes a major event of the book, the promised distribution of the Spirit at Pentecost. With the Spirit’s coming, Peter gives a key speech explaining that the new era is a part of Jesus’s continued work that shows him to be the promised Christ and Lord (2:1–41). A short scene follows with the group members engaged in worship, instruction, and fellowship as they work to be a community (2:42–47).
Next Luke juxtaposes word and deed, as he often did in his Gospel, with Peter’s healing of a lame man the occasion for yet another speech that overviews Jesus’s current and future ministry. This activity fits the promise of Torah but meets with official resistance as Peter and John are arrested. The prayer of the community to be steadfast in testimony is juxtaposed with the release of, and a warning to, those arrested (3:1–4:31). The cycle of activity and community life continues with the observation that all things are held in common and with the example of Barnabas. But all is not well. Ananias and Sapphira claim to lay at the apostles’ feet all the proceeds from the sale of a property but engage in deception by keeping some of the proceeds for themselves. Peter confronts them one at a time for lying to the Spirit, and they are judged (4:32–5:11). Another summary about the signs and wonders the apostles perform follows. The attention they are gaining shows that the ministry they are engaged in is making an impact (5:12–16).
One more cycle of persecution follows as the apostles continue to minister contrary to the admonition of the Jewish leadership. An arrest leads to a miraculous release to allow them to continue to preach, something the guards report to the leadership, who arrest them yet again. In the examination before the leadership, Peter claims to obey God, not them, something the narrative itself indicates as well. God has exalted Jesus, and they are witnesses of these things, as is the Spirit whom they obey. In a meeting of the leadership, Gamaliel counsels that the movement will die if it is not of God, but if it is of God, they cannot oppose it successfully. The remarks set up a key theme of the book, as the growth and expansion of the new community gives the narrative’s answer to these options (5:17–42).
Once again Luke switches back to community life and shows how the group resolves an issue of racial favoritism regarding the care of Hebrew and Hellenist widows. The Hellenists who make the complaint are told to appoint some of their own people to help solve the problem (6:1–6). The unit ends with a summary noting the growth of the community (6:7). In this unit Luke juxtaposes mission with community activity and formation. The Jesus community is a place for growth and witness.
II. The Early Church in Jerusalem (1:12–6:7)
➤ A. Community Life: Replacing Judas by Depending on God and Reconstituting the Twelve (1:12–26)
B. Pentecost (2:1–41)
C. Summary: Community Life (2:42–47)
A. Community Life: Replacing Judas by Depending on God and Reconstituting the Twelve (1:12–26)
In this scene we see the church responding to Jesus’s command to wait for the Spirit in Jerusalem. The disciples are not idle as they wait. They pray and are unified. They act to replace Judas among the Twelve. Judas is judged, having chosen to separate himself from the group. Acts 1:12–14 names some of the key figures present. Acts 1:15–17 reveals that the group is one hundred twenty in size and has Peter address the fact that Scripture predicted Judas’s defection. The explanation is interrupted in verses 18–19, where Luke explains to his readers what happened to Judas. Acts 1:20–22 completes Peter’s speech calling for the replacement of Judas. Acts 1:23–26 presents the selection of Matthias instead of Barsabbas as the Lord indicates his choice through the casting of lots. The community is preparing itself for the coming of the Spirit with prayer. Through scriptural reflection, they also consider what they should do. The unit begins a pattern for this section of Acts: we gain a glimpse of community life and then observe the community engaging the larger culture in witness. The juxtaposition is intentional. The community is not only to be inwardly focused on its worship, obedience, growth, and nurture; it is also to move out into the world in testimony.
Zwiep (2004: 178–79) notes four key biblical-theological elements underscoring the divine control of salvation history in the passage: (1) the advance of the gospel was not halted by Judas’s disobedience; (2) Jesus was not mistaken when he picked him; (3) the leaders who remained continued faithfully to represent the new movement; and (4) a circle of the Twelve existed at Pentecost to serve as Jesus’s chosen leaders of eschatological Israel in continuity with God’s promise. It can be added that the rest of Acts makes clear that this community became a new, fresh institution of God, distinct from Israel, but it did so because of the opposition of Jewish leaders throughout the Diaspora. The new community represented the realization of divine promises appearing with God’s chosen one and the coming of the Spirit, whom the chosen one would distribute. This point is made abundantly clear in Acts 2. None of this happened as a surprise to the plan or as a revision of it. God’s program for now was being realized in what became the church.
This new community’s existence, however, cannot cancel out promises and commitments a faithful God has made to Israel, a point made clear in Acts 3, where Peter affirms the realization of Israel’s promises in line with the prophets’ teaching to Israel. Zwiep (2004: 179–82) also notes that this text is the first in Acts to elevate Peter as the key figure of the earliest Jerusalem community. The choice of Matthias provides a figure for the twelfth throne discussed by Jesus in Luke 22:30b. With that slot now refilled, the program moves ahead, as Jesus’s eschatological promise in this regard still stands.
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In sum, Acts 1:12–26 covers the obedience of the church as its members wait in Jerusalem for the Spirit. There Peter moves to replace Judas and bring the number of apostles to twelve. The community is unified, praying and seeing what to do through Scripture. Here is a picture of active community life, one of several such snapshots in 1:12–6:7. Peter is leading the congregation, and the choice is left to prayer and the Lord. Everything about the community’s actions suggests that this is a community walking with God. The community understands Judas’s death to be a judgment from God and part of the divine plan. Peter leads by pointing the community to Scripture, and the community shares in the deliberations, appealing to God to select one who has the heart for the ministry. With the Twelve restored, the table is set for the coming of the Spirit. Readers of Acts are to understand the unit not only as an explanation of how Judas was replaced but also as a precedent for how to seek God as a community in decisions, looking to God to show the way.
Bruce, F. F.. The Book of Acts (New International Commentary on the New Testament) (p. 42,511,44). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
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Here, at the inception of the church’s life, they are recorded as faithfully observing the seasons of united prayer with the other members of this considerable company of believers in Jesus.
This was the original company of Jesus’ witnesses, including “those who had gone up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem” (13:31). The article τῇ before προσευχῇ (“prayer”) may indicate the appointed service of prayer. See P. T. O’Brien, “Prayer in Luke-Acts,” TynB 24 (1973), pp. 111–27; A. A. Trites, “The Prayer-Motif in Luke-Acts,” in Perspectives on Luke-Acts, ed. C. H. Talbert, pp. 215–42. G. W. H. Lampe points out that, as Jesus prays before the descent of the Spirit on him (Luke 3:21), so the apostles and their companions pray before the descent of the Spirit on them; this, he says, illustrates Luke’s “repeated doctrine that the grand object of prayer is the gift of the Spirit” (The Seal of the Spirit [London, 1951], p. 44).
16–17
On this occasion Peter takes the lead in filling the vacancy among the apostles caused by the treachery and death of Judas Iscariot. With one exception, where the term “apostles” bears a somewhat different sense (Acts 14:4,14), Luke restricts the use of this term to the Twelve. The total of twelve was significant: it corresponded to the number of the tribes of Israel, and may have marked the apostles out as leaders of the new Israel (Luke 22:30).
Dunn, James D. G.. The Acts of the Apostles (p. 15,17-18). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
Waiting in Jerusalem 1.12–14
Luke’s task in describing the period between ascension and Pentecost is to give the impression of its character as an interval between Jesus and the Spirit, empty of either. He does this first by indicating a period of prayerful waiting.
The twelfth man 1.15–26
In the interval between Jesus and the Spirit the only action taken (or narrated), apart from prayer, is the replacement of Judas as the twelfth apostle. The very manner of its narration, particularly the awkwardness of the insertion of the report of Judas’ death, indicates the character of the period in Luke’s account. On the one hand, as noted earlier (Introduction to Ch. 1), there is the oddity of such an important action being taken precisely in the intervening period, after Christ’s departure and prior to the Spirit’s coming. It is not that Jesus’ departure as such meant that access to Jesus’ presence and power was no longer possible (contrast e.g. Acts 3.16; 18.9–10). So Luke’s failure to refer to such direction from the ascended Christ will not have been accidental. On the contrary, the resort to the ancient method of lots (1.26) underscores their plight; for all the difference of epoch that Jesus had brought about, they were no better off than the ancient Israelites (see on 1.26).
On the other hand, the fact that the one clear action taken in the ten-day interval is to complete the band of twelve apostles is surely intended to imply an attitude wholly in accord with that of the question in 1.6. The implication is that a restored band of twelve is assumed to be necessary if the apostles are to form the core of a reconstituted Israel, representatives of the new twelve tribes (note again Luke 22.29). The negative corollary is that in this pre-Pentecost period the remaining apostles were still no further on than they were in 1.6, still needing the redirection which Jesus himself had indicated in 1.7–8. The positive corollary is that by reconstituting the twelve, Luke reaffirms yet once more the continuity between the church about to emerge and the Israel of old. There is a similar ambivalence in the impression given by Luke 1–2.
In short, the overall impression given by the account is of an uncertainty, awkwardness and powerlessness — just what needed to be remedied by the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.
Richard N. Longenecker, “The Acts of the Apostles,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: John and Acts, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), 259-261,266–267.
D. The Full Complement of Apostles (1:12–26)
Luke’s third factor underlying the rise and expansion of the early Christian mission is the centrality of the apostles and their ministry. His interest in the apostles was evident in chapter 6 of his Gospel, where in reporting Jesus’ choosing his twelve disciples he alone among the evangelists adds “whom he also designated apostles” (Luke 6:13). Now he resumes that interest, telling how under God’s direction the apostolic band regained its full number after the defection of Judas Iscariot.
Structurally, the passage appears to be the intermingling of early source material with Luke’s editorial statements. Here the seams between the two are more obvious than in many other passages in Acts. They are the basic Christian tradition regarding the selection of Matthias (vv. 15–17, 21–26), Luke’s own introduction to the pericope (vv. 12–14), his short comment at the end of v. 15, and a longer and particularly obvious comment in vv. 18–19. Luke’s writing in Acts is usually so artistic as to make it almost impossible to separate his editorial comments from his source material. Here, however, different strands are apparent.
1. In the upper room (1:12–14)
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The reference here to “Mary the mother of Jesus” continues Luke’s interest in Mary begun in chapter 1 of his Gospel, though this is the last occasion where she is recorded as being involved in the redemptive history of the NT. The reference to Jesus’ “brothers” (adelphoi) is particularly interesting because Mark 3:21–35 shows that during his ministry they thought him to be “out of his mind,” perhaps even demon possessed, and because John 7:2–10 presupposes their disbelief. Paul, however, recounts an appearance of the risen Christ to James (cf. 1 Cor 15:7), and we may infer that Joses (or Joseph), Judas (or Jude), and Simon (cf. Matt 13:55–56; Mark 6:3) likewise came to believe in Jesus and attached themselves to the congregation of early Christians. These all are depicted as being assiduous in prayer, with the article (tē) in tē proseuchē (“the prayer”) suggesting an appointed service of prayer (cf. Acts 2:42; 6:4). There must also have been others who were at various times with the Eleven, the women, Mary, and Jesus’ brothers in that upper room, for Acts 1:15 speaks of the total number of believers at the selection of Matthias as being “about a hundred and twenty.”
2. Matthias chosen to replace Judas Iscariot (1:15–26)
This pericope on the selection of Matthias has a number of significant implications. In the first place, it shows the necessity of a hermeneutical methodology that is able to distinguish between normative principles and culturally restricted practices in the progressive revelation of the Bible. We are exhorted as Christians to “search the Scriptures” and to “know what is the will of the Lord”—exhortations that are normative. But the early church’s midrashic exegesis and the practice of casting lots were methods for interpreting the OT and determining God’s will used at that time, and we need not be bound by them today. Second, the pericope suggests that a Christian decision regarding vocation entails (1) evaluating personal qualifications, (2) earnest prayer, and (3) appointment by Christ himself—an appointment that may come in some culturally related fashion, but in a way clear to those who seek guidance.
In addition, it should be noted that it was Judas’s defection and not simply the fact of his death that required his replacement. While the NT lays great stress on the apostolic message and faith and Luke stresses the importance of the apostles themselves, the pericope gives no justification for the theological necessity of an apostolic succession of office, as is sometimes claimed for it. According to Acts 1:21–22, the task of the twelve apostles was unique: to be guarantors of the gospel tradition because of their companionship with Jesus in his earthly ministry and to be witnesses to the reality of his resurrection because they had seen the risen Christ. Such criteria cannot be transmitted from generation to generation. Thus when James the son of Zebedee was executed by Herod Agrippa in A.D. 44 (cf. Acts 12:1–2), the church took no action to replace him. He had faithfully functioned as a guarantor of the gospel tradition and as a witness to the reality of Jesus’ resurrection for some fifteen years; and now, as the church was growing, that ministry was not to be repeated.
Finally, and contrary to an oft-heard claim that the apostles were wrong in selecting Matthias and should have awaited God’s choice of Paul to fill the vacancy, it should be pointed out (1) that Paul had not been with Jesus during his earthly ministry—in fact, he acknowledges his dependence upon others with respect to the gospel tradition (e.g., 1 Cor 15:3–5); (2) that the necessity of having exactly twelve apostles in the early church sprang largely from the need for Jewish Christians ministering within the Jewish nation to maintain this symbolic number, and, while Paul could appreciate this, he did not feel its necessity for his primarily Gentile ministry; and (3) that Paul himself recognized the special nature of his apostleship—viz., it was in line with that of the Twelve, but it also rested on a somewhat different base (cf. his reference to himself as an apostle “abnormally born” in 1 Cor 15:7–8). Paul’s background, ministry, and call were in many ways different from those of the Twelve. Yet he insisted on the equality of his apostleship with that of the other apostles—an equality he never interpreted in terms of either opposition or identity.
Matthew Henry and Thomas Scott, Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, 1997), Ac 1:12–15.
The apostles unite in prayer
Verses 12–14
God can find hiding-places for his people. They made supplication. All God’s people are praying people. It was now a time of trouble and danger with the disciples of Christ; but if any is afflicted, let him pray; that will silence cares and fears. They had now a great work to do, and before they entered upon it, they were earnest in prayer to God for his presence. They were waiting for the descent of the Spirit, and abounded in prayer. Those are in the best frame to receive spiritual blessings, who are in a praying frame. Christ had promised shortly to send the Holy Ghost; that promise was not to do away prayer, but to quicken and encourage it. A little company united in love, exemplary in their conduct, fervent in prayer, and wisely zealous to promote the cause of Christ, are likely to increase rapidly.
Matthias chosen in the place of Judas
Verses 15–26
The great thing the apostles were to attest to the world, was, Christ’s resurrection; for that was the great proof of his being the Messiah, and the foundation of our hope in him. The apostles were ordained, not to wordly dignity and dominion, but to preach Christ, and the power of his resurrection. An appeal was made to God; “Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men,” which we do not; and better than they know their own. It is fit that God should choose his own servants; and so far as he, by the disposals of his providence, or the gifts of his Spirit, shows whom he was chosen, or what he has chosen for us, we ought to fall in with his will. Let us own his hand in the determining everything which befalls us, especially in those by which any trust may be committed to us.