Acts 4:11-12

This is the stone, &c.— St. Peter's mentioning Christ as the head of the corner, naturally led to the thought of a spiritual and eternal salvation, which it was Christ's principal design to bring in; and with relation to which alone this, and its kindred phrase, the chief corner-stone, are always used by our Lord and his apostles: see Luke 20:17. Ephesians 2:21. 1 Peter 2:6. And this spiritual benefit is called salvation about forty times in the New Testament; whereas I do not find, that it once uses the noun σωτηρια, salvation, for miraculous cures; no, nor for any merely temporal deliverance at all, unless in Acts 7:25 where Stephen says, that Moses supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them; or, as it is in the Greek, would give salvation to them: and even that deliverance might becalled by this name, because it was typical of the more glorious one by Jesus Christ. And St. Peter here speaks of a salvation which every one needs, including himself and all Israel: but surely it could not be said of himself and the whole council, and of all the people of Israel, Acts 4:10 that they needed miraculous cures in the name of Christ, by which, in that respect, they must be saved. I therefore can by no means think that this strong and lively passage is to be sunk and restrained, as some contend it should, to the case of working miracles: on the other hand, there seems to me to be a great beauty in the occasion that the apostle took, and in the gradation which he made, from the temporal deliverance which had been wrought in healing the poor cripple by the power of Christ, to that of a much nobler and more important kind, which is brought in by Christ to impotent and sinful souls; he therein following the admirable custom of his great Lord and Master, who often took occasion from earthly to speak of spiritual things; as particularly when, upon his having mentioned the miracle of the loaves, he discoursed at large concerning himself as the Bread of life. John 6:26. The 12th verse may be thus paraphrased: "Nor is the spiritual and eternal salvation, to which his being the Head of the corner principally refers, to be found in any one whatsoever besides himself: for there is no other person of sufficient dignity, merit, and power, whose name can be pleaded or depended upon for salvation; or whom God has graciously appointed or granted to the men of this lower world, by whom, δει, it is fit, or meet and worthy of God, that any of us should be saved; or by whom we ought to expect, or ever can have, deliverance from sin and misery, from the curse of the law, and the wrath to come." Raphelius, in a remarkable note on this text, endeavours, among other things, to prove that Ονομα, or the name of a person, was a manner of speaking used in reference to one, regarded as God and the Author of salvation. See Raphel. ex Herod. p. 329.