5 Things That Gave the Apostles Boldness to Proclaim the Gospel

Profound Change
It’s hard not to love the story of Cinderella, the poor and neglected girl dressed in rags who is suddenly transformed into a gorgeous princess at the wave of the fairy godmother’s magic wand. The trouble is that the change that is offered is merely superficial. When midnight comes, the coach is recognizable as a pumpkin, and the coachmen are nicely dressed, sweetly perfumed rats. No lasting, foundational change has been brought about.
It is not so with the changes that Jesus brings to a life. Jesus changes people from the inside out, and as a result, the changes that he brings are real, substantial, and lasting. In Acts 3 we see the dramatic change that the power of Jesus brought into the life of the crippled man. From birth, he had been unable to walk, and because he was physically less than perfect, he was excluded from the temple where the presence of God dwelt. Now the man could not only walk but run and jump and leap to the praise of God (Acts 3:8). Perhaps even more astounding than the change in the crippled man is the change that has been brought about in the disciples.
In the space of a few weeks, they went from being a group of terrified individuals huddled away in an upper room for fear of the authorities (John 20:19) to men who walked the streets of Jerusalem and stood in front of the Jewish authorities proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ boldly to anyone and everyone who would listen. Boldness is a key theme in Acts 4 (Acts 4:13, 29, 31). Peter in particular had been changed from a coward who denied that he even knew Jesus when he was confronted in the high priest’s house on the night before Jesus’s crucifixion (Luke 22:54–60) to a courageous witness to the exclusive and unique power of Jesus as the messianic Son of God, the only source of life, health, and peace in this world. This was a miracle every bit as remarkable and as undeniable as the healing of the crippled man.
Turning the World Upside Down
Iain M. Duguid
In this practical, winsome guide, Iain Duguid explores the continuing work of Jesus after the ascension in Acts 1–8, encouraging believers today toward gospel-driven, Spirit-filled mission.
What gave the apostles their boldness in speaking such an unpopular message? Acts 4 addresses the aftermath of the healing of the crippled man. It shows us Peter and John being arrested by the Jewish authorities and put on trial for their actions—at the same time that many other people were coming to believe in Christ as they saw the lame man healed and heard Peter’s preaching. This chapter of Acts identifies several sources for the apostles’ powerful boldness, sources that challenge our general reluctance and unwillingness to speak out for Christ—especially if we think that people might be offended or angry with us for what we say. This chapter also encourages each of us to find a fresh boldness in speaking for Jesus.
1. Personal Acquaintance with Jesus
In the first instance, the apostles’ boldness comes from their personal experience of Jesus Christ. They may be “uneducated, common men,” but they have been with Jesus (Acts 4:13). Even the apostles’ enemies recognize that time with Jesus was the source of their confidence.
Their confidence came not from years of reading learned theological treatises in seminary but from time spent with Jesus. This is a tremendously important truth to understand. Some may have spent a fair amount of time reading theological books, while others haven’t, and there is application here for those in both categories.
For those of us who have spent time in theological training, there is a real danger that when we speak to others about Jesus, we make things too complicated. My wife is a much better evangelist than I am because she has an ability to cut right through the peripheral questions and get down to the heart of the matter: Who is Jesus? Some of us need to be reminded that people are not converted ultimately by intellectual arguments but rather as the Holy Spirit gives them new birth and opens up their eyes to who Jesus is.
On the other hand, there is also an application here for those who haven’t had any theological training. Perhaps you are tempted to let your lack of knowledge prevent you from speaking up for Jesus. Don’t let that absence of training worry you; go ahead and tell people what you do know about Jesus. The fact that God has made you his and holds you safely in his hand, and that he has given you a hope and a glorious inheritance in Christ—all this is dramatic enough!
But don’t wear your theological ignorance like a badge of pride. Remember that even though the disciples hadn’t been formally schooled, they had been with Jesus. They had devoted themselves for three long years to being with him, listening to his teaching, watching him at work, studying him, and learning at his feet. Even though we can’t physically go and travel around with Jesus, we can still sit at his feet as we read the Scriptures and study them and as we help one another apply these truths into our hearts and lives. This is how we can be with Jesus, even today. And one mark of that “being with Jesus” ought to be our boldness to declare that same truth to others around us.

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2. Recognizing God’s Sovereignty over Creation
The next source of the apostles’ boldness comes from their recognition of the sovereignty of God. The apostles remind themselves who was running the world in which they live, and they draw confidence from that knowledge. The idea of God’s sovereignty is a doctrine that people sometimes get tied up in knots over, but it is actually practical in its application. God is sovereign over all creation because he made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them (Acts 4:24).
If God is sovereign over all creation, he is also the one who must set the agenda for our lives. He is our ultimate King, and we must submit to him. Peter and John recognize this truth in their response to the Jewish leaders: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19–20). In other words, they recognize a higher authority than the political and religious leaders of their day. And the same must be true of us. We believe what we believe about God and we do what we do as Christians because God has spoken in his word, and we must obey him—and not because the politicians or the culture or even the church tell us what to do.
3. Peter and John’s Message
It is all very well to be bold, empowered by the Holy Spirit, but if we’re going to speak boldly for God we’d better be sure that we have the message straight. Boldly spoken nonsense won’t help anyone. Peter and John’s message is really very simple, even though it was offensive to the prevailing religious leadership, both then and now. Jesus died on the cross, was raised from the dead, is now exercising a powerful ministry here on earth, and is the exclusive means of salvation (Acts 4:10–12). Here we see once again a theme that is absolutely unique about Christianity. The message of every other religion stresses the life and teaching of its founder. But Christianity revolves around the death and resurrection of its founder.
Christianity is an exclusive religion; Peter says that “there is no other name given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). There are other religions that have moral teachings that are in some ways very similar to those of Jesus, so if salvation were about getting your morality straight, there would potentially be many ways to approach God. But no other religion under heaven proclaims the death and resurrection of Jesus as our only hope—that it is not Jesus’s teaching that saves us but his sacrificial death and his triumphal resurrection. In his righteousness he kept the law spotlessly in our place, his sacrificial death with all our sins laid on him paid the debt that we owed to the sovereign God of the universe, and his resurrection demonstrated the fact that God accepted his sacrifice in our place as full payment for our sins.
God is not stymied by our slowness to speak for him.
4. Recognizing God’s Sovereignty over the Nations
But there is one more aspect to the apostles’ boldness: they understood that God is not only sovereign over creation and over our circumstances but sovereign over all the forces that oppose him. That’s the point of Peter’s quotation of Psalm 2 in Acts 4:25–26. The ancient psalm predicted that the powers that be would range themselves against the Lord and his Christ (or “anointed one”). The apostles recognized the fulfillment of that prophecy in the conspiracy of Herod and Pontius Pilate—the kings and rulers—with the Gentiles, the nations of Psalm 2. What is even more shocking, though, is that now “the peoples of Israel” (Acts 4:27) have joined together with the rebellious nations of Psalm 2. God’s own people have turned against him.
But the point of Peter’s quotation is not simply to remind us that God has shown us ahead of time the way life will be for his followers and that in this world we should therefore anticipate much tribulation. No, the psalm also goes on to declare God’s amusement at all this petty posturing (Ps. 2:4). When he is ready, he will sweep it aside and install his chosen King on Mount Zion (Ps. 2:6). Quoting Psalm 118:22, Peter declares, “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone” (Acts 4:11). God is utterly sovereign even over those who oppose him.
The scriptural picture of God’s sovereignty can also encourage us when we are fearful of the future, afraid of what may happen to us. Even if the very worst that we can imagine comes to pass, Peter reminds us that the sovereign God who loves us and gave himself for us rules over those circumstances. That can give us boldness to speak for him, even when we are uncertain of the reception that our words will receive.
5. Filled with the Holy Spirit
There is another crucial element to the apostles’ boldness: after they pray, the place where they are meeting is shaken, and they are all filled with the Holy Spirit and speak the word of God boldly (Acts 4:31). It is not just Peter and John who are filled with the Holy Spirit and speak boldly: they are all filled with the Holy Spirit. There is a key link in the book of Acts between being filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking out boldly about Jesus Christ. We saw it already in 2:4: “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.”
Obviously, boldness isn’t the only result of Christians being filled with the Spirit. An abundance of the fruits of the Spirit will also follow: love, joy, peace, and so on. But boldness is a key result. When men and women are full of the Holy Spirit, they speak the word of God boldly. That means that if we want to see the word of God going out from us in power, we need to be praying that God will fill us with his Holy Spirit so that we may speak with boldness and authority the message about Jesus Christ that has been committed to us.
Of course, the reality for most of us is that we are not nearly as bold as we should be in speaking about Jesus. Many of us turn into pumpkins every time an opportunity to share the gospel arises, instead of speaking with great boldness and clarity as the Holy Spirit gives us the words to say. This is why God’s utter sovereignty in salvation should be a great comfort to all of us. God is not stymied by our slowness to speak for him. The good shepherd will bring in all his sheep, and not one of them will be lost because of something we failed to say or said imperfectly.
Yet at the same time, Jesus calls, commissions, and empowers us to speak that good news for him with great boldness. You may end up seeing people converted by your words; you may end up in jail. There are no guarantees with God, except for these: that God has installed his crucified and exalted anointed one, Jesus Christ, as King over all nations, and that on the last day, all those who are his will enter into glory—not one of his people will be missing.
This article is adapted from Turning the World Upside Down: Lessons for the Church from Acts 1–8 by Iain M. Duguid.
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