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.