In the course of time that have spent preaching and sharing the Gospel one of the things that bugs folks is the story of Peter’s shadow in Acts 5. There are many strange and really outrageous things in the preaching of Christ. The fact that God would in Christ reconcile the world to himself itself is outrageous to human nature. Why Peter’s shadow bugs more than other things is a mystery.
Martin Framzmann says this –
The apostles’ deeds of power are therefore the Lord’s deeds; “many wonders and signs were done through the apostles” (Acts 2:43; cf. 5:12). Concerning the lame man whom he had healed, Peter tells the rulers, elders, and scribes, “By the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man is standing before you well” (Acts 4:10). Perhaps the most striking expression
of the fact that the apostle is the “chosen instrument” of the Lord Jesus Christ (no less than that, but also only that) is in the words which Peter spoke at the bedside of the paralytic man at Lydda: “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you” (Acts 9:34). As instruments of the Lord the apostles are completely selfless: “Why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” Peter says to astounded people in Solomon’s portico (Acts 3:12). And when Cornelius fell down at Peter’s feet, Peter responded with, “Stand up; I too am a man” (Acts 10:25, 26). It is because the apostles are the self-effacing, chosen instruments of the Lord, because they are no more and no less than the human vehicles of the Lord’s presence, that their word shapes and directs the whole life of the new community: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.” (Acts 2:42)
