²¹When they had threatened them further, they let them go (finding no basis on which to punish them) on account of the people, because they were all glorifying God for what had happened; ²²for the man was more than forty years old on whom this miracle of healing had been performed. ²³When they had been released, they went to their own companions and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them.

The religious leaders could not bring themselves to punish the apostles, so they let them go, like threatening-repeating parents who were powerless to follow through. They had to stand down and wait for a more opportune time. So much of this story reflects the interactions they had with Jesus; the religious leaders would take turns confronting Jesus, only to depart with their tails between their legs. In this case, to punish the apostles for the healing would risk a rebellion by the people; the miracle had trumped their façade of being God’s leaders, for here a supernatural event had been clearly seen and accepted as being from the hands of the apostles. This was not a propitious scenario for them to continue challenging the apostles.

One further note from Luke makes it clear this was truly a miracle: the man had been lame for over forty years—“from his mother’s womb” (Acts 3:2). Today, we would call this a congenital disability. It was not a psycho-somatic healing where the man needed his thinking reprogrammed. Nor was it something modern scholars can treat as time-period superstition or mythology. Luke, the careful researcher, inserts that the healing was widely known and accepted as genuinely miraculous. Contrary to the assertions of modern-day skeptics, people of that day were not prone to superficially attribute things to the supernatural realm just because they couldn’t explain them otherwise. This healing was noteworthy because it was not something common. In fact, it was undeniable.

Finally, we observe that the miraculous had a specific purpose, namely validating the apostles and their message. The writer of Hebrews tells us:

After it [the message of salvation] was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit . . . (Heb. 2:3–4)

The apostle Paul wrote in defense of his own apostolic authority,

. . . [I]n no respect was I inferior to the most eminent apostles . . . The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles. (2 Cor. 12:11–12)

Lord, thank You for proving the apostolic testimony with undeniable miracles.