Today's Verse
Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.
Acts 13:38-39
Historical Context
Paul is in Pisidian Antioch, a Roman colony in the highlands of what is now central Turkey. It is his first recorded sermon in Acts, preached on the Sabbath in a synagogue full of Jews and God-fearing Gentiles who had attached themselves to the synagogue without becoming full converts. The rulers of the synagogue have just invited any visitor with a word of encouragement to speak, and Paul stands up.
What he says would have landed in a very specific way on that audience. These were people who knew the Psalms by heart, who kept the food laws, who circumcised their sons, who came every Sabbath to hear Moses read. They knew the promises made to Abraham and David. They also knew, painfully, how much the law demanded and how little peace it gave. A devout synagogue-goer in the first century did not think of the law as a burden to be discarded, but he did know the weight of the sacrificial system, the endless approach to a holy God through the blood of animals.
Into that world Paul brings a stunning claim: the promises God made to the fathers, the ones they had been reciting and rehearsing for a thousand years, have now been fulfilled. He anchors it in three psalms (2, 16, and the promise of 2 Samuel 7 echoed in Isaiah 55), showing that David himself pointed beyond his own tomb to a Son who would not see corruption. The sermon ends with a warning from Habakkuk, spoken originally to Judah on the eve of Babylonian judgment: do not be the scoffers who miss what God is doing in your own day.
Reflection
Two words in this passage will not let us go: forgiveness and freed.
Paul tells the synagogue that through the risen Jesus, forgiveness of sins is proclaimed. Not offered on condition of better behavior. Not held out as a possibility if we clean ourselves up first. Proclaimed. Announced as accomplished fact, the way a herald announces that the war is over.
And then the second word, which is even more startling to a synagogue audience: freed. Freed from everything from which the law of Moses could not free you. Paul is not insulting the law. He is telling the truth about it. The law could show you your sin, but it could not lift it off your back. It could point to the holiness of God, but it could not make you fit to stand there. It could kill the lamb, but the lamb had to be killed again next week.
We do not live under Moses, but we build our own versions of what he could not do. We try to be freed by self-improvement, by discipline, by the approval of people we admire, by the therapy of good intentions. None of it works. You cannot lift yourself off your own back.
Only one Man did not see corruption. Only one grave in human history stayed empty on the third day. And it is through that Man, and no other, that forgiveness is proclaimed to you today. Not as a self-help program. As a verdict. Believe in Him, and you are freed from what you could never free yourself from.
Do not be the scoffer in Habakkuk's warning who watches God work and refuses to believe it.
For Reflection
What are you still trying to be freed from by your own effort that only the risen Christ can lift off you?
Prayer
Father, we thank You that You kept the promises You made to the fathers, and that You kept them by raising Your Son from the dead. We confess that we cannot free ourselves from our sin, our shame, or our striving. Forgive us for trying. Give us faith to hear the announcement Paul made in that synagogue as spoken to us: that in Jesus, forgiveness is proclaimed and freedom is given. Keep us from the scoffing that misses Your work. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Paid subscribers get the study section below: the word behind the English, the setting, and where this thread runs through the rest of Scripture.