Acts 3:19

Acts 3:19. Repent ye therefore (οῧν). Seeing, then, that your guilt, great though it be, does not shut you out from pardon and reconciliation in the blood of the Messiah, whom in ignorance you crucified, ‘repent ye therefore.'

And be converted that is, turn from your present way of life, receive the crucified Jesus as Messiah. In a similar exhortation (chap. Acts 2:38), Peter adds, ‘and be baptized;' but this naturally would be understood, in the present instance, as several thousand had so recently received the rite of baptism immediately after their conversion to Christ.

That your sins may he blotted out (in the blood of Jesus obliterated, as it were, from the book of record or tablet where they were written). No doubt this idea of ‘blotting out' refers to the baptism in the name of Jesus that mystical washing away of sin.

When the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; Acts 3:20. And he shall send Jesus Christ. This rendering is undoubtedly incorrect; ὅπω; ἄν followed by a subjunctive ἴλθωσι, cannot signify ‘when' in the sense of ὶπεί, postquam (Beza, Castalio, and others, and also the English Version). It can only be translated ‘in order that the times of refreshing,' etc. What, now, are we to understand by this statement of St. Peter? 1st. That these times of refreshing relief, or rest for the wearied and faithful toilers of the world, will come when the Jewish people, as a people, shall acknowledge Jesus as Messiah; and 2d. That these times of refreshing are closely connected with the Second Coming of the Lord. The second clause of the statement (Acts 3:20) is added to define with greater exactness the nature of the ‘times of refreshing,' as a period in which Jesus the Messiah shall come again and comfort with His presence His own faithful servants. We have doubtless, in our very short abstract of this division of St. Peter's sermon, a distinct reference to a season of rest and gladness which the coming of Messiah in His glory would herald; it is apparently identical with the period of Messiah's reign for a thousand years, described in that portion of the Apocalypse beginning (Acts 11:15), when ‘the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.' St. Peter connects these events with the conversion of the Jewish people. Now it may be pointed out by thoughtful men not necessarily unbelievers that more than eighteen centuries have passed by since the inspired apostle spoke these words, and the conversion of the Jewish people as a people seems still as remote an event as it appeared to be some forty years after the date of the present discourse (we may assume that after the fall of the city in A.D. 70, few Jews, comparatively speaking, became Christians). To this the reply naturally suggests itself: Though after eighteen centuries the heart of the ‘chosen' race seems as hard as ever; still, circumstance unprecedented in the history of the world, God has kept them together. Though dispersed to the four quarters of the globe, they are as distinct and separate a people now as they were eighteen centuries back. Is it not surely for some great purpose, still hidden in perhaps a remote future, that they are kept in their strange, apparently unnatural, separation?

From the presence of the Lord. ‘Since the blessings in question are laid up there, He is, and must be, received thence' (Hackett).