to this point in Acts 3 Luke has portrayed numerous signs of the devotion of God’s chosen people.36 Peter and John, like many other Jews, were entering the temple to worship God. The lame man was apparently cared for by fellow Jews who faithfully carried him to the gate every day to ask for alms. The temple was a place where people were especially inclined to give to the needy, fulfilling God’s commands (Deut 15:11; Tob 4:7).
But the stunning cure of the man lame from birth is something new, above and beyond these acts of piety. It is a divine act inexplicable in human terms. It is heaven invading earth — the messianic kingdom made present and visible. Jesus had said to the crowds during his public ministry, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power” (Mark 9:1). Before the eyes of the crowd at the Beautiful Gate, his words are being fulfilled.
Proclaiming Jesus the Healer
Peter now has to explain to the quickly burgeoning crowd what just happened and what it means. He takes the opportunity to proclaim the kerygma, the good news of salvation in Christ, and invite people to repentance and faith. He says, in effect, “You’ve just seen a miracle. Now let me explain who did it and what that has to do with you.” Peter’s response sets an example for the rest of Church history. The right follow-up to a miracle done in the name of Jesus is always to seize the opportunity to proclaim Jesus.
Peter’s explanation of how the miracle occurred is worded somewhat awkwardly: “His name, by faith in his name, has made this man strong whom you see and know; and the faith which is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all” (3:16). Peter seems to be repeating himself. But he is concerned to underscore two essential ingredients of this healing.
Jesus’ name, which in biblical thought means his presence and authority, healed the man. Jesus alone has power to heal.
But it was faith in his name that released Jesus’ healing power upon this man in this place and time. Although the Lord can heal a person without human intervention any time he wants to, he most often chooses to involve his disciples in his miraculous works. The means by which he involves them is faith.
The stupendous healing at the Beautiful Gate, followed by Peter’s speech explaining what had happened, has an immediate result: “Many of those who heard the word believed; and the number of the men came to about five thousand” (Acts 4:4). The glorious power of Jesus’ name has been publicly manifested, and the Church has grown exponentially.
This healing is only the first of many recounted in Acts. The miracle causes Peter’s own faith to grow to such an intensity that he becomes a kind of lightning rod for the Lord’s miraculous power. “They even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and pallets, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them. The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed” (5:15–16).
Peter’s ministry is beginning to look more and more like that of Jesus. At Lydda, Peter finds a man who has been paralyzed and bedridden for eight years. He simply speaks a word of command: “‘Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.’ And immediately he rose.” The result is mass conversions to Christ among the residents of Lydda and Sharon (9:34–35).
At Joppa, Peter prays at the bedside of a dead woman and raises her to life in the same way, with a simple command. His words are curiously similar to those of Jesus in the Gospel: “Tabitha, rise” (Acts 9:40; see Mark 5:41). This miracle too has an immediate impact on evangelization: “it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord” (9:42).
Multiplying Miracles
The gift of healing, given first to Peter and the Twelve, soon began to be diffused among other members of the Church. Stephen, one of the seven deacons appointed by the apostles to administer the care of the needy,37 “did great wonders and signs among the people” (6:8) before he was martyred. Another deacon, Philip, evangelized in Samaria — a region previously hostile to the gospel (Luke 9:52–53) — and won multitudes to Christ by the healings he worked. “For unclean spirits came out of many who were possessed, crying with a loud voice; and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed” (8:7).
Soon afterward, the Church’s fiercest persecutor, Paul, was transformed by his encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus. Following this encounter Paul was blind for three days, a penitential sign of the spiritual blindness in which he had been living (9:1–3). He was healed by the laying of hands of a believer named Ananias. Not accidentally, Paul’s first miracle was to cause temporary blindness to fall on a man who was vehemently opposing the gospel as he once had. This led to the conversion of the proconsul who witnessed it (13:6–12). As Paul and Barnabas preached in Iconium, the Lord “bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands” (14:3). In the course of his missionary journeys Paul cured a lame man (14:8–10), cast out a clairvoyant spirit from a slave girl who was being exploited (16:16–18), restored a young man to life (20:7–12), and healed a man of fever and dysentery (28:8–9). Paul’s most fruitful ministry was in Ephesus, where “God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them” (19:11–12).
Jesus had promised his disciples at the Last Supper, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father” (John 14:12). In the miracles worked by Peter and Paul there is already an initial fulfillment of this promise. The Gospels nowhere record Jesus healing people simply by his shadow falling on them or by having his handkerchiefs brought to the sick, nor bringing about mass conversions.38 Yet Peter and Paul do. As Luke emphasizes, it is not the apostles themselves but the risen Lord Jesus who is acting through them, continuing in them all that he “began to do and teach” during his earthly life (Acts 1:1; cf. 14:3).
There is an important detail that often goes unnoticed in the reports of the disciples’ healings in Acts: Luke never says they prayed for healing, with the exception of Peter praying for Tabitha to be raised from the dead and Paul praying for the sick father of Publius (9:40; 28:8). In every other instance, they healed by announcement or by command, sometimes with the laying on of hands (9:17; 28:8):
“In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk” (3:6).
“Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed” (9:34).
“Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus … has sent me that you may regain your sight” (9:17).
“Stand upright on your feet!” (14:10).
“I charge you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her” (16:18).
“Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him” (20:10).
In all these cases, they healed not by asking the Lord to heal, but by boldly exercising the authority the Lord had already delegated to them.
This pattern invites us to consider whether Christians today fully understand the authority we have in Christ, a share in his own divine authority over sickness and all the forces of evil that oppress human beings. Jesus did not say “Pray for the sick” (although James 5:16 does instruct us to do so); he said, “Heal the sick.” This command was initially given to the Twelve, to whom Christ entrusted his authority over the Church in a unique and preeminent way. But there are no grounds for confining the command to heal to the Twelve (and their successors,
