“And we bring you good tidings of the promise made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled the same to our children, in that he raised up Jesus, as also it is written in the second psalm, ‘You are my Son, this day have I begotten you.' ”
So, he now tells them, he and his companions have come to them with Good News, the Good News of the promise made to their fathers, Good News now being fulfilled to them, the children of their fathers. For He has raised up (anastesas) Jesus, just as was written in the second Psalm, ‘You are My Son, this day have I begotten you' (Psalms 2:7).
Some see ‘raised up Jesus' here as referring to His being ‘raised up' in His coming, and birth, and life, in contrast with Him ‘raising Him from the dead' in Acts 13:34. Others, however, give the latter significance to both, for reference back to Acts 13:30 demonstrates that we are in the context of the resurrection..
Paul is here using the second Psalm with its Messianic significance. This very quotation had been cited by God at Jesus' baptism (Mark 1:11 and parallels) and at His transfiguration, when His Sonship was most clearly revealed (Mark 9:7 and parallels). This would support the idea therefore that ‘raised up' refers to His being raised up in His birth and life. The idea of the quotation is then that, as revealed at His baptism and transfiguration God, he was the begotten of God.
But as the Scriptures had declared that He must suffer and die, so this Psalm was equally the declaration that, speaking of the Greater David, God must bring Him forth alive again as His own Son the Anointed One against whom Israel and the nations had brought threatenings and slaughter (compare Acts 4:25-28), raising Him up after what they had foully done to Him, just as the Psalm had made clear would happen. Thus it is also declaring the certainty of His resurrection. This ties in with the use of Psalms 2:7 in Hebrews 1:5 where it connects back to His ‘being made better than the angels' as a result of sitting down at ‘the right hand of the Majesty on high', and in Hebrews 5:5 where it refers to when he was glorified as High Priest. In the end Jesus was ‘begotten' by His Father in an eternal today, beginning when the plan of salvation was determined before time began, continuing at His birth, confirmed at His baptism and transfiguration, and openly declared at His resurrection and enthronement. Each step of the way God confirmed His ‘adoption'.
While it is true that in its original meaning the Psalm had pointed to God's adoption of the sons of David as those whom He would adopt to rule in His name, it was always with the fact in mind that one day there would be an everlasting King Who would be so begotten by God. And this may be gleaned quite clearly from 2 Samuel 7:13; 2 Samuel 7:16. Thus in the end the seed of David was to be an everlasting King. And in the light of the revelation of the suffering and death of the greater David, the Psalm had now become a resurrection Psalm. How else could the suffering Servant ‘see His seed and prolong His days' and ‘divide His portion with the great and divide the spoil with the strong' (Isaiah 53:10; Isaiah 53:12)? Only because God had at His resurrection declared of Him, ‘You are My Son, this day have I begotten You'.
It should be noted again that this phrase has already been shown to apply to more than just one point in time. He was begotten of God at His birth (John 1:14). The idea had been applied at His baptism (Mark 1:11). It had been applied at His transfiguration (Mark 9:7). In a sense God was constantly ‘begetting' Him, that is, officially adopting Him for the next stage in His activity and declaring Him at each point to be His own Son. It clearly also occurred at His resurrection and enthronement when His ‘begetting' as His King was most made apparent (Hebrews 1:5). He was then the "first born from the dead" (Colossians 1:18) and was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4). We must not freeze out the glory of such statements by pedantic analysis, tossing away the grain and leaving the husk.