PT-4 "The Appeal" (Acts 2:37-40)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/5/2017 7:43 AM

My Worship Time                                                                                    Focus:  PT-4 The Appeal

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Acts 2:37-40

            Message of the verses:  “37 Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brethren, what shall we do?" 38 Peter said to them, "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 "For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself." 40 And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, "Be saved from this perverse generation!"”

            We want to focus in on verse 38 this morning where Peter tells them “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.”  There are some who teach that there is something they call baptismal regeneration, which is a false teaching that baptism is necessary for salvation, and when they read this verse they use it as a primary proof text to their view.

            We have spoken about baptism as a dramatic step for these first converts to Christianity as it showed that they were breaking away from Judaism, but physical baptism is not necessary for salvation, although it is one of the two elements of the Christian faith, with Communion, or the Lord’s Supper as the other one.  Water baptism is a picture of what happens to a believer when they are saved and perhaps the best place to see this truth is in the sixth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans.  In this case Peter was calling on them to prove the genuineness of their faith, and this was done through public baptism.  When Jesus spoke to the rich man in Luke 18:18-27 He wanted him to show the genuineness of his faith by selling his wealth to help the poor, but the man refused to do it, John MacArthur writes that “salvation is not a matter of either water or economics.  True repentance, however, will inevitably manifest itself in total submission to the Lord’s will.”  Now there are other reasons found in MacArthur’s commentary that show how the teaching of baptismal regeneration is wrong and this takes up a fair amount of his commentary on these verses and as I mentioned earlier that we will be looking at the subject of “The Appeal” for many days.

            Second is that this teaching “violates the important hermeneutical principle known as analogia Scriptura (the analogy of Scripture).  That principle states that no passage, when correctly interpreted, will teach something contradictory to the rest of the Scripture.  And the rest of Scripture unmistakably teaches that salvation is solely by faith (cf. John 1:12; 3:16; Acts 16:31; Rom. 3:21-30; 4:5; 10:9-10; Phil. 3:9; Gal. 2:16).”

            We will only look at one more reason why this teaching is wrong and then look at two more tomorrow.  “Third, after condemning the ritualistic religion of the scribes and Pharisees, our Lord would hardly have instituted one of His own.  F. F. Bruch remarks, ‘It is against the whole genius of Biblical religion to suppose that the outward rite [of baptism] and any value except in so far as it was accompanied by true repentance within.” 

Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:  “To treat is as holy.”

Today’s Bible question:  “What promise did God make to Moses at the burning bush?”

Answer in our next SD.

8/5/2017 8:14 AM