NT Text: Acts 4:27
OT Source(s):
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge; Beale & Carson, Commentary on the NT Use of the OT
Reference Type: Echo
Connection Method(s): Longitudinal Theme (Anointing Oil / Holy Spirit) + Analogy
Anchor Text: Ps 45:6-7 — Your Throne O God
Significance: The Jerusalem church's prayer names Jesus as "Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed" (Acts 4:27), the verb again χρίω — the same anointing-language Psalm 45:7b had set within the royal wedding: "God, your God, has anointed you." Having just quoted Psalm 2 (Acts 4:25-26), the disciples identify the Lord's "Anointed One" of Psalm 2:2 with the anointed King of the royal-psalm corpus, of which Psalm 45 is a part. The connection is an echo within the Anointing longitudinal theme rather than a citation: Psalm 45 supplies the Father-anoints-Son grammar that Acts 4:27 presupposes when it confesses that God anointed His holy servant. The escalation appears precisely in the irony the prayer exposes — the One the Father anointed as King (Ps 45) is the One the rulers conspire against (Ps 2; Acts 4:27), so the cross becomes the strange enthronement of the anointed Son. The telos: against every conspiring power, the Anointed remains the Father's beloved, anointed "with the oil of joy above his companions," so that the church prays not in fear but in confidence before the King whose reign — and whose gladness — no opposition can overturn.