Nothing to Say In Reply

There's a great verse tucked away in Acts 4. I turned to it this morning and, although I've read the verse several times, a new insight hit me. Here's the back story to the verse:

The Jesus movement is still pretty new. Peter and John are out preaching and they end up healing a guy who couldn't walk. This upset the establishment (religious leaders), which happens when control freaks lose control.

They throw Peter and John in jail for the night and then the next day begin to interrogate them. They ask them "By what power, or in what name, have you done this?" And so Peter boldly stands up (to them) and tells them that they healed the guy in Jesus' name.

Here's the great verse in this passage. John 4:13-14 "Now as they (religious leaders) observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus. And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they had NOTHING TO SAY IN REPLY."

Two things stand out to me in that passage. First, Peter and John lived their lives in a way that made people recognized that they had been with Jesus. And second, they lived their lives in such a way that at the end of the day, when they had to give an account, no one could find fault with them - they had nothing to say in reply.