Christ is risen!
Indeed He is risen!
For David says concerning Him: ‘I foresaw the LORD always before my face, for He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad; moreover my flesh also will rest in hope. For You will not leave my soul in Hades, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of joy in Your presence.’ Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption. This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. (Acts 2:25-32)
St Peter in his sermon cites Psalm 16:8-11 in quoting the Psalmist and Prophet King David speaking about someone who will not feel the sting of death nor remain in Hades after death. David proclaimed: “For You will not leave my soul in Hades, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.” Yet Peter notes that David died and was buried, so he wasn’t speaking about himself, but was prophesying about someone else – who Peter identifies as Jesus Christ. While David was anointed by God, Peter proclaims that Jesus is God’s chosen and anointed one. And though the Jewish leadership handed Jesus over to the Romans to be crucified, God had not rejected Jesus, only the Jewish people did. For Peter, God knew beforehand that His Christ would be crucified, and God used it to accomplish His purpose – the defeat of death. Peter is endeavoring to draw his fellow Jews into the Christian fellowship by proclaiming that their beloved and chosen King David spoke and prophesied about Christ’s death and resurrection. As David was looking to the Christ, so should all of God’s people enter into fellowship with their Lord, whom King David Himself also proclaimed as His Lord (Mark 12:35-37).
The fruit of Christ’s death and resurrection was koinonia: community, communion, fellowship, or the church. In Hebrew the corresponding term for it is yahad, used in the Dead Sea scrolls to denote ‘unity.’ With one mind [homothymadon] the members of the community ‘devoted themselves to apostolic teaching and fellowship [koinonia], to the breaking of bread and prayers’ (Acts 2:42). (Veselyn Kesich, FORMATION AND STRUGGLES, p 33)
Fraternized 