EXTRACTS

The announcement that Jesus is the Son of God awaited another vessel. It is as if the Lord would say, Peter you have received this revelation from the Father; it is to be in your mind as a treasure in a treasury; you are to be enriched by it in your soul, and you are by it constituted a stone in the building, but when My time comes, I shall bring forward a vessel peculiarly fitted, to announce Me as the Son of God—and that servant was Paul. He was fitted in like manner, for he says, “God, who set me apart ... and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me, that I may announce him as glad tidings among the nations”. Galatians 1: 15, 16.

Now we have him who is fitted for the service—what was revealed in him he is to announce,

“as glad tidings among the nations”—and this he did. His first preaching was that Jesus is the Son of God. He made no delay. The great testimony must be rendered, and he rendered it.

But then what a power the revelation of the Father would be in Peter’s soul as he stood up in Jerusalem, to know that the Messiah was no less than the Son of God—“the Son of the living God”; yea, that He was no less than God Himself!—“over all, God blessed for ever”. What a power that would be in the soul of Peter, in his service! But then, what also enhanced his service was this knowledge, that he and his fellow-servants, the apostles, had “believed and known” that Jesus was the Holy One of God. How that would enter into those hearts and ears at Jerusalem as he stood up on that day as the feast of Pentecost was running its course! He stood up, the Holy Spirit having come, and he called upon the men of Judaea and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to hearken to his words. “Hearken to my words”, he says; they were words of truth; they were gospel; they were holy words. There, was no lightness in that address, no trivial stories told; they were solemn words, spoken in the power of the Holy Spirit—spoken in holiness, and they brought about conviction in the hearers. Used of God these words laid a foundation of holiness in souls. The gospel should hold the germ of everything that is to be afterwards built up in the believer’s soul.

J. Taylor (Vol.39, pp.307, 308).

This shows us also that His love for John had a character of human affection and attachment, according to God, but not essentially divine, although full of divine grace—a grace which gave it all its value, but which clothed itself with the reality of the human heart. It was this, evidently, which bound Peter and John together. Jesus was their only and common object. Of very different characters—and so much the more united on that account—they thought but of one thing. Absolute consecration to Jesus is the strongest bond between human hearts. It strips them of self, and they have but one soul, in thought, intent, and settled purpose, because they have only one object.

J. N. Darby (Synopsis Vol. 3, p.402)

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