Continual Burnt Offering: Daily Meditations, August 28 (3:6-8)
“Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God” ―Acts 3:6-8.
THE “signs of an apostle” (2 Cor. 12:12), that is, the ability to work miracles in the name of the risen Christ, followed close upon the Pentecostal endowment in order to accredit the apostles as the direct, authorized representatives of the glorified Lord. When He was on earth and His mission confined to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. 15:24), He gave them similar powers, but in resurrection these were confirmed and enlarged. Such gifts were not promised to all believers, but to “them that believe” of the apostolic company (Mark 16:17, 18). And so we see Peter, once cravenly denying his Lord, now not only boldly confessing Him, but doing mighty deeds in His name, thus bearing testimony to the might of the One whom Jew and Gentile had united to crucify, but who had been raised from the dead by the power of God, All blessing for mankind is bound up in the risen Christ. He sits now exalted at the Father’s right hand to dispense riches of grace to all who come in His name, owning their need and confessing their sin. The healing of the man lame from his birth was in order to demonstrate the power and authority of the name of the Lord Jesus.
—C. C. Crowston.