Acts 13:38,39 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Bible Comments

Be it known unto you, therefore Be persuaded of this as a most certain and momentous truth, a truth infinitely consolatory; that through this man This seed of David, and Son of God; is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins The free, full, and assured pardon of all your offences, be they ever so great, and ever so aggravated. And by him By his mediation, by his sacrifice and intercession; all that believe Greek, πας ο πιστευων, every one that believeth; namely, in him as the Messiah promised of old, the Saviour of the world, able and willing to save to the uttermost all that come unto God through him; every one that relies entirely on him for salvation, present and eternal, and receives him in all his offices and characters, (of which see the note on John 1:12,) every one whose faith in him, and in the declarations and promises of his gospel, worketh by love, Galatians 5:6; is justified from all things Has the actual forgiveness of all his sins, and is accounted righteous by and before God at the very time of his believing. Observe, from all things, not only from the guilt of smaller miscarriages, but even of those things which are in the highest degree criminal; and from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses By the whole or any part thereof, moral or ceremonial. Not only ye cannot now, but ye never could: for that law afforded no expiation for presumptuous sins, so that the offender should be exempted from temporal punishment, but he was to die without mercy under two or three witnesses, that is, if two or three witnesses attested his guilt; nor could the sacrifices of it remove the guilt of such sins, or indeed of any sin, before God, make an atonement to his justice, or procure the sinner's reconciliation with him. See Hebrews 10:1-12. The Mosaic “law appointed sin-offerings to expiate smaller offences, so far as the offender who offered them should be free from all further prosecution on account of them. But this very view of them shows how absolutely necessary to the being of society it was, that they should not be admitted in cases of murder, adultery, &c. These crimes, therefore, were made capital; nor was the dying criminal, however penitent, allowed to offer them, which would have been quite inconsistent with the temporal pardon connected with them. But the expiatory sacrifice of Christ takes away the guilt of all sin,”

with respect to the penitent that believe aright on him; “and though it by no means affects the manner in which offenders may stand in human courts, (which the Mosaic sacrifices did,) it delivers from the condemnation of God in the invisible world; with respect to which, those of the Mosaic law could have no efficacy at all,” except so far as penitent offenders, considering these sacrifices as typifying that of Christ, were brought, through them, to have a believing dependance on him and his sacrifice.

Acts 13:38-39

38 Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins:

39 And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.