The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.
This verse comes from a dramatic confrontation in the book of Acts, the early history of the Christian church. The apostle Peter and other followers of Jesus had been arrested by the Jewish ruling council — the Sanhedrin — the same body that had handed Jesus over to be crucified weeks earlier. Peter is standing before them and refuses to soften his message. 'Hanging on a tree' was not a casual phrase — it was a deliberate echo of an Old Testament law in Deuteronomy 21:23, which stated that anyone executed by hanging was under God's curse. Peter was making a pointed argument: you believed you were carrying out divine judgment on a blasphemer, but God himself reversed the verdict by raising Jesus from the dead.
God, give me the kind of courage that comes from having seen something real — not from being fearless, but from knowing the resurrection is true. When I am tempted to shrink from honesty out of fear, remind me of Peter standing in that room. Let truth be worth more to me than safety. Amen.
The audacity of this sentence is almost hard to absorb. Peter is standing inside the room where the decision to execute Jesus had been made, looking at some of the same faces, and he doesn't hedge. He doesn't open with diplomacy. He says: the God your own ancestors worshiped raised the man you killed. And he uses the specific legal language — 'hanging on a tree' — that would have landed like a thunderclap. He was saying, you thought you were enforcing God's law. You were wrong. Not just morally wrong. Cosmically wrong. And the proof is an empty tomb. What's worth sitting with is what made this possible. Not long before this moment, Peter had stood by a fire in a courtyard and denied knowing Jesus three times in a single night — out of fear, out of self-preservation. Now he is staring down the most powerful religious court in his country with nothing but the resurrection as his argument. He wasn't braver. He had seen something that made fear feel smaller than truth. When you face a moment — and you will — where the honest thing and the safe thing are not the same, it's worth asking: what have you seen that makes truth worth the cost?
Why do you think Peter used the specific phrase 'hanging on a tree' rather than simply saying Jesus was crucified? What was he trying to communicate to this particular audience?
Think of a time when you stayed quiet about something true because it felt risky. What was the cost of that silence?
Peter had very publicly failed Jesus before. Does his courage here challenge the idea that past failure disqualifies a person from being used for something significant? What does that mean for you?
How do you think the people around you — coworkers, family, neighbors — would be affected if you spoke more honestly about your faith, even when it was uncomfortable?
What is one true thing you have been softening or avoiding saying? What would it look like to say it plainly this week?
And killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.
Acts 3:15
Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men:
1 Thessalonians 2:15
Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.
Acts 2:36
Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:
Acts 2:23
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
Galatians 3:13
Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
Hebrews 13:20
Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
Psalms 2:6
Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.
1 Peter 2:24
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross [and you are responsible].
AMP
The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree.
ESV
'The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross.
NASB
The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead—whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.
NIV
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a tree.
NKJV
The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead after you killed him by hanging him on a cross.
NLT
The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, the One you killed by hanging him on a cross.
MSG