Becoming Christian

We’ve been studying Acts 2 and this important moment that happened at Pentecost. The pouring out of God’s spirit upon these followers of Jesus signified the arrival of the last days and its urgent call to everyone to acknowledge that God has made this Jesus—Jesus of Nazareth—both Lord and Christ. This is what the Old Testament said would happen one day. And when it happened, the prophet Joel said, then “everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21).

Saved. Now what does that mean? What is this salvation that is promised to all who call upon the name of Jesus and acknowledge him as Lord?

As we conclude our study of Acts 2 this morning, we see that the preaching of Jesus in verses 22-36 resulted in people believing in Jesus and becoming members of his growing family and offering hope to the world. It’s a dramatic moment. We are watching as people are becoming Christian, and this is what salvation is all about.

Let’s take a look at this salvation. In our passage this morning, we see the search for salvation, the way to it, and the experience of it.

The Search for Salvation

First, the search for salvation. We begin with verse 37 where we are told that the crowd who was listening to Peter’s message about Jesus “were cut to the heart” and desperately asked, “Brothers, what shall we do?” They are searching for salvation.

The Preaching of Jesus

The phrase “cut to the heart” is unique in the New Testament, but it is a vivid way of describing an inner “feeling of sharp pain” due to anxiety or remorse.[1] What caused the pain? What brought this group of people under such strong conviction? What was it that brought them remorse?

Simply put, it was the preaching, the proclamation of Jesus, crucified, resurrected, and exalted. Peter did not pin them in a corner with his fine debating skills. He proclaimed Jesus and the Holy Spirit used that proclamation to bring them under conviction.

If only it were that easy, right? Perhaps it really could be, but we’ve become accustomed to the idea that we need to add to our preaching of Jesus fine-tuned arguments. Maybe that idea has actually hurt our witness. Most people don’t like to feel like they’ve been trapped in an argument. Most people won’t respond positively to that.

Rejecting the Savior

There is, however, something of a point to Peter’s argument, something he says that had a sharp edge to it and cut like a knife. He concluded his proclamation of Jesus by announcing in verse 36 that God had made this Jesus both Lord and Christ, “this Jesus whom you crucified.”

In what sense could Peter claim that this crowd was complicit in the crucifixion? How had they crucified Jesus? Notice that verse 36 addresses “all the house of Israel,” showing that this Jewish crowd before him is representative of the entire nation of Israel.[2]What would it mean for Israel to crucify the Christ? What would it mean for Israel to reject her own Messiah?

Once more we are reminded of the importance of keeping the biblical plotline before us. Go back to Abraham and remember that God had made a covenant with Abraham, promising to give him a large family, promising not only to bring blessing to the Abrahamic family but also to bring that blessing to the whole world through the Abrahamic family. That is the guiding sense of what salvation in the Scripture is all about. When Israel’s God acts to fulfill that promise, this will be good news not just for Israel but for all of creation.

So, Peter is more like Israel’s ancient prophets than he is a modern-day preacher. He is speaking to this crowd as representative of the entire nation and telling them where they have gone wrong. And this time, they have really gone wrong because they have turned their back on the God-appointed deliverer, the one God had sent to bring salvation to them and, indeed, to bring salvation to the whole world through them.

Think of Moses who “supposed that [Israel] would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand,” but when he came to reconcile two of his kinsmen who were quarrelling with each other, one of them said, “Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?” (Acts 7:25-27). Rejected by his own people, Moses fled from Egypt and his kinsmen remained in slavery in Egypt for four more decades.

The situation is similar here. Israel has crucified their only hope of rescue. And although Jesus has been raised from the dead and exalted to God’s right hand, this has only created a new crisis for “all the house of Israel.” The one who was chosen to be Israel’s deliverer but was rejected now stands over them as their righteous judge.

And so, conviction leads to the desperate question in verse 37, “What shall we do?”

Save Yourselves

Verse 40 says that Peter continued his exhortation “with many other words,” but it can be summed up like this: “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” He’s not here a snobbish old man decrying the vices of the younger generation, like we so often hear. But he is talking about the contemporary society of Jews who have turned their backs on God’s way and are plunging headlong toward disaster.[3]

It's a word that still needs to be heard today, starting with us, the church. After all, we are the heirs of the Abrahamic promise. Have we turned our back on our Savior?

The world today still needs to hear good news, but that good news has to begin with the recognition that the whole world—every single one of us—stands guilty before God.

Ashamed I hear my mocking voice

Call out among the scoffers.

It was my sin that held him there.

We don’t get to turn up our noses and blame “this crooked generation” (or the Republicans, or the Democrats) for the mess we are in. Salvation begins when we see and never forget that we are the ones who need it most.

The Way to Salvation

Now thank God that when the people say, “What sall we do?” Peter does not say, “Too late! You had your chance and you missed it!” There is a way to salvation for anyone who would like to take it. That way of salvation is found in verses 38-39.

Repent

The first thing Peter tells his audience to do is “repent.” What exactly does that mean? The etymology of the Greek word suggests that it means to change the mind. Change the mind about what?

What does Peter urge them to change their mind about? The context, I think, is pretty clear. Peter is telling them that the way of salvation begins by changing their mind about Jesus. Since they were complicit in having him crucified, their mindset about Jesus had been that he could be ignored, dismissed, or outright resisted. But since Peter has preached that God has made this Jesus both Lord and Christ, then the way of salvation has to begin by accepting God’s declaration of Jesus.

That is still true today. Paul tells us, quite straightforwardly in Romans 10:9 that the way of salvation involves confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. Repentance here involved saying and declaring with the mouth what one had come to accept in the heart: that Jesus has been raised from the dead and lives as the undisputed Lord of all. Repentance here at the start of the Christian movement consisted “in adherence and allegiance to Jesus himself.”[4]

It is easy enough for us today in our cultural moment to say, “Jesus is Lord.” Those can be empty, meaningless words. But they were most certainly not to this audience. Because to say “Jesus is Lord” is to deny that title to anyone else—and it is to deny one’s allegiance to anyone else, too. From a Jewish perspective, to say “Jesus is Lord” can get you kicked out of the synagogue because the title “Lord” could only be used for Yahweh, the God of Israel. Saying “Jesus is Lord” would have been viewed as a heresy.

But of course the early Christians did not think they were being heretical. They did not think they were starting a new religion, something called “Christianity” that was different from Judaism. They were beginning to accept the reality that the God of Israel, Yahweh himself, was somehow and in some way identified with this Jesus of Nazareth so that Paul could say that when every tongue confesses “that Jesus Christ is Lord” this is not blasphemy but precisely how God the Father would be glorified (Phil 2:11).

So, the first thing Peter urges the crowd to do is repent. Accept, affirm, and declare that Jesus is Lord. That’s basic to being Christian. So, say it!

Be Baptized

But then he says “be baptized.” Baptism has something to do with salvation. After all, Peter is only repeating Jesus’s own instructions. “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them,” Jesus said (Matt 28:19).

It’s funny, isn’t it, how controversial baptism has become among professing Christians? There is so much disagreement on who should be baptized, when they should be baptized, and how they should be baptized. But the importance of baptism is here stressed quite clearly, and while there are good faith disagreements on this matter among Christians, that all Christians must be baptized is more or less a unifying belief. That is to say, no one can seriously argue that the practice of baptism can be summarily dismissed.

Why does Peter tell this crowd to not only repent but also to be baptized? Why is baptism so important?

One thing we note here is that the command to repent is in the plural while the command to be baptized is in the singular. We’ve noted that, according to verse 36, Peter can speak to this crowd of Jewish people in Jerusalem as representing the nation of Israel itself, so that repentance is not simply an individual matter but a national matter. Baptism, on the other hand, is “an individualizing of the response that Israel as a whole should make.”[5]

It would be helpful if we could keep this collective as well as individual responsibility in mind as we think about what is happening here at Pentecost. We tend to think of this issue of salvation only on the individual level. The individual aspect of salvation is important, but the story of salvation must not be atomized like that.

Forgiveness of Sins and the Gift of the Spirit

Just consider what else Peter says here in verses 39-40. Baptism is to be administered “in the name of Jesus Christ,” so that the one who is thus baptized is marked as one who belongs to Jesus.[6] To confess that Jesus is Lord and to be baptized in Jesus’s name is to enter in to his service, and so to accept the responsibility to live the rest of your life in total allegiance to him and in obedience to his commands. No excuses.

Baptism in the name of Jesus is “for the forgiveness of your sins,” a phrase which usually only lands on our ears as an individual blessing: my own, personal sins are forgiven. But we cannot forget the larger picture going on here. For Israel as a whole to have their sins forgiven meant that Israel’s exile was over. Texts like Lamentations 4:22 anticipated the day when “the punishment of [Israel’s] iniquity” had been accomplished and God would keep them “in exile no longer.” So, what Peter is saying all throughout his speech here in Acts 2 is that what is on offer here is not some new religion called Christianity, but rather “a new world order, the end of Israel’s long desolation, the true and final ‘forgiveness of sins’, the inauguration of the kingdom of god.”[7]

Which is why Peter also says that repentance and baptism in the name of Jesus will result in the receiving of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Again, notice he doesn’t say what we are often taught to say: repent and be baptized, you will be forgiven, and you will go to heaven when you die. Nowhere in the Bible is evangelism done by promising heaven after death. The promise here is the gift of the Holy Spirit which is what the whole chapter is about. And as Peter says in verse 39, “the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” It is on offer for everyone who hears God’s call and responds to it in repentance and baptism.

So, this is the way of salvation, at least as it is expressed here: Repent and be baptized. And this is the benefit one is promised for going that way: God’s own Holy Spirit. So, what do you think? Would you like to be Christian?

The Experience of Salvation

The truthfulness of Christianity does not depend upon anyone believing it. But as this chapter draws to a close we see that many did respond positively to Peter’s speech. What happens next? What was their experience of this salvation?

Added to the Family

If we went out on the streets this afternoon, declaring in public that Jesus is Lord and hoping people would believe our message, none of us would expect to see the results that happened on this particular day during Pentecost. Verse 41 says, “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” Wow! I don’t know what percentage of the crowd this number represents, but it is quite a positive outcome nonetheless isn’t it?

Clearly this large number of conversions is explained by the reviving power of the Holy Spirit at work. But what I find interesting is how Luke describes the success of the disciples’ Pentecostal preaching. He doesn’t say, and there were about three thousand people who were saved, or three thousand people who were baptized. When he counts the number of people who believed the message about Jesus, he says that about three thousand people “were added.”

Added to what?

At the end of the chapter he says it again: “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” Those who were converted, who received the word, who repented and were baptized, who were saved, they were added, added to the number of Christian disciples. They became members of this fledgling Christian community. The church was born, and the world would never be the same because of it.

Committed to the Family

It was in the church that we see the experience of salvation for those who accepted the truth that Jesus is Lord. It is described for us in verses 42-47. It is such a lovely, joyful, hopeful scene, and it has inspired generations of Christians to anticipate some similar kind of experience within their own Christian church community.

But here we need to remember that Luke is writing history, telling us what happened while not necessarily prescribing for us what should always happen. If your experience of church life is not anything like what we read in these six verses, that doesn’t necessarily mean you are in the wrong church. In fact, Luke’s picture of the church throughout Acts is not always the bed of roses it appears to be here. He is honest about describing Christian (and church) experience.

Still, the unifying point is that the church matters, and that to be a Christian necessarily involves being a part of it. If you are a Christian, you must confess that Jesus is Lord, you must be baptized, and you must be added to the number—after all, you are part of the family!

So, the question, “Do I have to join a church?” is just as odd as the question, “Do I have to be baptized?” Such questions miss the point of what salvation is all about. Salvation is not first about one’s private religion or religious experience nor about securing one’s spot in heaven when they die. It is about believing that the crucified and risen Jesus is indeed the world’s true and living Lord. And those who believe that will find they have been given the energizing power of the Holy Spirit as a member of God’s new covenant family to catch a glimpse of the new creation itself.[8]

That’s what the experience of verses 42-47 is all about. It was terribly exciting, as verse 43 says. But again, these verses are descriptive, and no one should think that the absence of exciting signs and wonders means that they must be in a spiritually dead church. Excitement can be, well, exciting, but it can also be misleading. So, while it is no virtue to be boring, we must watch out for the all-too-common temptation of entertainment in our experience of salvation. We’ll see that in next week’s passage and in other places in Acts.

But what does have enduring application in these verses are the four commitments we read about here.[9]These new Christians were devoted to the apostolic teaching and the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. Quite ordinary things, to be sure, but also the same ordinary things that have marked and sustained Christians down to this very day.[10] Signs and wonders may or may not happen, but Christians who are members of any particular church can devote themselves to these things.

Attractive as a Family

Verses 44-46 describe the ordinary life of these Christians, living like family, sharing their possessions so no one was in need, gathering for corporate worship as well as in smaller groups in their homes to eat meals together “with glad and generous hearts.” It was enormously attractive to the watching world, we are told in verse 47. “And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” The Christian revolution had begun.

Healthy churches are what the world needs now just as the world needed it then. And it’s not really that hard to have a healthy church. Of course, it’s not that hard to have unhealthy churches either. And unhealthy churches have caused an awful lot of harm.

But the church remains the hope of the world, because it is there that the gift of the Holy Spirit is at work, showing the world a new family, the Abrahamic family in fact, a new way to be human.

And if you believe that Jesus is Lord, and if you are baptized in his name, then this is your family. This is where you are supposed to be. This is where we grow up together into fully-formed disciples of Jesus.

_____

[1] Walter Bauer et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 523.

[2] Darrell L. Bock, Acts, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, ed. Robert W. Yarbrough and  Robert H. Stein (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 135–36.

[3] Tom Wright, Acts for Everyone: Part 1 Chapters 1–12 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 41.

[4] N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1996), 251–52.

[5] C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, International Critical Commentary, ed. J. A. Emerton, C. E. B. Cranfield, and G. N. Stanton (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 153–54.

[6] Barrett, Acts of the Apostles, 154.

[7] Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 272.

[8] N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Acts: Rediscovering What the Church Was and Is (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2024), 28.

[9] It may be more accurate to say there are two things mentioned (teaching and fellowship) and that the breaking of bread and the prayers further define what is meant by fellowship. See Ben Witherington, III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-rhetorical Commentary, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 160.

[10] Wright, Challenge of Acts, 28.