And having heard [it] they were pricked in heart, and said to Peter and the other apostles, What shall we do, brethren?
Peter had just told this crowd that the Jesus they killed is the One God raised and exalted. This verse is their reaction, and it shapes what Peter says next.
Their response shows the Holy Spirit at work in the hearers, not only through the preacher.
Peter testified about the One whom they had refused and killed, but whom God had exalted. That testimony had the most powerful effect: "They were pricked in their heart." That is, they were convicted. You have there the very first effect of the action of the Holy Spirit on the souls of men. The Spirit convicted them of their sins and reached their consciences. These men stood face to face with their guilt. The Lord put them on trial, so to speak, and brought them into the presence of God. He did not only charge their sin on them; He made them conscious of what that sin was. There was a clear break between them and God.
A response on this scale invites an obvious explanation: a gifted speaker, or an impressive movement to join.
Three thousand were added to their number — many times the size of the original company. This addition did not come from Peter's striking eloquence. It did not come from anything powerful or attractive in the company of those who professed the Lord Jesus Christ. It came entirely from the power of the Holy Spirit.
The same sermon can wound two ways. Older translations say these hearers were "pricked in heart." One writer sets that beside a later scene in Acts, where hearers were "cut to the heart" and stoned Stephen.
When the gospel went out, many were pricked in their hearts. This was not like some in Acts 7:54 who were "cut to the heart" — there the flesh was cut, and they stoned Stephen. Here they were pricked in their heart, in their affections, and were brought down in repentance. They ask at once, "What shall we do?"
Being cut to the heart could look like a wave of emotion or a change of opinion. One writer shows it was neither.
It was a real work of God in the conscience. They were not merely persuaded, but pricked in heart. There was submission to His person whom they had just crucified, and this through faith in God's word. This was not mere remorse. It was not just a change of mind either. It was real judgment of self before God. They now took His side against themselves and against their own unbelieving evil in the past. And they cast themselves on Him whom they had so bitterly despised to their own ruin.
These are the people who had shouted for His crucifixion. Their question shows how far they have moved.
Their sin was set before the people. They were pricked to the heart, and said to Peter, What shall we do? The loud, unruly will was gone: no more "Crucify Him, crucify Him." Sin has done its act, and can never undo it. The folly of it comes home to the heart with distress. "What shall we do?" They are turned; they have come to distress and godly sorrow.
They address the apostles as "Brothers." Older translations expand this to "Men and brethren." The word carried more than family ties.
Besides its literal meaning, the word was used for people linked together morally or as a nation. It was also used for those who made up the Jewish nation. Acts 2:29, 37 (where the expression "Men and brethren" should be translated simply "Brethren").
A conscience awake is real. But one writer warns against reading more into this verse than it says.
These people were pricked in their heart and said to the apostles, "What shall we do?" It would not be scriptural to say they were already saved. For that would set aside what Scripture means by being saved in the full sense of the word.
Peter does not leave the question hanging. His answer has two steps.
Where conscience is seriously affected, the answer is near at hand. First they are to repent. That points to the way they had treated their own Messiah. Then they are to be baptized, which publicly reverses their public rejection of Him.
- Word. Peter told them what they did to Jesus and what God did with Him; the Spirit made those words land.
- Wound. The word wounded them into repentance, unlike the crowd who were cut to the heart and stoned Stephen.
- Weight. This was conscience, not feeling. They judged themselves before God and took His side against themselves.
- Will. The crowd that once shouted "Crucify Him" now asks what to do; the will that shouted for His death had broken.
- Way out. Conviction is not yet salvation. But the answer is close: repent, and be baptized — publicly undoing their public rejection of Him.
And Peter said to them, Repent, and be baptised, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for remission of sins, and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Peter has just told the crowd at Pentecost that the Jesus they crucified is Lord and Christ, and they cry back, "Brothers, what shall we do?" His answer names four things — repentance, baptism, forgiveness, and the Spirit — and how they fit together is the question.
Peter preached Christ, and then he called for repentance. One writer puts that demand and its result side by side:
Listen to Peter's address on the day of Pentecost, at the opening of the book of Acts. It was the most fruitful sermon ever preached in this world. It ended with the glorious result of three thousand souls! And what did Peter preach? He preached Christ, and he called on men to repent. Yes, the great apostle to the Jewish people insisted on repentance — judging yourself — real sorrow of heart before God.
Repentance is more than regret, and baptism was the public test of it. It also reversed what these same voices had shouted weeks earlier:
"Repent" — a good word… What is repentance? It is judging yourself… Why be baptized? That would test the reality of their repentance, if it existed. Go, and publicly own His name in the waters of baptism, as seven weeks ago, in Pilate's hall, your voice was heard crying, "Away with him, crucify him."
This order is not the order found elsewhere in Acts. One writer explains why:
Baptism before remission! This is not God's usual order, but the very reverse. When Peter proclaimed Jesus to Cornelius and his friends, they first received the remission of their sins, then the Holy Spirit, and after that baptism was granted to them (Acts 10:43-48). God departed from the usual order on the Day of Pentecost for a very important reason. Only seven weeks earlier these people had been guilty of the murder of the Son of God… Their baptism put them outside "the crooked generation." God's judgment was about to fall on that generation through the Romans.
That separation is the point. Baptism marked a break from that nation. It did not buy salvation:
Baptism saves in a similar way, not for eternity but from a world that rejects the Lord Jesus Christ… By being baptized they publicly dissociated themselves from their own nation, which had rejected the Messiah. Of course, baptism is a symbol of burial with Christ in His death (Romans 6:4). So baptism saves outwardly, but it is only a picture of what saves for eternity — the precious sacrifice of Christ. That sacrifice becomes yours only through faith in Him.
The words read like a formula, and people have built far too much on them:
Peter's words, wrongly interpreted, have led to much confusion. People have built doctrines on these words, especially about water baptism. Those doctrines are taught nowhere else in the Bible, and they contradict the gospel… Remember that Peter was speaking to people who had openly rejected Jesus. So they had to admit their wrong in public. They had to own Him openly as Messiah — the one they had disowned when they handed Him over to lawless men.
The gift Peter promises is not a power but a Person:
The great point of the passage is the personal coming of the Spirit. The power to speak in unknown tongues, the power to do miracles, and the power to preach were only the signs and effects of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Receiving Him personally is the grand thing in Acts 2. The gift itself is infinitely greater than any effect it could produce.
Peter offered that gift to "every one of you." One writer notes the phrase:
There was no discrimination now.
One writer traces the order seen after Pentecost:
They heard of forgiveness of sins through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They believed on Him. They received forgiveness. At once, without a moment's delay, God gave each of them the Holy Spirit… Paul's teaching in Ephesians agrees perfectly with what happened at Caesarea, where Cornelius heard the gospel: "In him, when you believed, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit."
- Pierced — Peter preached Christ, then called for repentance, and three thousand were reached.
- Judged — repentance means judging yourself, not just feeling sorry. Baptism was the public test of whether it was real.
- Severed — their baptism cut them off from a nation under judgment. It saves outwardly, as a picture of the sacrifice that saves for eternity.
- Guarded — Peter spoke to people who had publicly rejected Jesus. His words are not a rule that water baptism buys salvation.
- Given — the promise ends in a Person, not a power. It was offered to "every one," and God still gives Him to all who believe the gospel.
For to you is the promise and to your children, and to all who [are] afar off, as many as [the] Lord our God may call.
Peter has just called the crowd to repent and be baptized. Now he tells them how far the promise of the Spirit reaches. He names three groups — the hearers, their children, and those far off. Then one clause decides who among them receives it.
The promise Peter points to is not vague goodwill. It is the specific blessing the crowd had just watched fall on the disciples, and it comes bundled with forgiveness.
Peter pointed to repentance and baptism in the name of Jesus Christ as the way to remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. As he points out in verse 39, the promise in Joel is to repentant Israel, to their children, and even to distant Gentiles. So the first Christian sermon already has in view the spread of gospel blessing to Gentiles. Remission of sins and the gift of the Spirit carry with them all Christian blessings.
This gift is one thing. New birth is another, and so are the various abilities the Spirit hands out.
The gift of the Holy Spirit spoken of here is the special and lasting privilege of the Christian and the church. It is as distinct from new birth by the Spirit as it is from the gifts we read so much about in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles.
The people standing in front of Peter had, weeks earlier, pressed Pilate to crucify Jesus by calling down the consequences on themselves and their offspring. Peter now addresses exactly that.
To win over the wavering governor Pilate, the people had lightly said, "His blood be on us and on our children!" (Matthew 27:25). Now the proclamation cancelled that vow for the repentant Jews and their children. They were admitted to a place of privilege on earth — the house of God. The promise was to the very people who had so blatantly abused God's approach to man in Christ.
"Far off" is not about geography. Israel held a nearness to God that other nations did not have. Peter's phrase marks those left outside — and in Christ that distance is gone.
In God's arrangements the Jews were near, as Peter declares (Acts 2:39), and Paul also (Ephesians 2:13). The Gentiles were far off. Now, for those of the latter who are in Christ, that difference is abolished for ever by the blood of Christ. For them there is now no privileged nation that shuts them out for ever. There is a privileged people, but everyone in Christ makes it up.
So two groups once kept apart now enter one new place by one way.
The Church — the dwelling place of God — has now been built, and the gift of grace is proclaimed to both Jews and Gentiles. God declared the way by which the Jew and the Gentile, in His sovereign grace, could pass out of the two outer circles into that new sphere formed that day. Both of those circles lay in the kingdom of darkness, where Satan reigned. In that new sphere the Spirit of God acted and dwelt.
Peter said more than he had grasped. His own later reluctance shows it.
His words seem to carry a sense beyond Israel: how far he entered into their force himself, perhaps none of us can say. We know that afterwards, when Peter was called to go to the Gentiles, he found it difficult. It is hard to suppose, then, that he fully understood his own words. However that may be, the words were according to God, whether or not Peter fully appreciated them when he spoke them.
The last clause decides it all. It leaves no one a claim, near or far.
The apostle closes by assuring them of Israel's share in the blessing. That blessing had a wider range, as Joel had declared about the day he spoke of. The promise, he tells them, is for you and for your children; but beyond these, for all that are far off — the Gentiles. Yet it is not a claim anyone holds. Even Israel could have no claim. Everything depended entirely on the call of God's grace — the call of "the Lord," that is, Jehovah, our God.
Because the call is God's, no human resistance can block it. Peter learned this in the house of Cornelius, a Gentile officer who believed.
The details of the conversion of Cornelius in Acts 10 and 11 show the ability of God to bring this about. Neither the prejudice of the Jew nor Peter's hesitation could stop God pouring out the gift of the Spirit on the nations.
- Promise — God promises forgiveness and the gift of the Spirit, and with them every Christian blessing.
- Pardon — He offers it first to the very crowd that had called Christ's blood down on themselves and their children.
- Reach — "Far off" names those outside Israel's privileged place. In Christ that distance is gone for good.
- Beyond him — Peter announced a scope wider than he yet understood; the words were still God's words.
- Call — Nobody, Jew or Gentile, holds a claim. The whole promise rests on God calling — and when He calls, no prejudice can stop Him.
And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, Be saved from this perverse generation.
The scene is Pentecost, and this verse is only a summary of how Peter closed his preaching. His last words raise two questions: what is the danger, and how can a person save himself?
Luke records the closing appeal, but tells us plainly that Peter kept going.
Then Peter urged them, solemnly and earnestly, to save themselves from that crooked generation. But here the historian has not reported everything Peter said. He spoke many other words of the same urging kind, and they have found no place in inspired Scripture.
What kind of words were they?
These "many other words" meant, I take it, good, sound, plain preaching, which had most blessed results. Peter was in splendid form that day, because he was full of the Holy Spirit.
Out of everything Peter said, the Holy Spirit kept this one line. Some translations put it, "Be saved from this perverse generation," as the quote below does. The line points to more than pardon for people one by one.
This was by no means all the apostle urged on that memorable day. But out of many more and different words, it was enough for the Holy Spirit to recall the exhortation, "Be saved from this perverse generation." For now God was about to separate as well as to forgive and deliver. At the very least, the salvation goes beyond guilt and sin. He would set them apart from that perverse generation, which was hurrying on to its quick ruin. It was rejecting the gospel, as it had rejected the Messiah Himself. Out of that set-apart people, now proved utterly crooked and rebellious, He would have His own saved, for His own glory and in a new way… For we too, though Gentiles by birth, belong to this new family of God and new testimony of Christ.
"This generation" is not a date on a calendar. It is the nation that had killed its own Messiah, and some of Peter's hearers had helped. A city of refuge was a town where someone guilty of a death could flee and be safe.
"Save yourselves from this crooked generation" was a call to cut themselves off from the nation that had killed its Messiah. It was a call to get into the city of refuge. In practice the Church of God became "the city of refuge" for every Jew who had stained his hand with his brother's blood — for everyone who had helped to kill the Lord.
So how was the break made? Baptism was the public act by which a repentant Jew stepped out of the doomed company.
The particular point Peter makes, both in his sermon and in his letter, is that baptism cut the link between the repentant, believing Jews and the unrepentant, unbelieving mass of that nation. That lies on the surface of Acts 2, and we believe it is involved in 1 Peter 3:21, for his letter was written to believing Jews. He tells them that baptism corresponds to the waters of the flood, which long ago cut the link between believing Noah and his household and the godless world… They suffered much from that godless mass. But they were saved from its fate, whether in this life, at the destruction of Jerusalem, or in the world to come.
Can a person save his own soul? The salvation in view here is of another kind.
In this verse the Jews were urged to save themselves from "this crooked generation." In being baptized they were saving themselves (not saving their souls) from a generation that had rejected the Lord Jesus.
The command still lands on a hearer today, and it is not a call to self-rescue.
Peter then adds, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation." But you say, "How can I save myself?" By coming to Jesus, the living Saviour, and clearing out of the world that is under judgment. "You are in the wrong company today," Peter is saying in effect; "come out from among them."
Peter had three thousand anxious hearers in front of him. Notice the direction he pointed them.
When three thousand Jews became anxious enquirers, Peter said nothing about conquering the Jewish nation for Christ; he urged them in the opposite direction, saying, "Save yourselves FROM this crooked generation."
- Warned. Peter pleaded and testified far longer than Luke records. The Spirit kept this one sentence for us.
- Named. The danger is a generation, not just personal guilt — the company that had rejected its Messiah and was hurrying on to ruin.
- Separated. God was about to separate as well as forgive; this salvation goes beyond the question of guilt and sin.
- Marked. Baptism cut the link, as the flood cut Noah's household off from the ungodly world; it saved them from that generation's fate, not their souls.
- Gathered. The way out led into a refuge — coming to a living Saviour and clearing out of a world under judgment. Gentiles belong to this new family too.
Those then who had accepted his word were baptised; and there were added in that day about three thousand souls.
One sermon at Pentecost, and a small group of disciples became a crowd of three thousand. The verse raises three questions: what it means to receive the word, what the baptism meant, and who did the adding.
The ESV reads "those who received his word." Older English Bibles added the word "gladly." The oldest manuscripts do not have it, and that missing word says something about how these people heard.
'Gladly' is the reading of the Received Text. Textual scholars reject it on plenty of evidence, because the oldest and best manuscripts do not have it... The gospel may be precious and comforting, but deep seriousness would mark souls who had only just repented, and for reasons that searched them to the bottom. A 'glad' reception would fit better with a revival movement and its usually shallow results. The work at Pentecost was both deep and wide. Three thousand souls in one day was no small catch, and it was in every way fitted to prove that a Divine person had just come in grace as well as in power, both to save and to gather.
Peter had just told them to save themselves from this crooked generation. Baptism was how they did it — a public cutting of ties.
They were a separate company. Baptism, as we all know, presents the idea of separation. In that day, and in this day, there is the great world system, ruled by the power of evil and the will of men. But God also formed a new circle, and the Holy Spirit lived in that circle... Baptism took the converts out of this world's circle and brought them into the Christian circle. Baptism is the figure of death. In effect they said, "We are dead to the world we once lived in. We have left it so that we could come into that new circle of life and love where God dwells."
For these hearers the break was sharper still. They were Jews, and their nation had rejected its Messiah.
The Jews as a nation were like a sinking ship. To be baptized was to cut your last link with them, and that meant salvation from their national doom. So Peter said in Acts 2:40, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation."
The word translated "souls" here is not a technical term. It has more than one sense, and here it counts people.
First, the word psuche clearly means "life," as in Matthew 2:20... Next, it stands for the general fact of conscious feeling and existence — the activity of the inner man — without saying where it comes from or what it is... And it stands for persons, as in Acts 2:41, 43 and 7:14.
The verse says they "were added" but never says who added them. The end of the chapter answers that. There the older translations read "such as should be saved," where the ESV has "those who were being saved."
The last verse of the chapter tells us who added them and what they were added to. The Lord Himself added them, and He added them to the Church... The closing words, "such as should be saved," do not mean that they were unbelievers, or that He added them so that they might be saved. The nation had rejected Christ and was heading for judgment. Those who believed and were baptized would be saved from that judgment... This matters greatly, because Catholicism, and those who follow it, tie salvation to belonging to the Church, instead of making the Church the Assembly of those who are saved.
They joined a company that already existed, and the adding did not stop that day.
The same day three thousand souls received Peter's word of testimony and were added to this company already formed (Acts 2:41). And it became a daily event that the Lord was adding together such as should be saved (Acts 2:47).
The number three thousand had appeared before in Israel's story, on the day the law came down.
Moses brought down the law, carved on stone tablets, only to find it already broken. That day three thousand men died by Levi's sword. Three thousand law-breakers were thrown into eternity unblessed (Ex. 32:28). The Holy Spirit came down to bear witness to a Saviour who had gone up to heaven. That day three thousand souls were brought to that Saviour, and He blessed and saved them. Three thousand took their stand for the Lord. They had judged themselves, believed the truth, and received forgiveness of sins, and the Holy Spirit as the seal of their faith.
- Received — they took the word in with deep seriousness, not surface excitement; "gladly" is missing from the oldest manuscripts.
- Baptized — the sign of death and separation, a public break with the world and with a nation heading for judgment.
- Souls — the word here means persons; three thousand real people, counted one by one.
- Added — no man enrolled them; the Lord Himself added them to a company He had already formed.
- Reversed — under the law three thousand died the day it was broken; at Pentecost three thousand were saved the day the Spirit came.