IBS Application for Acts 5:29

“But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men.’”

Here in Acts, we have one of many examples of Biblical obedience being demonstrated through Peter and the other apostles. In this particular story, we see Peter and the others being led before the Sanhedrin to answer once more for the “crime” of teaching the Gospel in the name of Jesus Christ.

Peter and the others had been given an immediate mandate after having just been freed from prison by an angel. The angel told them to go teach the Gospel to the people in the temple. They had already been arrested once to teach them not to defy the commands of the Sanhedrin; now that they were free, they had just been told to do the very thing that had landed them in prison in the first place. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But they were never given any assurance that persecution would never come. In fact, Jesus told them that this would happen. But they remained obedient to the angel’s commands, because they had a freedom in Christ’s sacrifice that they had been commissioned to share with everyone they could. They had received a promise of life beyond death through Christ that enabled them to do this act with obedience divorced from fear.

And because of their faith, God protected them. In verse 26, we see that the temple guards that were dispatched to arrest the apostles were too afraid of being attacked by the people that the apostles had been ministering to, and couldn’t bring them to the Sanhedrin by force. God protected the apostles by using the crowd. What’s more is that the apostles went with them willingly; the fact that the guards couldn’t just arrest them and they still stood before the council proves it. They trusted God to protect them in their obedience, even as they stood before the council, with the distinct possibility of being executed for their faith in the same way their Lord was killed.

And ultimately, although they were all spared execution and a prison sentence, their reward for their faith was a beating before being released. But even as they were recovering from their new wounds, they still walked out rejoicing the fact that they got to suffer for Christ. Still sounds crazy, but that’s what an obedient life looks like.

I want to be able to smile even in the face of persecution, and remain obedient to the Lord like the apostles were. The end of the chapter tells us that they continued to preach the Gospel even after this latest persecution. That’s some pretty radical obedience. I suppose that the lesson that can be pulled from this story is that Biblical obedience and faith go hand in hand.


This week, I will reread this section of Acts 5 every morning to set an example of obedience for myself each day during my morning devotion, and pray that my obedience each day would reflect that of the apostles.

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