Acts 2: 39 Commentary

There are a few things to consider here:

1.) The promise is to your children only in the same way that it is to those who are afar off.
2.) The conditions of the promise apply in all cases being part of the promise.

What is the promise? It is the promise given in the preceding verse, namely that if a believer will repent of their sins and be baptized in water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as an appeal for the forgiveness of sins, that this person will receive the Holy Spirit as a gift.

Now, this promise applies to all men, even as many as the Lord shall call. But it does not apply until they are called, for the conditions of the promise require the call to have taken place. In other words, the promise is to believers, that if they repent and are baptized as an appeal for forgiveness that they will receive that forgiveness and the Holy Spirit also. It is not the case then that those afar off should be baptized before they are called (indeed, how could they be?!?) and it also is not the case that your children should be baptized before they are called (as the Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Anglicans argue). Rather, just as those afar off must be first brought close and hear the word of God and beleive it, so also your children must first grow up and hear the word and believe it. Then, once they have been called by the preaching of the gospel and beleive the word preached, then and then alone let them be baptized. And even then, do not have them baptized as a mere sign or as a bare act of obedience. Nay, for Peter says “be baptized for the remission of sins” which means as an appeal for forgiveness, even as Paul in Acts 22:16 was instructed “What are you waiting for? Get up and be baptized and have your sins washed away, calling on the name of the Lord.” The promise here, in fact is not to receive the Holy Spirit in a bare ritual obedience or a mere sign but in an appeal for forgiveness. “Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” — if you are baptized for some other reason, you cheat yourself of the promise. Do not be baptized or baptize anyone else for anything less than the remission of sins. Do not view baptism as anything less than an appeal for cleansing from sin, or you will make it worthless. Peter says in 1 Peter 3:21 “And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you–not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” — It does not do anything as a bare ritual or bath. When you dunk that faithless infant, nothing is accomplished. When you (although a believer in Jesus’ death) get dunked as a mere sign or a mere act of obedience, again nothing happens. But when you as a believers, penitent of his sins, get baptized as an appeal for cleansing from sin, then God answers that appeal and washes away your sins and gives you the Holy Spirit as a gift, as he has promised. Baptism is all about the promise of God, but if you are baptized not believing the promise, you do not receive the promise. If you are baptized as a mere sign or mere obedience, you have disbelieved the promise and you baptism is a witness against you before God showing and proving your disbelief. But if you are baptized believing the promise that in baptism God will forgive and remit your sins and give you the Holy Spirit as a gift, then he will do so for you while you are yet in the water.

By jk (wrote 36 Bible Commentaries - permalink to this Commentary)
Posted on: 4/18/2008 23:13 pm