Peter and John have healed a lame man at the temple gate and have been arrested. Now Peter stands before the Sanhedrin — the same council that condemned Jesus — and is asked by what name or authority they did this. His answer is the most exclusive statement of salvation in the New Testament. The lame man is healed by one name. The council hearing the case has the power to imprison Peter. Neither of these facts changes the content of what Peter says.

From the writers we read together

William Lane Craig

philosopher and Christian apologist, author of Reasonable Faith

Craig addresses the objection that Acts 4:12 is “arrogant exclusivism” by distinguishing between the claim's content and the tone in which it is made. The claim that there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved is either true or false. If it is true, it is not arrogant to say so — it is simply accurate. If it is false, the problem is its falseness, not its exclusiveness. Every significant truth claim excludes its contradiction; the question is whether this one is correct, not whether it is exclusive.

Craig also points out that Peter's audience is the body that sentenced Jesus to death. The boldness of “no other name” in that room, before those people, is not the boldness of a man who has not considered what it might cost him. It is the boldness of a man who has seen the resurrection and found it more convincing than the Sanhedrin's power. The exclusive claim of Acts 4:12 is credible only in the mouths of people who have staked something on it. Peter is staking his freedom.