Repentance and Salvation Part 2. Acts 2:38-47
Acts 2:28 is one of those verses that constantly pops up. You are having a conversation with somebody and this verse pops up because it looks in the English as if it is saying something that runs counter to our theology. This is Peter's challenge when he comes to the end of his sermon. The Jews that are gathered there in the temple precinct are "pierced to the heart," which simply means that they come under the conviction of the Holy Spirit as they realize that they are guilty. They say to Peter: "What shall we do?" Peter answers that question in verse 38.
Sometimes we work our way through in such a detailed analytical manner when we are looking at a word that we forget that how words are used and what defines word meaning. It is very easy to focus on a word and forget the context. There is an analysis when you are drilling down into a passage and looking at all of the details, which are very important, but then you have to sort of stand up and look around. You can't just spend all of the time, as it were, with a microscope looking at the cell structure on every leaf. Every now and then you have stand back and look at the tree, look at how the tree relates to the other trees in the forest, and look at how the forest relates to other forests. The context isn't just the verse before and the verse after. The context has to do with that sub-section of a book or epistle, it has to do with a section that that sub-section is in, it has to do with that epistle as a whole and then with the writings of that particular writer. John presents the gospel in his Gospel without ever mentioning the word "repent." Yet the synoptic Gospels use the word "repent" a lot. We ought to be asking the question why, and what does this mean? The context matters. Observations aren't just in relation to that one verse but are to be expanded out: read the whole chapter, read two or three chapters, read the whole book. Then each book is in a context, e.g. Acts is in the context of Luke and Acts because Luke wrote these two books, part one and part two. So in studying a word you need study first how it is used in Acts, then in Luke and Acts, then in the Gospels, and then in the New Testament and the Old Testament as well. Only when you broaden that out to get the whole context can you really begin to understand the word. The vocabulary that the apostles use when they get into the New Testament era has less to do with how a Greek word was used in the culture of Koine Greek-eastern Roman empire-1st century AD culture and more to do with how that word was grounded in an Old Testament theology. So when you have words like "holy" and "repent, believe, faith," all these different words, you have to go back to the Old Testament to understand how they thought because they were all Jews coming out of a culture that had the Old Testament embedded in their thinking, and so they were just translating Old Testament ideas and words into their Greek equivalents. So it is really important to understand a lot of what happens in the New Testament the place to go isn't 5th century Athens, the place to go is the Old Testament. Then you trace these words through there. And especially when we come to passages like the events of the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 it is doubtful that it is possible to understand the chapter. For example, in Peter's sermon here, his use of Joel 2:38, 39 in terms of his explanation of this event of the Holy Spirit, if you don't understand what God's plan and purpose for Israel is within the whole concept of the kingdom, that these words are just loaded with meaning that come out of the Old Testament.
Acts 2:38 NASB "Peter {said} to them, 'Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. [39] For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.'" That is just loaded with Old Testament usage and verbiage and you can't really understand that of you don't understand the Old Testament very well.
There are basically three ways that evangelicals, grace-oriented conservative theologians, have interpreted this verse to show that water baptism isn't necessary for salvation. One of them deals with the Greek preposition translated "for" in the phrase "for the forgiveness of sins." The second way has to do with focusing on the grammar, looking at the fact that there are certain plural verbs and certain singular verbs, and that is also very important. Then a third way which you won't find in a lot of commentaries but it is a really solid, stand-up view.
"Repent" is the Greek metanoeo [metanoew]—the preposition meta prefixed to the verb noeo which means to think (nous is the noun for the mind; noeo is the verb to think). metanoeo, if you broke it down etymologically, would be like an afterthought; you are going to think again, you are going to change your mind—which is what it came to mean, change your mind. It is not always helpful to look Bible words up in a Webster or Oxford English dictionary. They say that "repent" means to have remorse, and metanoeo doesn't have an emotive connotation. There is another word in the Greek language, metamelomai [metamelomai] which Paul uses in 2 Corinthians 5 which as the idea of sorrow, but that is another word. metanoeo is a thought word meaning to change your mind, and it is also used to translate the Hebrew word shub in the sense of turning to God, turning away from one thing and turning to something else; so that involves a change of direction, a change of thinking. This is the word that Peter uses. When he says that he is using a word that is just loaded with Old Testament meaning, and it is important to understand that. As we have seen the command to repent is addressed to a group; it is a plural. The singular is addressed to the individuals who respond to the previous command.
The meaning of water baptism in terms of its denotation is the idea of plunging or immersing in water; its connotation is identification. The theological meaning is that a person is identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection. That happens at the instant of salvation and is the baptism by means of the Spirit. Water baptism is a physical ritual that is designed to teach the principles of this abstract concept of spiritual baptism.
How is the word "repent" used in the New Testament? The word was used 21 times in the Gospels, but that is a little misleading because it is not used at all on the Gospel of John. The first time the word appears is in Matthew 3:2 from the mouth of John the Baptist as he comes to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom, the kingdom that had been promised to Israel throughout the Old Testament, the promise of a King on David's throne, the promise of an eternal kingdom in which righteousness would dwell, the promise of a kingdom where all of the nations of the world would come to worship at the temple. That kingdom was now being proclaimed by John. Never does John explain what the kingdom is; never does Jesus explain what the kingdom is. If you were a Jew and had been reading the Old Testament you didn't have to be told what the kingdom was, you already knew. Jesus came along and He has the same message. Matthew 4:17 cf. Mark 1:15, parallel passages. Jesus began to preach at the very beginning of His ministry the same message as John: "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Mark records it this way: NASB "…The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." Matthew doesn't include the faith part. It is not that he doesn't believe it is relevant; it just doesn't fit the focal point of his theme in his Gospel, whereas it does with Mark.
What does this idea of repent mean? As we have seen this takes us back to Deuteronomy 30:2. To understand Deuteronomy 30 you really have to put that within the context of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is basically a sermon that Moses preached to the Israelites just before he died and just before they were going to enter into the land that God had promised them, and this generation was finally going to realize that promise. At the end Moses describes the stick and the carrot (stick = curses; carrot = blessings). God says: If you obey me I will bless you in these ways; if you disobey me I am going to discipline you in certain ways. So at the end of chapter 29 God warns them they of they go and break the covenant, i.e. the Torah, and get involved in idolatry then the justice of God would burn against the land and "bring upon it every curse [judgment]." The worst and most extreme form of divine discipline was that God would remove them from this land that He had promised them and had brought them to and given them, and He would scatter them among all the nations. We have seen that. The majority of Jews lived outside the land in the first century; they did not all return. Why did only a few return? Because they hadn't turned back to God, and God wasn't going to fulfill the promise of establishing the kingdom until they all turned back to Him. But He had to bring a few back in order to establish a national entity in the land so that the Messiah could come and give them that opportunity to accept or reject Him. They rejected Him and when they were defeated in AD 70 by the Romans they were scattered to all the nations, and they did not start a return to the land until the 19th century. That has been increasing ever since.
Deuteronomy 30:1 NASB "So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call {them} to mind in all nations where the LORD your God has banished you, [2] and you return [shub] to the LORD your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, [3] then the LORD your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you." What is the condition for being restored from captivity—full restoration? "…return [shub] to the LORD your God and obey Him." This is picked up as we go through the Old Testament. There are places where the prophets mention this during the time of first and second Kings.
Isaiah 19:22 NASB "The LORD will strike Egypt, striking but healing; so they will return [shub] to the LORD, and He will respond to them and will heal them." Shub just means to turn to God. It doesn't mean to have remorse, to put on sackcloth and ashes—not that that is bad but it is not the issue, the issue is turning to God.
Isaiah 55:7 NASB "Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return [shub] to the LORD, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon."
Ezekiel 18:30 NASB "Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, each according to his conduct," declares the Lord GOD. "Repent [shub] and turn away [shub] from all your transgressions, so that iniquity may not become a stumbling block to you." Turning to God is a turning away from the idols. God wants 100% obedience, that is why the first commandment was a command to obey the Lord exclusively and the second commandment prohibited idolatry. [32] parallel to 1 Timothy which tells us that God does not desire that anyone should perish, NASB " 'For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies,' declares the Lord GOD. 'Therefore, repent [shub] and live.'"
Then when we get into the New Testament we have in Acts 3:19 NASB "Therefore repent and return [synonyms: turn to God and turn to Him], so that your sins may be wiped away [as in 2:38], in order that times of refreshing [Millennial kingdom] may come from the presence of the Lord." He is still offering the kingdom. One of the hardest things for people to grasp is that in the first eight or nine chapters of Acts the church is primarily Jewish and the offer of the kingdom is still being made. The destruction of Jerusalem hasn't happened yet, so there is potential. There is still the legitimate offer because as long as the people are in the land God is going to extend the offer of grace to them. And so again and again it is repent and the kingdom will come. Could they? Yes. Would they? No.
Why didn't John use the word "repent" in his Gospel? Repent is heavily loaded with this Deuteronomy 30 baggage. Later on we see in Acts 17 Paul says in Athens that all the nations are commanded to repent, but primarily this is a word that is directed in an Old Testament context. In Matthew, Mark and Luke it is directed to Israel, and John doesn't mention it. He doesn't really say much about the kingdom of God either. Why is that? Matthew, Mark and Luke were written before AD 70 and John was written in 90. We can't prove that but that is probably very close to the answer and that by the time John writes the Gospel of John the issue of Israel turning back to God, based on Deuteronomy 30:2 and the kingdom coming, is no longer a possibility. The temple has been destroyed and the nation has been scattered. So it is a focus on understanding what God is doing with Israel.
The reason they are baptized in the name of Jesus. The next phrase is "for the remission/forgiveness of sins." One way we may hear some people solve this is by saying the eis [e)ij] clause with the accusative noun indicates "on account of" or "because of." So we got baptized because we've been forgiven. Though it can mean that, just because a statement is possible it doesn't mean that it is right. But when you take it and plug it into the whole context of the Scriptures you can eliminate some of the options. It is a sense of being baptized to or towards the purpose of the remission of sins. It is not talking personally here. Everybody wants to take this as a justification passage but this is another offer to corporate Israel to turn back to God, accept the Messiah and the kingdom will come. That involves justification but it is a much richer concept than what we have in a passage like Acts 16:31 NASB "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved..." There is more going on here than just individual justification, it is if you will all turn to God and each of you that does gets baptized for the remission of your sins—this is corporate sins of Israel—then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. When he is talking about the promise of the Holy Spirit here it is loaded with new covenant terminology, Jeremiah 30:31-33. Blessings are going to come. We can't interpret this as strict church age because when he gives this message how long had they been into the church age? Twenty minutes? An hour? It is transitional, and failure to understand this transitional nature is confusing. There are two things going on: the start of the church, looking forward, but there is also the ongoing offer of the kingdom to Israel that if they would turn to accept the Messiah, even now, the kingdom will come in. So it is going in a couple of different directions.
Later on when Peter is talking to Cornelius he makes it plain that he understands that salvation is by faith alone. It is not repentance in the sense of remorse and he says there that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sin, the same phrase as in Acts 2:38. Essentially what Peter is saying in 2:38 is this: You all turn to God [corporate message to Israel] for the forgiveness of your [all] sins, and you all shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Then, "let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ." The forgiveness of sins is a plural noun, so he is talking nationally, corporately, just as he is when he says repent. It is still a kingdom offer. What do the last verses of Joel 2 say? Those who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. In Joel chapter three it is when the Lord returns and the Spirit is poured out upon all the people and the kingdom comes.
What happens as a result of this is that 3000 understand. They realize that Jesus fits every pattern in the Old Testament for the Messiah. Acts 2:40 NASB "And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, 'Be saved from this perverse generation!'" The word translated "perverse" is interesting. It is skolias [skoliaj] which means crooked or bent. Why is this generation crooked? Because it has followed the teaching of the Pharisees, hasn't understood what Jesus was teaching about the righteousness of God, and so it has come under a judgment. [41] "So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls."
Now we get a summary. Acts 2:42 NASB "They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." Notice there is an "and" between "teaching" and "fellowship," and there is an "and" between "bread" and "prayer." But there is not an "and" between "fellowship" and "breaking of bread." The best way to understand this verse is that in the breaking of bread and prayers there is an appositional phrase that explains fellowship. Fellowship is not primarily social intercourse between human beings. In Scripture primacy is given to fellowship with God and our fellowship with each other is a byproduct of fellowship with God. So we see here that they continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine, the didache [didaxh]. They are teaching. One thing we observe here is that the authority of the apostles is recognized and that what they teach is absolute. They continue steadfastly in it, and the word for "steadfast" is the Greek word proskartereo [proskarterew] which means to persevere in something, to keep close to it, to do it continuously. They are steadfast, disciplined, this is their priority. They are going to make sure that they are not going to not miss any time that there is going to be Bible teaching; they are going to be there. Then we have "breaking of bread." That is communion. Then "and to prayer." Prayer is between the individual believer and God; that is fellowship. So to get the point that fellowship here is fellowship with God it is further defined as celebrating the Lord's table and prayer.
Passages where the word "fellowship" is used: 1 Corinthians 1:9 NASB "God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship [koinonia/ koinwnia] with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." Then next time Paul uses that word, in 1 Corinthians 10:16, NASB "Is not the cup of blessing [referring to the Lord's table] which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing [fellowship] in the body of Christ?" It is the fellowship that is based on the death of Christ. This is the focal point of the church. Notice it doesn't say they continued steadfastly in 30-45 minutes of worship singing every Sunday. It doesn't say a lot of things that people go to church to do. They focused on doctrine—doctrine and fellowship with the Lord. That's it. It doesn't mean that some of those others things aren't fine, that they are not enjoyable; but too often they become distractions. The main thing is the main thing, and the main thing is to maintain the main thing. The main thing is the teaching of the Word.
As a result fear come upon them. Remember, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. Acts 2:43 NASB "Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles." This is their calling card, establishing their credentials. [44] "And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common." This is not mandated. Just out of their care for each other they were helping each other. If anyone needed something they freely gave of their own volition. This isn't some sort of Christian socialism or Christian commune; this is something where people care for each other, like a family. They are going to help each other out of there is a real need. [45] "and they {began} selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need." This isn't Marxism at all because it is done voluntarily; it is not imposed from the top down, and nowhere does the Scripture prescribe this as what everyone should do.
Acts 2:46 NASB "Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple…" Every day they went to Bible class in the temple and Peter sat down on the steps of the temple and taught them the Bible. Maybe they rotated among the apostles. "… and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, [47] praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved." Not a good translation. It is a present participle, but present participles that are used like a relative clause really function more like a noun. It is present tense; it is dynamic—"those who are saved" is how it should be translated. So it is not saying that salvation is a process for an individual.