ANNOUNCER: Believing for eternal salvation—is it believing that sins are forgiven or believing that a promise is kept and a gift is given? What is the bullseye for belief and for evangelism? Thank you, friend, for joining us today. This is Grace in Focus, a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Find us at faithalone.org. Go there to find out about our online seminary with full scholarships available for students maintaining good academic standing. Application and registration windows are open now for our fall semester starting September 16. We would love to have you study with us and we’re thankful for our generous donors who make this possible. Get all the information you need at faithalone.org/seminary. 

Now today’s discussion is just ahead with Bob Wilkin and Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right, Bob, we’ve got a question from Michael. This question is, GES teaches that believe in Jesus for everlasting life is the bullseye in evangelism. Isn’t believing Jesus for the forgiveness of sins another bullseye, since Cornelius and his household were saved by believing that message? It’s an interesting question, but I can give you the answer right now. 

BOB: Okay, give me the answer. 

SAM: An archery target only has one bullseye, so there can’t be two. So it’s got to be one or the other, Michael, thanks for the question, that’s the [unintelligible] everybody and that’s about it. 

BOB: But is the bullseye big enough more than one arrow can hit it? 

SAM: Well, every bullseye is big enough for that. 

BOB: That’s right. I’ve seen the dart throwers and you know they can throw more than one dart in there. 

Okay, so great question and great comment there too. There’s just really one bullseye. So the real question would be, is believing in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins synonymous with believing in Him for everlasting life, because there’s only the one bullseye. So are those two different ways of saying the same thing? Let’s look at this first of all from the Gospel of John. How many times does Jesus speak of the forgiveness of sins in John’s gospel? 

SAM: I think it’s zero. 

BOB: Well, no, there is one, but never evangelistically and never before His resurrection. After He rises from the dead in John 20, He says whoever’s sins you retain will be retained and whoever’s sins you forgive will be forgiven. That’s it. And that is not talking about the forgiveness that a person gets when they’re born again, he’s talking about fellowship forgiveness, in terms of church discipline. In other words, He’s saying, if you retain the sins of someone, then they’re going to be undergoing church discipline.

But never once does Jesus say he who believes in Me receives the forgiveness of sins, right? Not once. That should be quite telling. But what Michael’s asking about is Acts 10:43, right? In Acts chapter 10, Peter is coming to the household of Cornelius. And Cornelius was a centurion. A centurion, we get the word century from centurion. You think of someone over a hundred troops, but it wasn’t exactly a hundred troops. It could be slightly less than that, but it could be all the way up to like 600 troops for a centurion.

But in any regard, this was a high-ranking person. And we’re told in the opening verses that this is a God-fearing Gentile who was a devout man and his prayers and alms ascended to God. So God sent an angel to him and the angel told him to send for Simon Peter. Now we’re not told until Acts 11:14, the angel told him what Peter would be telling him. All we’re told initially is send for Simon Peter and he’ll come and give you God’s message. But not what God’s message is for. In Acts 11:14, can you read 11:14? This is where Peter is telling what Cornelius had told him. 

SAM: The last part of 13 is where it starts the quote, “Send men to Joppa, and call for Simon, whose surname is Peter, who will tell you words by which you and your household will be saved.” 

BOB: So he was told in advance that Peter is going to tell you and your household words by which you must be saved. And clearly he didn’t understand that as any other kind of salvation, but salvation from eternal condemnation. He understood this as regeneration. So when Peter is preaching in Acts chapter 10 and he gets to the part about his message that all the prophets say that whoever believes in him receives the forgiveness of sins, we know Peter is not finished with his message, because what does the next verse say? 

SAM: Verse 44, “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word.” 

BOB: So “while Peter was still speaking.” It’s like he finished saying “whoever believes in Him receives the forgiveness of sins and…” and he’s starting into “and” and before he can even get the “and” they get the gift of everlasting life, the gift of God which is everlasting life. He doesn’t even get that out because they get it, because they were told that he’s going to give you words by which you must be saved. And so they understand that one of the attendant blessings that goes along with salvation is the forgiveness of sins. And so when they heard the forgiveness of sins and it was by those who believe in Him, they connected the dots and got the fact that believing in Him was the condition of being saved forever. 

SAM: Yeah. And it’s important to note that the reason why this account is included in Acts is to explain why the Jews and the Gentiles are now one body in Christ. They’re no longer separated, because this was a big event for Peter too when Peter received a vision and God tells them that all things are clean or all things that I make clean are clean, I don’t think in that account, he mentioned anything about go teach Cornelius how he can have everlasting life. 

ANNOUNCER: The Grace Evangelical Society’s recently published Old Testament Commentary, Volume One is now available. Find it at faithalone.org/store. It’s where you can also find Bob Wilkin’s latest book, The Gospel is Still Under Siege, as well as many other titles by Grace Evangelical Society authors. Please come by and have a look today. You’ll find the GES store at our website, faithalone.org. That’s faithalone.org/store. Now back to today’s topic.

BOB: What’s interesting, that’s Acts chapter 9 and he has this vision of this sheet that comes down from heaven with various unclean animals on it and he’s told to take and eat and he says “No, Lord.” How many times did he see that same vision with the sheet coming down? Three times. And immediately after the vision, how many men come to him from Cornelius? 

SAM: Three men. 

BOB: And are these three men Jews or Gentiles? 

SAM: Gentiles. 

BOB: They’re three unclean men and what are they telling him? To go to the household of an unclean man to talk to him about Christ. And so this passage is about Peter and the other apostles recognizing the church is not just for proselytes. Peter could have held the view that, look, anyone who believes in Jesus has everlasting life. But to be part of the church, they’ve got to not only believe in Christ, but they’ve got to be baptized and they’ve got to be circumcised. So they might think full participation in the church required more because in Acts 2, Peter was present when a group of Jews came to faith, but they didn’t yet receive the forgiveness of sins. 

SAM: And they also didn’t receive the Holy Spirit until they repented and were baptized. And that’s the historic event here is in, verse 44 while he’s still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon them. 

BOB: Okay, great. 

SAM: That’s the emphasis. 

BOB: And what does Peter say about baptism right after this? 

SAM: Then he says [in verse] 47, he says, “Can anyone forbid water, that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” 

BOB: We tend to think of baptism as something which we’re imposing upon people. Peter is viewing baptism as a privilege. 

SAM: They’re just like us. We were baptized. You know, why would we forbid them to be baptized? 

BOB: Right. But he’s thinking that the Jewish believers who are with him might want to forbid them from being baptized. And he’s saying, no, no, we can’t forbid them because they’ve received the Spirit just as we have. You see in Acts 10:43-48, we have the condition that exists today. I remember it from RIBS: regeneration, indwelling, baptizing, sealing. At the moment of faith, ever since Acts chapter 10, the person who believes is not only born again and sealed, the R and the S, but they’re permanently indwelt by the Holy Spirit and they’re baptized into the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit. In other words, they were already Spirit-baptized before they were water-baptized. 

So in terms of Michael’s question, believing in Him for the forgiveness of sins is not synonymous with believing in Him for eternal life. It’s just that they recognized that you’re not going to receive the forgiveness of sins unless you’re also receiving everlasting life. But that doesn’t mean then that we can just quote Acts 10:43 and people are going to get it because people can think that I have the forgiveness of sins by faith in Christ, and yet in order to have ongoing forgiveness, I’ve got to confess my sins, which is of course what 1 John 1:9 teaches. So the problem is, if you think that forgiveness of sins is what you get when you believe, you may well not believe that you’re secure forever. 

SAM: I think the best thing you could do, Michael is go through the Gospel of John, see how the greatest evangelist evangelized and look at the bullseye that He was hitting every time. If you do that, then you’re going to be evangelizing just like Christ did and you’re going to be hitting the bullseye every time. So I don’t see the need to, well, I like to say Jesus forgives your sins. If to you, they mean the same thing, I don’t understand why you’d pick the one that Jesus didn’t use over the one Jesus did use. 

BOB: I like that. 

SAM: So I think that the best advice we could give is, stick to the Gospel of John, stick with what we know to be the bullseye and not stray into other areas and make an argument for well, maybe this could be it. 

BOB: Now, I would say this just as a finishing touch here. Let’s say someone used something that was truly synonymous with everlasting life. Like they said, you will be saved forever and you can’t lose it. You’re once saved always saved. Most people would understand that to mean I’m going to be in His kingdom forever. Or you might say you’ll be in his kingdom forever. You might say a number of things which are equivalent to eternal life. 

But Michael, I still agree with what Sam’s saying. Why would I even say that, “saved forever,” or “be with Him in His kingdom forever,” when Jesus rarely used the word “saved” in John’s Gospel that way. He did in John chapter 10, I think it’s verse eight, and He did in John 3:17. But his repeated message was “He who believes in Me has everlasting life.” So let’s keep that the bullseye. If you happen to use a synonymous term, okay, but don’t use something that’s not synonymous. The forgiveness of sins is not synonymous. So don’t use that. 

Well, thanks, Michael. Thank you, Sam, for all your good input. And remember, let’s keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode: is belief in Jesus enough? Come back and join us again and in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.