“Silver and gold have I none”
Acts of the Apostles“Silver and gold have I none” is a scripture song inspired by Peter’s healing of a person at the Beautiful Gate. In the preaching guide, the song links the scene’s memorable language to its central contrast: Peter lacks silver and gold, yet acts in Jesus’s name and participates in the healing power of the Realm.
Scriptural Source and Use
The song is identified as a musical response to the passage about Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate. The guide suggests teaching it during a service’s children’s moment, bringing the biblical episode into congregational practice through a simple, repeatable song.
The song’s place in the discussion is more than decorative. It gives a compact point of entry into a passage that the guide also proposes approaching through its manifestation of the Realm, its interpretation, and the conflict that follows between witnesses and the rulers of the old age.
Meaning in the Healing Narrative
The phrase foregrounds what Peter does not possess: silver and gold. The passage’s significance, as the guide frames it, lies instead in the healing represented through Peter and John. Preachers are encouraged to help a congregation recognize where people today encounter that healing power, using the person at the gate as a point of comparison for experiences of inability, dependence, and need.
The song thus carries the scene’s contrast into worship: material resources are named, but they are not presented as the source of the healing. Its scriptural setting directs attention to action in Jesus’s name and to the Realm made visible through that action.
Place in the Guide
The expression is presented both as a song that may be taught to children and as a reminder of the passage’s wider preaching possibilities. Those possibilities include a holistic reading that moves from the healing itself to its interpretation and then to the confrontation with the old age’s rulers. The song condenses the opening movement of that sequence into a phrase a congregation can remember and sing.
A source for the lyrics is cited in the guide. No additional details about the song’s authorship, composition, or performance are supplied.
