Acts 3

At the ninth hour — three in the afternoon, the hour of prayer — Peter and John approach the temple gate called Beautiful. A man lame from birth is being carried to his usual position there to ask for alms. He asks Peter and John for something. Peter looks directly at him and says: silver and gold I do not have, but what I have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. He takes the man by the hand and raises him up. The man's feet and ankles are immediately strengthened; he springs up, stands, walks, and enters the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. The crowd in the temple recognizes him — they had all seen him begging at the Beautiful Gate for years — and they gather in Solomon's Portico, astonished.

Peter addresses the crowd. He begins by deflecting the amazement: why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have done this? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and denied before Pilate, though Pilate had decided to release him. You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you. But God raised him from the dead — to this we are witnesses. Peter then invokes Moses, who said God would raise up a prophet like him from the people and that whoever does not listen to that prophet shall be cut off. He closes by pointing to Abraham's covenant — in your offspring all the families of the earth shall be blessed — and applies it to the present moment: God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness. The crowd's response is interrupted by the arrival of the temple authorities.