2:22
“Fellow Israelites”, Peter is not setting himself apart from the other Israelites, but is speaking as one of them. When we preach the gospel we preach as people who were equally in need of salvation, and of people who are in the process of being saved by grace, most definitely not as people saved because we are better. We see here the humanity of Jesus being emphasised. Jesus came in the flesh, fully human (and also fully God). He was accredited by God, and this was demonstrated by the miracles, signs and wonders. Sceptics sometimes say something like “who are you to say Jesus is the only way to salvation”, but it is not me who is saying that, it is God who has accredited Jesus. God did the miracles through Jesus. Now God is the same today and He can still do miracles, if He chooses to do them through us it will be God doing the miracles, not us. The power lies in God, not in us. “As you yourselves know”, the people had witnessed the miracles. It is significant that the gospel started in Israel, where it could be most severely tested, for it was where the events had taken place.
2:23
People sometimes get all het up about predestination and the sovereignty of God. They really shouldn’t, and these two verses illustrate why. The cross was all part of “God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge”. It was all predestined. “And you, with the help of wicked men ...” At the same time men, acting wickedly, chose to put Him to death. God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility go together, they are compatible. We get in trouble and go down wrong routes when, because we cannot work out how they can be compatible, we decide that only one them can be really true, so we jettison the other. This is a foolish mistake to make. In the Bible there is no conflict between the two, so we should not imagine that there conflict. Peter holds the normal Jewish people and the Romans both as being responsible for nailing Jesus to the cross.
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