Acts 3:3-6

"In the East it was the custom for beggars to sit begging at the entrance to a temple or a shrine. Such a place was, and still is, considered the best of all stances because, when people are on their way to worship God, they are disposed to be generous to their fellow men." [Note: Barclay, p. 28.]

Peter told the beggar to look at him and John so Peter could have his full attention. Peter than gave him a gift far better than the one he expected to receive. This is typical of how God deals with needy people. When we give people the gospel, we give them God’s best gift.

"In effect, Peter has given him a new life, which is precisely what the miracles represent, as Peter’s subsequent speech will show." [Note: Bock, Acts, p. 161.]

". . . the Church’s opportunity is lame humanity, lame from its birth." [Note: Morgan, p. 82.]

The name of a person represented that person. When Peter healed this man in the name of Jesus, he was saying that it was Jesus who was ultimately responsible for the healing, not Peter. Peter healed him in the power of and with the authority of Jesus of Nazareth (cf. Acts 3:16).

This was the first of three crippled people that Luke recorded the apostles healing in Acts (Acts 9:32-34; Acts 14:8-10; cf. John 5; John 9).

The gift of healing as it existed in the early church was quite different from the so-called gift of healing some claim to possess today. Examples of people using this gift in the New Testament seem to indicate that the person with this gift could heal anyone, subject to God’s will (cf. Matthew 10:1; Matthew 10:8; Acts 28:8-9; et al.). The sick person’s belief in Jesus Christ and in God’s ability to heal him or her also seems to be a factor (Acts 3:16; cf. Mark 6:5-6). There is a similar account of Paul healing a lame man in Lystra in Acts 14:8-10 where Luke said the man’s faith was crucial. Jesus Christ gave this gift to the early church to convince people that He is God and that the gospel the Christians preached had divine authority. He gave it for the benefit of Jewish observers primarily (1 Corinthians 1:22).

"The New Testament gift of healing is a specific gift to an individual enabling him to heal. It is not to be confused with the healing performed by God in answer to prayer.

"There is little correspondence between modern-day charismatic ’healings’ and the healings recorded in the New Testament. The differences are so vast that many of today’s healers are careful to point out that they do not have the gift of healing, but are merely those to whom God often responds with healing." [Note: Thomas R. Edgar, "The Cessation of the Sign Gifts," Bibliotheca Sacra 145:580 (October-December 1988):376, 378.]

Of course, many other modern healers do claim that their healings are the same as what the New Testament records.