A Lame Beggar Is Healed

¹One day Peter and John went to the Temple at three o'clock in the afternoon, the hour for prayer.

²There at the Beautiful Gate, as it was called, was a man who had been lame all his life. Every day he was carried to the gate to beg for money from the people who were going into the Temple.

³When he saw Peter and John going in, he begged them to give him something.

⁴They looked straight at him, and Peter said, “Look at us!”

⁵So he looked at them, expecting to get something from them.

⁶But Peter said to him, “I have no money at all, but I give you what I have: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth I order you to get up and walk!”

⁷Then he took him by his right hand and helped him up. At once the man's feet and ankles became strong;

⁸he jumped up, stood on his feet, and started walking around. Then he went into the Temple with them, walking and jumping and praising God.

⁹The people there saw him walking and praising God,

¹⁰and when they recognized him as the beggar who had sat at the Beautiful Gate, they were all surprised and amazed at what had happened to him.

Peter's Message in the Temple

¹¹As the man held on to Peter and John in Solomon's Porch, as it was called, the people were amazed and ran to them.

¹²When Peter saw the people, he said to them, “Fellow Israelites, why are you surprised at this, and why do you stare at us? Do you think that it was by means of our own power or godliness that we made this man walk?

¹³The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our ancestors, has given divine glory to his Servant Jesus. But you handed him over to the authorities, and you rejected him in Pilate's presence, even after Pilate had decided to set him free.

¹⁴He was holy and good, but you rejected him, and instead you asked Pilate to do you the favor of turning loose a murderer.

¹⁵You killed the one who leads to life, but God raised him from death—and we are witnesses to this.

¹⁶It was the power of his name that gave strength to this lame man. What you see and know was done by faith in his name; it was faith in Jesus that has made him well, as you can all see.

¹⁷“And now, my friends, I know that what you and your leaders did to Jesus was due to your ignorance.

¹⁸God announced long ago through all the prophets that his Messiah had to suffer; and he made it come true in this way.

¹⁹Repent, then, and turn to God, so that he will forgive your sins. If you do,

²⁰times of spiritual strength will come from the Lord, and he will send Jesus, who is the Messiah he has already chosen for you.

²¹He must remain in heaven until the time comes for all things to be made new, as God announced through his holy prophets of long ago.

²²For Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will send you a prophet, just as he sent me, and he will be one of your own people. You are to obey everything that he tells you to do.

²³Anyone who does not obey that prophet shall be separated from God's people and destroyed.’

²⁴And all the prophets who had a message, including Samuel and those who came after him, also announced what has been happening these days.

²⁵The promises of God through his prophets are for you, and you share in the covenant which God made with your ancestors. As he said to Abraham, ‘Through your descendants I will bless all the people on earth.’

²⁶And so God chose his Servant and sent him to you first, to bless you by making every one of you turn away from your wicked ways.”

The Example of Abraham

¹What shall we say, then, of Abraham, the father of our race? What was his experience?

²If he was put right with God by the things he did, he would have something to boast about—but not in God's sight.

³The scripture says, “Abraham believed God, and because of his faith God accepted him as righteous.”

⁴A person who works is paid wages, but they are not regarded as a gift; they are something that has been earned.

⁵But those who depend on faith, not on deeds, and who believe in the God who declares the guilty to be innocent, it is this faith that God takes into account in order to put them right with himself.

⁶This is what David meant when he spoke of the happiness of the person whom God accepts as righteous, apart from anything that person does:

⁷“Happy are those whose wrongs are forgiven, whose sins are pardoned!

⁸Happy is the person whose sins the Lord will not keep account of!”

⁹Does this happiness that David spoke of belong only to those who are circumcised? No indeed! It belongs also to those who are not circumcised. For we have quoted the scripture, “Abraham believed God, and because of his faith God accepted him as righteous.”

¹⁰When did this take place? Was it before or after Abraham was circumcised? It was before, not after.

¹¹He was circumcised later, and his circumcision was a sign to show that because of his faith God had accepted him as righteous before he had been circumcised. And so Abraham is the spiritual father of all who believe in God and are accepted as righteous by him, even though they are not circumcised.

¹²He is also the father of those who are circumcised, that is, of those who, in addition to being circumcised, also live the same life of faith that our father Abraham lived before he was circumcised.

God's Promise Is Received through Faith

¹³When God promised Abraham and his descendants that the world would belong to him, he did so, not because Abraham obeyed the Law, but because he believed and was accepted as righteous by God.

¹⁴For if what God promises is to be given to those who obey the Law, then faith means nothing and God's promise is worthless.

¹⁵The Law brings down God's anger; but where there is no law, there is no disobeying of the law.

¹⁶And so the promise was based on faith, in order that the promise should be guaranteed as God's free gift to all of Abraham's descendants—not just to those who obey the Law, but also to those who believe as Abraham did. For Abraham is the spiritual father of us all;

¹⁷as the scripture says, “I have made you father of many nations.” So the promise is good in the sight of God, in whom Abraham believed—the God who brings the dead to life and whose command brings into being what did not exist.

¹⁸Abraham believed and hoped, even when there was no reason for hoping, and so became “the father of many nations.” Just as the scripture says, “Your descendants will be as many as the stars.”

¹⁹He was then almost one hundred years old; but his faith did not weaken when he thought of his body, which was already practically dead, or of the fact that Sarah could not have children.

²⁰His faith did not leave him, and he did not doubt God's promise; his faith filled him with power, and he gave praise to God.

²¹He was absolutely sure that God would be able to do what he had promised.

²²That is why Abraham, through faith, “was accepted as righteous by God.”

²³The words “he was accepted as righteous” were not written for him alone.

²⁴They were written also for us who are to be accepted as righteous, who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from death.

²⁵Because of our sins he was given over to die, and he was raised to life in order to put us right with God.

Right with God

¹Now that we have been put right with God through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

²He has brought us by faith into this experience of God's grace, in which we now live. And so we boast of the hope we have of sharing God's glory!

³We also boast of our troubles, because we know that trouble produces endurance,

⁴endurance brings God's approval, and his approval creates hope.

⁵This hope does not disappoint us, for God has poured out his love into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit, who is God's gift to us.

⁶For when we were still helpless, Christ died for the wicked at the time that God chose.

⁷It is a difficult thing for someone to die for a righteous person. It may even be that someone might dare to die for a good person.

⁸But God has shown us how much he loves us—it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us!

⁹By his blood we are now put right with God; how much more, then, will we be saved by him from God's anger!

¹⁰We were God's enemies, but he made us his friends through the death of his Son. Now that we are God's friends, how much more will we be saved by Christ's life!

¹¹But that is not all; we rejoice because of what God has done through our Lord Jesus Christ, who has now made us God's friends.

Adam and Christ

¹²Sin came into the world through one man, and his sin brought death with it. As a result, death has spread to the whole human race because everyone has sinned.

¹³There was sin in the world before the Law was given; but where there is no law, no account is kept of sins.

¹⁴But from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, death ruled over all human beings, even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam did when he disobeyed God's command. Adam was a figure of the one who was to come.

¹⁵But the two are not the same, because God's free gift is not like Adam's sin. It is true that many people died because of the sin of that one man. But God's grace is much greater, and so is his free gift to so many people through the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ.

¹⁶And there is a difference between God's gift and the sin of one man. After the one sin, came the judgment of “Guilty”; but after so many sins, comes the undeserved gift of “Not guilty!”

¹⁷It is true that through the sin of one man death began to rule because of that one man. But how much greater is the result of what was done by the one man, Jesus Christ! All who receive God's abundant grace and are freely put right with him will rule in life through Christ.

¹⁸So then, as the one sin condemned all people, in the same way the one righteous act sets all people free and gives them life.

¹⁹And just as all people were made sinners as the result of the disobedience of one man, in the same way they will all be put right with God as the result of the obedience of the one man.

²⁰Law was introduced in order to increase wrongdoing; but where sin increased, God's grace increased much more.

²¹So then, just as sin ruled by means of death, so also God's grace rules by means of righteousness, leading us to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

¹Never boast about tomorrow. You don't know what will happen between now and then.

²Let other people praise you—even strangers; never do it yourself.

³The weight of stone and sand is nothing compared to the trouble that stupidity can cause.