Acts 5:14

These verses follow straight on from Acts 5:1–11, where Ananias and Sapphira lied about their gift and died, and “great fear came upon all the church”. That judgment purified the church and confirmed the apostles’ authority, and the next thing we read is God’s power at work among the people again. The passage sums up a whole season of the church’s life in Jerusalem, and it leads into the apostles’ arrest and trial (Acts 5:17–42).

“By the hands of the apostles” names the men God worked through. The hands stand for the apostles themselves as the instruments of his power, and the power was God’s own. The same was said just after Pentecost, when many wonders and signs were done by the apostles (Acts 2:43), and the healing of the lame man at the Beautiful Gate in Acts 3 was one of them. “Among the people” means these works were done in public, where the whole city could see them.

Each word of the pair adds something. A sign, sēmeîon, is a mark, token or indication. Paul uses the word for his own handwritten greeting (2 Thessalonians 3:17), so it can mean anything that identifies or points to something beyond itself, and here it is a miraculous work that points to the truth of the apostles’ message. A wonder, téras, is a prodigy or an omen, something so extraordinary that people are astonished at it. The sign carries a meaning, and the wonder holds people’s attention. The pair is an old one in Scripture. Moses reminded Israel of the signs and wonders the LORD showed upon Egypt (Deuteronomy 6:22), and in Acts the pair, semeia kai terata, describes the miracles God did through the apostles.

“And they were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch” speaks of the whole company of believers gathered with the apostles. The adverb homothymadón means with one mind, with one accord, by common consent. Luke uses it often for the church in Acts, especially when the believers pray together, and here it shows a people who were agreed and acted together. The first believers after Pentecost lived the same way, sharing what they had and meeting day by day in the temple (Acts 2:44–47), and Paul asks the Philippians to be of the same mind (Philippians 2:2). Jesus prayed that all who would believe through the apostles’ word would be one (John 17:20–23), and he promised them the Holy Spirit (John 14:26). In Solomon’s porch that prayer and that promise are being answered together, and the believers’ agreement was itself a witness to the city.

Solomon’s porch was a large covered colonnade on the eastern side of the temple courts, a well-known public place where people met to talk and to teach. Meeting there was a bold thing to do. The believers gathered openly in the heart of Jerusalem’s religious life, in full view of the authorities who opposed them, and every miracle done there was seen by many. It also kept them among their own people, the Jews of Jerusalem, while they proclaimed Jesus to them.

Fear of God’s holiness kept outsiders from attaching themselves to the believers lightly, while the apostles’ miracles won them the honour of the whole city. “The rest” are those outside the company of believers. The verb tolmáō means to venture or to be bold, and among the outsiders nobody had the boldness. To join, kolláō, comes from the word for glue. It means to stick to or cleave to someone, a close and committed bond. The death of Ananias and Sapphira had shown everyone that God takes hypocrisy in his church seriously, so people were afraid to attach themselves to the believers casually, for what they might gain, or with a divided heart. The next verse shows that this fear held back the insincere, for multitudes who believed were added to the Lord.

This was holy fear, a reverence for God’s power and righteous judgment, and “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). The same concern for a pure church lies behind Paul’s command to “purge out the old leaven” (1 Corinthians 5:6–7), and Jesus said that among all who call him Lord, it is the one who does his Father’s will who enters the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21–23). Christ himself was keeping his bride pure, so that he might present to himself “a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle” (Ephesians 5:27).

“But the people magnified them.” The verb megalýnō comes from the word for great and means to make great, to extol or to praise. The people of Jerusalem held the apostles in high regard, because they could see that God was at work through them. Many who praised the apostles had yet to believe in their Lord, yet their respect prepared the way for the growth of the next verse. Jesus said that people would see his disciples’ good works “and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16), and the apostles were honoured because Christ’s power was at work in them.

“And believers were the more added to the Lord.” The verse opens with dé, a simple connective (“and”) that carries the story on. “Believers” translates a form of pisteúō, which means to believe, to credit what someone says, and to trust oneself to a person. These people believed the message about Jesus and put their trust in him, and their faith set them apart from the crowd who only admired the apostles. “The more” is mâllon, more, to a greater degree. After the judgment and the fear, the church grew all the more.

Added, prostíthēmi, means to place beside or to add to. The verb is passive, and this verse leaves the one who adds unnamed. Luke has already named him: the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:47). Paul says the same of his own work, that he planted and Apollos watered, but God gave the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6–7). The growth of the church is God’s work, and his servants sow and water.

They were added “to the Lord”, kýrios, a word for one who is supreme in authority, a master, used here for the risen Jesus. Many in Jerusalem thought of him as a crucified criminal, so to come to him as Lord was a bold confession. To be added to him is to come under his rule and into his care, and so into his people. He is head over all things to the church, which is his body (Ephesians 1:22–23). He had promised, “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18), and he spoke of other sheep he must bring, so that “there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (John 10:16). His Spirit convicts the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment (John 16:8), renews hearts (Titus 3:5) and joins believers into one body (1 Corinthians 12:13). The growth in this verse is the work he gave his church before he ascended, to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19–20).

“Multitudes both of men and women.” The word for multitude, plēthos, means a great number or a crowd. A little earlier the number of men who believed had come to about five thousand (Acts 4:4), and now Luke speaks of multitudes. He names both men, anḗr, and women, gynḗ, a word that means woman or wife. Women had a lesser place in the public life of that day, and here they come to Christ in their own right, alongside the men and with the same standing before him.

This growth came while the rulers opposed the church. They had already arrested Peter and John (Acts 4:1–3), and they would soon arrest the apostles again.

“Insomuch that” ties verse 15 back to the signs and wonders of verse 12. In the KJV the words in between, from “and they were all with one accord” to “men and women”, stand in brackets, so the miracles lead straight into this scene. People carried their sick out of their houses into the streets. The verb ekphérō means to bear or carry out, and those carried were too weak to come by themselves. They laid them “on beds and couches”, which shows how ill many of them were, and there they lay waiting for Peter to pass.

“At the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them.” “At the least” shows how great their hope was, since they trusted that even the slightest contact with Peter would be enough. The word for shadow, skiá, means shade or a shadow. To overshadow, episkiázō, means to cast a shade upon. Luke uses the same verb when the angel tells Mary that the power of the Highest will overshadow her (Luke 1:35). Here it describes Peter’s shadow falling across the sick as he walks by, and it shows how closely the people tied Peter to the power of God.

“There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem.” The word for multitude is plēthos again, the same word as in verse 14. The news had spread beyond the city, and people came in from the surrounding towns with their sick. It is a first glimpse of the witness Jesus said would go out from Jerusalem to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8).

They brought two kinds of sufferers, “sick folks, and them which were vexed with unclean spirits”. The verb for vexed, ochléō, comes from ochlos, a crowd or mob, and means to mob or harass, and in the passive, as here, to be troubled or harassed. Unclean spirits are evil spirits, so the apostles’ authority reached past bodily illness to the powers of evil. In this they carried on the work of Jesus. People marvelled that he commanded even the unclean spirits and they obeyed him (Mark 1:27), and he gave the twelve power over unclean spirits and over sickness (Matthew 10:1). He went about Galilee teaching, preaching and healing every kind of sickness (Matthew 4:23–24), and Peter later summed up his ministry by saying that he “went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil” (Acts 10:38).

“And they were healed every one.” To heal, therapeúō, means to serve or attend on someone, and especially to relieve them of disease. The words “every one” carry the weight of the sentence, because every person brought was made well. Luke tells the same of Jesus, when the sick were brought to him at sunset and “he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them” (Luke 4:40). Jesus had told his disciples, “greater works than these shall he do” (John 14:12), and here the risen Lord is keeping his word.

Everything in these five verses flows from the risen Christ working by his Spirit. The apostles’ hands, Peter’s shadow and the meeting place in Solomon’s porch all serve him. He adds the believers, and he heals the sick and frees the oppressed as he did in Galilee, for “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). He is the Sun of righteousness of whom Malachi speaks, with healing in his wings (Malachi 4:2), and he is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), so the healing he gives reaches past the body to the soul.

The passage shows us a God who confirms his word, who guards the holiness of his church and who gathers his people himself. The same season brought judgment on hypocrisy and healing for every sick person brought to the apostles, and both came from one Lord who is holy and full of compassion. A church that is of one mind, open before the world and honest before God is the church through which he drew multitudes of men and women to himself, and the increase is always his to give.