What Must Be Done

“And God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.”  Acts 2:24  NASB

End – In the end, the ultimate question of life is death.  In fact, every human philosophy and religion must deal with the ubiquity of death.  Without an answer to this question, there is no purpose for living.  Materialists embrace the absurdity of life because they offer no deeper reason for death.  Hindus promise another chance at the wheel.  Buddhists call for renunciation as a way of spiritual union, overcoming death with death.  Christians, Muslims and Jews look for the olam ha’ba, but in very different ways.  Death is the issue, always!

It was no different in the first century.  Guilt?  Yes, there are ways to deal with guilt.  The Levitical sacrifices.  Yom Kippur.  Acts of atonement.  God provided for guilt.  But what do we do about death?  Where do we look for an answer to that question?  What hope do we have that death isn’t the final end?

The people that Peter addressed on the Temple mount were no strangers to the sacrifices.  They were there because they embraced the Torah, its prescribed rituals and its festivals. Peter doesn’t address their need for atonement.  He doesn’t have to.  They knew God provided for the guilt of sin.  Peter does something equally important.  He speaks about their concern regarding death.  Yeshua’s resurrection proves that God has dealt decisively with the issue of death.  Yeshua’s resurrection proves that death isn’t the end.  Yeshua’s resurrection proves that we too may participate in a life not held captive by death’s grip.

David died.  So did the prophets and the sages.  But this one, Yeshua HaMashiach, came back.  He received the promise of the Spirit from the Father and has been made Lord and Messiah.  And His victory over death proves it all.  Peter’s telling claim is not about forgiveness.  It is not about getting to heaven, washing away your guilt or putting on the new man.  Peter’s telling claim is about life after death.  His audience realizes the enormity of this claim and the part that they played in it (and most of them, of course, had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual crucifixion).  The part they played was their ignorance of the enormity of this event.

What must be done?  “Repent!”  For what?  These people were mostly bystanders or unaware of the passion play on Golgotha.  What sins do they need forgiven?  Since they were on the Temple mount, they had to have very recently gone through a ritual purity immersion and offered themselves clean before the Temple.  They clearly did not need to be forgiven for “hidden” sins.  The sin has to be directly connected with Peter’s claim about Yeshua HaMashiach.  The problem, of course, is that we have a Greek rendition of a Hebrew speech.  In Hebrew, Peter probably used the word hatta’th.   “In general, nouns derived from the root ht’ can refer to objective transgressions of a communal relationship, whether committed consciously and deliberately or unconsciously.”[1]  Koch’s insight fits perfectly Peter’s declaration.  These men did not need personal salvation through repentance.  They needed corporate forgiveness because the whole community was tied to the past events of the death of the Messiah even if they were not directly involved.

This is difficult for Christian evangelicals with a “personal salvation” theology to comprehend.  We think that “sin” always means “my sin.”  But Hebraic consciousness is communal.  Sin demands corporate repentance.  To allow a violation of the character and purposes of God, even if I am not directly complicit in that violation, subjects the entire community to the need for repentance.  I repent on behalf of the community because the sin of the other is my sin.  When Peter asks these men who have just gone through ritual purification to repent, he is not suggesting that they individually are sinners before God.  He is saying that the actions of the entire community of God’s faithful has been harmed by this travesty of justice and for that the entire community is guilty and in need of repentance.  The fact that these men immediately respond only demonstrates that they understood the corporate nature of this sin.

In like manner, the action of the Messiah removes the threat of death for the community.  Men now know, by experiential evidence, that God’s promise of life after death is true.  Death no longer holds men captive (as the author of Hebrews will later proclaim).  Peter points to the one thing that still threatens these righteous men.  What about death?  And Peter’s answer is, “It’s finished!  God won!” God put an end to the agony of death.  The Greek term is odinas (plural of odin).  It is literally “birth pangs.”  The Hebraic background emphasizes the anxiety and distress of giving birth, not the actual pain itself.  This seems quite appropriate since, just like death, no one knows when the birth pains will begin and therefore one can be anxious about them far in advance.  This is the same word Paul employs in his famous statement about the creation waiting to be delivered.  Perhaps Peter chose this word (in Hebrew) because he notes that death defiles God’s creation and it must be removed before God’s order can be re-established.  Human anxiety about death has now been abolished.  The process of ritual cleansing of the entire creation has begun.  This also explains the translator’s use of the Greek verb lyo (translated here as “putting an end”).  The literal meaning is “untied” or “released from bondage.”  Notice that the verb is an aorist participle.  It is a completed action in the past.  If we think of death as the bonds that hold us captive to “this perverse generation,” then Peter’s declaration is even more poignant.  Death’s chains are broken.  We are freed!

Finally, notice that there is no indication here that forgiveness was accomplished or made available through the crucifixion.  The focus is death and its stranglehold – and the victory over it.

Topical Index:  agony, odin, putting an end, lyo, sin, hatta’th, death, Acts 2:24