36 You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. 37 You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached— 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.
39 “We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, 40 but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. 41 He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. 43 All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. 45 The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. 46 For they heard them speaking in tongues[b] and praising God.
Then Peter said, 47 “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” 48 So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.
Dig Deeper
A few years back the church at which I now minister had a member of the church family who happened to be a player for the local professional NFL team in our area. That was before we moved here but many of the people who are still in our church family here knew him and his wife (he was injured and eventually retired from professional football before moving back home). I thought about that recently, though, when my youngest son asked me about going up to the stadium and maybe catching a game. He said that he would like to watch the game and then go into the locker room and meet the players. That’s a great idea, but of course I had to explain to him that we didn’t have tickets and couldn’t afford to buy any. Then he thought that perhaps we could just go up to the stadium and go into the locker room without getting tickets for the game and going to that. What he didn’t realize is that there is no way that we could ever get into that locker room. We could try and plead and beg and do everything else that came to mind but they would not let us anywhere near the locker room. We are not members of the team and you don’t get in unless you are a member.
But the brother that I mentioned was a member of the Green Bay Packers. He could go into the locker room whenever he felt like it because he belonged to the team. Of course no one else in the church at the time was a member of the Packers and so they could not go in even if they wanted to. But from time to time, this player would take a couple of disciples from the church with him into the locker room. They could go where they normally would not have been allowed simply because he told the security guards that they were with him. Because he belonged, he had the right to bring them in with him and his endorsement signified to the security people that it was okay for them to enter. Any of the normal objections would be voided by the fact that he had vouched for them.
Now that’s not a perfect analogy, analogies never are perfect, but it does start to help us understand some of the confusing aspects of this scene here. We can easily recall passages like Acts 2:38 where it is promised that all who enter into the life of Christ through repentance and baptism will receive the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But here, at first glance at least, it looks as though the Spirit is being given before baptism. That can be confusing for some folks. But first we must remember that there is an important difference between the Spirit of sonship that we receive at baptism, that subtle indwelling that guides us through the process of growing into Christ’s family and being transformed into the image of Christ, and the outpouring of the Spirit that enabled people to display the miraculous gifts of the Spirit as a verifier of the truth of their message. It is the difference between the “gift” of the Spirit and the” gifts” of the Spirit.
The reality is that what is going here is not at all confusing when we look at it from the perspective of the above analogy. The Gentiles could not previously enter into God’s family but they would be allowed now. And just so that there was no confusion and no arguments, one who belonged to the family, the Spirit of God himself, would vouch for them. The Holy Spirit would give them his special outpouring, something that for the early church usually only came through the laying on of hands by the apostles. But this was not a normative event. This was a once-and-for-all opening of the door to the Gentiles that was similar in its magnitude to the outpouring of the Spirit that came upon the apostles in Acts 2 at Pentecost. He poured himself out on them, enabling them to perform signs and speak in tongues to show that the door to God’s family really was opening and that people really could be baptized into God’s family. He was pouring himself out on these Gentiles now to vouch for them and show the Jewish Christians that God’s family door was opening to them as well. If the Spirit had vouched for them then they all they could really do was to endorse the Spirit’s call and baptize these folks into God’s family.
Throughout Peter’s speech to the household and friends of Cornelius he continues to stress that everything that has happened and everything that he was claiming about Jesus Christ was a result of God. Cornelius was not a Jew but he was a God-fearer. He was one who had been staring in through the shop window for a long time and had liked what he had seen about Judaism but he could not realistically become a member of God’s family. So Peter makes it clear to him that this was the same God. Everything that Cornelius admired and desired about this God had come to fulfillment through Jesus Christ, and what was more was that he no longer had to stand on the outside and look in admiringly. He and all other Gentiles could finally come in.
At every turn in this section, Peter brings out that the promised salvation that would make people of all nations God’s people had come through the agency of Jesus Christ but it was orchestrated through the hand of God. It becomes clear that when Peter referred to God, he was primarily referring to the Father whose role is to appoint and ordain the actions of the Son and the Spirit. God sent Jesus Christ to announce peace to the people of Israel. He, through the power of the Holy Spirit, went around showing people that he truly was the Messiah, but he was able to do all that because God was with him. He was put to death on a cross, but God raised him from the dead. This was not an event that was witnessed by all people but was witnessed by those whom God chose to serve as witnesses to his resurrection to the rest of the world. They were the ones that were appointed to preach that God had appointed Jesus Christ as the judge of the living and the dead.
Finally, said Peter, all of the prophets testified about Jesus, declaring that everyone who believes in him would receive forgiveness of sins through his name and life. The person who insists on finding a specific prophecy or passage that makes this exact statement will have some trouble. Peter was not claiming any such thing. He was not claiming that there was a specific passage in the Old Testament that made this prophecy. His point was that the whole of the Old Testament promises that came through all the prophets pointed to this exact concept. God’s people would always be built on faith and the specific expression of that faith would come through dying to self and having resurrection faith in the life of Jesus Christ (see Romans 4 where Paul expounds upon this exact idea).
It appears that verse 43 was not the end of what Peter was planning to say because he was interrupted by the Holy Spirit. We can speculate that perhaps Peter was ramping up to give a similar call to Acts 2:38 where he called his listeners to repent and be baptized in Christ for the forgiveness of sin and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But God knew how challenging this was going to be for the Jewish Christians and the watching Jewish world. Many would have a hard time accepting the entrance of Gentiles into the family of God based solely on being baptized into Christ and reception of the subtle but powerful gift of the indwelling Spirit. They were so conditioned to think of things like circumcision and following the Law as one’s uniform of the people of God. It would have been easy for them to continue to question the validity of the Gentile believers and to eventually splinter God’s people into two groups of Christians. But this would have gone against the very point of God creating his one people out of the two (Eph. 2:11-22).
In fact, this was such a challenging concept that the Spirit considerately stepped in and gave a clear sign that God was accepting the Gentiles just as they were based on nothing more than their belief and baptism into the life of Christ. What God was calling clean, no man should call unclean. That this was a monumentally difficult acceptance for Jewish Christians is evidenced by much of the rest of the New Testament. Books such as Ephesians, Galatians, and Romans have the difficulty of fully accepting Gentiles into God’s family despite not being circumcised or following the Law as a primary theme. And that is after the Holy Spirit broke in upon the Gentiles and poured out the miraculous gifts upon them.
Some have wondered, though, if the Spirit coming upon them meant that the Gentiles were already saved without really needing to be baptized into Christ through water baptism. In some ways this speaks more to our Western need to break everything down into its smallest parts to understand it, and usually winds up in us separating things out that don’t need to separated from one another. But this passage has led to so much confusion for some that it is probably a legitimate question to consider. The key, as mentioned above, is to understand the difference between the outpouring of the Spirit and the indwelling. Even in Old Testament times, the Spirit would occasionally come upon one person or a small group of people in a special act and enable them to partake (including someone like King Saul who was certainly not a man after God’s own heart but could be used occasionally for God’s purposes), however temporarily, in specific work of God. This practice would continue for a brief time after the coming of Christ. But this is separate to the gift of the indwelling Spirit that was received only when one entered into Christ and received a new heart through the work of God’s own Spirit (Ezek. 36:26). What the Gentiles received, then, in the outpouring of the Spirit and the ability to demonstrate the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, was not entrance into the family of God. It was a voucher from the Holy Spirit. It was a one-time, non-normative event that was showing God’s people that this group of non-Jews really did belong into God’s family. The only thing that one needs to enter into the life of Christ through baptism is faith in his life; nothing more and nothing less.
Devotional Thought
Chances are pretty good that you are a Gentile. Have you really ever spent some time thinking deeply about the great lengths that God went through to bring you into his family. Not just as a Gentile but even as an individual. Spend some time today praying through your own salvation story and how God brought you into his family. Express your deep gratitude for how much he has done to bring you into his family.
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