Peter & John’s Gospel Education
This comes from N.T. Wright’s Acts for Everyone Part One, but it reads like a paragraph out of a novel. A historically-true, gospel-centered, heart-thumping novel that reflects the kind of “education” a seminary grad can only pray for and aspire to.
Peter and John had a secret–a secret that enabled them to run rings round the book-learning of the authorities. They had been with Jesus. They had been with him night and day. They had seen and heard him pray. They knew how he read the scriptures, in his fresh, creative way, drawing out their inner message and finding his own vocation in the middle of it.
Now that he had died and had then been astonishingly raised, and had then been exalted into the heavenly realm, all Peter and John had to do to explain what they were about was to develop the lines of thought they had heard him use over and over again.
This didn’t just give them “boldness” in the sense of courage to stand up and say what they thought. Sometimes people can be bold even when they’re muddled. It gave them something more: a clarity, a sharp edge, a definite point at which to stand. And the authorities knew it.
