In the years after Peter opened the church to Gentiles, the persecution of the church in Jerusalem grew intense. This persecution was no longer fueled only by the religious authorities of the city, but by the civil government of Herod. This tyrant was Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great who cruelly murdered Jewish children around the time of Jesus’ birth. Herod Agrippa ruled over Judea from AD 41–44. He wanted to annihilate the Christian movement by striking at its highest leadership.
Herod first arrested James, the brother of John. These two brothers had formed, along with Peter, the inner circle of Jesus’ closest disciples. James was the first apostle to die, and John would be the last. James was killed “with the sword”—that is, beheaded like John the Baptist. Jews viewed this manner of death as utterly appalling. Perhaps Herod hoped that by killing James he would frighten the other leaders into silence.
When the religious leaders of Jerusalem praised Herod for moving against the church and putting James to death, he singled out Peter as his next target. The community of believers was stunned by James’s execution, so when Peter was taken, there was great distress. Peter’s arrest and imprisonment occurred during the seven-day feast of Passover, when Jerusalem was crowded with pilgrims (Acts 12:3). Herod planned to bring Peter before the people after Passover to face judgment. He wanted to make a public spectacle of Peter’s trial and execution.
Herod put Peter under heavy guard. He assigned no fewer than sixteen soldiers—four quaternions with four men each. Each squad took guard duty for three hours while the others slept. One soldier was chained to each of Peter’s arms, and two others guarded the door. Meanwhile, the church prayed fervently that God would spare Peter’s life. To lose the chief apostle would have been devastating. The church needed his guidance and strength.
Peter surely expected to be executed. He had been imprisoned for several days in the Antonia Fortress on the north side of the temple mount. He knew that the last night before his scheduled judgment and execution had arrived.
Yet he was sleeping peacefully, obviously trusting that God would be glorified through his death. At the last moment, God acted through the ministry of an angel to rescue him. With a shining light, God rescued Peter from the darkness and liberated him from imminent death. Luke tells the story in Acts.
The very night before Herod was going to bring him out, Peter, bound with two chains, was sleeping between two soldiers, while guards in front of the door were keeping watch over the prison. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his wrists. The angel said to him, “Fasten your belt and put on your sandals.” He did so. Then he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.” Peter went out and followed him; he did not realize that what was happening with the angel’s help was real; he thought he was seeing a vision. After they had passed the first and the second guard, they came before the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went outside and walked along a lane, when suddenly the angel left him. (Acts 12:6–10)
Peter is taken by surprise. The chains fall off his wrists, and he is set free. He is not sure what is happening. But when he sees the iron gate open of its own accord and finds himself back on the city streets, he knows that God is at work. He realizes that God has indeed delivered him from captivity.
When Peter emerges from the prison alive, he goes off to tell the disciples the good news. He arrives at the house where the disciples are meeting and knocks on the door. With comic detail, the writer describes how the servant girl, Rhoda, is so excited at realizing it is Peter that she forgets to open the door for him. Instead, she rushes off to tell the community of believers gathered inside. While they argue for a while over Rhoda’s sanity, Peter continues to knock at the door. He has a harder time getting into the house of the believing community than he had getting out of prison. An angel led him out of Herod’s cell, but he cannot get through the locked gate of the disciples. When finally he is allowed in the house, Peter tells the astonished crowd what happened.
There are clear parallels between Peter’s ordeal and Jesus’ passion and resurrection. Both occur at Passover. Peter’s emergence from prison resembles Jesus’ emergence from the tomb; and in both cases the disciples fail to believe the good news brought by women. Peter’s escape from prison demonstrates that the resurrection of Jesus continues to empower his apostles. The pattern of God’s action in Jesus remains the pattern for God’s action in his followers. In the midst of hardship, God continues to offer new life.
The writer makes us smile as we try to imagine the guards’ confusion the next morning. Each blaming the other, they are flabbergasted by the empty chains beside them. Quite a commotion is raised as Herod searches for Peter and cannot find his prized prisoner. The writer contrasts the scene of the church gathered in the house with that of the baffled guards in the prison. The one is a scene of bewildered joy and gratitude, the other a scene of revenge and punishment. While the Christians praise God for Peter’s deliverance, Herod orders that all the prison guards be put to death.
The prisons of the ancient world were not built to code, as are many jails today. The dungeon holding Peter was dark and dank. The watch level was maximum security. A double chain fastened the prisoner to two soldiers, one on each side of him. The iron gate was securely fastened with Roman guards at each station. Herod had made arrangements for an imposing spectacle that would earn the people’s applause. With the morning light, he would bring his victim out of his cell for a showy judgment and a sentence of death.
Peter was sleeping between his guards, seeking some minimal comfort while his arms were bound in the metal chains. And a little way off, the church was keeping solemn watch and pouring forth intense prayers through the night. There was no foolish escape plan, no plot unfolding for a dramatic rescue. Peter and the church he shepherded waited trustfully for God’s next move.
Many Christian artists throughout history have expressed this moment in various media. My favorite is the fresco painting called the Liberation of Saint Peter by the Renaissance artist Raphael. The artist created the scene in the apostolic palace of the Vatican. In the early sixteenth century, Raphael was painting a series of rooms at the same time Michelangelo was painting his Sistine Chapel a short distance away. The rooms of Raphael as well as the Sistine Chapel are part of the Vatican Museum today.
The fresco consists of three scenes in symmetrical balance. In the center, the angel of freedom awakens Peter in his cell. The barred cell is on an upper level, reached by steps to the left and right. On the right side, the angel guides the stunned and still-drowsy Peter past the sleeping guards. On the left side, one guard has noticed the light generated by the angel and awakens his bewildered companion, pointing to the miraculously illumined cell. The scene is a celebration of light. The angel casts a transcendent and radiant light into the scene, while the light of the moon and the crack of dawn spread their more subtle glow. The reflections off the armor and the prison walls create an extraordinary effect.
Art historians say that Raphael gave Peter the facial features of Pope Julius II, who commissioned the work. He intended it to express the freedom that God gives to the church in the face of overwhelming odds. The power of Christ’s resurrection is made evident in its divine liberation from all the powers of evil and oppression. Certainly we are all imprisoned in our own waywardness and ensnared in the sin of the world. Every viewer of Raphael’s masterpiece can be led to contemplate the amazing grace that freed us when we were lost in darkness without an exit sign in sight.
Early tradition maintains that the chains of Peter from the prison cell were kept in Jerusalem, where they were venerated by Christian pilgrims. In the fourth century, the patriarch of Jerusalem presented the chains to Aelia Eudoxia, the wife of the eastern emperor Theodosius II, and she brought them to Constantinople. Later, she sent a portion of the chains to Rome with her daughter Licinia Eudoxia, the wife of the western emperor Valentinian III, who gave them to Pope Leo I. It seems that another set of chains was already venerated in Rome, the fetters in which Peter was bound when he was imprisoned later by Nero in the capital city. In the fifth century, the Church of St. Peter in Chains was built in Rome to venerate these relics. Today these chains are kept in a large reliquary and may be seen under the main altar of the basilica.
The fallen chains and the freedom given to Peter launch a new phase in his ministry to the church. When Peter comes at dawn to the house where many of the disciples were staying, and when they finally let him into the house, their first impulse must have been to cry out with joyful surprise. But Peter motions for them to keep quiet. He did not want them to awaken the neighborhood and betray his presence. He quickly tells them how the angel delivered him, and he asks them to tell James and the other believers what has happened. This James was the one called the brother of Jesus, not the apostle who had recently been executed. James will become the leading figure of the church in Jerusalem after the departure of Peter.
Peter then departs from the house, and as the text of Acts says, “went to another place” (Acts 12:17). The escalating persecution and the desire of city authorities to kill Peter explains why Peter left his leadership position in the Jerusalem church and went to another place. All available evidence indicates that, at this point, he becomes a traveling missionary in other parts of the world. By freeing Peter from his prison in Jerusalem, God has liberated Peter to minister in other lands. No longer is Peter’s fishing for men and women limited to the regions of Galilee and Judea. He will become a universal shepherd and care for God’s scattered flock.
To gain a better understanding of Peter’s apostolic journeys, we depend on the letters of Paul and Peter, historical writings, and other early traditions. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he reveals a great deal about his relationship with Peter. He first describes his initial meeting with Peter in Jerusalem, three years after Paul’s Damascus Road conversion experience (Galatians 1:18). At that encounter, Paul learns directly from Peter about the events of Christ’s life and his relationship with the apostles. Paul then describes another meeting fourteen years later in which he and his companion Barnabas went up to Jerusalem. There he met with Peter, James, and John, receiving from them supportive encouragement for his mission to the Gentiles.
On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. (Galatians 2:7–9)
Paul takes seriously the reputation of these three “pillars” of the church: James, John, and Peter, who is here called by his Aramaic name, Cephas. Paul wants to meet with them to get their assessment of his work among the Gentiles. The three pillars acknowledged God’s grace working within his mission and endorse his work. Paul affirms that both he and Peter are missionary apostles: Paul entrusted with evangelizing the “uncircumcised,” the Gentiles, and Peter entrusted to the circumcised, the Jews.
This division of labor between Peter and Paul, while it expresses a general complementarity between the missions of the two apostles, was not workable in practice, especially outside of Judea. Because in most places the population was mixed, any precise division into two missionary areas was unattainable. Peter certainly had ministered among Gentiles, and Paul preached to both Jews and Gentiles during his travels.
It is difficult for us to imagine today the problems resulting from the early church’s efforts to include Jews and Gentiles together. Christianity, in its earliest years, was not a separate religion, but a form of messianic Judaism. So Jewish Christians who believed in Jesus as the Messiah continued to live their ancient faith as Jews, which included covenant markers such as circumcision, dietary practices, and purity regulations. And when Gentiles began to become believers, most Jewish Christians assumed that Gentiles would practice these covenant traditions of their sacred history.
Paul was the missionary proclaiming to the Gentiles that receiving the gospel did not include taking on these Jewish practices. People are made right before God not through what they themselves accomplish but through what Jesus Christ has done. As Paul wrote in this timeless statement, “A person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16). By joining oneself to Jesus, living “in Christ,” a person achieves what the covenant regulations accomplish and much more. So Paul dispensed with all such covenant markers in his evangelizing of the Gentiles. It seems that Peter completely agreed with Paul’s approach in his mission to the Gentiles. After all, it was Peter who baptized Cornelius, the first Gentile to be received into the church.
However, Paul describes in his letter a strong disagreement he had with Peter while they were both ministering to the church in the city of Antioch. It seems that Peter traveled to Antioch after leaving Jerusalem and spent an extended amount of time there. Antioch was the third largest city of the empire, after Rome and Alexandria, and consisted of a mixed population of Jews and Gentiles. Large numbers converted to the faith, making Antioch the most important city for the early expansion of the church. Luke tells us that here the followers of Jesus were called “Christians” for the first time.5
Paul accused Peter of hypocrisy when he withdrew from table fellowship with Gentiles. He had regularly eaten with Gentiles in Antioch, but only when Jewish Christians sent by James came from Jerusalem did he withdraw. This is how Paul narrates the event.
When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?” (Galatians 2:11–14)
The Jewish Christians of Jerusalem, backed by James, upheld the Jewish sacred practices. Some thought that all believers should first become Jews; others thought that certainly Jewish Christians, like Peter, should maintain the precepts of the Torah. Because Peter had agreed with Paul in principle that the Gentiles were freed from following the covenant regulations, Paul declared Peter’s actions inconsistent with his beliefs and accused him of compromising the freedom that the Gentiles had been given in Christ.
There is a wide range of opinion on the seriousness and the length of this rift between Peter and Paul. Some consider this an example of two strong personalities clashing over an important issue that was soon resolved. Others deduce that the conflict led to a prolonged divide between the two.6 The problem, of course, is that the letter gives us only Paul’s point of view. We are not given Peter’s perspective on the wide range of issues involved with Jewish and Gentile converts in a mixed community.
As apostle to the Jews, Peter knew that many Jewish believers in Jesus continued to demonstrate loyalty to the covenant laws and ancestral customs that constituted their Jewish identity. Out of concern for his mission to the circumcised, he chose to honor the deeply felt beliefs of his fellow Jews. The truth of the gospel, Peter felt, was not at stake. Paul, however, strongly disagreed. Although he clearly respected Peter’s authority, Paul’s passionate nature and strong belief in principles convinced him to challenge Peter for not “acting consistently with the truth of the gospel.” By rebuking Peter publicly, he stood strongly for the basic principle of salvation through Jesus Christ and not through the Torah.
Paul believed that failing to stand resolutely on this principle would lead to division within the church. There would either be two churches separated by ethnicity, or the church would have a two-tiered membership with Gentile Christians occupying the lower tier. Such division would be a travesty for Paul, who wrote in the same letter, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Paul judged that Peter was effectively rebuilding the very walls that Paul had torn down.
Although we don’t know all the details, this confrontation between Peter and Paul demonstrates the challenges of pastoral leadership in the church. Often within communities there is a need to talk about differences, compromise over issues that are not essential, and make corrections where needed. The church must always seek unity within its necessary and important diversity. The ancient adage applies to many such situations: “In essentials unity, in doubtful things liberty, but in all things charity.”
In the tug-of-war between principle and pragmatism, Peter seems to have taken a middle way. He tried to hold both sides at once: the party of James in Jerusalem and the followers of Paul. Essentially he agreed with Paul, that covenant markers were not essential practice for believers, neither Jewish nor Gentile. But for the sake of peace and for the unity of the church, Peter stepped back from table fellowship so as not to create problems for the Jewish Christians and their relationship with the church in Jerusalem.
Peter’s concern was for the unity of the church. There are indicators throughout the New Testament that Peter was the one most responsible for holding together the Christian communities throughout the Roman Empire that were in many ways so different from one another. Considering the many conflicts and tensions within the early churches, it is remarkable that they did not break apart into various splinter groups.
Unlike Paul, who was continually going to the fringes to establish new churches, it seems that Peter focused his pastoral activity on visiting those churches already established to encourage their faith and unity in Christ. These complementary aspects of evangelization are both essential for witnessing God’s kingdom in the world. To use a metaphor from physics, Peter represents the centripetal force, moving in a curved path toward the center, and Paul represents the centrifugal force, moving away from the center. On the one hand, Peter worked to preserve the unity of the church, holding together the divergent positions of James and Paul, and expressing the rock-solid foundation of the community. Paul, on the other hand, moved outward to spread the gospel to the whole world, breaking boundaries, pushing the church to the fringes, and seeking to remove the barriers that divided people from one another and from God.7
Without the unifying force of Peter, Paul’s mission would become scattered, forever in danger of dissolution. And without the energy of Paul, Peter’s mission would be in danger of becoming stagnant, too attached to the status quo. The church must always move out into the world, and at the same time it must always be drawing people inward with open arms and embracing them as the universal family of God.
Many years after Peter’s departure from Jerusalem following his escape from prison, he returned to the city for an important gathering of church leaders. This final episode of Peter in the book of Acts is often called a council, the prototype of later church councils called to settle particularly troublesome controversies and to unify the church in its mission. The issue in question here was a perennial one for the early church—the inclusion of Gentiles. The debate was not whether Gentiles should be received into the church—that decision had been made long before—but on what basis they should be included. The key question that needed a final resolution was whether Gentiles must become Jewish to be genuinely Christian.
The controversy had incited much dissension within the local churches spread throughout the empire, and so Paul and Barnabas were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this issue with the apostles and elders of the mother church. This matter was too important to be left to local debate, and it must be a decision for the whole church. A definitive, churchwide resolution was essential for the church’s ongoing mission.
After considerable debate among the apostles and elders, Peter stands to speak:
My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will. (Acts 15:7–11)
Peter places the emphasis on God’s initiative, as he reviews his experience with the household of Cornelius. He observes that God selected him to be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the good news and become believers in Jesus Christ. He then stresses that God gave the Holy Spirit to these Gentiles just as the Spirit had been given to Jewish believers at Pentecost. In terms of access to salvation, there is no distinction between Jews and Gentiles.
Peter’s statement dovetails with the views of Paul and Barnabas. Because it is God who purifies the hearts of both Jews and Gentiles through faith, the church should put no unnecessary obstacle in the way to salvation. Peter’s conclusion states the principle at the heart of the council’s pronouncement: both Jews and Gentiles will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus.
The final witness at the council is James, who became the leader of the church in Jerusalem after Peter’s departure. He shows deep respect for the stature of Peter and reaffirms the pivotal role of Peter in opening the door of the kingdom to Gentiles. He reinforces Peter’s testimony by linking it to the ancient prophets. He quotes a passage from Amos to show that the restored kingdom of Israel will include people of all nations, “so that all other peoples may seek the Lord—even the Gentiles over whom [God’s] name has been called” (Acts 15:17).
In a remarkable display of unity, the council issues its teaching and sends it to the local churches spread throughout the world. It demonstrates the work of the Holy Spirit in a momentous time of decision for the whole church. It shows that the work of the Holy Spirit is both conservative, safeguarding the teachings of Jesus and the ancient Scriptures, and progressive, bringing new understanding in every age of history.
Although Peter leaves the stage of Acts after this episode, the remainder of the book completes the story of the church’s growth from Jerusalem to Rome. Through the mission of both Peter and Paul, the church shows itself to be the instrument of salvation in bringing people of every nation to Christ.
By freeing Peter from his prison in Jerusalem, God liberates Peter to minister in other lands. Why does the church often experience new life as a result of persecution?
Peter was freed from prison because he responded to God’s lead. In what aspect of your life might you admit your own powerlessness and surrender to God to show you the way?
How does the disagreement between Peter and Paul in Antioch demonstrate the wisdom of the saying: “In essentials unity, in doubtful things liberty, but in all things charity”?
In what sense were the missions of Peter and Paul complementary within the early church? Why are both the Petrine and Pauline dynamism essential for the church today?
How does the apostolic council in Jerusalem demonstrate both authoritative and collaborative leadership in the early church? What are the lessons from this council for the church today?