May 31 – Acts 2:37-41; 19:1-7

Main Focus: Who Receives the Holy Spirit?

After the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost Peter gave the first sermon to the church. “Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized. This does not imply that people can be saved without having faith in Christ as Savior, because the need to believe is implied both in the command to “repent” and also in the command to “be baptized . . . in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” The willingness to submit to baptism is an outward expression of inward faith in Christ. The gospel can be summarized in different ways. Sometimes faith alone is named as the one thing necessary for salvation, other times repentance alone is named, and sometimes both are named. Genuine faith always involves repentance, and vice versa. Repentance includes a change of mind that ends up trusting God (i.e., having faith). The gift of the Holy Spirit does not mean some specific spiritual “gift” but rather the gift of the Spirit himself, coming to dwell within the believer.

Peter’s word that the promise was not just for the Jews who were listening but for all who are far off implies the inclusion of Gentiles. Everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself indicates that salvation is ultimately God’s work, and comes to those whom the Lord effectively calls into personal relationship with him. In response to the gospel, three thousand converts at Pentecost were added to the initial body of 120 believers.

Later in Acts 19 Paul asked the disciples if they had received the Holy Spirit and they said no. That they had not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit indicates they had not heard of the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, and therefore they probably had not heard much of Jesus’ life and ministry, and certainly not of his death and resurrection. They had evidently relocated from Palestine to Ephesus before Jesus’ own ministry began. As followers of John they would have known his message that the Messiah would bring the Spirit.

Having learned how Jesus had fulfilled the message of John the Baptist, these disciples of John submitted to baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit came on them means they received the new covenant fullness and power of the Holy Spirit, something that happened to Jesus’ disciples for the first time on the day of Pentecost. They had not previously known about Jesus’ death and resurrection, so their earlier belief was one of looking forward to the Messiah to come, a state similar to that of OT believers. Their speaking in tongues and prophesying was an outward demonstration and verification of their receiving the Spirit.