Given their presuppositions,
I don’t know how materialists would have explained the healing of the man who
sat day by day at the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3). Everyone familiar with the
Beautiful Gate knew him to be one who had been lame from birth, who was brought
to the location so that he could beg for alms. When it came to pass, therefore,
that he was suddenly able to stand and leap about they couldn’t deny that it
was he or that he was now completely healed. But what brought this about? Why
was he suddenly able to walk? The explanation given by Peter wouldn’t have
satisfied the materialist. It wasn’t scientific. It wasn’t rational.
Well, actually, that’s not
completely true. The healing might not have been scientific, but it was totally
rational, for it was done in the name of Jesus.
Prompted by the healing,
Peter offers the incredulous onlookers a string of titles and adjectives for
Jesus, when put together, provide a perfectly rational explanation as to why
the man was healed “by faith in his name.” Jesus, the one those listening had “delivered
over and denied in the presence of Pilate,” was the “Holy and Righteous One”
who had been glorified (ascended and now seated at the right hand of God, as
attested to by the outpouring of he Holy Spirit) by the “God of Abraham, the
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers,” who was raised
from the dead and shown to be the “Author of life.” He was the “servant” of
God, the “Christ” who “suffered” as “foretold by the mouth of all the
prophets,” who himself was the one of whom “Moses said, ‘The Lord God will
raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.’” He was the object of
“all the prophets [had] spoken” about the age to come in which the covenant
that God made with Abraham that “’in your offspring shall all the families of
the earth be blessed,’” would be realized. Given the reality of who Jesus is,
it makes perfect sense that Peter and John, ministering in the power of Jesus
could heal the man in the name of Jesus.
The hope is that the
materialist (or anyone else for that matter) would reason backwards from the
miracle and come to the conclusion that “there is salvation in no one else, for
there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved”
(Acts 4:12). For some who listened to Peter that was the case. And for those in
any age who hear the testimony for themselves, and are willing to weigh the
evidence, a perfectly rational response will be to repent and believe.
